Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk have exposed the media’s depravity

“Clarifying.” It seems almost obscene to say that the murders of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk were “clarifying.” But the huge and still-exploding response to those savage events shows that the mournful synergy of murder can be an occasion for illumination as well as for grief.

To say that something is “illuminating” is not necessarily to say that it is pleasant.

The media yearned for a pro-Trump, heterosexual, white male killer of Kirk. One out of three was a disappointment

A picture is worth a thousand words. Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old refugee from Ukraine, was murdered on a commuter train in North Carolina on August 22. The attack went mostly unreported until early September. Then video footage of the incident emerged. That changed everything. The suspect in Zarutska’s case is Decarlos Brown Jr., a deranged black man who had been arrested at least 14 times. He was free on cashless bail the night he stood up behind Zarutska and stabbed her to death with a pocketknife. “I got that white girl,” he appears to mutter as he moves through the train, his knife dripping blood. But that gruesome clip was superseded by the still of Zarutska looking up in terror at Brown from her seat.

We were not supposed to notice – or at least, we were not supposed to comment on – the fact that Zarutska’s suspected murderer was black. That was irrelevant, we were told. To suggest otherwise is racist. Is it?

A picture is worth a thousand words. A few days after images of Zarutska’s murder began circulating, the popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck and killed at a campus rally in Utah. He was 31. The image of Kirk knocked sideways, clutching his neck in pain made the world hold its breath. It took a little more than a day for the police to discover the identity of Kirk’s suspected assassin. He was a 22-year-white man called Tyler Robinson. The fact that he was white was not only relevant, we were told, it was cause for celebration. To suggest otherwise is racist. Is it?

The initial jubilation over Robinson’s race was at first compounded by the fact that his parents were Republican Trump supporters. The jubilation was short-lived. Despite his conventional upbringing, Robinson turns out to have been marinated in leftist ideology. He said Kirk was “spreading hate.” So, it appears, he decided to shoot him.

Robinson also appears to have had a complicated private life involving a transgender “roommate.” This was not what the media wanted to hear. They yearned for a pro-Trump, heterosexual, white male killer. One out of three was a serious disappointment.

Those pictures of Zarutska and Kirk represent a very large problem for the left. On the one hand, they are rallying points for a previously cowed current of normality. On the other, they are a revelation of a hitherto unnameable depravity. 

The commentator Glenn Reynolds recently wrote an essay on his Substack about “preference cascades,” those “tipping points” in which people suddenly rise up and give voice to opinions they had previously suppressed. As Reynolds notes, usually preference cascades move in one direction.  But the murder of Charlie Kirk – to which I would add the murder of Iryna Zarutska –revealed two opposing cascades.

The accepted media narrative was that Charlie Kirk was a “far-right” fringe figure.  But his murder allowed millions of people to realize that Kirk’s ideas were also their ideas. They were mainstream ideas. Not only were those millions outraged by Kirk’s assassination, they were also free to celebrate his teaching. At the same time, many on the left greeted the murder of Kirk with a snarling ecstasy of hatred. They were glad Kirk was murdered. Some hoped his wife and children would be, too. Others provided lists of people who should share his fate. As Reynolds observed, “These aren’t just a few wackos. These are large numbers of people in professional and managerial jobs… who genuinely believe that holding ideas they don’t like should carry the death penalty.”

Which brings me to Plato. In Book II of The Republic, Socrates says that one thing no one can abide is “deception in the soul about realities.” Ordinary lies are one thing.  People tell them all the time. But “everyone fears” the “true lie” that would disconnect one from the way things really are.

The commentator Scott Adams makes a related point when he talks about the people who are being fired or ostracized for saying hateful things about Kirk. The noteworthy thing, Adams says, is that they are surprised at the critical reaction to their vituperation against Kirk. They thought that the world at large would agree with them that Kirk, Donald Trump and their kith were fascists, Nazis, etc. They are shocked that this is not the case. They have been living in a media-nourished bubble in which Trump is the reincarnation of Hitler. They are, says Adams, “hypnotized Hitlerians.” They believe – because they have been assiduously instructed to believe – that America has been taken over by a Hitler-like figure. So in one sense, Adams notes, they are victims. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of Hitler? But the Hitlerians have been deceived in their souls about the truth. This does not mean they are not responsible for fomenting hate, only that their behavior can be explained.

The silver lining is that Kirk’s assassination, like Zarutska’s murder, has punctured that bubble. The disabused lineaments of common sense are everywhere taking shape again. Perhaps it is another instance of the somber economy, the paradoxical gift, of sacrifice.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.