Ta-Nehisi Coates: 'Charlie Kirk Was a Hatemonger'

hotair.com

After Charlie Kirk was murdered, Ezra Klein wrote a column for the NY Times arguing that Charlie Kirk was doing politics the right way.

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.

Advertisement

Klein took a significant backlash for saying that at the time, even as many people on the left were openly celebrating, rushing to TikTok to express their happiness.

One of the people who really pushed back on Klein for writing that was Ta-Nehisi Coates. Klein responded (much as Kirk himself might have) by inviting Coates on his show to discuss it. That discussion/podcast was published yesterday. Klein's remarks are in bold. Also, because this is lengthy, I'm going to condense a bit here.

One thing for me is that in the immediate hours after somebody is murdered in public, when you see that sort of grief and horror pouring out of the people who loved him — and many people loved him — my instinct then is to just sit with them in their grief.

To say: I can for this moment find some way to grieve with you, to see your friend in some version of the way you saw him...

I actually think that is a great impulse after somebody has been killed — and not just killed, but because we live in the media environment that we live in, it’s seen, and it will live forever. And that person’s family — you know what I mean?

One thing I wrote about in that piece that I do worry about is — I worry we are already in a cycle of political violence, of mimetic violence. I think about Pelosi. I think about Shapiro. I think about the near assassination of Trump.

After that happened, I thought about me, I thought about you. I thought about all kinds of people I know. So, I do think there’s just something about when violence takes hold, there’s something about it that begins to breach all lines. That’s part of my reaction, too.

I think all of that is understandable. But was silence not an option?

Silence to me was not grieving with people. I felt it was important, as someone who is liberal, as someone who has a voice, that there are moments like that.

Advertisement

Why does Coates prefer that Klein remained silent? Because he sees Charlie Kirk as a "hate monger." And you shouldn't say anything nice about such a person.

And I don’t take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes soothe ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance and warmth are powerful forces. I believe they are. I also believe hate is a powerful force. I believe it’s a powerful, unifying force. And I think Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger.

I really need to say this over and over again. I have a politic that rejects violence, that rejects political violence. I take no joy in the killing of anyone, no matter what they said.

But if you ask me what the truth of his life was — and the truth of his public life — I would have to tell you it’s hate. I’d have to tell you it is the usage of hate and the harnessing of hate toward political ends.

It's no surprise Coates would think that. His politics are pretty bog standard woke identity politics in which anyone who doesn't hold his views of, say, trans issues is not worth speaking to and shouldn't be part of any national conversation. Ezra Klein is pushing back on this a bit.

I look at the last eight, 12 years, and what I see having happened is we, the coalition I am in, the things I believe in, lost ground. And people determinedly worked to make that so.

Charlie Kirk worked to make that so — successfully. I think that when he began going to college campuses and putting out a sign at a table, what he was eventually going to build was not obvious. I think he was a successful political actor...

So, for me, it’s not enough to say: We lost, there are backlashes, sometimes you lose. I think it requires a very fundamental rethinking — a disciplined, strategic rethinking — of: What have we been doing? Why are people preferring this to us?...

He was doing politics. He was trying to persuade people. And I’ve watched on our side, not opportunistic engagement but a lot of, I would say, counterproductive disengagement.

Advertisement

Klein is doing his level best to avoid using the word "woke" or the phrase "cancel culture" even though that's clearly what he's talking about. He's basically saying what many of us on the right have said many times. The woke won't debate you, they just want to scold you. This is what Klein is saying hasn't worked for progressives.

I think of the huge backlash to Bernie Sanders for going on Joe Rogan’s show because Rogan was transphobic. Such a big backlash that when I defended him — I became a Twitter trending topic. And to Elizabeth Warren for going on Bill Maher’s show — Bill Maher is Islamophobic. There were protests at Netflix when they brought on Dave Chappelle.

I think there was a politics of content moderation that took hold that was more about enforcing boundaries of what were and were not ideas we should be engaged with — rather than about engaging them, even if opportunistically.

And when I go back to something I was saying to you a minute ago, I am in a process right now of thinking: We failed. We lost. The loss is having terrible consequences. What do we need to rethink? How do we become competitive again in places where we’re not?

And I think there is something in here. Do people feel like, even if they disagree with us on some things, they have a place with us? And my experience going around the country, talking to people — I’ve been on a lot of right-of-center podcasts lately — is that, rightly or wrongly, what they took, and something that really empowered Trump in the last election, was a sense that they didn’t.

They feel like we were against them, and if so, they were going to be against us. And I think that’s, in the end, doing politics badly.

Advertisement

But for Coates, the most important thing is to stand against "hate."

I can’t ever a) contribute to making them feel like they’ve been abandoned, and b) I can’t ever stand by and watch somebody do that and in the name of unity or whatever, act like that’s not happening. Because there are real consequences.

So, when I read his words toward trans people — Jesus...

I’m all for unifying, I’m all for bridging gaps, but not at the expense of my neighbor’s humanity. I just can’t...

I actually think that’s not a hard line to draw. I think not calling people out of their name, that’s actually a basic value that most people have.

And I think people who think it’s not, who are pushing that, are actually themselves on the other side of the line.

Klein tries to push back by saying that while we can each draw a line for ourselves, we don't get to draw that line for everyone else. 

I think, from your perspective and from my perspective, we probably don’t believe hugely different things. But a huge amount of the country, a majority of the country, believes things about trans people, about what policy should be toward trans people, about what language is acceptable to trans people, that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong.

Coates' reply to that is that different people have different roles. As an progressive author, he sees it as his role to be the guy shouting for purity of vision on trans issues and everything else. The kind of politics that Klein is talking about (the kind he praised Charlie Kirk for excelling at) aren't Coates' job, so to speak.

Advertisement

What I think Coates misses or at least dodges is that the two things are clearly connected. If someone with a loud voice is shouting about trans issues and whatever else and refusing to really speak with anyone who holds a different view that makes the job of creating a big tent a lot harder. On the other hand, as Charlie Kirk demonstrated, if you spend your time engaging respectfully with people who disagree, that makes building a big tent easier.

If Ta-Nehisi Coates is the loudest voice in your party, you probably aren't winning a lot of converts so much as preaching to the choir that your own side is righteous and those other people aren't your moral equals and so aren't worth your time. 

I walked away from the conversation convinced that Klein had the more sensible political argument about how to win elections in the future but it won't matter because Coates has a self-righteous message progressives want to hear. This probably means Democrats will continue to lose elections, which is just fine with me.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Hot Air's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join Hot Air VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!