Demonism and the Left
On those ghastly, and numerous, online celebrators of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
I didn’t want to pay attention to this subject initially.
I figured it was all just rage-bait, best to be avoided. There are, after all, nefarious forces— representing all different sectors of the political spectrum—who seek to make a news consumer feel perpetually agitated and fearful, to rob him of all semblance of peace of mind.
That is why I have tended not to consume news lately, particularly not for the last decade, during which the rage-baiters have suddenly lurched into overdrive and every day since 2015 it feels like World War 3 and Civil War 2 are a mere hair’s breadth away from simultaneously kicking off… if, that is, you watch the news.
That said, there are some stories in that nebulous thing called “the news” which do drift into my consciousness, and Charlie Kirk’s assassination was one such event. I barely even thought of Charlie prior to his savage and senseless murder a fortnight ago; now (as you can see from the above sentence) I presume to be on a first-name basis with him. (Such overfamiliarity is a symptom of parasocial grief, and I embrace it, for all of its possibly “cringy” resonances; it is, after all, what it is.)
Like many others across the world, I can report that, on September 10, in the words of Don McLean, “something touched me deep inside, the day the music died.” That sorrow stayed with me for days, because when I scrutinized Charlie’s activities, all I saw was an uncommonly good and decent young man— so young, a mere 31 years of age! much younger than I thought he was— who truly cared about people, and wished to have a dialogue with others. Yes, he was far more “moderate” and mainstream in his conservatism than I was, but that was beside the point. That he was ruthlessly gunned down while in the process of peaceably engaging in conversation with young students on a college campus struck me as especially obscene.
And then, I kept hearing about the “haters,” people who, upon hearing of Charlie’s brutal death, could not contain their delectation and delight. There were, it seemed thousands of such posts, on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and elsewhere. Yes, these were technically “rage-bait,” I realized, but could they really be ignored or dismissed on that account, when there were so many of them? Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps more of these “I’m so happy Charlie Kirk was murdered” posts had apparently been posted, many if not most of them by posters who felt absolutely no shame about showing their faces and revealing their identities. Posts which were then liked and reposted by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps more, other people.
I am not going to provide a link to any of these disgusting videos or messages here. They are very easy to find online, if you wish to treat yourself to a manifestation of the worst of humanity on display. I will, however, describe a few, dishearteningly representative, samples:
1) a post on Facebook by a woman named “Jennifer Wexler Stomsky,” who, under a picture of herself posing in a “Handmaid’s Tale” costume (but of course!), writes: “I’m so tired of being told that violence isn’t the answer… let’s make some more martyrs! (emphasis mine).”
2) a man on TikTok speaks: “To the Charlie Kirk family (takes a pause in which he pretends to be sympathetic to the widow and children of the murdered man), did you see all that blood come of out Charlie’s fucking face! (makes gory sound effects, then breaks out in hysterical laughter).
3) a community college student surreptitiously records his teacher, who tells the class that he took great pleasure from watching the murder over and over again, adding, “and I hope everyone in his family dies, and their children, and their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, to eternity.”
4) a high school teacher, in the midst of exulting that Charlie Kirk is dead during class, reportedly ends her comments with, “MAGA kids, y’all can go home and cry.”
5) a young woman in a sweatshirt shakes her ample hips, sings “Ding, dong, the witch is dead,” cackles loudly, declares it was Kirk’s fault for dying, because “he should have been wearing a bulletproof neck brace, or somethin,’” and mocks those who mourn, smirkingly telling them, “remember, this was God’s plan!”
…and there is plenty more where that came from. I mean, a whole lot more. These are not outlier cases; rather, this is a broad swath of the left-leaning population of the United States.
Because they were frequently so careless, or more accurately carefree, about showing their faces and letting the world know exactly who they were, many of these posters were fired, laid off, or put on leave by their employers in the days that followed. These consequences, while richly deserved, and certainly satisfying to witness (especially when these same smug, smirking, callous, and cruel individuals later posted tearful, self-pitying messages after getting sacked), don’t resolve the real problem at hand.
