On September 10th, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder and hatemongering political commentator, was shot. Between the manhunt for the shooter, the deluge of memes and takes across the political spectrum on social media and the desperate attempts to transform Kirk into some sort of good natured debater who “practiced politics the right way”, it has certainly felt like an eternity has passed since then. One thing that has stood out to me in the aftermath (besides the misuse of the word empathy in place of sympathy, people saying they “didn’t agree with all of Kirk’s ideas” without elaborating on what they did agree with, and the desperate need to associate any semblance of trans identity with the shooting) is this overwhelming sentiment that “this isn’t who we are”. The desire to decry political violence of any sort is understandable. The house of cards that makes up the great American myth has endured thanks to a level of cognitive dissonance. One that allows us to hold on to the comforting idea that American exceptionalism stems from our shared morality and natural ingenuity, while ignoring the barbaric violence that has historically shaped the country. The fact is political violence isn’t just who we are, it might be America’s most indelible truth.

Now to be clear, what we will be discussing here is literal violence, but that doesn’t discount all the other forms of violence that have been inflicted throughout the centuries. Environmental violence, litigious violence, and psychological violence are just some of ways that people have sought to claim and maintain power in America. But from the very start, physical violence has been how the course of American history was paved. Exterminate all the Brutes is a 2021 documentary by Raoul Peck in which he lays out the basic cycle of modern humanity: civilization, colonization, extermination. It is a must watch to truly understand how this country was founded. Unfathomable amounts of Indigenous people were tortured, burned, hung, shot, drowned, beaten, stabbed, beheaded, castrated, and more in the name of a “New World”.

A mural of the Bear River Massacre in the National Postal Museum

Kirk was killed on the campus of Utah Valley University, and Utah is no stranger to acts of political violence. More than 160 years ago perhaps the worst massacre in American history took place right on it’s border. In 1860, War Chief Bear Hunter of the Shoshoni tribe had watched as Mormon settlers occupied land near his peoples settlement by Beaver Creek and Bear River. Three years later they had nearly taken over the entire area and engaged in several clashes with the Shoshoni. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor was called in along with 200 volunteers from California to intervene. On the march up from Salt Lake City, Colonel Connor announced his intentions to take no prisoners. That’s exactly what happened as the militia massacred 250 Shoshoni, including 90 women and children, raping and bludgeoning any who survived the opening attack.

This kind of violence was nothing new in America (by 1863 the country was two years into the Civil war), and you could argue that it was foundational in forging the countries identity. In 1677 John Culpeper led a rebellion against the local proprietors of Albemarle County in North Carolina. He and some fellow colonists took the acting governor prisoner and eventually overthrew the local government (and after being arrested and charged with treason, Culpeper was found not guilty. Imagine that). In 1689 there was a revolt by the Puritan colonists in Boston where they similarly overthrew the local government before England regained control. Neither of these revolts had any casualties, but they were a precursor for the event that would create a nation and change the course of world history.

When we think about foundational figures in American history, a name not mentioned nearly enough is Crispus Attucks. His life before 1770 is hazy, but we do have a few facts. He was a sailor of African and Indigenous descent. At some point he had escaped slavery and was working in Boston under the name of Michael Johnson. And he is considered by many the first to die for the American cause against British rule.

After the passage of the Stamp Act in 1695, Bostonians where incensed, leading Britain to send soldiers to occupy the city. On March 5th, 1770, things came to a head as a group of colonists, lead by Attucks, made their way to the custom house to confront a British soldier who had got into an altercation earlier in the night with a 13 year old. The group of 50 swelled to hundreds and the soldier soon called for back up as he was pelted by ice, snow, rocks and whatever else the crowd could find. Tensions boiled over as one of the soldiers was knocked down and got up firing into the crowd, leading a few of the other soldiers to follow. Attucks was struck twice and died instantly, the first casualty in the Boston Massacre. In 1888, poet John Boyle O’Reilly penned a poem about the massacre, writing ‘And honor to Crispus Attucks, who was a leader and voice that day/the first to defy and the first to die”. But he wouldn’t be the last. 18 years after his death, America would elect its first President, and speaking of…

Off the top of your head, how many Presidential assassinations would you guess there have been in American history? Let’s quickly run down the list.

The first was of course Abraham Lincoln in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater. Booth originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, but after hearing a speech Lincoln made in which he promoted voting rights for the recently freed slaves, he decided to kill him instead.
James A. Garfield was shot in a railroad station in DC on July 2nd 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau. He died 11 weeks later on September 19th.
September 6th, 1901, President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgsz in Buffalo, New York. He died 8 days later due to a gangrene infection. After his death, Congress appointed a full time “Secret Service” detail to protect future presidents.
John F. Kennedy was shot and killed during a motorcade in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald.

What about assassination attempts?

