Thoughts on the Murder of Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk was murdered last week at a university campus, and the public reaction by many self-identified socialists or communists has shown me just how much socialists and communists share in common with the fascists they claim to despise. One of the many things that fascists, socialists or communists have in common is their hatred for dissenting opinions and their willingness to resort to violence to satisfy their lust for control over people’s lives. Ludwig von Mises observed that “Lenin and Hitler knew very well why they abolished freedom of thought, speech, and the press…Their systems could not survive without concentration camps, censors, and hangmen.” (Mises, 1944, p. 92). Similarly, Charlie Kirk’s murderer could not defeat his opponent with words, and so he resorted to the tactics of despots. Should those who cheer on the murder of political commentators achieve any significant political power, they will not hesitate to use state-sanctioned violence to eliminate dissenters while calling it “justice” and “liberation.”

The communists in China also monopolized the media and outlawed dissenting political speech because their ideology was incapable of surviving long in the marketplace of ideas. The “One Strike and Three Antis” campaign in 1970 during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution resulted in the imprisonment and execution of tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who were guilty of “speech crimes and thought crimes” (Yang, 2016, p. 327). Yang Jisheng describes how the Chinese communists were so fearful of the ideas of those about to be executed that “the authorities went to outrageous lengths to prevent victims from expressing last words by wrapping their necks with ropes, stuffing objects in their mouths, or slitting their larynxes” (Yang, p. 332). In my opinion, there is something symbolic about Charlie Kirk being shot in the neck while in the process of committing what the more anti-social members of the political Left believe to be a speech crime.

Charlie Kirk’s murderer and the people who publicly justify it have done irreparable damage to their cause. So far, the supporters of Charlie Kirk have not resorted to the BLM/Antifa methods of burning down small businesses and beating innocent bystanders while radical academics cheer on the violence from the social media sidelines. Hopefully those who value individual liberty will continue to win hearts and minds through peaceful means, because rational minds will recognize that “Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success” (Mises, 1927, p. 29)

References

Ludwig von Mises (1927). Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. Liberty Fund.

Ludwig von Mises (1944). Bureaucracy. Liberty Fund.

Yang Jisheng (2016). The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Picador.