As stories like this become more chaotic, we tend to forget about reactions to them in the moment. Later, such reactions are rewritten. That can not happen again. For posterity: a catalog of the justifications and celebratory reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Please contribute everything we missed in the comments below.

Charlie Kirk was shot in the throat by an assassin yesterday, and died shortly after. Millions of people watched. His children, one day, will watch.

The fallout has been immense, and will likely alter our country in ways impossible to predict. We are now in a state of information chaos, with details of the assassin still unknown, and — I am assuming — all manner of mis- and disinformation coursing the news and social media. Reaction from the right is one of mourning, which is not only to say sadness but anger. I anticipate it will follow on like this for many days. Reaction from the left has mostly been, at the more positive end, unhelpful.

Before I dig in, however, I want to first point out Cenk Uygur, who has produced the only really helpful commentary from the left I’ve seen so far. He is clearly just taking five minutes to empathize and relate with a lot of people in pain, and express, very competently, that he is standing beside them at this moment. I was moved by a video of him last night, and then today by the following:

This is the kind of writing that helps us remember we’re all human. It matters. Thank you, Cenk (seriously).

But now we’re moving onto the dunces. My purpose here is not to shame these people. My earnest hope is by the end of this record, I can persuade most reasonable elements of the left of a very real problem nobody wants to face. My hope is only that you look. I just want you to see it. Then, come to your own conclusions. But you have to look.

Earlier today, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein had the following to say:

Great. It is obviously true that America has a violence problem, in terms of armed assaults, domestic violence, and mass shootings, including another high school shooting just yesterday that barely cracked the news. It is also obviously true that America has a political violence problem, and that no political party is immune to crazy people in their ranks doing awful, crazy things. But, after yesterday, I just don’t have it in me to lie to myself anymore.

With the exception of the Minnesota shooting, a haunting, monstrous act — which, despite this week’s bizarre insistence to the contrary, everyone denounced at the time — Ezra’s examples of, as they seem to be framed, violence committed by the right against the left, are categorically different than what happened yesterday to Charlie Kirk. The inclusion of January 6^th, which preceded Ezra’s unmentioned six months of BLM rioting that resulted in dozens of deaths across the country, is especially infuriating. Paul Pelosi’s attack wasn’t political at all, though it was terrible, and reaction to that attack, while certainly not appropriate, was generally focused on the weirdness of the initial police and news reporting that seemed to paint the picture of a gay love affair gone wrong. There was no mass hope for Paul Pelosi to die. There were no calls for further dead Democrats. There were gay jokes, mostly. Again, bad. Yet more similar to what happened to Rand Paul, who was brutally attacked by his neighbor over yard waste. Yes, the left loved that too. And both of these stories are categorically different than what happened yesterday.

But rather than focus on a tit-for-tat “who is more violent?” competition, my intention is for us to focus on the country’s reaction to political violence.

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson led immediately to the leftist canonization of Luigi Mangione (as I covered at the time), and that public glazing extended well beyond the typical media psychopaths. Sitting politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren tacitly justified the attacks, then pivoted to discussing healthcare — Luigi’s obsessed cause. Thus, rewarding his behavior, they guaranteed it would haunt us for the rest of our lives. Today, you can buy Luigi merch online.

There were similar reactions on the left after both attempted Trump assassinations, the killing of Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner this summer, and now Charlie Kirk.

In the 24 hours since Charlie’s assassination, justifications and outright celebrations from left wing Americans have flooded every major social media platform. We are sharing them here, so we can refer back to this record as the conversation on violence in this country becomes confused, probably purposefully by people who do not want to face, for political reasons, what is happening.

To be clear, you will always be able to find examples of crazy people saying crazy things after every act of violence, in every direction. But the scale of what we tend to see is incomparable to anything we are witnessing now, and most of this, much of what we are cataloguing, has come from people with no fear whatsoever of sharing their identity. These are not Russian bots, or anonymous rage farming Pakistanis. These are public school teachers, college students, defense contractors, actual government employees. The reason they are so apparently relaxed sharing such truly heinous and horrifying sentiments, with no fear at all for their jobs, is they have internalized a sense, from our culture, that violence against right-wing people is justified.

We have been told for many years that “words are violence.” This has only ever meant, with no exception, right-wing words. Whether you agree, or disagree, with the notion right-wing words are violence (they are not, Jesus Christ), that is the culture that has produced such an unthinkable normalization of heinous grizzly murder.

The overwhelming majority of liberals do not think this way. Most American leftists do not think this way. But polling indicates a lot of leftists do. An enormous number of leftists. And reporting indicates this is reshaping Democratic politics.

I am hoping, perhaps stupidly, that liberals who fancy themselves thoughtful, good people will look at this, and will reflect honestly on what is very obviously a large, open, and growing movement on the far left in favor of literally murdering people they do not agree with.

I will say it again, because it is so important.

You at least need to look:

Celebrations

(click handles for links to videos)

Teachers celebrating:

A Boeing employee:

A DOJ employee:

And, as the ongoing leftist fetish for violence thing mainstreams, it turns out many of these people are losing their jobs. A lengthy thread here worth checking out, with many more examples updated in the comments:

Finally, an endless flood of requests for further murder on Bluesky. Though, I must note, unlike most of what we've shared here I have no idea who these people are. Judging by the overall tone of the week, my sense is much of this is coming from Americans who really believe this stuff. But some of this could be a foreign op, or bots, really anything.

Justifications

We are drawing a distinction between outright celebrations above, and justifications below. While the comments above are unambiguously insane, my sense is at least some of the stuff below would find defense on the left. People are emotional. People are just saying things. People want attention, really, is all this is.

None of this, especially from sitting government officials — who should only be saying, in unison, this is absolutely outrageous and must never happen again — is innocent. The outright celebrations we’ve seen could not exist if there weren’t a culture priming us for this behavior. And the posts below are actively contributing to that culture.

First, and of course, we have Mehdi Hasan and Ilhan Omar, two immigrants to our country tacitly endorsing the murder of a young American father. Love our new neighbors!

CA State Senator Scott Wiener took a break from defending sex criminals this afternoon to remind us Kirk should not have died, but deserved to die:

In the hours following Kirk's assassination, Steven King shared a fake claim that Kirk believed gay people should be stoned to death. He has since apologized.

MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was fired for saying Charlie Kirk was a “divisive younger figure” who is “constantly pushing hate speech aimed at certain groups,” concluding with: “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.”

Elizabeth Warren on toning down divisive rhetoric: “Why don’t you start with the President of the United States?”

And more:

Not a justification at all, but disturbing nonetheless:

Please share everything we missed in the comments below.

-Solana