This guest opinon piece is an academic analysis of materialism, and a critique of the root causes that underlie gun violence. It explores the conditions that make vigilante justice inevitable. It does not endorce them.
People all over the country are crying about the terrible state of things. The media is handwringing over it all and saying that what really matters is the free exchange of ideas, and how terrible it is that the sacred principle of Free Speech has been upset by political violence. Despite all the hullabaloo about ideas and thoughts and speech, it is clear to me that materialism has secured yet another win.
Materialism suggests that physical matter determines ideology. Essentially, actions speak louder than words, but as a way of analyzing the world. Combined with dialectics and history, it is a key piece of Marxist analysis. When I say that materialism is winning in this situation, I mean that the theory of analysis is proving true once again, not that the current circumstances promote materialism as an ideology. In one way, materialism is always winning, as it proves itself over and over again. However, in this case, the analysis is particularly stark.
Charlie Kirk, a noted conservative who preferred to spend his time harassing college students and funding millions of dollars worth of hate speech, has finally lost his debate. He will never haunt a college campus again, say a slur, or exercise his patriarchal authority over his family. How did this happen? Which college student had a debate strategy so good that he finally tucked tail and ran, proclaiming that he was wrong and dropping his fortune out of a helicopter so that one-hundred-dollar bills would rain down on the people of America?
At the time of writing, we are not sure who committed the deed or why they committed it, even though a suspect has been taken into custody and his motives have been extensively scrutinized by the media in order to pin the blame on either the right or the left, depending on the political affiliation of the reporter. While the evidence seems to suggest the debater was neither trans nor connected with the radical left in any way, the motives are immaterial. If the debater were a politically conscious John Brown, or if they just wanted target practice, the outcome is the same. That’s materialism for you. The outcome was dictated not by their motives but by their physical characteristics, in this case, being a good shot.
The political establishment has been quick to condemn this violence. The President has ordered that all flags be lowered for four days, perhaps the highest honor a social media influencer or a victim of gun violence has ever been afforded in this country. Politicians from both sides of the bourgeois aisle have affirmed that Kirk had the right to life and the right to free speech, rights he extended to few other people. You, the reader, might have bought into this way of thinking and consider this article in bad taste, making light of the very serious problem of gun violence in America.
Tastelessness in reality was the way Kirk devalued live. Tastelessness was his ignorance of the countless victims of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Tastelessness is the economic system he defended. Tastelessness is the way we profit from an economy built on the blood of millions of people around the world, that can only exist because of the exploitation of workers here and abroad. It is more than tasteless; it is downright immoral to pretend that this death is worth more than the millions of people who are ground up by this capitalist system every year. It’s tasteless to feign ignorance about the connection between fascism and terrorism in this country. Every single time a terrorist action is committed on the people of this nation (and it is terrorism), media figures, politicians, and your parents try to pretend that it wasn’t caused by fascism, only to dismiss politics when they learn that it was.
In life, he was simply a mouthpiece for capitalism and a vessel for money to flow through, whether it was sucking up DEI funds or receiving “donations” from capitalists of all kinds. In death, he is lighter than a feather. In fact, it seems he was killed by the very same kind of person he encouraged. It’s no surprise. Did Hitler cry on the night of the long knives? Does the US think twice about killing its most loyal soldiers in unnecessary imperialist battles? Human life is inconsequential to fascists.
Kirk couldn’t be taken down by debate. In fact, debating him made him stronger by giving him and his ideas attention. Debate was his territory–the polite territory of “civic” discourse. While in the realm of ideas, many of the people who argued with him were correct; in the material world, Kirk had the money and influence to make them look like shrieking lunatics on social media. His team wouldn’t post anything that made him look bad. His audience was not up to being convinced. You can tell I am right because of the outcomes– is the left or the right stronger in the country after ten years of Kirk and his ilk? Has free speech raised the minimum wage, given you healthcare, or protected you from gun violence? No. You may only speak so long as you do not change anything. When you challenge someone in power, you will be censured, like the people who have been fired for posting “tasteless” statements about a fascist.
This materialist debate was out of his control. Audre Lorde once said “The master’s tools cannot destroy the master’s house.” The bourgeois approved tool of destruction, debate, has never been able to eradicate fascism. There is only one tool which can accomplish that. That tool is not the redundancy Americans call “gun violence.” Let us look again at the consequences. After thirty years of gun violence, is the “right” or the “left” stronger in this country? Do you feel that your life is improved when every place can break into a spontaneous debate?
No, of course not. There is nothing good about violence for violence’s sake. Just like debate, it is often redeployed as a tool designed to reinforce the status quo. The president is deploying troops to American cities with less and less fanfare each time. Even without the troops, there is already an organized, militarized force in every city– the police department.
It has been a month since this debate took place. The uproar has largely died down, but it will flare up when spontaneous violence inevitably happens again in six to twelve months. It will also flare in reaction whenever people try to combat the root cause - forbid someone suggest that the university shouldn’t invite another different run-of-the-mill fascist to campus again. Materialism would suggest that gun violence is not the result of “lone wolves”, but the product of the economic base that creates and supports them. As long as that economic base remains, materialism stays winning. Gun violence will continue until the economic base of our violent capitalist system changes.
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