You Can Speak Ill of the Dead

The last week has brought a whirlwind of anger, fear, and grief for so many people. And I want to first offer a disclaimer that there is so much I could write in response to *all of the things*…much more than what a blog post can include.

In fact, it’s the overwhelm that gave me pause before putting words down. Where do I even begin to talk about all of this, as both a person experiencing it and a therapist helping other people experience it?

It’s my role as a therapist that got me to start typing…because what I’ve found centrally important right now is to make sure that you know that my therapy couch is open to you and all of your feelings, and that as much as we’ve been told recently that old trope “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” frankly that is an absolute load of bullshit.

“Don’t speak ill of the dead” silences survivors.

It privileges people who have harmed, abused, violated.

It says that somehow the physical death of someone should disappear the violence that they perpetrated when they were alive.

And the case of Charlie Kirk has highlighted an additional component of how we respond when someone dies, which is that white supremacy says that only certain people are worthy of being sanctified after death.

If you were raised in evangelical christianity like I was, then you might have been feeling particularly activated by all of this.

Seeing the “martyr” paradigm play out in such an aggressive way might feel incredibly familiar to you, like it does to me.

As someone who used to be exist within that world and who now doesn’t, I know what this ideology is.

The framework of constant persecution, of the way in which literal children are taught from birth that there is glory in being harmed or killed because of your faith…I see it in the reactions we’ve witnessed.

I see how it’s galvanizing an already dangerous ideology, how it’s reinforcing the idea of “us” versus “them” in a way that asserts that white christians are the most victimized, when in reality they continue to hold the power and to oppress and endanger.

And the “don’t speak ill of the dead” mentality is reinforced in this, too. Ignore all the violent rhetoric because someone was killed. Look at all the “good” that he did, how dare you call out the vitriol he spewed, the ideology that put others in danger, he was sharing his faith.

I’m not sure which feels more absurd—that we’re supposed to completely overlook the violence he espoused, or the fact that many of his supporters don’t view what he did as hateful or dangerous at all.

But as a therapist, I know that often, when someone who has abused us dies, our relationship with that abuse tends to feel more complicated, at least for awhile.

It permanently removes the chance for accountability or repair from that person. It can activate a sense of guilt for feeling rage toward someone who’s dead (for the very cultural narrative reasons we’re seeing play out in real time). It’s often a time in which someone is being eulogized, either literally or metaphorically, watering down the actual person and usually ignoring the pain they caused.

It can make the harm that was caused feel more pronounced. It can feel isolating, confusing, and hopeless.

And as a therapist, I know that this is definitely not the time to tell someone to stop speaking ill of the dead.

That is so, so dangerous. And it’s what’s happening on a national stage, right now, perpetuated by the government, in social media, in the news.

We’re being told to forget. That literally the simple of act of quoting Charlie Kirk is hate speech…simultaneously claiming that what he said and did wasn’t hateful.

The cognitive dissonance is real, and it’s painful.

And it’s not just harmful to some people…it’s damaging to us all.

White supremacy privileges white folks, but it hurts everyone.

Racism is infinitely more dangerous to Black people and People of Color, but it keeps all of us from thriving.

Christian nationalism might feel beneficial to some, but the ideology is threatening to us all.

And calling out someone’s violence is not only allowed, it is imperative.

And it doesn’t matter if that person is alive or not.

We may no longer be able to call in Charlie Kirk, to hope that he might be able to understand how dangerous his rhetoric is, how harmful and unloving his ideology is.

But his followers are still alive. And this is not a time for platitudes or ignoring violence.

This is a time to acknowledge the deep harm Charlie Kirk caused, and that his followers are still causing.

Charlie Kirk may be dead, but his ideology is alive and well, and I will continue to speak to the danger of it, no matter what.