"Organizing Around Objects of Hate Produces Murder"
by Paul Rosenberg
"I’ve been on this theme for some time, but given yesterday’s political assassination of Charlie Kirk, I think I need to amplify it. So, let me say this again: Any group, organizing around people they hold as vile enemies – a process that automatically dehumanizes those people into hateful objects – will eventually spawn murder. How quickly and how many murders will vary, but if the process is not interrupted by humane and tolerant voices, murders will follow.
Perhaps no one was earlier or more explicit on this than Jesus, when he noted that “whoever kills you will think he does God a service.” That very clearly describes the self-righteous and fixated mind of such people. And, horrifyingly, we’ve seen the organized-around-hate people spewing approval of yesterday’s murder. That may not properly be a mental illness, but it approximates one.
The problem of organizing around hate isn’t properly a left-right issue; it’s equally possible for right-wing groups (or any groups) to become dark and murderous, but I don’t think American right will do that. For one thing, most people on the right have a more-than-passing familiarity with the Bible. Not only does that give them a shared text full of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation, but it gives them something to reference that’s outside the polluted news feeds which have monopolized so many minds. The American right includes most of the people who build, grow, repair and deliver the necessities of life, and the mindset of producers fundamentally differs from that of group-think mobs.
Our problem just now is political violence from the hard left, which, after incubating in the polarization machines of social media, has assaulted civilized society. (The center left, whatever of it remains, has gone mute.)
We don’t yet know who the murderer was in this case. It could be another transgender shooter (as we know, there have been several recently), or it could have been a professional, paid for by God knows whom. But whoever it was, the people who’ve organized around hate have cheered and excused them.
The hard left not only justified people burning down buildings and smashing store windows, en masse, but in this case demonized a young man dedicated to polite debate, to the point where even his very public murder couldn’t generate a humane response in them. This is a problem we should not ignore. There’s more that could be said on this sad day, but this is enough, and it’s a point we all need to remember: Organizing around hate yields murder."
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