How Celebrating Kirk's Assassination Proves You Would Have Justified King's Death
The unchanging script America uses to excuse political murder
A Note to Readers
This article represents intensive research conducted over a weekend as I grappled with this week’s events and the disturbing parallels between how Americans responded to two political assassinations fifty-seven years apart. While I typically reserve long-form pieces like this for paying subscribers, the importance of understanding these historical patterns and the urgency of the moment compel me to make this analysis freely available.
I'm aware this comparison will be controversial. That's precisely why it needs to be read widely rather than confined behind a paywall. Democracy's health depends on our willingness to examine uncomfortable truths about how we talk ourselves into accepting political violence.
If you find value in this work and want to support independent journalism that tackles difficult subjects, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support makes in-depth reporting like this possible.
Fifty-seven years apart, two political leaders were gunned down. The reactions that followed were almost identical, and that should terrify us.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated while addressing students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Two killings, separated by half a century, both aimed at leaders who built their movements by mobilizing America's youth, though toward very different political goals.
The contrasts are obvious. King was a Nobel laureate and a global civil rights icon by the time of his death. Kirk, frozen out of legacy media, built his influence through social platforms and campus organizing. King favored government expansion and egalitarian economic policy; Kirk championed free markets and limited government. The liberal establishment celebrated one; the other was systematically excluded from it.
But here's what should keep you awake at night: When we examine the public response in the hours and days after each assassination, a disturbing pattern emerges. The proper nouns change; the machinery does not. Almost on cue, we see the same reflexes: victim-blaming, moral justification of violence, and, in both eras, people who chose to celebrate a political murder.
This isn't just a history lesson. It's a warning about how democracies talk themselves into accepting political violence. The bottom line won't surprise you: many of those cheering Kirk's death are using the exact same playbook used to excuse King's assassination, and history will judge them just as harshly.
There's a second irony at play here, one that assassins and their online supporters often do not grasp. Assassinations rarely have the intended effect; they can actually turn their victims into icons, bringing them more recognition and influence in death. In King's case, his murder actually sped up his transformation from a polarizing activist to an unassailable moral leader. Early signs suggest Kirk's assassination may do what his critics feared most: galvanize the youth movement he built and create a political legacy that would have taken him years to earn in life.
Why does any of this matter? Because political violence is creeping back into the realm of the thinkable. Watching how two different Americas reacted to two different assassinations shows us exactly how democracies normalize the idea that assassination is an acceptable tool for resolving political disagreement.
The Echo of Moral Failure
The most frightening sound after a political assassination isn't the gunshot. It's the voices that rush to explain why the victim deserved it.
1968: How the System Set Up King to Die
By April 1968, a large chunk of white America had been coached for years in how to justify King's death. The runway was paved in editorials, speeches, and "law and order" sermons. Senator Strom Thurmond had a favorite label: "agitator," often upgraded to "outside agitator," that stripped away King's legitimacy while building moral justification against him.
The Jackson Daily News jammed every dehumanizing signal into one line: "Rev. Dr. Extremist Agitator Martin Luther King," as if stacking titles could swap respect for contempt. Memphis officials accused King of "agitating destruction, violence, and hatred," as if the blame for violence belonged to the man who marched rather than those who cracked batons.
The tell came immediately after the murder. Polling showed nearly one-third of Americans believed King had "brought it on himself." U.S. News & World Report had spent years portraying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a radical, a subversive, and a promoter of civil disobedience that undermined the rule of law. Letters to editors repeated the same script: King's "radicalism" invited violence; his movement undermined "law and order."
It was a tidy story: label, isolate, predict violence as "inevitable," then call the assassination a grim but logical consequence. A moral machine built to run.
2025: When the Mob Does Its Own PR
Fast-forward to Kirk. The gatekeepers are gone. No editor has to approve your worst impulse. Your thumbs will do. Within hours, social platforms flooded with celebrations, jeers, and tidy justifications.
