‘In no instance did Charlie Kirk respond by calling the person who insulted him a derogatory name,’ professor says
A Biola University theologian recently put to the test the Left’s claims that Charlie Kirk espoused “divisive” and “disparaging” rhetoric, and found them to be without merit.
In an interview with John Stonestreet at the evangelical Christian site Breakpoint, Professor Thaddeus Williams described what he found when he decided to test claims raised by Democrat lawmakers.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted against a resolution to honor the late Turning Point USA founder who was murdered earlier this month at a campus speaking event in Utah. The New York congresswoman described Kirk’s work as a “legacy of bigotry.”
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson also voted against the resolution, calling Kirk’s work “divisive, disparaging, and rooted in grievance.”
Williams told Breakpoint:
Using multiple accounts, multiple IP addresses, and multiple devices to avoid politically charged algorithms, I crowdsourced the worst quotes people could find of Charlie from my friends who staunchly disagreed with him. In the end, I analyzed 100 videos.
In 44 of those 100 videos, there was no name-calling from either side. That means in 56 videos insults were hurled. Here’s where things get interesting. In those 56 videos, Charlie is called names a total of 59 times by those who disagreed with him. He was called stupid, insane, honorless, classless, weird, freak, loser, pathetic, spineless, cowardly, sick, piece of trash, Nazi, Hitler, and dozens of other unsavory terms that I won’t bother to repeat here. In no instance did Charlie Kirk respond by calling the person who insulted him a derogatory name.
Williams found 11 cases when Kirk resorted to “name calling,” including one when he described a young man who praised Adolf Hitler as a “low I.Q. individual.”
Most significant, however, to Williams were three of those 11 videos in which Kirk called himself names: “a sinner,” “selfish,” and “broken.”
“So, in the end, Charlie Kirk’s most vivid case of name calling was aimed at none other than Charlie Kirk,” Williams told Breakpoint. “Was he perfect? No. And he knew it. So, he looked to the only One who lived a perfect life—Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice. May broken, selfish, sinners like us do the same.”
Read the full column at Breakpoint. Watch Williams’ full analysis on his “Shed and Beam” podcast.
MORE: How the campus ‘safe space’ trend led to Charlie Kirk’s murder: analysis
