When news broke of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the immediate reactions online revealed something unsettling. It wasn’t just shock or debate about what had happened—it was a gleeful celebration. Memes, taunts, and performative cruelty poured into feeds as though the event were less a tragedy and more a punchline.
But here’s the puzzle: before his death, Kirk was not exactly public enemy number one in progressive circles.
Before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, progressives and liberals generally disliked him, sure—but he was not their great nemesis.
He was not Donald Trump, the orange menace whose very existence seemed to summon primal rage. He was not Elon Musk, the billionaire troll who manages to turn every tweet into a lightning rod.
Kirk was, in most liberal minds, a run-of-the-mill conservative influencer—annoying, wrongheaded, even smug, but hardly worthy of foaming-at-the-mouth hatred.
And yet, something curious happened the moment he was murdered. Overnight, Kirk went from being a marginal nuisance to a full-blown symbol of evil. People who once rolled their eyes at him suddenly began portraying him as a uniquely dangerous figure, the kind of man whose death was either deserved or at least not worth mourning.
Why? Let's dig in.
The Inversion of Martyrdom
Normally, it’s the victim’s own side that rallies after a political killing. Martyrdom is powerful—it sanctifies the dead and strengthens their message. Kirk’s opponents instinctively knew this, and so they rushed to perform a kind of narrative judo.
If they didn’t reframe him as a malignant threat, they risked allowing his supporters to turn him into a martyr. The easiest way to prevent that was to inflate his faults retroactively: No, he wasn’t just another conservative; he was actually dangerous, extremist, even fascist. A malevolent force the world is better off without.
Death has a way of making figures larger than life. Kirk’s supporters were quick to frame him as an icon for free speech, a man silenced by violence rather than debate. His opponents knew this narrative would be disseminated quickly, so they rushed to invert it.
Suddenly, Kirk was painted as not just wrongheaded, but uniquely harmful—someone whose death was not merely unfortunate, but cosmic justice. By recasting him as a villain after the fact, they tried to neutralize the symbolic power his supporters would inevitably claim.
Performative Cruelty
Much of the online glee wasn’t about Kirk at all—it was about performance. Social media rewards cruelty because cruelty is loud, shocking, and tribal. When someone dies on “the other team,” dunking on the corpse is an easy way to prove your loyalty. It’s not intelligence, it’s not depth, it’s not even genuine hatred—it’s a spectacle. The cruelty is a performance for clout, for validation, for “likes.” And of course, mindless trolls jump on the bandwagon because, ya know, it's the internet.
And the irony is that this spectacle benefits no one except the platforms and the ruling class, who thrive on division and outrage.
The Tribal Reflex And The Social Function Of Laughter
One of the strangest reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination was laughter. Not thoughtful commentary, not pause for reflection—just laughter. Why? Because humans are wired for tribal reflexes. When a rival falls, the instinct is to cheer. It’s the same psychology that makes a stadium roar when the opposing quarterback is sacked. In that instant, Kirk was not a man who had been gunned down; he was a symbol, a piece removed from the enemy’s board.
But here’s the revealing part: would those same people have laughed if they were alone in a room, with no one watching? Probably not. Most of the laughter was public—tweets, memes, comments, edgy one-liners—because cruelty has a social function. It signals allegiance to the tribe. It’s less about personal joy and more about being seen hating the right person. Without the crowd, the performance loses its energy, and conscience has more space to creep back in.
This is the danger of dehumanization: once opponents become “enemies,” their suffering no longer registers as tragedy, but as entertainment. Laughter becomes less an authentic response and more an anthem of tribal war. And that, perhaps, is what makes it all the more disturbing.
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” - Hannah Arendt
Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Justification
In life, Kirk was not central to progressive rage cycles. He didn’t command the same attention as Trump or Musk. But his death threw him into the spotlight in a way he never achieved while alive. The left suddenly needed to control the story. To let his supporters frame him as a free-speech martyr would be to lose moral high ground. So they responded by making him into something bigger and darker than he ever was while breathing.
Celebrating a murder feels grotesque on its face. To resolve that discomfort, many resort to reframing: “He was that bad, therefore no sympathy is warranted.” This is less about Kirk himself and more about easing one’s own conscience. By inflating his faults after the fact, people could convince themselves that glee was righteous indignation rather than mob mentality and online circle-jerking.
The Posthumous Enemy Effect
The dead cannot defend themselves. They cannot clarify, evolve, or push back. That makes them easy symbols to project onto. Kirk, once a relatively ordinary figure in conservative media, became a frozen icon of “the dangerous right.” His death gave opponents the chance to transform him from a man into a symbol, an immovable placeholder for all they loathe.
The Rational Perspective
It’s worth pausing, though, to recognize a broader truth: the loudest voices are not the only voices. Yes, some people celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death in shocking displays of cruelty—but the critical bulk of his opponents did not. Most people who disagreed with him, sometimes passionately, still understood that assassination is wrong. They did not join the party of ghoulish memes.
And even among those who mocked, even those who would read this article and say, "Nope, I hated him, he was an evil fascist, he deserved worse than death," it’s crucial to note the gap between words and actions. The majority of people spewing vitriol online would never commit harm themselves, despite how sanctimoniously they defend violence.
They may revel in harm having been done, but they stop well short of endorsing doing it themselves. Their cruelty is not courage—it’s performance.
The Takeaway
Why did some people celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death? Because tragedy, in the age of social media, becomes fuel for tribal warfare. Cruelty is cheap currency. Outrage is performative. And symbols matter more than human beings. While it may be infuriating to some, Libertarians stand firmly in the principle of free speech. Those who despised him have the right, regardless of how abhorrent their opinions, to express them freely. That is the cost of liberty.
But, alas, the louder truth—the one less heard but more important—is that most who disagreed with Kirk’s politics will not dance on his grave. They may have loathed his ideas, but they did not cheer his murder. And that’s a distinction worth remembering if we want to preserve any hope of real principle in our political discourse.
See Next: The Assassination of Charlie Kirk: A Libertarian Critique of Victim Blaming
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