In 1835 Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Andrew Jackson outside of the Capitol Building. His pistols misfired and Jackson beat him severely with his cane.
A year before he was killed by Booth, Lincoln was nearly killed by a sniper in 1864. The shot missed him by inches, taking off his hat as he rode alone at night just north of the White House.
While on the campaign trail in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot by John Schrank at close range. He not only survived (due to the bullet striking has 50 page speech and metal glasses case in his pocket) but went on to deliver said speech before going to the hospital. The bullet was lodged in his chest for the rest of his life.
In 1933, Giuseppe Zangara fired 5 shots at Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami, Florida. He missed the President but did end up killing Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.
In 1950, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempted to kill President Harry S. Truman at the White House. The resulting shootout with White House police left one officer dead as well as Torresola.
1972. Arthur Bremer tries twice to shoot Richard Nixon but is unable to get a good shot. Instead a month later he shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace.
In 1974 Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon. He ended up killing an officer and a pilot before killing himself.
A year later in 1975, Gerald Ford is almost shot two separate times. Once by Lynette Fromme, a Charles Manson devotee, as he was greeting a crowd in Sacramento. She drew the gun as he went to shake her hand but didn’t have a bullet in the chamber. She was quickly restrained and arrested. 17 days later Sara Jane Moore fired a shot at Ford while he was visiting San Francisco. She was also arrested right after.
In 1981, Ronald Regan is shot by John Hinckley Jr as he was getting into his limousine. Regan almost died from the injuries. Hinckley would go on to say he tried to kill the President to impress Jodie Foster.
In 1994, Francisco Martin Durand fired 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House in an attempt to kill Bill Clinton.

So let’s see, that’s 4 actual assassinations and at least 10 attempted ones. That’s not counting all the plots that never got off the ground. Over the years, hundreds of sitting politicians have been shot at/shot and killed including Robert Kennedy, Harvey Milk, Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise, and just this year Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman. But there’s a period of time in which political violence reached a fevered pitch. A quaint moment in American history shortly after the Civil War known as Reconstruction.

1865 was supposed to mark a rebirth of the American dream. After years of fighting, the Union prevailed and America was now faced with the work of how to reunite a country and integrate an entire group of people who were recently classified as property into the citizenry. It was a daunting project, but in the beginning it was approached with a sense of earnestness. Black people wholly embraced education, business, and politics, with 80 percent of eligible Black men being registered to vote, and a growing number actually winning elections. The federal government for it’s part sent Union soldiers to ensure things went as smoothly as possible. What started out hopeful ended up as one of the most horrific chapters in American history. One that most American’s know nothing about.

Over a 12 year period an estimated 2,000 Black men, women, and children were killed by lynching. That’s 166 a year, 3 a day. That’s just accounting for the ones that were documented.

For a more in depth look at Reconstruction, I highly recommend this report by the Equal Justice Initiative, but I want to narrow the focus to two things: the use of violence to suppress voter turnout and the killing or use of violence to overturn elections. One of the enduring American horrors birthed in this period was the Ku Klux Klan, emerging as a direct response to Black’s not only gaining their freedom but daring to participate in American politics. The Klan formed out of the dregs of the Confederate Army in 1865, and while they were initially stationed in Tennessee, they quickly spread throughout the south and beyond.

Now remember, political parties have shifted wildly over the course of American history and the Republican and Democratic parties of the 1860’s bear no resemblance to their current iterations. But to demonstrate how much the Klan effected local and national politics, consider the 1868 Presidential election, the first after Reconstruction began. More than 2,000 people where killed or injured in Louisiana leading up to the election between Republican Ulysses S. Grant and Democrat Horatio Seymour. St. Landry’s Parish had more than 1,000 registered Republicans, but come the election not a single one cast a vote. Similarly in Columbia County, Georgia, only a single Republican dared to cast a vote for Grant. Thankfully, freedman still turned out in mass throughout the country giving Grant a unanimous victory with over 52% of the vote. But the message was sent loud and clear, and the violence would only get worse.

As mentioned above, The Equal Justice Initiative has a detailed breakdown of the horrific decades of violence, but the stories of Vicksburg, Mississippi and Hamburg, South Carolina give us a snapshot of what was happening nationwide. In 1873, Peter Crosby was elected the first Black sheriff of Warren County, which of course did not sit well with it’s white citizens. Throughout the following year they rallied to get him removed from office with Sheriff Crosby refusing to resign. Finally, a group of 600 white men marched up to his office and forced him to leave over threats of violence. Crosby then went to Governor Adelbert Ames to tell him about his forced resignation. With the Governors support, he returned to Vicksburg with the intent of campaigning to be reinstated as sheriff. This, as you can imagine, further enraged the white citizens of Vicksburg. On December 7th, 1874, supporters and opposition to Crosby marched into Vicksburg. The result was over a week of violence that ended with 300 Black men dead and untold violence committed against Black women and children.

The fall out saw the federal government getting involved to reinstate Crosby as sheriff, but the damage was already done. White people refused to listen to Crosby, deferring to his white deputy. When that deputy got fired for criminal actions, he and Crosby ended up in a barroom fight that ended with Crosby being shot in the head. He survived, but between continued death threats and an inability to maintain law and order, Crosby resigned just one year later in 1875.

