Charlie Kirk Said, “I Can’t Stand Empathy.”
Well, if he insists.
This is the last conversation Charlie Kirk had before he died.
Debater: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
Charlie Kirk: Too many.
The crowd cheers wildly.
Debater: [First part is inaudible due to crowd noise] It’s five. Ok. Now, five is a lot, right? I want to give you… you know… give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?
Charlie Kirk: Counting or not counting gang violence?
At the moment Charlie Kirk finished that sentence a bullet struck him in the neck. This was a midday, outdoor event at Utah Valley University. The event was hosted by Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s conservative organization for college students. The crowd that would have cheered Charlie’s “gang violence” comment instead screamed in shock. The scene immediately became absolute pandemonium. Watching the footage, it is clear that the moment Charlie Kirk was shot that he was not going to survive. Charlie Kirk had spent years touring college campuses “debating” college students in this exact same manner.
Deep breath, everybody. We are now in deeper shit than we already were as a country.
In March of 2017, I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas to do a gig at the University of Arkansas. When my flight landed at the airport and I got off the plane, I was greeted by a couple of police officers. They let me know that they were there to take me to the gig. This was not a common occurrence. Usually, when I arrived at the airport, I was driven to the university by a student or, if I was lucky, a professor. As we exited the airport there were multiple police cars there to escort me. When I arrived on campus, a phalanx of police formed around me, as I was escorted into the building venue. They got me to my dressing room backstage and assumed new positions -- outside of my dressing room door, other spots in the hallway, and ultimately two officers stood on each side off stage and remained there during my show. A couple times during the show when I got to material that was–shall we say… critical of law enforcement–I would look over them out of the corner of my eye to see if they were still as committed to protecting and serving me. They never seemed fazed one way or the other.
Before the show, I asked a police officer, who was Black and friendly, if they always showed up like this for shows at the university or if there had been a specific threat against me. His response was less verbal and more a look that said, “Trust me, brother. You don’t really want me to answer that question.” I immediately got the feeling that if I knew the truth, I might not want to go onstage at all.
Less than a year before, my new CNN docuseries United Shades of America had premiered. The first episode featured me interviewing the Ku Klux Klan. And yup, much of that episode was taped in Arkansas. It is entirely possible that some of those klansmen didn’t think the jokes I made at their expense were that funny. That day in Fayetteville, I knew I had earned the threats on my life. Not that I was excited about them.
A couple months earlier in January of 2017, I was actually booked at California Polytechnic State University (a.k.a. Cal Poly) as counterprogramming to proto-MAGA influencer Milo Yiannopoulos. (Remember him? He probably doesn't even remember himself.) He had been booked by a conservative student group, and the student government and the Cal Poly Department of Diversity and Inclusion (which I’m happy to report still exists) booked me in response. There were police everywhere that night. I was prepared for anything. Like, what if Milo brought his crowd to my show to confront me and to start a riot? Luckily, I never even saw him. According to this review, the show was great. I’m not even sure if I spent the night there. I might have just gotten right back in the car and commenced the five hour drive home.
After that first season of United Shades of America, we added security people to every shoot. I have contract stipulations about security when I do events. Sometimes we dial up the level of protection depending on the news of the day, the location of the event, and what I have said or done recently that might lead to more threats of danger. I understand that this is the cost of doing business the way that I do it. I’m in the business of speaking openly, honestly, and mockingly about white supremacy and the powerful people in this country who are the drum majors of white supremacy.
I know what it is like to feel like you are personally in danger for what you have said or done. I know what it is to be targeted by the people you disagree with. I also know what it is like when being surrounded by hostility is a part of your job.
When I see Charlie Kirk getting shot and killed, presumably for his beliefs, I am reminded that I've imagined myself in that same position many times. (So have all of the security guards and production managers who worked to keep me safe on the road.) And yet, I have no empathy for him. Or maybe what I mean to say is that I have no extra empathy for him. Before any of you scroll down to the comments to tell me how agog you are, just understand one thing. Charlie Kirk would be fine with my lack of empathy for him, Not that I needed his permission.
“I can't stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics.” – Charlie Kirk
What in the overconfident white man yammer is going on with this sentence? “Empathy is a made-up New Age term”??? I hate to go all Oxford English on ya, but here we go. Empathy is not a New Age term, unless Charlie thought the NEW AGE started in 1909. That’s the first time empathy appeared in the English language.
Also it is fundamentally weird (to bring back an underused Tim Walz word) and extremely hypocritical that Charlie, a man who spent much of his time labeling himself a Christian, didn’t value empathy. I guess for Charlie Kirk the second “W” in WWJD? stood for “Wouldn’t”.
