In the span of one week, Americans witnessed two horrific murders that shook the Internet.
On Sept. 5, the Charlotte Area Transit System released a video that showed the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte, N.C., light rail train, and on Sept. 10, Charlie Kirk, a conservative political activist and author, was assassinated in front of a crowd of 3,000 people on the campus of Utah Valley University.
Iryna had moved to the U.S. in 2022, with her mother, sister and brother, to escape the war in Ukraine. On Aug. 22, she had just gotten off work at a pizzeria and was heading home when the man behind her on the train stood up, stabbed her in the neck and then walked away. The look of terror on her face as she turned to look up at him has haunted me all week. The video shows her putting her head in her hands then she slumped over in her seat and fell to the floor. On the video, her fellow passengers don’t appear to acknowledge this horrific incident at all.
The man who stabbed her was 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, a homeless man with 14 prior convictions and a history of mental illness.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was in Orem, Utah, the first stop on a fall “The American Comeback Tour,” where he was scheduled to debate students at a “Prove Me Wrong Table.” As of Sept. 14, the American Comeback Tour website still listed upcoming tours through the end of October, which includes stops at nine other universities around the country.
Kirk was assassinated in front of the crowd while answering a student’s question about mass shootings. Initial reports weren’t clear about his condition, but after viewing a video that showed blood gushing out of his neck after being shot, I sadly knew it was unlikely that he would survive.
On its website, Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012 when he was 18, says its mission is to identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government. At his “Prove Me Wrong” tables, he would invite people to challenge and debate his views publicly.
Before his death, videos of these debates were the only thing I knew about Charlie Kirk, as some of his videos had shown up in my newsfeed these past couple of years. I admired the way he seemed to always remain so calm, focused and articulate when answering people’s questions, even when they were insulting him, and appreciated his support for Israel and the Jewish community.
After his death was announced, my newsfeed was flooded with reactions. I learned that he and his wife and two young children lived in Scottsdale and that the Turning Point USA headquarters were actually in Phoenix, where I live. I learned that people I knew, including a local rabbi and his wife, were friends with him and wrote eloquent tributes about him. A few hours later, I learned that some people on the Internet had very different views of him and his work and were actually celebrating his death.
What?! They were posting quotes attributed to him, calling him racist, misogynic and antisemitic, and laughing at the irony that a proponent for gun rights was killed by a gun. (The sad irony is that there was another school shooting that same day in Colorado that comparatively received little coverage; the shooter was a 16-year-old student at the school. Two students were shot before the shooter turned the gun on himself and later died from the injuries.)
How did we get to this point in our country where so many people are celebrating violence? Regardless of whether one disagreed with his conservative views and religious beliefs, what leads someone to rejoice in the violent death of someone who devoted his life to trying to promote dialogue in an attempt to understand others? He wasn’t just preaching the way he thought people should live, he wanted to actually talk to people and discuss important topics with them.
In a video where a woman asks him why he goes to campuses with his “Prove Me Wrong” table, his response was “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence, that’s when civil war happens. Because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity.”
Have some Americans lost their humanity? I would hope not. I think part of it is that people get their news from different sources and some of those sources are very biased. People engage with different news (and different views) and then their algorithms continue to feed them more and more of the same information.
That’s why my newsfeeds are more focused on the plight of the hostages of Gaza, the impact of the war on Israelis and the Jewish community, and the debunking of misinformation about what’s happening in Gaza and why others are still convinced there is a genocide and that everything is all Israel’s fault. I can’t understand why people are expressing so much hatred toward Israel and the Jewish community and someone with a different algorithm would likely think I’m a horrible person because I’m not condemning Israel’s existence.
Many people’s algorithms may have skipped over another horrific attack that happened this past week. On Monday morning, Sept. 8, two Palestinian gunmen from the West Bank opened fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Six people were killed: an elementary school teacher, a rabbi, a grandmother, a father of six children, a newlywed immigrant and a former cardiologist who ran Dr. Mark’s Bakery, a bakery that supplies Israeli supermarkets with healthy breads. At least a dozen others were wounded.
Hamas praised the terror attack, calling it a “heroic operation.” On college campuses, people have shouted “We are Hamas” as they protest against Israel. In interviews on college campuses after Charlie Kirk’s murder, students were asked about their thoughts on the assassination. Shockingly, many said they didn't care or even that they were glad that he was killed and and didn’t show any empathy for his wife or young children.
Ironically, the people who are saying they don’t care he was murdered because of things he said about transgender individuals or women’s roles or gun rights seem to be the same demographic that is advocating for those fighting against Israel, which would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic, as Islamic Jihad ideology doesn’t exactly celebrate the LGBTQ+ community or advocate for women’s rights and Islamic militant groups often proudly share images and videos of their children posing with guns.
Immigrants like Iryna Zarutska come to America to escape violence in their own country and to pursue a better life here. Charlie Kirk loved America and devoted his life to trying to help the country thrive.
To those who are celebrating this act of political violence - what kind of future do you want for America? What kind of world do you want to live in and pass on to the next generation?
Maybe we should all step outside of our algorithm once in a while to gain a better understanding of what’s happening.
Your writing is like the pin of perspective on a map of a crazy world. Such a powerful post. Thank you for writing these.
Leisah, what a wonderful, insightful article. Your thoughts are so helpful, after so mucy negativity in all the newsfeeds, even outside the US. Thank you!