Anthony Pohorilak, a George Washington University official, declared Kirk's assassination "fair" because of his pro-gun advocacy—"No thoughts no prayers."
Patrick Freivald, a New York teacher, labeled Kirk an "aspiring Goebbels" who was "interrupted by a bullet," and closed with "Good riddance to bad garbage."
MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd offered the tidy causality loop, "hateful thoughts lead to hateful words… and awful actions," suggesting Kirk authored his own murder.
Gretchen Felker-Martin, a DC Comics writer, wrote: "Thoughts and prayers you Nazi b*tch… hope the bullet's OK."
A Prince George's County officer summed up the motif: "When you're spewing hate, hate will eventually… find you."
The day after the assassination, the victim-blaming came from within the U.S. House chambers. Representative Ilhan Omar shared videos describing Kirk as "a reprehensible human being... a stochastic terrorist."
The "stochastic terrorism" framing is particularly insidious. It suggests that conservative speech randomly but inevitably generates violence, making any attack feel predetermined rather than chosen. In other words, Omar is arguing that Kirk caused his own assassination through his words.
Different media ecosystem, same moral failure. Then it came in broadsheets and polls. Now it arrives as quote-tweets and viral dunks. The architecture didn't change; the volume knob did.
The Political Class and the Art of Selective Condemnation
Perhaps most revealing was the response from Democratic political leadership—a master class in moral positioning that condemns the effect while protecting the cause.
The Ritualistic Denunciation
Within 24 hours, the statements began flowing with a predictable rhythm. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker posted on X: "I strongly condemn the shooting that killed Charlie Kirk today at Utah Valley University. May his memory be a blessing." This came after he first blamed Trump and Republicans for the rising political violence: "I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country. I think the president's rhetoric often foments it."
"We've seen the January 6th rioters who clearly have tripped a new era of political violence," Pritzker went on.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed the sentiment, also directing blame towards President Trump: "This moment requires leadership that brings the American people together as opposed to trying to further divide... political violence in any form against any American is unacceptable, should be denounced by everyone."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered his own variation: "All Americans should come together and feel and mourn what happened. Violence, which affects so many different people of so many different political persuasions, is an affliction of America, and coming together is what we ought to be doing. Not pointing fingers of blame."
The script was identical across the board: universal condemnation of "political violence" coupled with calls to "lower the temperature" and a little finger-pointing. What was notably absent? Any acknowledgment of the specific hate ecosystem that had spent years priming this very reaction.
The "Both Sides" Deflection
Democrats responded with a clever deflection tactic: they condemned the violence while spreading the blame so widely that they dodged having to recognize the violence growing on the fringes of their own party. By framing the issue as "extremism on all sides" and "rising political tensions," they positioned themselves as the reasonable middle ground, dodged scrutiny of their own actions, and allowed the most radical of their party to maintain their perceived moral upper hand.
This was particularly galling given that many of these same leaders had spent the previous election cycle using precisely the dehumanizing language that makes violence feel justified. When you spend years calling your political opponents "fascists," "Nazis," and "threats to democracy," you cannot simply pivot to calls for civility when your very own language was found carved into the assassin's bullet.
The Conspicuous Silence on Celebration
Most damning was what Democratic leaders chose not to address: the widespread celebration of Kirk's death within their own political coalition. While quick to condemn "political violence" in abstract terms, not one major Democratic figure directly addressed the teachers, government officials, and activists who were publicly celebrating a political assassination.
The silence was deafening. Where was the condemnation of Anthony Pohorilak's "fair" comment? Where was the rebuke for Patrick Freivald's "good riddance" celebration? Where was the moral leadership that said celebrating political murder was unacceptable, regardless of the victim's politics?
This selective blindness revealed the hollowness of their "both sides" rhetoric. They could condemn violence when it served their political positioning, but they couldn't bring themselves to discipline their own coalition after an assassination.
