Reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death show how unprepared we are for challenging political conversations. Here’s How to Start.

If you were left wondering "how can people really feel this way" or feeling despair over others' reactions — in real life or online — to the assassination of Charlie Kirk a few weeks ago, you certainly weren't and aren't alone. The flame wars, meme battles, and internet vitriol have died down now that his memorial is over, but the underlying sources of tension remain: ideological divides over social and political positions, policy disputes and differences in ideal forms of governance, disparate norms for engaging in conflict and conversation, and interpersonal differences each play a role.

To be very clear before I start, Charlie Kirk was a vile human being. He was a white supremacist Christian nationalist, an antagonist to trans people and queer people, and a propagator of misinformation and hatred, not a champion of "free speech" or "open debate," and not a hero or someone to admire. If you support free speech and open debate (which I do), that is something you can do without white-washing his legacy or investing in his symbolic presence in any way. This isn't an essay about how to carry forward his supposed legacy and get into "debates" with false premises that are unproductively polemical. This is an essay about how reactions to his death demonstrated just how ill-prepared we are to have tough political conversations.

This post isn't for folks who are going to throw themselves into hero worship or fandom about his persona or anything he represents; it's for people who witnessed what happened and were shocked by how the conversation around his life and work unfolded, and perhaps were dismayed to discover that not just random internet people, but people in their communities and close to them, were enthralled with his presence.

MAGA supporters turned out in droves to Charlie Kirk’s memorial, but also to support his legacy online.

Diverting attention from his political rhetoric to focus on his image as a Christian husband and father is just one rhetorical tool to shut down political critique and maintain control over the terms of the conversation.

How do I talk to people who think Charlie Kirk was a hero?

I intentionally waited to weigh in here because of what I'm about to say: conversations about politically volatile subjects are not best had in a reactive state or from a reactive posture. So in short, I want to offer a first quick piece of advice in an overall framework for engaging in these kinds of tough conversations: don't. I'm not telling you to never talk about these types of people, or discuss issues with others who don't agree with you, but I am telling you that your best baseline response is probably going to be to take a beat. Here's why:

Your goals for tough conversations matter

If you were jump-scared by a friend or family member appearing on your social media timeline to eulogize Charlie Kirk at length, or were taken aback by major news media sanitizing his legacy rather than representing him with his own words, you might (understandably) have felt the urge to leap into action.

Surely your friend/family member/favorite journalist is mistaken. Surely you can offer a quick correction, perhaps even citing a source or a quote. Perhaps you see a cascade of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, or falsehoods, and feel called to address each point, line by line, with refutation.

It makes sense that you want to rectify the situation and have the urge to engage, but this is the moment where pausing to check in with yourself might matter most. What are your goals for this conversation, whether it's with a member of your community or an internet stranger? And, behind those goals, what are your covert hopes for how the conversation will go?

Consider that the person making those statements has already put their position out into the world — they either shared their take from an emotionally volatile place, or they had a long-considered position that is emerging in this seemingly opportune moment. In either case, your swift take-down or lengthy refutation isn't likely to land on fertile soil. That doesn't mean you shouldn't still post or engage, but it does mean that if you were hanging your hopes on quickly convincing someone to share your point of view, you should think again.

If, on the other hand, your goal is about signaling to others or yourself, it might still make sense to proceed. These goals can include things like, registering your disagreement or disapproval to let this person (or the general "audience" of your community) know that it's not a universally held belief. Or perhaps what you mainly need is to speak into the world your sense of reality, to see it in print or to hear it come from your own mouth, to reassure yourself of its veracity. Importantly, though, these types of goals are much more circumscribed: you achieve them mainly by speaking your truth or sharing your position, rather than relying on the other person's reaction.

Avoiding altercations or disappointment don't need to be the litmus test for whether you choose to dive into a tough conversation or a political topic, but learning how to have these conversations sustainably and handle them well in part hinges on your clarity and objectives going into the conversations. Repeatedly jumping in without considering what you hope to accomplish serves more to burn you out than it does to enact any social or political change.

Is your conversational goal to start a flame war, or develop understanding?

It’s not that meaningful conversations *can’t* happen on social media, but they certainly don’t happen organically when we lack intention.

Reacting is not the same as meaningful conversation

In a related vein, being reactive is not an end unto itself when we have broader political work in mind. I'm not necessarily telling you to swallow your emotional reactions and "take the high road." It might feel cathartic to chew someone out, shitpost at length, or block someone on a social media platform — and perhaps you have a real emotional need for catharsis in the moment. Just don't mistake catharsis for accomplishing political aims.

