By: Sam Gruetter
Editor-in-Chief
In recent years, many politically motivated shootings have occurred, including the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, the murder of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, and the most recent killing of Charlie Kirk. While all of these figures are extremely polarizing and controversial in the realm of politics, social media users have taken it too far by glorifying the shooters and their actions through honorary “edits” and vain approaches to real, human events. Society needs to recognize that shooters are ultimately murderers and should not glorify them or their actions, despite the controversial nature of their victims or seemingly heroic intentions.
One of the most popular types of short-form content on TikTok is the edit. Essentially, a fifteen-second to a minute video of a person with special effects and music added, with the intention of glorifying the subject of the edit, is an inherently positive form of media. Therefore, it was immensely problematic when people began making edits of Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, specifically, commenting on his appearance while neglecting the fact that he murdered an innocent individual. People, especially social media users, need to distinguish between the assailant’s appearance and intentions and their actions.
Another troublesome example of this behavior is the content users produced surrounding the assassination attempt of Trump. Many users stitched a clip of his competitor, Kamala Harris, saying “I have a Glock” with the video of Trump being shot. These videos lend problematic implications to Harris, a political figure who has built her platform on peaceful resistance and politeness towards controversial figures. These videos are also incredibly contradictory to many liberal platforms and doctrines, namely their approach to gun violence and their viewpoint on it as problematic. Liberals cannot selectively choose when to adhere to their political beliefs; it must be a steadfast constant that they apply to every person and situation, rather than when they agree with it. The strength of political beliefs is indicated not by how individuals exercise them when it is easy, but when it is difficult.
This problem has also extended to the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk, with many people on social media making jokes about the irony and nature of his death. It is even possible, social media discourse motivated the killer; engravings on the bullets read “bella ciao,” a popular phrase in several video games. Even though Kirk had several hateful ideologies, killing somebody for their beliefs signals a trend towards an increasingly Orwellian society, a worrisome transition, and an even more concerning litmus test of the political well-being of our country.