Lord Porridge, I think the problem people are having with feeling empathy for Charlie Kirk is that he himself did not oppose (and in some ways incited) the violence by which he met his end.
Kirk’s comment about “some deaths being worth it to preserve the Second Amendment” has already been quoted (I paraphrase).
And many of those who agreed with his political point of view have been lauding him to the skies (Trump apparently is planning to give him some kind of posthumous medal) while previously either ignoring or actually laughing at the deaths of Democratic politicians who have been assassinated in the US.
Everybody here deplores his death, but he was not a saint or a martyr, and he represented a brand of American hypocrisy that many find distasteful (to say the least). It’s not about whether you agree or disagree with some (or even all) of his talking points, it’s about the very sad poison that has entered the bloodstream of American politics, largely generated by people who would like to turn the political clock back to the pre-Civil War era, and are often doing it violently and by trampling on people’s human rights (viz the Jan 6 insurrection and the activities of ICE, to name but two).
That’s a quite different thing from “conservatism” vs “liberalism” as we understand it in Europe.
And lastly we should also remember that he was shot by a young man who it seems (according to early reports) represented an extremist group who actually thought Charlie Kirk was not right-wing enough.