Put simply, the fact that these people’s first impulse, upon hearing of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, was to post utterly vile messages of celebratory glee, says something fundamental about their state of mind. The fact that there are seemingly so many such people, as indicated by the sheer number of postings of this sort, and the even greater number of likes and repostings of these initial posts (as well as the common sense conclusion that some with identical sentiments were prudent enough not to post such incendiary rhetoric online), underscores the size and scope of this quite hideous dilemma we face.
If those shamelessly posting such evil, awful sentiments were merely a handful of marginal castaways— toothless, mentally-ill freaks, or pathetic social outcasts desperately screaming for attention— then they could be ignored and even pitied. But the fact is that many of these people are actually successful and accomplished citizens: doctors, nurses, teachers, airline pilots, etc. One would think that holding patently homicidal predilections towards a mild-mannered, morally upstanding young conservative man like Charlie Kirk would suggest a personality type incapable of mastering the social niceties required to ascend in such fields as those named above. I do not pretend to have an answer to this seeming paradox. Perhaps such people as these generally have a greater ability to moderate their temperament, but an event like Charlie Kirk’s death “activated” them, the same way that a demon concealing itself within a person howls and snarls with diabolical rage and scorn when a sacramentally-charismed exorcist priest demands, in the name of the Holy Spirit, for it to identify itself.
Indeed, though one of the Kirk-hating posters sneered that his murder would “activate no one,” the opposite has clearly been the case. It has, as we have seen, galvanized many Christian traditionalists, both Protestant and Catholic, as well as those on the political Right, to stand more fervently for their faith and principles. Correspondingly, as we have also seen, it “activated” many leftist secularists who hate Christianity to reveal the full scope of their vicious, demonic fury.
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I don’t use words like “demonic” or “diabolical” lightly. Though I am a believer in Hell and in the existence of the demonical realm, I am usually hesitate to ascribe most human evil to the direct influence of literal deviltry. Most of us who choose to commit wrongdoing behave in such a manner out of weakness, out of a desire to be in accord with social conformity, or due to some other base and ignoble character flaw. Even the worst human behavior— adultery, murder, the harming of children— is generally undertaken without demons playing any sort of active role.
That said, when I saw the countenances of those who appeared in these countless videos, mocking Charlie Kirk’s murder, calling for the murder of others, calling for the murder of the Charlie’s widow Erika and their two small children, exulting in the shedding of blood and the making of martyrs, I couldn’t help but flash to scenes I have witnessed of active exorcisms, wherein a ghastly smile appears on the face of a man, woman, or child, where a horrible, inhuman laugh issues forth from that person’s lips, following the utterance of stunningly perverse and depraved blasphemies.
I hasten to add that I am no expert on these matters, but merely a layman with a degree of discernment, calling it like I see it. Lest I be misunderstood, the Devil and his infernal minions aren’t bound by ideology; they can manifest as easily on the Right or the Center as on the Left. It seems, however, that we are living in an age in which the demonic has burrowed conspicuously into the leftist scene, to the extent that it has even become semi-acceptable for those in this demographic to give voice to patently demonic sentiments, as evidenced by the legions of online celebrators of Kirk’s murder.
Meanwhile, those on the Left actually possessed of greater prudence, appalled as they may be by this development, are also hesitant to call it out, lest they also be pelted with ignominious epithets like “traitor” or “sellout.” For evidence of this worrisome trend, one need look no further than the fact that a recent House resolution calling for the condemnation of Charlie Kirk’s murder, and the condemnation of “political violence” generally— a resolution which one would think would be utterly non-contentious and un-controversial— only half of Congressional Democrats voted “yes.” A full 58 Democrat House Representatives voted “no,” while an additional 38 merely voted “present,” essentially a weasely way of voting “no” without actually saying “no.”
How on earth could 96 House members refuse to condemn an obviously evil act like the taking of an innocent man’s life in cold blood? I submit that the House Democrats know that much of their base are pro-murder, and they don’t wish to alienate their base.
And that, like it or not, is where things currently stand.