Charlie Kirk is Dead. Here’s Why I’m Celebrating!
It’s a wonderful thing to outlive someone who spent his life working for your elimination.
illustration by Evan Urquhart in the style of Charlie Hebdo
Opinion, by Evan Urquhart
Most Mondays, Assigned Media runs the news aggregation column Leading Off. With the news dominated by the death of far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, and amidst widespread fears of violence from the far right, we chose to feature this opinion column by our founder Evan Urquhart this week instead.
We’re not supposed to say it. It is terribly taboo. According to Reuters, at least 15 people have already been fired for saying it (reporting by NBC suggests it may be many more). And yet, and yet… there’s a stirring deep inside, a wild joy lifting our hearts, an impish gleam in our eyes as we say Charlie Kirk is dead.
How could anyone be sorry? How could anyone be mournful? A man who kept a watchlist of professors whose views he disagreed with (one that spurred endless death and rape threats), is now dead! A man who supported the January 6 rioters that chanted calls to hang our vice president is dead! A man who called for his supporters to bail out the attempted murderer of one of his political rivals is dead! A vicious and committed racist is dead!
He called a passage in Leviticus that said gay men should be stoned to death “God’s perfect law”—and now he’s dead! In part, I am celebrating the fact that, however much evil remains in the world, at least nothing can ever bring him back. But mostly, I’m celebrating because he’s dead and I am still alive.
In normal times, I’d work to keep my schadenfreude at the death of a terrible person under wraps. The man has children, after all, and it would be a terrible thing if they were to learn how joyful their father’s death has made the people who he hurt. That’s why, in the first 24 hours after Kirk’s death, I kept decorum. I refrained from saying anything celebratory or even negative about this awful man. (Most people on the left did the same.)
These, however, are not normal times. These are times when the right to say something the far right finds offensive is under threat. It’s under threat by the US government and by individuals in the far right who seek revenge. If they’re compiling a list of everyone who refuses to fellate the memory of the horrid, evil, violent, moon-faced turd then it’s a list I’d rather be on than off.
I am nothing if not a free speech absolutist. Freedom of expression is central to the ability of trans people to live our lives openly, freely, and with pride. And that’s why, however tasteless, however much I’d hesitate to say it in any normal circumstance, today I am determined to join the celebrants with my full chest.
All that said, let’s take a minute to be clear: There was no hotbed of violent transgender leftism that resulted in Kirk’s murder. Our community has always been peaceful, and only recently even begun considering the need for self-defense. Even if the young, white, male scion of a deep red state had a transgender partner (a claim that remains unverified by any reliable news organization), that is as irrelevant as the fact that his parents were Republicans. Attempts to blame the trans community on this pretext would be funny—if they weren’t putting us all in deadly peril.
For my part, I certainly never wanted Kirk to be shot—honestly I didn’t think about him much, except as one of a cadre of interchangeable dead-eyed far right toads. You know, the ones embracing Nazi analogies for the modern day US that casts them as the Nazis and trans people (and Jewish people, and immigrants, and Black Americans) as the Jews?
“This is our Reichstag fire!” they cried, as Kirk lay dead. Yes, you fucking freaks, we know.
I do not want and have never wanted any of them dead. I want them to chill out and be normal for the first time in their lives.
I know that some people who would usually be on my side may look askance at my strong words. But I have concluded that strong words are the only ones suited for this day. In the first months of Trump’s second term we’ve had far too many people tempering their tones, hoping to avoid the ire of the victorious far right. Each on our own we’ve been keeping our heads down, afraid to say the wrong thing, hoping things get better or, if they get worse (which we pretend not to expect), that we’ll be able to survive. As we cower we are losing the core freedoms that we learned in school made ours a country worthy of our love. We must be brave. We must not shrink.
That’s why I’ve chosen to depart from my normally measured tone. I have always believed in an American right to free speech which includes a right to be offensive. It’s not a right I’ve often exercised myself, but it is one I value highly, nonetheless. Today, this hallowed right is teetering on the brink. I think I’ll use it while I still have it, thank you very much.
Fuck Charlie Kirk, and fuck you, if you don’t like me saying fuck him. I’m not afraid to say I’m glad I’m still alive at 47 while he is dead at 31.
While I still can, I feel like celebrating.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.