The Language That Built the Permission Structure
The groundwork for Kirk's assassination didn't just emerge out of nowhere. It was built up over time, through high-profile speeches and mainstream Democratic media appearances. The documented timeline shows a gradual increase in dehumanizing language that turned political opposition into a threat to the nation.
The foundation was established in 2022 when President Biden labeled Trump's Make America Great Again movement "semi-fascism," introducing Nazi-adjacent terminology into presidential discourse. This word bridge proved crucial; once "fascism" entered mainstream Democratic vocabulary, the logical extensions followed predictably.
Vice President Kamala Harris demonstrated how normalized violent thinking had become during a televised interview with Ellen DeGeneres. When asked whom she'd choose to be trapped in an elevator with among Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, Harris smiled and responded, "Does one of us have to come out alive?" The studio audience erupted in laughter, demonstrating a casual acceptance of political violence.
By 2023, the rhetoric had crystallized into explicit elimination language. Representative Dan Goldman declared on MSNBC that Trump "is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated." However, Goldman's defenders argued that it was metaphorical, a defense historically offered for inflammatory rhetoric that precedes political violence.
The rhetoric continued to escalate, reaching the crowned leader of the Democrats in October 2024, when Harris was asked directly at a CNN town hall by Anderson Cooper, "Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?" Harris responded without hesitation: "Yes, I do." She later reinforced this characterization, saying voters don't want "a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist."
Trump wasn't the only target; this language expands to anyone who supported Trump, as Biden often describes anyone who supported Trump as "extreme MAGA republicans."
Here's the thing: When political leaders repeatedly characterize their opponents not as fellow citizens with different views, but as fascists requiring elimination, they construct a moral justification where violence becomes defensible as democratic self-defense.
You cannot spend years spreading fascist accusations and elimination rhetoric in mainstream discourse and then claim surprise when someone takes that logic to its ultimate conclusion.
The Architecture of Dehumanization
Strip away the names and the platforms, and you're left with a four-stage mechanism that makes assassination feel like fate.
Stage One: Labeling.
King: "extremist agitator."
Kirk: "right-wing extremist," "hate-monger," "fascist," "Nazi."
The vocabulary updates; the function doesn't. Labels shove a person outside the circle of "legitimate participant," which is step one toward treating violence as acceptable.
Stage Two: Outsider Status.
King: branded the "outside agitator," as though black citizens in the South were not his community.
Kirk: cast as the campus "provocateur," a walking disturbance whose presence was inherently destabilizing.
In both cases, critics denied the target's standing to speak for real communities.
Stage Three: Inevitability Narratives.
King: His confrontational tactics "would lead to violence," said 1968.
Kirk: His "hateful rhetoric" made violent retaliation "predictable," said 2025.
The trick is the same: transform political speech into a trigger that requires a violent response.
Stage Four: Post-Violence Rationalization. Once the shot is fired, the chorus sings the same refrain: this wasn't horror; it was consequence. The murder becomes justifiable.
Technology changes. The moral structure does not.
Why the Parallel Holds
This comparison isn't frivolous. King and Kirk shared key similarities that made them high-value targets for a society willing to excuse violence.
Both operated within explicit moral frameworks, presenting their movements as moral crusades rather than mere policy preferences. King made the case for racial equality; Kirk argued for campus free speech and religious liberty. Both positioned their fights as rights-based, not mere political preferences.
Both pursued generational strategies, pouring resources into campus organizing and student leadership development. They understood that changing the country meant changing the people who would run it next.
Both built alternative power structures outside traditional institutional channels. That's what makes entrenched systems angry, and what explains why the same dehumanization process was activated when violence ended their lives.
The key difference lies in media positioning. King was forced into mainstream discourse, even when coverage tried to diminish him. Kirk operated outside legacy institutions, growing from the bottom up via platforms that those outlets couldn't control. But the dehumanization sequence that followed their assassinations? Identical.
