Charlie Kirk’s death and the hypocrisy of tolerance
Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a tragedy period. A young man, barely 31 years old, gunned down while doing what he always did: speaking his truth in public. I did not agree with Charlie on everything. I often found his stance on guns too extreme, his nationalism too rigid, his immigration policies too harsh for someone like me, an immigrant who knows the long wait and the sacrifices to build a life here, and much more. But admiration does not require blind loyalty. I followed him because he was sharp, brilliant in debate, and unafraid to say what he believed, even when it made him unpopular. That courage deserves respect.
What devastates me more than the bullet that ended his life is the reaction I see from many who claim the banner of tolerance. Celebrating a man’s death because he was your political opponent is not justice. It is cruelty. It is hypocrisy. To mock his death because he opposed gun control is to treat a tragedy as a punchline. To cheer because you disliked his worldview is to reveal that your so-called tolerance was only a mask, one that falls the moment someone dares to think differently. And this celebration is not harmless noise on the internet; it reflects a deeper sickness in our society, a culture that has lost the ability to separate disagreement from dehumanization.
This is bigger than Charlie Kirk. This is about who we are becoming as a society. We are entering a dangerous age where disagreement equals dehumanization, where debate is replaced by cancellation, and where violence is justified if the target is the “enemy.” But what future can we build on that foundation? If every life is only as valuable as its ideology, then none of us are safe. The same logic that excuses violence against one opponent today can be used to excuse violence against another tomorrow. A society that normalizes selective empathy is a society that prepares its own downfall.
And let us not forget: Charlie Kirk was not only a commentator; he was a husband and the father of two young children. Behind the headlines and the controversies is a family whose life has been irreparably shattered. Two children will now grow up without their father, a wife will bury her partner, and yet some among us see only a political victory. If we cannot pause to recognize the human cost of this tragedy, then our moral compass is broken beyond repair.
I am African, I am Christian, I am an immigrant, and I hold views that put me on neither extreme of the political spectrum. I believe in compassion for the vulnerable and in responsibility for the able. I believe in protecting life while respecting pluralism. I believe in family, faith, democracy, fairness and individual freedom. And precisely because of those values, I cannot stand by silently when hatred masquerades as justice. Democracy itself cannot survive if we only grant empathy to those who agree with us. Freedom means nothing if we use it to cheer the silencing of others.
Charlie Kirk is gone, but the real test remains for the rest of us: will we use moments like this to deepen the spiral of division, or will we step back and remember the humanity of those we oppose? If we cannot mourn the death of someone we disagreed with, then we have lost something far greater than a political battle. We have lost our soul. And if a nation loses its soul, no amount of progress, no accumulation of wealth, and no victories in the culture wars will save it from collapse.
We are not moving forward. We are marching backward into barbarism.
