I agree—Charlie didn’t deserve to die for his activism. Saying that doesn’t make me a fan, it just makes me a human being with basic empathy. But let’s stop pretending he was the next MLK. He wasn’t.
In fact, Charlie openly dismissed the very idea of empathy. “I don’t like the word empathy,” he once said, as if basic human compassion was some kind of weakness. But empathy isn’t weakness—it’s the foundation of justice and humanity. Our kids should be learning empathy, not bragging about their lack of it like he did. That’s not a flex—it’s a failure.
MLK’s message was rooted in empathy for all people, no matter their skin color. That is worlds apart from Charlie’s brand of activism. Elevating him to martyr status doesn’t just miss the mark—it insults the legacy of true leaders who sacrificed everything for justice.
At the end of the day, Charlie was a podcaster who built a platform by debating inexperienced college kids to make himself look sharper and his arguments stronger. That’s not courage—it’s picking low-hanging fruit. If he and his fans wanted real respect, he should’ve gone toe-to-toe with thinkers and leaders at his own level.
Yes, Charlie deserves empathy. He deserved to live, to have a voice, to pursue happiness. But let’s not confuse that with reverence. He will never be MLK, and asking us to treat him as such is asking far too much.
There are people being fired from jobs over expressing this kind of sentiment. That’s using a tragedy and someone’s death as a toxic partisan weapon and it’s just gross. Twisting people’s words to further this partisan agenda against leftists is just absolutely gross and starts to look like the whole reason this all happened at all, but that’s just me conspiracy theorizing. The right wing always seems to think that’s ok to do. You know, like the leaders of the party like T***p and Mace guessing what kind of person did this before the person’s identity was even known, all to use it as political mud to sling and not apologizing when he turns out to be one of them.
