Ele Ludemann: Can we grieve for someone we didn’t know?

A friend asked if I’d heard that Charlie Kirk had been killed.

I said I had but I didn’t know who he was.

Since then I’ve found out:

He was a young man with conservative views who wasn’t afraid to speak out about them.

He was a young man who had challenging conversations in public.

He was a young man who promoted and strove for courteous discourse.

He was a young man who was killed for doing that.

He was a husband and a father.

The actions of someone who couldn’t, or wouldn’t answer words with which he or she disagreed, with words, chose to answer them by shooting him, leaving his wife a widow and his children fatherless.

Those who knew him will be grieving.

Can we who didn’t know him also grieve?

In The Grief That Isn’t Ours, Donna Ashworth wrote:

Not all grief comes from reciprocated love; sometimes it comes from respect, gratitude, humanity, familiarity, – or the simple fact of having a heart that beats and breaks . . .

Without diminishing in anyway the pain of the grief of those who knew and love Charlie, we who didn’t know him can grieve for a life cut short, his death and the manner in which it happened.

We can grieve for what it says about intolerance,.

We can grieve for the evil of politically motivated violence from people who can’t, or won’t, seek to counter words and ideas with which they disagree with more words and ideas, rather than violence.

Jillaine Heather, chief executive of the Free Speech Union wrote words are not violence, but violence is:

Charlie Kirk was tragically killed this week for speaking his mind.

A well-known conservative activist gunned down while giving a speech at Utah Valley University, leaving behind his wife and two young children.

Think about that: a man killed for exercising his democratic right to speak. Not shouted down, not protested – shot.

That is violence.

And if we need a reminder of why it matters to keep our categories straight, this is it. Violence takes away lives. It ends debate permanently. It shuts someone up forever.

There’s a dangerous idea floating around these days: ‘words are violence’. We hear it in classrooms, from administrators, and in training sessions where university students are told that hearing the ‘wrong’ idea is a form of harm. That uncomfortable debates are too much to bear. That students must be shielded from words that make them feel unsafe.

This is nonsense – and dangerous nonsense at that. Words are not violence. Words don’t break bones or put people in hospital. They don’t leave children without parents.

Words can hurt feelings, yes. They can anger, offend, even shock. But treating speech like violence cheapens the meaning of actual violence, weakens people’s ability to handle debate, and turns disagreement into a crisis.

If we teach young people that being exposed to tough ideas is the same as being attacked, we make them more fragile, not stronger. And we send the toxic message that the only way to truly be safe is to shut people up. That’s not education – it’s indoctrination.

And here’s the real danger: when you tell people long enough that words are violence, someone will eventually treat violence as a reasonable response to words. If speech is an ‘attack’, then a bullet starts to look like self-defense. That twisted logic is how free societies crumble.

The reaction to Kirk’s assassination showed that most people, left and right, still know the difference. Leaders across the spectrum condemned the killing and called for civility. But civility isn’t enough. We need courage. Courage to say that speech – even offensive speech – is not a threat, not a weapon, not violence.

Because if we can’t say that, then we can’t have debate. We can’t have universities that are places of learning instead of indoctrination. We can’t have a society where disagreements are settled with words instead of fists, knives, or guns.

This is why together at the Free Speech Union, we push back so hard against the trend of treating words as harm. If we only allow ‘safe’ speech, speech everyone approves of, we don’t have free speech at all. And if we keep telling young people that words are dangerous, we make them fragile, fearful, and easy prey for those who believe silencing opponents by force is justified.

Charlie Kirk’s death is a tragedy. But it’s also a warning. We cannot let the line between speech and violence get blurred. We cannot let fear or fragility turn free expression into a crime.

The only way forward is a recommitment: to free speech, to open debate, to the right to disagree and ability to hold differing views. To show future generations that resilience comes from grappling with hard ideas, not hiding from them.

Charlie Kirk should be alive today. His ideas should be debated, challenged, even ridiculed if you like – but not silenced with a gun. The right to speak should not come at the risk of death.

The right to speak must be protected, defended, and celebrated. If we have the courage to hold that line, then there’s hope: that the next generation won’t fear words, but embrace them; that disagreement won’t end in violence, but in deeper understanding; and that free speech will remain the cornerstone of a free society.

 

 

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Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.