When we jump in to react and refute someone else's out-of-pocket commentary to to laboriously critique their overwrought political diatribes, we're accepting their framing and their position as the one that sets the terms of discussion. How they contextualize the issue, how they understand the issue, how they feel about the issue—those are what's at the center, and you, in reacting, are at the periphery.

Sometimes we don't get to choose the best staging for our battles. It's important to interrupt actively harmful claims and inflammatory statements in the moment, too. If someone is threatening harm, using slurs, or being actively detrimental in their rhetoric, demonstrating disagreement is one way to poke a hole in the veneer of their totalizing narrative. HOWEVER: engaging in deeper conversation with a goal of understanding, education, or growth is a different activity than directly interrupting harm. Again, being clear about the goals of a conversation is the first step. This deeper type of work can be done in contexts more amenable to exchange, where everyone is more open to learning and growing; it shouldn't be an expected consequence of more urgent moments of intervention.

There are several reasons it's so easy to get drawn in to reacting to others' rhetoric and vitriol:

These issues matter. Many of us have heartfelt, deep-seated values and beliefs that relate to issues that Charlie Kirk (in life or death) brought up: gun violence, racial disparities, sex-based discrimination, faith and politics. It makes sense that hearing or seeing others wade in on these issues in ways you might vehemently disagree with brings up emotions and stirs a sense of urgency.
Bringing up controversial, heavy, or political topics is hard. It violates social norms. It puts the onus on the initiator to frame the discussion and opens them to unknown or uncertain pushback and reactions. Fear of "rocking the boat" or upsetting social niceties inhibits socially conscious and responsible people from bringing up topics that deeply matter, that are values-based, and that have political consequences. But those topics, as in the previous point, still matter, so we may want to jump in to conversation about them now that the moment has arrived. Getting comfortable with initiating these kinds of conversations is one antidote to always being on the reactive and receiving end.
Our vision of politics is (incorrectly) only about winning and losing. For many people who are steeped in a culture of electoral politics, it's common to expect that any political debate or political contest will have a winner or a loser. Given how much these political and social issues matter, then, you certainly don't want to lose! Even if a "debate" isn't literally happening, and is just implicit in people putting their thoughts and words out for public consumption, it's easy to feel like leaving odious points uncontested means that that "side" or mindset "wins." This framing suggests an imperative, a responsibility, to weigh in on tough topics and controversial issues.

All of these are understandable impetuses to engage, but they don't change the fact that merely approaching from a reactive posture or operating only from quick retorts is not (probably) a real mechanism of political change.*

Don't misunderstand: I am not at all saying that we need to "reach across the aisle" and "befriend our enemies," or some other bucolic vision of defusing political disputes that resolves in us holding hands and singing kumbaya at the end. I actually think this idea is profoundly harmful unto itself, but that's a subject matter for another day and a different essay. What I am saying is, if part of the goal is developing an understanding of each other and raising political consciousness, doing political education, or calling in/out people in our communities, those aren't activities that can be accomplished well in a single conversation, and they especially are not best approached from a reactive position.

Rather, we need better tools and more practice for having hard conversations on terms that are thoughtful and lead from our values. Not getting sucked into someone else's emotional vortex or political cesspool plays one part in that.

Our conversations can serve emotional, relational, or political needs—pick which ones you're focusing on, when, and with whom

In addition to knowing your objective for a tough conversation, and approaching it in a context that is conducive to that objective, knowing who you are in that conversation, and who the other parties are to you, can and should condition how we approach fraught political and social topics with each other.

What I mean is this: you wouldn't necessarily share your deepest, most intimate secrets with a total stranger. In fact, it would be considered socially inappropriate at best to do that, and dangerous at worst. Having deep, meaningful conversations about issues of political importance is similar: you (mostly) can't dive right into the deep end with someone if you don't have any relational rapport. On the flip side, how much it matters that someone else can come around to your point of view, consider your values or opinions, or respect your perspective, is at least somewhat conditional on who they are to you—are they a close friend or partner? a member of your chosen family or family of origin? a neighbor? a distant relation? a stranger on the internet?

These questions can be about direct social ties, or they can be about your relative political and social positioning. For example, I as a white-skinned person might be better positioned to speak to people steeped in white supremacist ideology because our (perceived) degree of social difference and political power is less than it would be if I were a person of color. Likewise, if my social positionality is one that is often empowered or in authority (masculine, upper class, English-speaking, higher education, etc.), my ability to "reach" some audiences or some individuals—even if we don't align politically at all—may be greater than if I operate from a social position that is less endowed with social power and authority.