How Media Changed the Mask
Why does Kirk's assassination feel more viscerally revealing to ordinary Americans than King's did at the time? Because the medium doesn't just transmit messages; it exposes the messengers.
1968: Hatred in Formal Wear
In 1968, to celebrate a political assassination at scale you needed institutional approval: editorial pages, news magazines, or a public-facing pulpit. That formality created buffers. You read a cautious-sounding editorial blaming King for "division," and you could pretend the position reflected high principle, not personal hatred. Racial hostility and anti-communist fear acted as moral cover for excusing the inexcusable.
2025: The Mask Comes Off
Today, there are no buffers. Social platforms turn private bile into public broadcast. Your child's teacher, your county employee, your colleague—they don't need an editor to convert contempt into a digital record; they do it themselves, in your feed, under their own names.
The scale of the shift shows up in numbers, not just anecdotes. Surveys from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) show a record one-in-three students now hold some level of acceptance for using violence to stop a campus speech. That's not a small subculture; that's a pipeline. The 2026 College Free Speech Rankings reveal that acceptance of disruptive tactics has reached record highs across the board.
Shoutdown culture and assassination justification exist on the same moral spectrum. If you can justify using force to stop words because you believe those words are violence, it's a short walk to calling a bullet a "consequence."
The Convenient Fiction of the "Racist" Kirk
Perhaps nowhere is the dehumanization machinery more visible than in the systematic mischaracterization of Kirk's positions on race and civil rights. The assassin's cheerleaders have found comfort in a particular fiction: that Kirk was a racist who hated black Americans and wanted to roll back civil rights. This lie provides moral cover for celebrating his death; after all, who mourns a racist?
The problem is that this characterization is demonstrably false, built on selective editing, quote-mining, and willful misinterpretation.
Kirk's Actual Position on Civil Rights
Kirk's critique of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 wasn't rooted in racial hatred but in concerns about federal overreach and selective enforcement. His position evolved over time, but it was never the crude racism his critics portrayed.
In 2015, Kirk praised Martin Luther King Jr. as a "civil rights icon" and hero, aligning with mainstream conservative thought. His later criticism emerged from observing how the Act had been repurposed to disadvantage white Americans and Asian Americans through affirmative action.
Kirk's core argument was that the Civil Rights Act had been "weaponized" against the very principle of equality it was meant to establish. He didn't oppose the Act's anti-discrimination goals but argued it had evolved into a "permanent bureaucracy" that enforced racial quotas rather than colorblind equality.
This position, enforcing civil rights laws colorblindly but dismantling biased applications, is a far cry from the "wants to bring back Jim Crow" narrative his assassin's supporters have embraced.
The Media's Role in Manufacturing a Monster
The distortion of Kirk's positions wasn't accidental; it was systematic. The New York Times, for instance, had to issue a correction after wrongly attributing an antisemitic statement to Kirk when he was actually critiquing that very statement.
This pattern, taking Kirk's criticism of racist positions and presenting it as if he held those positions, became a standard technique for manufacturing outrage.
Elizabeth Spiers, writing in The Nation after Kirk's assassination, exemplified this approach by citing an "interpretive" quote attributed to Kirk: "Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot." Spiers linked to an X post containing this quote, which never actually appears in the video. The clip had been strategically edited to remove crucial context, and Spiers apparently made no effort to locate the original source material.
In the actual July 2023 podcast episode, , Kirk's commentary followed a different path entirely. He argued that "if we would have said Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks we would be called racist, but now they are coming out and saying it for us," then played a clip of Jackson Lee herself discussing her role as an affirmative action beneficiary. Kirk's full statement was: "We know you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."
While Kirk's language may have been crude and inflammatory, the context reveals something different from Spiers' characterization. Kirk wasn't making sweeping generalizations about black women's intellectual capacity as a racial group. He was targeting specific individuals whom he viewed as beneficiaries of what he considered illegitimate racial preferences. His comments came directly after playing a clip of Jackson Lee acknowledging her own affirmative action backgrounds, and Michelle Obama's admission in her memoir that she "sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action" regarding her Harvard admission.
