I knew almost nothing about Charlie Kirk when he was killed on September 10, other than that he was a leading organizer and thought leader for MAGA. One of the first things I saw in my email inbox about him after that misguided, violent act that took his life referenced the fact that he publicly supported dialogue between the Left and the Right. Here’s that quote, prominent on his website: “We heal our divides by talking to people we disagree with… You heal the country when you allow disagreement.”

I agree with these words. To what extent he acted upon these words I do not know.

I do know that he was a huge Trump backer and enabler, and Trump is all about division and hate. I wonder if Kirk ever said a word of criticism about this fact about the man he helped elect President and whose policies he advocated for until he died.

USA Today came out with an article after he died summarizing what can only be called his racist, sexist, homophobic views.

It remains to be seen how many Trump/MAGA supporters follow what Kirk said about healing the country through allowing disagreement and talking to those we disagree with. The Republican Governor of Utah, where the killing took place, seems to have done so, to his credit.

For those of us on the political Left, the Kirk murder and Trump’s efforts to use it to ratchet up attacks on us, using a very broad, hysterical brush, should be just the latest lesson about the importance of nonviolent tactics as we continue to strengthen our resistance movement.

It appears as if Trump’s alleged killer was not a Leftist. His family appears to be very Republican and pro-Trump. Perhaps as he went out on his own he was exposed to ideas and facts he had not known about before, but unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have been exposed to the importance of nonviolence and dialogue in efforts to oppose what is seen as wrong.

I’m not a pacifist. I support people defending themselves, their family and their community as necessary against violence of any kind. But acts like those alleged to have been taken by Tyler Robinson are not self-defense; they are self-defeating and destructive.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed the way forward, with active and militant, mass nonviolence at the center of that way. In his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in NYC in April, 1967, he said this: “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Charlie Kirk did not like King. He said the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake. About King he reportedly said, “MLK was awful. He was not a good person.” I wish Kirk was still alive so that, perhaps, someday, through dialogue with people who disagreed with him, he would have changed his mind.

The post Charlie Kirk first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.