With each additional degree of separation, how far we can hope to come in a single interaction is limited, and the stakes of our interactions are limited as well. If I cannot convince someone I've never met and may never meet who lives thousands of miles away, or can't see eye to eye with them, that may not directly impact my personal circumstances or my political well-being to the same degree as if I feel betrayed by someone I thought was a close friend and confidante not believing that I am an equal human being or person worthy of rights, care, or consideration.

Concretely what that means is, your approach to a conversation about a tough political issue might (should?) fundamentally differ on the basis of what your preexisting levels of trust, understanding, and connection are with the other person or people involved. If they're core to your life and someone you deeply care about, it makes sense to invest more time and energy into understanding their perspective, sharing your own, and working through your political education together. If they're more distant, you might not want to invest the same time and energy, or you may consider that that energy needs to be dissipated over a longer timespan, more people and communities beyond yourself, and in more varied contexts. Either approach is ok, but making an intentional choice about how you engage will allow you to better resource yourself for those engagements, so you'll feel less emotionally raw and burnt out.

Shooting off a quick, inflammatory comment on a stranger's instagram post might serve an emotional need that you have to see your point of view represented in the world, but it doesn't have political depth or exist within a framework or a strategy to make meaningful political change. It can momentarily reassure you of your own reality and help support you in the solidity of your own beliefs, which isn't unimportant, but it's fundamentally insecure and not offering support to yourself or anyone else in a deep way. Maybe that's fine if your ultimate aspiration is to be an occasional internet troll, but it's less sustainable if your hope is to build coalitions, gather political power, or change the level of political discourse in society.

Having a conversation that maintains relational connections with people whose politics you find challenging is another possible framework, but it comes with potential emotional and political costs. When you divert conversation away from hot-button issues to defuse conflict with your boomer parents, this does some work of refocusing your relationship and connection around issues you can agree on, or ways that you do bond. But it can come at the expense of your emotional well-being if, say, you are a trans person and your parents are deeply conservative and anti-queer. And it can also come at the expense of our political objectives if your parents have the potential to shift their understanding and move resources toward political projects that safeguard trans lives.

Engaging in conversations that have the potential to move the needle politically, then, can sacrifice your emotional health or relational ties—unless you support yourself first. Going deep with someone close to you who fundamentally disagrees with your politics or has a different worldview altogether can feel like a high stakes hostage negotiation (except you're the hostage and we're hoping you make it out alive). Misfiring in that conversation can get you hurt, or can compromise your relational standing with the person you were trying to engage. That realization, or abortive attempts to do this work without adequate preparation, can leave you exhausted and avoidant of ever trying again.

If you want to have tough conversations…

…you need to practice having those tough conversations. Start small, start resourced. Build your skills in supportive environments, then branch out.

How can I have tough conversations about political issues?

In a word: practice.

What the outpouring of political debate and discourse after Charlie Kirk's assassination demonstrated is how deprived many of us feel of avenues and opportunities for having genuine political conversation and deep engagement with the people around us. But it also showed how deeply unprepared most of us are to have those conversations in a real way, and how little forethought often goes into how to approach each other outside of the expectations we're fed from media theatrics and electoral politics.

Most of us aren't very practiced at sustaining deep, challenging conversations with others when we don't already agree on a political worldview. Starting in this work can feel emotionally exhausting and mentally challenging, so finding support for building your skillset and opportunities to practice that can shore up your confidence and ease are critical. Some of that practice can happen organically: what happens if you ask a close friend to coffee and start off by saying, "You know, something I read about [gun violence/queer issues/immigration detention/new policies] has really been weighing on me. Can I talk through it with you?"

But you'll get even more payoff if you structure your practice with intention. What role do you want to play in your friend group, your family, your community? What actions do you take or positions do you inhabit, and where do those align with your values? How can you bring these aspirations and intentions into alignment with your political work and political goals? Stepping through these types of questions, and practicing your ability to politically engage others from this deeper self-understanding, can make your work more sustainable and less taxing. And in a world that isn't going to right itself any time soon, you really can't afford to burn out in the first act. So get practicing.

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If you could use support in that practice, check out my upcoming workshops specifically around having these tough conversations and dissecting news stories with a critical eye. For more specific 1:1 support strategizing around your political work or tough conversations you need to have in your life, reach out about political peer mentorship opportunities.

* Conversations, by themselves, are also probably not major mechanisms of political change either, to be clear. They certainly have a role to play, but that role is largely overblown by Liberal narratives of what it means to live well in a pluralistic society.

How to have tough conversations