This distinction between attacking individuals over policy disagreements versus making claims about racial superiority matters significantly. Kirk was responding to the women's own acknowledgments of benefiting from affirmative action, arguing that such policies create conditions where merit becomes questionable. The Oxford definition of racism requires "prejudice or discrimination based on race, or the belief that some races are inherently superior," and Kirk's statements focused on policy outcomes rather than inherent racial characteristics.
Spiers' portrayal also conveniently omitted Kirk's extensive work with black conservatives and the significant black support within his movement. Kirk regularly organized with prominent black conservative figures and maintained genuine partnerships that contradicted any simple narrative of racial animus. These relationships and collaborative efforts, which would be inconvenient to Spiers' preferred storyline, received no mention in her "analysis," which leads one to conclude that he goal was not to report honestly but to present the most damaging interpretation possible.
Whether one agrees with Kirk's assessment or finds his language acceptable, deliberately removing context serves the dehumanization process. By transforming targeted criticism of affirmative action policies into evidence of broad racism, commentators like Spiers contributed to a narrative that made Kirk's assassination seem justifiable to some observers.
This technique has become routine: manufacture inflammatory quotes, strip away context, ignore corrective evidence. When an assassination occurs within such a fabricated narrative ecosystem, the bullet arrives pre-justified by lies that masquerade as journalism.
The Moral Nullification of the "But"
While Democratic politicians offered carefully sanitized condemnations, a more revealing pattern emerged among commentators, opinion writers, and online voices who felt compelled to condemn the violence while immediately justifying it. The formula became predictable: "I condemn all political violence, BUT Kirk was a fascist who spread hate..." or "No one deserves to die, BUT his rhetoric was dangerous and divisive..."
This caveat reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of moral condemnation, or a deliberate denunciation of it. The moment you attach a "but" to your condemnation of political murder, you haven't condemned anything at all. You've provided permission.
The psychological reality is straightforward: those celebrating Kirk's death don't process the condemnation; they absorb the justification. When prominent voices across social media and opinion platforms offered these hedged responses, they weren't dampening the celebration. They were feeding it. The supporters cheering his assassination read these statements as validation, not rebuke.
Examples proliferated across platforms and publications. Leftist commentators wrote some version of, "Violence is never the answer, but we cannot ignore that Kirk built his career on division and hate." Opinion writers crafted: "I mourn any loss of life, but Kirk's extremist rhetoric contributed to the very climate that made this tragedy inevitable." Influencers posted: "Assassination is wrong, but we must acknowledge the harm caused by those who profit from hate speech."
Each "but" functioned as a moral eraser, wiping clean the condemnation that preceded it. These weren't statements against political violence; they were sophisticated methods of excusing it while maintaining plausible deniability.
Elizabeth Spiers' piece in The Nation exemplified this approach perfectly, condemning the violence in theory while spending thousands of words explaining why Kirk deserved what happened to him through systematic misrepresentation of his positions and character.
You cannot lie about a man to justify his murder and still claim moral authority. You cannot misrepresent someone as a racist or fascist, watch him get killed, and then wonder why people felt justified in celebrating. The condemnation becomes meaningless when you immediately provide the rationale that makes the violence feel earned.
This is where moral clarity separates from social positioning. Genuine condemnation requires moral courage: either political assassination is wrong regardless of the victim's politics, or it isn't. There is no middle ground that preserves your conscience while protecting your social standing.
The Support of Those Who Actually Knew Kirk
Perhaps most telling was the support Kirk received from black Americans and Jewish leaders who actually worked with him. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Kirk a "once-in-a-generation" figure and "a defender of our common Judeo-Christian civilization." This is from a leader who would have had no patience for actual antisemites or racists.