A year removed and several states over, another massacre would lead to the end of Reconstruction in South Carolina. In 1876, Hamburg, South Carolina, was a small all Black community, with a Republican government as well as a militia. One summer day, two white farmers, Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen, were riding down a road in Hamburg as the militia were doing drills. The farmers complained the men were blocking the road and got into a spat. Soon after, the farmers bought a complaint to the local court and demanded the militia be disbanded. As tensions continued to rise, a white mob rose up and descended into Hamburg, trapping the militia in a warehouse. A day long battle ensued, ending only when the white mob blew through the warehouse with a cannon. Several militia men tried to flee and were shot, including Town Marshal James Cook. The survivors who remained in the warehouse were brought out and several were shot immediately. Others were allowed to leave, only to be shot at and a number of them killed as they fled.

All told, 6 militia men and citizens were killed along with one white farmer. That white farmer became a beacon for Wade Hampton, an ex-confederate soldier who was running for Governor of South Carolina. The story of Hamburg stoked fear in the white citizens of South Carolina, leading to a landslide victory for Hampton and the end of Reconstruction in the state.

And on it went.

In 1870, North Carolina Senator John W. Stephens was murdered by the KKK in the local courthouse. He was tried in absentia for the crimes of helping to politically organize the Black population. His throat was slit and he was hung.
That same year in South Carolina, Wade Perrin, Republican member of the House of Representatives, was surrounded by a white mob and forced to dance, sing, and pray before they shot him in the back as he tried to flee.
The Red Summer of 1919.
George W. Lee was the first Black man to register to vote in 1953 in Humphrey’s County, Mississippi. He rallied and pushed to help other Black men to register to vote. He was shot and killed while driving home. No killer was ever found.
Two years later, activist and WWI veteran Lamar Smith was shot in broad daylight in front of the courthouse in Brookhaven, Mississippi. 30 whites witnessed the murder, none came forward. No killer was ever convicted.
Voting rights activist Herbert Lee was killed by Mississippi state representative E.H. Hurst in 1961. Hurst shot Lee point blank in the head in front of witnesses. The murder was ruled self defense by an all white jury.
William Lewis Moore was a white postal worker and member of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) who marched and delivered letters to politicians denouncing racial segregation. In 1963 he was found shot dead on the side of the road on a march from Tennessee to Mississippi. No killer was ever charged. His letter read in part “the white man cannot be truly free himself until all men have their rights.’
That same year Medgar Evers was shot in his driveway by Byron De La Beckwith. Although he was tried several times, it wasn’t until 1994 that De La Beckwith was actually convicted.
1964. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner went missing near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their bodies were found 44 days later. They had been beaten and shot by the KKK.
Malcom X is shot in 1965 in the Audubon Ballroom in New York.
1968. Martin Luther King Jr. is killed in Memphis after his march for striking sanitation workers.

This list could go on forever. These are just the ones we know. I have not even spoken of deaths of protestors across college campuses. I have not mentioned the countless deaths of LGBTQ activists. I have not spoken of the violence of January 6th. The story of America is written in the blood of people killed for voicing their beliefs, doing their civic or elected duties, or simply existing. Each punctuation is gunshot. Each chapter seemingly unaware of the one that preceded it, an endless loop of violence.

The two things to always consider when you hear a lie are who is telling it and how does it benefit them? Who benefits from the transformation of Kirk from a mudslinging far right commentator to an activist and voice of a generation? Who benefits from pinning his murder on some far left, anti-fascist, trans conspiracy? Who benefits from the censorship of not just late night comedians but journalists and every day citizens? What are we to do with the death of a man whose words seemingly contradict how those who mourn him say he should be remembered? The answer is clear. Before Kirk’s body was even in the ground, President Trump had already shifted his attention back to the construction of his new ballroom.

I have wondered if people would have been scolded as harshly for not mourning Kirk’s life if he had died of a heart attack or in a mountain climbing accident? But a martyr makes for a great spokesman. His death has allowed for a reconstruction of another kind. In no longer being able to speak for himself, others get to put his words into context. Omit the obvious intent. Fill in the blanks with an agenda. Bring the fringe closer to the mainstream.

What is gained by the false flags, the performative anger, the coerced mourning? Silence and power. Or perhaps the power to silence. The ability to weaponize a group that makes up an estimated 0.8% of the population. A chance to further sow division.

I am guided by the spirits of two great humanist thinkers in Kurt Vonnegut and James Baldwin. That part of me feels that there is nothing to celebrate in the senseless loss of human life. However, I think both would find Kirk’s death unremarkable. For two men who witnessed countless death in their lifetimes, the violent end of a man who spent his adult life calling for violence to be done to others would seem a predictable outcome. Even if you didn’t choose to celebrate his death, there wasn’t anything particular about his life to celebrate either.

If we were to look past the lies for some truths, what might we find? Well, the truth is that political violence is what we do in America. Racial violence is political violence. Violence against LGBTQ people is political violence. There has been no decade in this country that hasn’t been embroiled in acts of political violence. To tell ourselves any different is a lie. So ask yourself, what is the difference now?

I believe we can hold two truths at once. The killing of someone for voicing their political beliefs is unjust. It is also America’s great pastime.

On Political Violence: America’s Great Pastime.

Blackface in the machine AKA Who are these Niggas?