For Whom The Bell Tolls

Once we had Ernest Hemingway. Today we have Stephen King.

Photo by Dawn McDonald on Unsplash

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has left a profound mark — and the reactions to his death have been chilling.

Countless people celebrated the murder on social media. They filmed themselves dancing with joy, laughing hysterically. Some went on to list those they hope will be assassinated next. Sharing their sick elation to the approval of likeminded multitudes.

Many of them on X. Many more on Bluesky, the platform born as an alternative to X, deemed a nest of violent fascist propaganda after Elon Musk bought it. Bluesky, this civilized and tolerant haven, had to urge its users to stop celebrating and encouraging murder, such was the surge of gleeful hatred across its feeds. Like a Hamas stronghold after October 7^th.

People rejoicing in Kirk’s death included school teachers, doctors and nurses. When President Reagan was shot in 1981, he looked at the surgeons and quipped, “Please, tell me you’re all Republicans.” Today that would no longer be a joke. Back then the head surgeon, a Democrat, replied: “Today Mr. President, we’re all Republicans.” How times have changed.

Most of the people in these videos are young: in their twenties and thirties, some in their teens. The same young people who fear a ‘micro aggression’ behind every corner. Who cannot read Mark Twain without a ‘trigger warning’, but exult when an actual trigger is pulled.

We have raised generations of monsters. Ghouls sneering from the online darkness. We have raised them with the addictive power of the digital technologies we are so proud of.

For ten years now, President Trump has been called a dictator, and everyone who supports him a fascist and a nazi. Existential dangers to our democracy, to our way of life and to world peace. If that’s what you believe, why would you mourn their death? Why wouldn’t you want to kill them yourself? Especially when the online world makes it so easy to hole up in your echo chamber, hearing and seeing only what reinforces your views.

As clips of Charlie Kirk engaging with students bounce across the internet, some people now say, I had no idea he was like that, so sensible, so open to listening. The novelist Stephen King reacted to Kirk’s death by tweeting “He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin.” Totally false, and he later apologized. But that’s all King knew, and he never even bothered to find out who Charlie Kirk really was before rushing to imply that his assassination was justified.

Once we had Ernest Hemingway. Today we have Stephen King.

Charlie Kirk toured college campuses to engage students in face to face discussions with facts, logic and common sense. He spoke to people of all political persuasions and sexual orientation with respect and empathy even as he disagreed with them and challenged their views. He pushed them to think. Asked why he did this, he said that if we don’t learn to see each other as human beings even as we disagree on fundamental issues, society breaks down. He said: “When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.”

He practiced and championed free speech, because it is the foundation of democracy. But to the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy, free speech is unacceptable.

We condemn the extreme polarization and animosity that surrounds us and defines our political system. We condemn President Trump for speaking and acting like a thug, which he often does. Charlie Kirk set a different example. He was not a politician, but he could have been the kind of leader who promoted tolerance, dialogue and compromise. The kind of leader we claim we want and need.

We called him a fascist. We demonized him. We killed him.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

The English poet John Donne wrote these lines four-hundred years ago. Hemingway chose them as the epigraph in For Whom The Bell Tolls — a novel about the Spanish civil war.