In fact, you would have a much, much, muuuuuuch more difficult time finding a Charlie Kirk quote espousing the values of Christianity than you would finding a Charlie Kirk quote where he was promoting hate. Charlie Kirk was like a used car salesman at the end of the fiscal year. He was literally giving the hatred away! His slogan might as well have been, “Come through! I’ve got a hatred for YOU!”
Charlie Kirk hated the Blacks, the Browns, the gays, the trans, the Gazans, the libs, the women, the Latinos, the Latinas, the Latinx, the undocumented, the Browns who were documented, the Chicagoans, the San Franciscans, the woke, the broke, the comedians who told good jokes, and much more! Charlie Kirk hated the Democrats and the ladies who owned cats, but he looooooooooooooved the plutocrats.
Charlie Kirk was a bad faith actor who spent all his time coming up with new ways to create more bad faith. He did it for money, for clicks, for shits and giggles, for clout, and, worst of all, he did it for his Dear Leader Donald Trump. Shortly after Charlie’s death Trump announced that he is going to posthumously give Charlie the Presidential Medal of Freedom, formerly this nation’s highest honor. Going forward it will be the equivalent of 10 year old me getting a comb as the “toy” in my Happy Meal.
The day after Charlie Kirk’s death, I was at an event designed to reimagine education at the SFMOMA in San Francisco. In the greenroom, I had a beautiful conversation with a Black woman. We didn’t know each other before our conversation but very quickly we did that thing that I love about being Black. I was talking to her like she was my auntie, and she was talking to me like I was her nephew who she hadn’t caught up with in a minute. In short order, I learned that she was a grandmother, a retired middle school teacher (I thanked her for her service), and a radical. At one point in the middle of our conversation she had a far off look in her eyes and said, “I just don’t have empathy for that man.” I immediately knew which that man she was referring to. Her tone was one of regret mixed with confusion. I could tell that she was generally an empathetic person and she was somewhat surprised to find herself lacking empathy for anyone. Although I had only known her for a few minutes, I knew that she was a good person. She had the same kind of energy my mom has. ALSO, SHE TAUGHT MIDDLE SCHOOL FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS. If she had asked me I would be her character witness in court i
I quickly responded to her statement, declaring, “You don’t have to have empathy for that man.” Her eyes got big and she looked at me and exclaimed, “THANK YOU!”
In the wake of Charlie’s death, people on all sides of the aisle have run to express empathy. That’s great if that is what you want to do. (Although I will judge you.) There has also been a lot of online pushback and grandstanding against people who don’t feel the need to express any empathy at all. There has been even anger towards people who mock Charlie Kirk’s passing or toward those who would dare to remind the world of who Charlie Kirk was in life by quoting him. People have literally lost their jobs for just describing who Charlie Kirk literally was. I understand all of this is just what happens due to social media contagion. And I am smart enough to keep my spiciest hot takes in the group chat. But I certainly won’t be gaslit into performatively pretending that Charlie Kirk was some sort of saint in death when he was actually just a truly awful person in life. I’m not editorializing. If you don’t believe that to be true, either you haven’t seen enough of the clips of him being awful (often directly in people’s faces) or you have made your way to the wrong corner of Substack.
Charlie Kirk’s last words on earth were both transphobic and racist. (“Gang violence” has been a broken dog whistle for “Black” my entire life.) Charlie Kirk died trying to “own the libs”. That alone makes him an even bigger martyr in the circle of awful people he mouth farted his ideology into.
The lessons of Charlie Kirk’s death are simple. And we, as a country, should have learned these lessons a long, long, loooooooooong time ago.
America needs common sense gun reform.
Guns are too easily accessible.
Many of the easily accessible guns, like the one used to murder Charlie Kirk, are weapons of war and not appropriate for everyday society.
As a group, our politicians have failed us all by not working hard enough to pass new laws and regulations around gun ownership.
The best way to “honor” Charlie Kirk’s memory is to actually get our politicians to finally enact sensible gun reform. Ironically, Charlie Kirk would hate that.
He said that about a week after three children and three adults were shot and killed by a 28-year-old white man in Nashville, Tennessee at The Covenant School, a Christian school. Damn, Charlie didn’t even have empathy for Christians.
