Charlie Kirk's death changed something in me, and I suspect in many of you also. Until yesterday I was aware of his views, but only as aware as one is of the general opinion of any public figure. I considered myself aligned with him on many issues, but not an ardent supporter by any means. My reaction, in the immediate aftermath, surprised me. I was moved to tears and, after 20 years abstention, to prayer. I could believe it was because I felt it the most appropriate response to the death of man so clearly guided by his faith. Or because of the deep sadness I felt for his widow, and for his 2 young children that will grow up without their father. But I think more than respect or empathy, it was because their father died for saying the things a great many people, myself included, believed but lacked the courage to say. The prayer then was for his family, but also for all of us; that we may have the courage to stand up for what we believe to be right and true. That rather than letting his death silence debate, we take it upon ourselves to seek out debate in the manner he did. Rationally and respectfully but with unflinching courage.
While we don't know who committed that heinous act, or what their motivation was, we do know who celebrated. Who was willing to repress their humanity, respect and decency, to revel in the death of a 31 year old husband and father. Those people walk among us, and I truly fear they are beyond saving. For everyone else, how we respond in the wake of his murder will determine whether our Western values of freedom, individualism, and rational inquiry further degrade, or whether they find renewed strength. That response must start with the courage to speak our own mind.
I remember clearly the first time I felt uncomfortable with my own words. I was sitting in a small circle on the slopes of Memorial Glade at UC Berkeley. It was August 2017 and I excited for the first day of a year studying abroad. Our orientation leader explained that we should introduce ourselves: name, major, pronouns. I didn't know what "pronouns" meant in this context. A slight panic set in, everyone was nodding along, I guessed I was the idiot. Thankfully the student next to me closed his introduction with "he/him", he'd clearly been through this ritual before. I dutifully followed, feeling faintly ridiculous that myself, a 21 year old man, with facial hair and an Adam's apple would need to state something so obvious and so inconsequential. What about where we're from, our hobbies, what we're excited about learning in this new place among these new people? All that was clearly was less important than firmly establishing what we believed was in our underpants.
The irony, that the first time my speech felt coerced occurred at the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, was not lost on me. But I shook it off, I was being silly. Nobody forced me to say something I disagreed with. I possibly could have neglected to say it, had I really objected. I was simply instructed to tell a truth, albeit a truth that was obviously redundant. What I didn't appreciate back then was that this tiny droplet of compelled speech, at an historically liberal university, would steadily turn into a torrent that would affect every part of our lives. What naturally followed have been character and physical assassinations, corporate struggle sessions, and coverups of atrocities when the facts inconveniently violated the party narrative. With hindsight, the path from that moment to the perilous position we find ourselves in today, is obvious. But I lacked the courage to speak then. When I returned to the London School of Economics the following year, our classes now opened with the same ritual. The virus had spread. No less comfortable, I remained compliant, still lacking courage.
Upon graduating I started work as a software engineer and later as a founder. Code is appealing because there is a clear distinction between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. Your program either runs or it doesn't. It produces the right result or the wrong result. There are no grey areas, as there are with natural language. I also deeply believe that technology is the root of all human progress. That anyone can make something of value from hard work, talent, and ingenuity. And indeed that is the ultimate calling for us as human beings - to be useful to our fellow man. I thought that this domain would at least be rational, that it would value truth and principled thinking. I found instead that the industry was, by and large, the same as everywhere else. We spent months renaming the default git branch from master to main, breaking workflows company-wide in the process. Very few really cared about the old name, or what it supposedly signified, but the rest of us lacked the courage to speak up. Another droplet of compelled speech and a growing sense of complicity I now felt in the charade. When an executive made the obvious all-hands slip up of saying "all lives matter", I reflexively flinched; I'd learned to anticipate the accepted bounds of speech and I knew what was coming. Her apology tour started before day's end.
Perhaps outside of technology, some level of enforced "rightthink" is tolerable. Within the industry it's unacceptable; partially because what we choose to build affects the future more than almost anything else, but especially because, to build a future that's good, it's necessary to seek maximal truth. We have an obligation to argue with accepted belief, to take risk under our own names, to get things wrong, to fail publicly, and to be judged by our peers in good faith. This is why classic liberalism and the technology industry were inseparable bedfellows until recently. To be "conservative" was to move slowly and respect tradition, to be a "liberal" was to move fast and break things (especially tradition). But there is no classic liberalism anymore. There are just those that see reality clearly, however uncomfortable that makes people, and those that believe in collective delusions. But a person cannot live in a state of cognitive dissonance for too long. They have eyes to see, and the reality they're living does not match what they've been told. Speech is not violence, shooting someone in the neck for speaking is. Releasing a convicted criminal fourteen times is not empathy, it's absolute insanity. Some cultures are superior to others - those that educate women rather than lock them under house arrest, those that accept homosexuals rather than throwing them off buildings, for example. So I applaud the technologists that have spoken up, much earlier than now. Those like Mike Solana, Joe Lonsdale, Shaun Maguire, Eoghan McCabe, and David Sacks, . They embody the courage necessary to actually change the course we're on.
Conversely, I feel a great sense of shame for all those times I didn't speak up. I didn't act because I feared for my reputation, my career, and at times my safety. When I learned that thousands of young girls had been systemically groomed, for decades, by the same demographic in my native country, I wanted to act. I wanted to do something, say something. But I didn't, because I was a coward. Because I selfishly thought more about what speaking out would mean for me, than what it might do for others. The dark truth is that the only reason such an atrocity could continue unabated is because those responsible for the safety of those girls had the exact same thoughts. When a man sat next to me on the London tube with a ripped up poster of an abducted Israeli baby, I wanted to act but I didn't. I was a coward then too. I thought more about what side my fellow passengers might take, and what that might mean for my own safety, than I thought about the dignity of that child. Charlie Kirk would have spoken up in those situations. He had courage, he was selfless, and he stood for his principles regardless of the personal sacrifice.
These incidents fill me with rage as I think about them. They illustrate how courage withers from the shock collar of illiberalism disguised as tolerance. Even when the collar is removed, when there is no one else around, the person that remains is a neutered remnant of what existed before. A person that polices their own thoughts is not a real person at all. I'm done being that person, and I sincerely hope that every decent person, regardless of political persuasion, is too. If we can drop the facades we feel we must uphold, we can finally speak plainly with one another; to debate issues rationally, and make progress in solving them. This must be possible, because the alternative to debate is not peace, it's violence.
Perhaps a proportion of those reading this might want for violence in some way. They might feel some payback, for 2 decades or more of cancellation, fear-mongering and oppression, is warranted. I can assure you, it is not. I was born 4 years before the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. There isn't a single family I know that wasn't affected by a conflict that turned countryman on countryman. It's been almost 27 years since that conflict ended, a conflict which itself raged for about 30 years, and which claimed 3,500 lives. The scars that remain are evident to this day - in how people behave, in how they think, and in the environment in which they live. Violence is never the answer, it's the last resort of cowardly fools when they realise their ideas hold no water and have lost all influence.
The only solution to speech you don't like is more speech. That is what Charlie Kirk did when he visited those college campuses. That is what his final act on this earth was. That is what we all must now do - debate, with vigour, with respect, and most of all, with courage.
May he rest in peace.