Kirk's consistent support for Israel and his documented relationships with black conservatives and Jewish allies paint a picture incompatible with the racist caricature his assassin's supporters have embraced. But acknowledging this would undermine the moral permission structure that makes celebrating his death feel justified.
The Mirror Test for the Celebrators
Here's the most damning part of the 2025 reaction: the breathtaking hypocrisy of those celebrating Kirk's death while posing as heirs to King's moral authority.
They align themselves with the "good side" that fought for civil rights during the darkest times of racial division, positioning themselves as King's moral inheritors. And yet, when confronted with a political assassination in their time, involving some of the same civil rights King fought for, they didn't recoil from the violence. They applauded it. They mocked a dead husband and father. They spat on the idea of equal moral standards.
Anthony Pohorilak's claim that Kirk's death was "fair" is morally indistinguishable from 1968's "he brought it on himself." Patrick Freivald's "aspiring Goebbels" crack—"interrupted by a bullet," "good riddance to bad garbage"—relies on the same dehumanization tactics King's critics used, merely updated for the social media age.
The uncomfortable question writes itself: If you had been an adult in 1968, which side would you have been on? Your response in 2025 already told us. The logic you're using now is the logic that excused King's assassination then.
If you are reading this clutching your pearls, offended by how anyone could have the audacity to compare Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King Jr., then you have proven the point entirely. You know nothing about Charlie except the lies that have been forced upon you by other liars, including the Democratic leadership.
Watch Charlie for yourself. Listen to his actual words in context. Examine his actual positions rather than the caricatures. If you refuse, or if in the end you shrug and still say you don't care about this man's death, then look in the mirror, because you are the problem.
You are the 1968 crowd that said King "brought it on himself." You are the people history will remember for cheering political murder while claiming moral authority. And no amount of virtue signaling about civil rights will wash that stain away.
The Martyr Effect: How Assassinations Backfire
Assassination almost never accomplishes what its supporters want. It doesn't end arguments; it preserves them in moral formaldehyde.
King's Posthumous Canonization
In life, King was polarizing, not least because his later economic positions were redistributive and disruptive. In death, he was canonized. A federal holiday. A speech placed among the nation's sacred texts. Opponents who claimed he "invited violence" now live in the footnotes as examples of what moral panic looks like in print. Their names are remembered for what they got wrong.
Kirk's Early Trajectory
The early signs are familiar, yet the scale defies historical precedent. Within forty-eight hours of Kirk's assassination, Turning Point USA received over 32,000 inquiries to start new campus chapters, more chapter requests in two days than the organization had accumulated over its thirteen-year existence.
The psychological mechanisms driving this surge exemplify the fundamental miscalculation in political assassination. Students who never would have engaged with Kirk are now watching his debates, driven not by ideological conversion but by curiosity: What ideas inspire such lethal hatred? The assassin's bullet, intended as a period ending Kirk's influence, instead created the Streisand effect, driving everyone, young and old, to seek out Charlie and his message for themselves.
Those who celebrated and mocked Kirk's death online have created a permanent digital record of their moral failure. In 1968, expressions of satisfaction over King's assassination could remain confined to private spaces. In 2025, social media platforms will preserve such reactions permanently, creating what might be termed permanent proof for future historical judgment. Screenshots, unlike memory, prove incapable of forgetting.
A Four-Beat Timeline the Country Keeps Reliving
To understand why this pattern is so enduring, observe how both assassinations follow a predictable four-beat loop that lets people convince themselves they are righteous.
Pre-assassination framing
1968: "Outside agitator," "extremist," "invites violence," "law and order."
2025: "Hate-monger," "fascist," "Nazi," "threat to democracy," "violence is speech, speech is violence."
The moral permission slip
1968: "He's tearing the country apart."
2025: "His words are violence, so violence is defense."
The shot
A trigger man. A balcony. A campus event. The moment itself is brutally simple.
Post-assassination rationalization
1968: "Don't make a martyr of a man who preached division."
2025: "Hate begets hate; he brought it on himself."