We can argue about how culpable Charlie Kirk was in provoking his own death, but we have to agree that without America’s (and Charlie’s) callous acceptance of gun violence that it's less likely that he would have died this way. Describing his shooting as an act of "political violence" obscures the facts. Saying, “Charlie Kirk died from political violence.” is used to ennoble his death. He was not a noble figure. I’m not giving him that much, unless those same people who call Charlie Kirk’s death “political violence” are also willing to give that description to George Floyd’s death. Charlie Kirk certainly never gave George Floyd that grace… or any grace at all.
The day after Charlie Kirk’s death, several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) told students to stay home due to the colleges receiving threats of violence after Charlie Kirk’s death. Why do you think Black institutions were threatened with violence after Charlie Kirk’s death? Not one credible person thought a Black person had committed this crime. The crime didn’t happen at an HBCU. It should come as no surprise that Utah has zero HBCUs. In fact, once I found out that Charlie Kirk had been killed in Utah, I immediately did the thing that many Black folks do in that situation. “Whew! It wasn’t one of us!” Unsurprisingly, the suspect who has been arrested is a white man.
But it did not matter at all that Charlie Kirk’s death had nothing to do with Black people, because an essential tentpole Charlie Kirk’s brand was anti-Blackness… and that tentpole is still being propped up after his death.
In threatening HBCUs, Charlie Kirk’s acolytes were just carrying on his anti-Black work. I’m sure Charlie Kirk is looking up from where he is now and is very proud.
One day, I will die. I hope it isn’t any time soon. I have too many children to finish raising. I also hope it isn’t due to gun violence. But if I do die at the hands of gun violence, and if it is by the hand of someone who hated my politics, don’t call it political violence. It is gun violence. Don’t express empathy without action. Do try to work hard to make sure I’m the last person to die that way.
I cannot in good conscience express empathy for Charlie Kirk. If that bothers you, take solace in the fact that Charlie wouldn’t have it any other way.
Who’s with me?
Pastor Mike is on Substack!
You may have heard or seen me mention Pastor Michael McBride. Pastor Mike has been a great friend, an essential collaborator, and my activist in a glass case for more than ten years. He also lives in Oakland, so we literally run the streets together. He is also my spiritual mentor. He doesn’t ask “What would Jesus do?” Pastor. Ike asks, “What did Jesus do?” I finally convinced him to join Substack. And with the news of the last week, he got here just in time. Read his debut piece and Subscribe!
Let’s Work Together to End Gun Violence
The same day that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, over the mountians in Evergreen, Colorado, a high school student shot two students at his high school. He later turned the gun on himself and is dead now. As far as I can tell, the two shooting victims are still alive. As a parent with school age children, this is my nightmare. The victims, their families, the school, and community all have my empathy. But empathy isn’t enough, remember?
The last couple years I have supported an event by Brady United in San Francisco. Brady United is the organization that continues the work of Jim and Pam Brady. This is from BradyUnited.com.
“In 1981, White House Press Secretary Jim Brady was shot and partially paralyzed in the assassination attempt on President Reagan. He and his wife, Sarah — who were both gun owners and longtime Republicans – spent the rest of their lives at the forefront of the fight to end gun violence. For years, they lobbied Congress on both sides of the aisle for the landmark Brady Bill, which ultimately passed in 1993 with unanimous, bipartisan support.”
Click the link here and figure out ways you can support the fight to end gun violence. There are virtual workshops, information to learn, and of course a link to donate!
Stand-Up Comedy Fall Tour!
This Saturday, September 20th, I’ll be performing at The Sunset Center in Carmel, CA. There are still some tickets available. And then I’m in Los Angles on October 3, and then my mini red state tour in Oklahoma and Louisville, KY.
Get your tickets below.
September 20, Carmel, CA
October 3, Los Angeles
November 7, Tulsa, OK
November 8, Oklahoma City, OK
November 20-22, Louisville, KY
Who’s With Me? Merch
Check out the Who’s With Me? merch selection. Another great way to support the work here AND YOU GET MERCH!
No one sums things up better than you, Kamau. No one. Thanks!
Charlie Kirk spent years turning empathy into a punchline, so forgive me if I don’t break out the world’s smallest violin now that people aren’t lining up to offer him theirs.
He called empathy “made up,” but honestly, so was half his shtick. Gang violence = Black people? That wasn’t debate, that was a dog whistle so loud even the dogs were like “bro, we get it.”
And the rush to canonize him as a martyr? No thanks. Kirk died the way he lived, trying to own the libs, and that is exactly how his fan club is spinning it. If we are going to call this political violence, then we better be ready to call George Floyd’s murder political violence too. Otherwise we are just laundering hate into heroism.
Blessed be the ones who refuse to hand out sainthood to someone who spent their life selling tickets to the culture war.