Opening the Door to Violence

Charlie Kirk

Nobody cares what I think about Charlie Kirk’s recent public assassination, nor should they. Thanks to the internet, our public discourse is littered with opinionated cranks whose ad hoc platforms give them space to spew unbaked viewpoints and soak up citizens’ dwindling attention. Kirk himself might’ve become one such purveyor, had marketing copywriter Bill Montgomery not mentored and bankrolled him. Also, Kirk might still be alive.

I face two conflicting impulses regarding Kirk’s death. Historically, I’ve been a longtime advocate of nonviolent resistance, believing that shows of force only give powerful people the justification they need to instigate draconian crackdowns. Therefore, I would never advocate anyone actively assassinating Charlie Kirk, no matter how reprehensible I find his opinions. Anyway, that’s my longstanding historical opinion, which I still broadly believe.

Recent political trends, however, force me to evaluate my position. We saw, during the summer protests of 2020 and after, how the police used routine, lawful protests as justification for attacking American citizens like a Greek hoplite phalanx. More recently, we’ve seen ICE agents swarming over workplaces, businesses, and whole communities, in such number that Gandhi-like responses would be thoroughly impotent, and possibly even get people killed.

Concisely, you can’t hug it out with the fash.

Nonviolent resistance always contains within it the prospect of violence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reached the point where he objectively needed to participate in the plot to assassinate Der Führer. Dr. King’s resistance to state authority always implicitly held groups like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam in reserve. Whenever we assert the primacy of nonviolent resistance, we tacitly also say: “For as long as that works.”

Demonstrations, language, and semiotics won’t work under current conditions. We can’t afford the time necessary to convince a critical number of Americans to withhold their support from an administration that shows thorough disrespect for the law. Not only the upper echelons of power, the White House or the complicit Congress, but also the boots-on-the-ground functionaries who get their limited scraps of social capital from helping enforce the administration’s goals.

Thus we hit my first impulse: the necessity, in dire times, for direct action. We must do something. Not just generating symbols or waving placards; these only work under normal conditions. Rather, we must strike at those who misuse their power for selfish, harmful, or venal ends. When the Einstatzgruppen invade, you don’t inaugurate a committee to build consensus. You shoot back.

But there’s my second impulse. Who or what gives us the authority to exercise violence? Under whose orders to we fire and reload? Mine? I’d make a terrible generalissimo; I can easily imagine getting so lost in my personal mythology that I forget the cause or ignore my allies. As Brian Klaas writes, power corrupts good people, but power also attracts those already vulnerable to corruption. And I’m Christian enough to know my vulnerability to Original Sin.

Revolutionary violence frequently starts well, but it seldom ends that way. Robespierre, the rhetorician of the French Revolution, couldn’t accept that he’d won, and launched the Reign of Terror. Chairman Mao called for perpetual revolution, which precipitated sectarian infighting after the Kuomintang collapsed. Contra Marx’s trust in collective wisdom, there’s no evidence that the next revolution will resolve any better.

Whenever we commence a campaign, we cannot anticipate where it will conclude. Society has too many moving parts to allow simple point-to-point planning. We can, at best, try to anticipate contingencies and make allowances. But the more people involved, and the more sweeping the social consequences we pursue, the more likely it becomes that we’ll unleash a monster we cannot control. The likelihood of that beast consuming us is high.

As I was drafting this essay, news broke that law enforcement had apprehended the probable shooter. Far from a leftist revolutionary, Tyler Robinson is apparently a conservative and a Nick Fuentes follower, who felt Kirk was too accommodationist. All reports are preliminary, and the accused deserves a fair trial, notwithstanding today’s political currents. But this only supports my belief that once you permit violence, you don’t get to stop it.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes that strongman dictators generally only leave power in chains, or in a coffin. Either way, they require somebody, inside the country or outside, to oppose them. Nobody outside America can challenge our military, suggesting we’ll need insiders to take initiative. But history isn’t on our side; once we allow violence into politics, we can’t eject it easily, and the price may be steeper than we anticipate.