The conservative propaganda machine is in overdrive right now, blaming the left for Charlie Kirk’s murder yesterday in Utah despite knowing very little about the shooter.
Let me be clear: what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrible. However you or I may feel about the man, political violence is unacceptable—full stop. He didn’t deserve that. His kids didn’t deserve to lose their father. No one should have to suffer that kind of loss.
But there’s a name Republicans are terrified to say right now: Melissa Hortman.
Melissa Hortman was a Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota, brutally murdered—alongside her husband and her dog—by a conservative activist just 12 weeks ago. Her name deserves to be said in this moment.
Charlie Kirk’s murder is an attack on all Americans. So was Melissa Hortman’s.
Every time this kind of political violence surfaces—whether it’s the attempted kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the January 6th insurrection, or the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband—it shakes this country to its core. It causes real trauma. It makes people afraid to run for office, to engage with their communities, to believe in democracy at all.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: the overwhelming majority of these attacks come from the right. That’s not partisan spin—it’s backed by data. Yes, there are incidents from the left too, and in those moments, we all have a responsibility to look in the mirror and figure out how to move forward and do better.
What we should be doing right now is coming together to condemn political violence across the board. But instead, we’ve got the President of the United States, conservative influencers, and right-wing media rushing to blame Democrats and “the left”—as if we haven’t universally condemned what happened.
They cherry-pick a couple of morons on the internet celebrating Kirk’s death and pretend they represent all of us, despite the vast majority of Democrats condemning this violence—including myself, who found out about the shooting live on Newsmax and had to react in real time. Same playbook they used with the dumb Sydney Sweeney jeans ad, or any number of other manufactured moral panics.
It’s bullshit. And it needs to be called out for what it is: a desperate grab for cheap political points that pushes us further down the road to a society where violence is normalized.
And it is not normal.
They won’t say Melissa Hortman’s name because it shatters the narrative they’re trying to sell—that the left is violent and the right is peaceful.
That narrative is a lie, and we need to call it out.
Thank you for this post and the salient points you make. Patriarchy is the root of most of the violence around the world, and the right often demonstrates the deep emotional wounding and lack of empathy that result from patriarchy. The left has moved slightly beyond patriarchy, at least enough to feel empathy and compassion for most others. We all need to heal at a deeper level in order to stop this violence; and we need to find a balance of the sacred feminine within all of ourselves in harmony with the sacred masculine within all of ourselves.
Melissa Hortman spread her name.
Let it ring out.
She her husband and dog were shot and killed.
Medal of Honor. !
Did not think she
Received it.