On Murder, Political Violence, and the Collapse of Reason.

To say that I am appalled and disgusted is an understatement. All of us, as political beings, acknowledge the right to speak one’s mind.

No matter how much you disagree with someone, no matter how much their comments irk and irritate you. Our democracy, our lifeblood, our freedom to speak our minds on the topics we please to do so upon rest on freedom of speech.

If you have the right to express your opinions – so does the opposing side. Ethical debates, by all modern standards are almost always subjective. Our politics, our lives as civic beings rest upon freedom of conversation, and reason. May the best argument win entails that arguments can be presented. Violence against speech is not a form of rebuttal; it’s a destruction of the space where rebuttal can happen. And will always result in the death, of reason.

It is completely irrelevant whether you liked Charlie Kirk or not, if you celebrate violence, you undermine the very conditions that make democracy and coexistence possible.

I disagreed with everything he said too, but political speech – even bad ones – do not warrant violence. A husband and father was shot; treating that as a victory teaches the worst lesson; Once violence becomes an acceptable answer to speech, no one is safe—not the left, not the right, not anyone who dares to dissent.

To permeate violence means to accept this might happen to you, or anyone you support. In the name of coexistence, in humanity, in hope of a world where reason dominates over emotion – do not celebrate this atrocity, think again, and ask yourself how you would feel if this happened to someone you supported.

There is no greater crime than murder.
And no greater cowardice than killing out of disagreement.
This is the principle I will live and die by. Those who truly believe in their words do not change their morals selectively.

This is no longer about Charlie Kirk, but the sickness that infects our politics.
The collapse of reason and discourse.

I would like to follow up with a recommendation of a text. Few writings are more relevant to this situation than Albert Camus’ the Rebel. Camus argues that to live, man must rebel — but rebellion through violence is the greatest of all crimes. True rebellion is resistance to the human condition, not its destruction.

We all have a moral imperative, a civic duty as members of society, to expand the scope of rational discourse. Yet in recent years, anti-intellectualism has been on the rise. We have lost our voices, our capacity to think critically, to interrogate our beliefs. We have become so partisan, so dogmatic, that most of us do not think beyond what we already believe.

That is why it is more important than ever to recognise the beauty of human rationality and the necessity of empathy. To win an argument is to triumph through reason, not bullets. This assassination is but a symptom of a deeper problem: the collapse of reason. What we can do is turn to one another in moments like this and remind ourselves that we are all flesh and blood.

If you care for politics, care for life, care for a world in which coexistence might one day be possible, where humanitarian issues such as the genocide in Gaza can be confronted openly, not silenced — violence will never be the answer. Violence has never produced freedom. All states born of violent revolutions — even my own — have collapsed. And the states that kill journalists, however abhorrent their views, collapse all the faster.
Charlie Kirk’s harmful and degenerative rhetoric was easily defeated by reason, as we saw in Cambridge. I believe in the power of our logic, our minds, to craft the society we want. And I rest assured: no society worth living in can be born of blood.

As I have written about Israel’s genocide in Palestine — where occupation grinds on and bombs fall on families. As I have written about the USA, and the crimes of modern imperialism. My principle has never changed: violence only breeds collapse. To make exceptions only betrays a deeper lack of integrity. Those who truly believe in their words do not change their morals selectively.

“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose – even for transforming murderers into judges.  .”
— Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death