I am outraged. We are all outraged. As I write this, three days after the brutal, senseless and very public execution of Charlie Kirk, there seems to be a collective, palpable feeling of anger across our nation over this young man’s death.
Apart from the obvious outlandishness of an innocent man’s life being taken from him in the presence of his wife, two small children and thousands of onlookers at an open-air university talk, there is something more.
Aside from the demonic nature of a sneak attack by a monstrous individual perched on a rooftop two hundred yards away from a completely defenseless target, vulnerable to an easy line-of-sight kill-shot by an experienced shooter with a high-powered, scoped rifle, there is something more.
Ignoring the fact that Charlie was using his remarkable rhetorical gifts to try to engage those with whom he disagreed on political, cultural and moral issues, and a cowardly opponent, lacking the ability to debate him intellectually, chose to silence him with a bullet, there is something more.
What is that “something more”?
As I’ve dwelt on this, it dawned on me that this same inchoate sense of outrage, helplessness and stupefaction that is gripping much of America now, both conservative and liberal in outlook, is what the French people felt in the wake of the attack on another “Charlie” – the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, on January 7, 2015.
In that shocking slaughter, two Frech-born Algerian Muslims, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, forced their way into the nondescript offices of the Charlie Hebdo publication. The Kouachi brothers were determined to avenge what they viewed as the desecration of their religion, following Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Recommended
After encountering Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Coco Rey and her young child at the entrance to the building, they forced Rey at gunpoint to enter her passcode to the building. After gaining entry, the Kouachis sprayed the lobby with gunfire, killing a maintenance worker sitting at the reception desk. Then they forced Rey to take them to the second-floor offices, where 15 staff members were holding a weekly editorial meeting. The Kouachis burst in to that assemblage and spent five to ten minutes killing the hapless cartoonists, reporters and other staff members present, mostly with head shots. A few survived by hiding. Twelve died in total. As the killers left, they shouted “Allahu Akbar!”
The Kouachi brothers would be killed two days later in a firefight with French anti-terror police. But they’d made their point.
The grief of the French populace following the slaughter was profound. Massive demonstrations against the attack appeared in cities across France – Paris, Nice, Lyon, Marseilles and elsewhere. Many participants carried signs that read “Je Suis Charlie”, or “I Am Charlie.” They were saying that these French men and women who were executed in the Charlie Hebdo offices were like them – free-thinking, independent, edgy. They were involved in that most French of traditions – speaking their minds openly, if irreverently, against powerful institutions.
Was Charlie Hebdo offensive? Yes. But they were an equal opportunity offender. All religions were subject to Charlie Hebdo mockery - Catholics, Jews, Muslims. It was their shtick. That was the point of satire, in their view. They were avowedly secular and anti-religious, but made no secret of that.
And what do the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Charlie Kirk have in common?
They were both perpetrated by individuals who could not or would not abide by the most fundamental tenet of civilization – the tolerance of free expression.
While Charlie Kirk was far more positive and humanity-loving than Charlie Hebdo seemed to be, both Charlie Kirk and Charlie Hebdo strove to get people to think by engaging them intellectually and encouraging them to challenge their long-held beliefs.
As we learn more about what motivated Charlie Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, we see the same nihilistic impulses at play that have inspired other transgender and antifa attacks, ideologies which Robinson apparently embraced and fused. The phrases he had etched on the casings of the bullets in his rifle, including ones endorsing Antifa, and his reported romantic partnership with a man “transitioning” to become a “woman”, point to a severely distorted mind. Similarly, we see in the Charlie Hebdo killers suicidal nihilists, who found themselves born into a post-Christian secular society with values completely at variance with the Islamic tenets of their forebears, whose nation had been conquered and colonized by the country to which the Kouachi brothers were supposed to show allegiance.
The objects of the killers’ hatred in both cases were popular pundits in their societies, who sought to prod the minds of their listeners. Regardless of what we think of these pundits’ views, as Frenchmen and Americans, we respect their methods as central to any civilized nation.
I think this is why I, along with millions of other Americans, are so unsettled by Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Apart from the sheer evil of killing an innocent husband and father, he was one of us. I am him. We all are Charlie Kirk. God bless, Charlie. Je suis Charlie.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 39 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News 48 Hours and NBC News Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member