The Tragedy Of Charlie Kirk And The Authoritarian Uses Of Mourning

Murdered

I was surprised when an old friend of mine called and expressed a degree of satisfaction about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. She doesn’t agree— to put it mildly— with any of Kirk’s public statements… but speaking ill of the dead has always seemed rough to me. The idea “Don’t speak ill of the dead” shows up in many cultures and languages, though with different emphases. The maxim “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” (“Of the dead, [say] nothing but good”) is often attributed to the philosopher Chilon of Sparta, later popularized by the Roman writer Diogenes Laërtius.

Versions of it exist in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism and elsewhere. The impulse is widespread and deeply human: death is a liminal moment, a sacred threshold. As we see in the Charlie Kirk example this week, the newly dead cannot defend themselves. Their families grieve. This cultural reflex is heightened when death comes violently. People lean on ritual and restraint to keep chaos from spilling further. To mock or attack someone in that moment feels indecent, like kicking up dust in a storm. Grief is hard enough without cruelty layered on top.

I’m thinking this maxim was never really so much about Truth as about social harmony. Don’t destabilize the fragile peace of mourning. Don’t deepen wounds that are already raw. The danger today is that the right is already weaponizing Kirk’s death for the exact opposite purpose— to deepen division, to license repression, to pour fuel on fires that threaten to consume democracy itself. Noting the tragedy, Dan Pfeiffer emphasized that Kirk was a man gunned down, leaving behind a wife and two young children who will live with trauma forever, a human fact, not a partisan one. But Trump, true to form, immediately twisted tragedy into a cudgel. Instead of calling for calm or even showing the basic decency that the maxim about the dead prescribes, he blamed the “radical left” wholesale, ignoring the many recent acts of right-wing violence that don’t fit his narrative. And now MAGA media and figures like Christopher Rufo are already calling for a 1960s-style crackdown on political opposition.

The old maxim tells us not to speak ill of the dead. But if we only speak “good,” we erase truth— and truth is the only soil democracy can grow in. Kirk spent his career demonizing immigrants and nurturing precisely the politics of resentment that now metastasizes into violence. To ignore that history isn’t compassion; it’s distortion. The way forward is neither silence nor slander, but truth spoken with clarity and restraint. Violence must be condemned unequivocally and offering sympathy to his family is humane. But we can’t risk allowing Trump’s and MAGA’s authoritarian narrative to dominate: that all violence is left-wing, that all dissent is dangerous, and that every act of resistance to his project is terrorism. We’ve already seen how this works— after the attempt on Trump’s life last year, even mild criticisms of his dictatorial ambitions were smeared as incitement. Now it’s happening again— and with the White House bully pulpit behind it.

The maxim once served to soften death and preserve social harmony. But what happens when a political movement weaponizes death as a pretext for crushing opposition? What happens when “respect for the dead” is turned into a gag order on the living? At that point, silence is complicity. We don’t have to dehumanize Kirk. But we do have to refuse the myth-making. We do have to tell the truth about how the politics he championed helped bring us to this violent precipice. And we do have to expose Trump’s exploitation of tragedy as the authoritarian tactic it is. So maybe the maxim needs updating: of the dead, say nothing but the truth. Because truth is the only way to honor the living.

“Democracy,” wrote Pfeiffer, “cannot function if people can’t participate in the political process without fear of violence. Political violence begets more violence, as more and more people seek retribution. This is when the system collapses and people begin to lose their rights and freedoms… Trump had the opportunity to speak to our better angels—to try to heal the wounds on both sides of our bitterly divided politics. But of course he didn’t do that. It’s telling that no one thought he would do what almost every other president would have done in this moment… Instead, he poured gas on a burning fire. Even though we still don’t know who killed Kirk or the motivations behind the assassination, Trump blamed the ‘Radical Left’ not just for Kirk’s murder but for the recent spate of political violence in America… I think everyone— from the left to the right and the center— should consider the language they use to describe the other side. We should strive to communicate in ways that do not dehumanize those with whom we disagree. However, Democrats also cannot be cowed into silence about the very real threats to democracy and freedom. We must remind everyone that the best— and only— way to protect those freedoms comes from the ballot, not the bullet. Violence is never the answer. Ultimately, Democrats should strive to appeal to the vast majority of Americans who desire unity and comity.