Change the decade, keep the script. Different fonts, identical copy.
What the Numbers Say About the Mood
We are not guessing about the drift; we're measuring it. The FIRE surveys aren't just campus curiosities; they're cultural warning signals. Twenty-three percent approval for violent shutdowns of speech is not an outlier; it's a flashing red light. Forty-five percent among the "very liberal" is not a blip; it's a doctrine.
When you normalize violence against words, you're announcing what you think about the people who utter them. And once you've convinced yourself that a political opponent's speech is literal violence, what follows writes itself. If words are violence, then violence is "self-defense." If the target is "outside the circle," then the bullet is "inevitable." That's how democracies talk themselves into accepting political murder.
What Makes This Moment Different
No one seriously argues that political violence is confined to one camp forever. History doesn't assign halos by party. But this moment is not abstract. The assassination of Charlie Kirk happened in a hate ecosystem where key cultural institutions and a significant slice of highly online progressives have spent years redefining dissent as harm, disagreement as "erasure," and opposing views as literal threats.
"Speech is violence" isn't just a campus chant; it's a worldview that has migrated from academic theory to mainstream Democratic rhetoric to social media celebrations of political murder. When sitting members of Congress call their opponents "fascists" and "threats to democracy," when government officials label political assassination "fair," when teachers celebrate bullets "interrupting" speech, we are no longer talking about fringe positions.
That is the context in which thousands of Americans felt comfortable cheering a killing. That is why the parallels to 1968 are not only valid but necessary. The categories shift, race and communism yesterday, free speech and "fascism" today, but the mechanism survives: dehumanize, predict inevitability, call the bullet a consequence.
The Historical Embarrassment Arrives on Schedule
History has already written its verdict on 1968's rationalizers. Politicians and commentators who smeared King are remembered for their errors in judgment and character. Editorials that blamed him for his own death read like artifacts from a civilization that lost its nerve.
The same embarrassment is incoming for 2025's celebrators. The tweets, the posts, the "good riddance" jokes, these aren't disappearing. There is no editor to save you from yourself. You have preserved your words for the very posterity that will judge them.
And just as King's critics could not claim ignorance about the morality of political murder, today's celebrators cannot pretend they didn't know how this ends. You've had fifty-seven years of case study. You chose to repeat it.
The Democratic politicians who offered sanitized condemnations while protecting the celebrators in their coalition will face their own historical reckoning. Their carefully calibrated responses, condemning violence while avoiding any confrontation with the moral rot that enabled it, will be remembered as a masterpiece of political cowardice disguised as leadership.
The Bottom Line
Two assassinations. Two eras. One moral pattern.
In 1968, a third of Americans said King brought it on himself. In 2025, a growing share of Americans (particularly among the very online and the very progressive) publicly rationalized or celebrated the murder of a political opponent. The platforms changed. The psychology did not.
The sequence is tragically stable: Label the dissenter as beyond the pale. Isolate them as an "outsider" who destabilizes the order. Predict violence as the logical fruit of their speech. Rationalize the murder as inevitable when it comes.
What changes is who gets cast as the villain. What doesn't change is the script.
The people who excused King's assassination bear a stain that time did not wash away. The people who celebrated Kirk's assassination have volunteered for the same stain, now preserved by screenshot. The politicians who condemned "political violence" while protecting the moral framework that justified it have chosen their own form of historical embarrassment.
They didn't silence an extremist. They minted a martyr. They guaranteed that the arguments they hate will be heard by more young people, not fewer. That is how assassination works in free societies: it multiplies the message by proving the messenger's point.
The echo between 1968 and 2025 isn't just a pattern; it's a warning. Every time we dehumanize an opponent, call their speech "violence," and talk ourselves into believing that bullets are consequences, we move one inch closer to a country that settles arguments with funerals.
And history has never been kind to the people who cheer that on, or to the leaders who enable them with their silence.
Wow 🤯 well written 👏🏻
Well done.