Michael Kirk, an American conservative activist, was murdered during a presentation at a university in Utah. He was murdered because he was conservative, right-wing, pro-Israel, anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), pro-"big business"... In other words, he lost his life because of his beliefs. Even if I don't agree with many of them, being tolerant means precisely that: accepting that ideological differences exist. As insensitive and ignorant as it may seem to me for someone to defend Israel and not stand with the Palestinian people, for example, I still can't prevent that specific position from being adopted by others. I can lament that the average human being is so irregular in moral and rational terms. I can try to convince those who believe this or that, but I can't stop anyone from having their own beliefs and expressing them publicly.
(Although I believe that certain types of beliefs, positions, or modes of expression should be inhibited, as I already discussed in this text "The Only Rationally Acceptable Limit to Opinion Censorship: Absolute Dehumanization")
I would only agree with Michael Kirk's political assassination if I were a person driven by unhealthy ideological fanaticism and believed that dissenters should be punished, imprisoned, or even eliminated. Although I also believe that, while tolerance of dissent is a rule of civility, there are more urgent contexts in which, at the very least, harsher measures may be necessary, or when the maximum limits of tolerance based on rational criteria—moral and intellectual—are being exceeded.
Aside from some "conspiracy theories" that have emerged to explain what happened in this case, the official police version is that Michael's killer was a young man in his early 20s (Tyler Robinson) who seemed to identify as "left-wing." A relatively similar case of politically or ideologically motivated murder occurred in the US last year, also committed by a young man identified as Luigi Mangioni, who took the life of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. But these primary similarities end there, because while Michael Kirk was an activist who made videos and lectures about his beliefs, ideas, and thoughts—some quite sensible, in line with common and necessary criticisms of certain "progressive" policies—Brian Thompson oversaw the systematic denial of payment for certain medical treatments to thousands of his health insurance company's members, while continuing to increase his profits by cutting these "costs." So, although his murder was a barbaric crime, it is more difficult to fully condemn it, precisely because of his cruelty in denying payment for the treatment of sick people out of pure greed. Both cases show how important the context is in determining the type and severity of the crime, because when justice is too slow to severely punish serious crimes that are committed, or even tolerant, especially if they are committed by "upper class" people and based on cruel legalities, typical of systems that are designed to favor "elite" interests, such as capitalism, certain acts of "taking justice into one's own hands" end up filling these gaps, doing the job that should be done by the "system."
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