Charlie Kirk died the death of a rabble rouser whose inflammatory rhetoric energized the evangelical MAGA base and incited a troubled young man to permanently silence him with the type of weapon that the rightwing prophet fetishized.
Kirk’s violent and gory death was a personal tragedy for his family, friends, and colleagues, but it was not a national tragedy. When a propagandist who incites violence against the LGBT community, racial and religious minorities and immigrants meets an untimely death, it is not a time for mourning, it is a time for reflection and sobriety.
I condemn violence unequivocally. I denounce political assassinations, and I deplore political commentators who provoke violence against women, minorities, and political opponents with their fiery rhetoric.
Kirk was a Christian nationalist who trafficked in rightwing politics steeped in homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism while claiming to be a disciple of the Jesus of the Gospels who ministered to the poor and embraced the disenfranchised.
It is distressing that evangelicals eulogize Kirk as a martyr and canonize him as a national hero akin to Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy. This sorry state of affairs in an indictment of evangelical Christianity and MAGA politics.
As a progressive Latino who lives on a fixed income and hates fascism, I do not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk, I mourn the death of our democracy symbolized by the glorification of a conservative agitator.
