After conservative Republican Charlie Kirk was assassinated Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University, I couldn’t help but think of when Malcolm X called the assassination of John F. Kennedy “the chickens coming home to roost.”
While it was indeed a dark moment in politics, and the loss of life must never be condoned, I cannot, in good conscience, feel any sympathy for the death of Kirk, nor can I aggrandize him to the level of one of our institution’s most beloved alumni, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘48.
In the wake of Kirk’s death and the national spread of threats to historically Black colleges, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., has called on Speaker Mike Johnson to place a statue of Kirk in the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Luna has already garnered support from 16 Republican lawmakers.
Among the 16 supporters, Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., invoked King’s name in arguing for the potential development of a memorial for Kirk.
“We have a statue of MLK in the Capitol, don’t we?” Clyde said.
To compare King to Kirk is blasphemous. King paved the way for African Americans’ civil, voting and housing rights throughout the 1950s and ’60s. He was a devoted family man, a pastor dedicated to his congregation and an exemplary orator – putting it mildly.
Kirk’s life was the contrary. Despite the vanity from the right wing in comparing the two, Kirk besmirched the name of our beloved alum in the past, calling him “awful” and the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake.”
To add context to my argument, let’s look at the opposing circumstances in which both these figures were assassinated. When King initiated the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968, he faced overwhelming disapproval both within the campaign and from outside institutions like the U.S. Government. Many critics have argued this pursuit was the motive for his assassination.
While MAGA supporters would prematurely claim King’s adversity to be an identical trait, Kirk’s circumstance lacked the moral pursuit that King had in his campaign for economic empowerment.
Kirk wasn’t advocating for our civil liberties. He wasn’t pressuring Congress to protect our voting rights. Instead, he spent his last moments falsely claiming that transgender people make up “too many” gun violence perpetrators in America.
Sadly, his life was taken immediately afterwards by the same instrument he has time and again argued in favor of – in the exact same fashion.
“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” Kirk said at a Turning Point USA Faith event April 5, 2023. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
Regardless of my own judgement, I feel for the family and friends of Kirk. No one should have to lose a loved one in that manner.
Kirk’s death was tragic, but to memorialize his passing as our nation has done so for King isn’t a comparison; it’s a mockery.
