Reading the Shooter: Motives, Texts, and Aesthetics

Why must all good things come to an end? Just asking questions. 

This will be the final episode of the Just Asking Questions podcast. This discussion with Freddie deBoer about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath felt like the kind of sincere, analytical, deeply meaningful conversation across an ideological divide that would be appropriate to call our last. Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller offer their final thoughts and reflections on the series at the end of the episode, so if you've been with us on this journey, please stay after the final question to hear our closing statements. You can continue to read Liz's work every weekday by subscribing to the Reason Roundup. Zach will continue to produce documentaries, video essays, and interviews for Reason TV. You can also follow Liz and Zach on X for updates on their work, and the full Just Asking Questions archive will remain available here, on YouTube, and podcatchers.

Freddie deBoer joins us in today's episode to unpack the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk. On his Substack, he wrote a remarkable piece attempting to make sense of what he calls "spectacular acts of public violence."

The motive of Kirk's alleged killer has become clearer as text messages and family statements released by law enforcement reveal a young man in a relationship with a transgender partner, enraged by Kirk's supposed "hatred." But from deBoer's perspective, it's not ideology primarily spurring these public acts of political violence. A profound lack of meaning and wallowing in nihilistic online irony continually leads young men—often egged on by internet friends they barely know in real life—to desperately graft a semi-coherent grievance onto their final violent act in a doomed attempt to make it meaningful. 

DeBoer is a proud man of the left, and we ask him whether the pathology that led to Kirk's assassination is particularly characteristic of the left in an era where unapologetic celebrations of this murder and the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson late last year have appeared on social media with disturbing frequency. 

It's a conversation that we hope inspires you as it did us to reflect on what it is that's meaningful to you, what the effect of an increasingly digital and disembodied world has on that meaning, and how to avoid pushing our culture any further in the direction of one that produces rampant celebration and dehumanization of a father and husband who was killed for the words he spoke. 

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. 1. Utah County Attorney: Charges against Tyler Robinson
   2. Ken Klippenstein: Leaked Messages from Charlie Kirk Assassin
   3. How acceptable are the following activities in response to a campus speaker? 2024 College Free Speech Rankings | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
   4. Institute for Economics and Peace: People who feel political violence is justified

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Freddie deBoer: Charlie Kirk's Murder Reveals a Cultural Sickness appeared first on Reason.com.