News of Charlie Kirk’s death had not even reached the internet when the celebration began. He spent his life defending right-wing ideology; he helped Trump get elected, twice; he attacked everything from gun control to LGBTQ rights. Didn’t he deserve it? Across the darkened halls of social media, from TikTok to Twitter, left-leaning posters gleefully made jokes and posted memes the way they would for any other pop culture event. Along with the jokes there were the typical scolds and counter-scolds, debates over decorum and speaking ill of the dead, punchy tweets like “We cannot have empathy for White supremacists,” and millions of Americans united only in their anger.
It would be shocking were it not so familiar. Political violence in the past decade has followed the same pattern with alarming regularity, as if scripted beat for beat: someone is shot (it could be a liberal figure or a conservative one), some make appeals for turning down the temperature, others redirect blame, people online celebrate or mourn, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.
The waves of violence and celebration cut against the heart of Christian teaching—Jesus famously taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us—but even some left-leaning Christians celebrated Kirk’s death, just as they did the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. In the age of assassinations and the social media mob, enemy love is as big a scandal as ever.
