BREAKING: A prominent Black influencer goes viral with a powerful post about Charlie Kirk, condemning the assassination as "absolutely horrific" while being bluntly honest about how history will remember the right-wing demagogue.
It's crucial that we push back on attempts to whitewash this man's hateful legacy...
"America lost Charlie Kirk a couple hours ago, violently, tragically, and in a moment that was recorded, and is circulating social. I will not post it because it’s absolutely horrific," wrote The Hungry Black Man wrote to his 300,000 followers on Facebook.
Kirk, a hardcore pro-gun advocate and professional racebaiter, was tragically shot and killed yesterday at Utah Valley University. The killer remains at large.
"Charlie was not a figure of grace or empathy," continued The Hungry Black Man. "History will not remember him as a voice of unity or a champion of justice. He will be remembered for the words he chose, words that often wounded and divided. As he lay bleeding out onstage, those words, once weapons, became dust."
"When he was shot, he was speaking about one of America’s deepest wounds: mass shootings," he went on. "When asked about school shootings, his response was not measured compassion but deflection. 'Counting or not counting gang violence?' he said, as if the grief of families who send their children to school only to bury them could be minimized by a technicality. And then, almost instantly, a shot rang out. He fell, his voice instantly silenced."
"This is not eulogy-flattery," he continued. "This is memory. We remember the things he said about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: 'MLK was awful. He’s not a good person.' We remember his calculation on gun violence: 'I think it’s worth … some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.' These are not the words of healing, not the words of unity. And yet they, too, are part of the ledger he leaves behind."
"So what do we do with a legacy like this? First, we tell the truth. We acknowledge what he said, how he said it, and the hurt it caused," he went on. "Second, we resist the temptation to let violence beget violence. For if this act tells us anything, it is that political violence has become a siren call to the unhinged, a spark they would gladly use to ignite the tinderbox of racial and class resentment. Today it was a conservative voice silenced. Tomorrow, it could just as easily be a progressive one. We must not let this become the currency of politics."
"We should also understand the warning buried in this moment," he wrote. "What we say matters. How we live matters. The words we choose, the causes we defend, the way we treat one another, these become the bricks of our legacy. Kirk’s words were often sharp, sometimes cruel, but they are now etched into his memory as surely as his death. Let the rest of us take note: legacies should be rooted in love, in justice, in equality, not in division or deflection."
"Rest, if you can, Mr. Kirk. May your final act teach us something lasting: that even in grief, we are called to choose better," the post concluded.
Kirk's assassination is a dark moment for America and it's a direct result of allowing a country awash in guns to descend into hyper-polarized politicization. His death is a tragedy, but so is every death caused by gun violence. If we want to create a safer, more peaceful nation we must turn away from the hateful rhetoric that Kirk spread and embrace a vision of America where equality and understanding are celebrated.
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