America’s Liberal Hypocrisy: Mourning Some Deaths and Cheering Others

The revolting phenomenon in the United States of picking which deaths to cry over and which to celebrate is tearing us apart. The double standard of kneeling for months when a black man dies but cheering when a white conservative is killed shows something unquestionably rotten in our society. It’s beyond simple political games; it’s a moral failure that is amplified, in large part, by social media, and which is splitting us into tribes that can no longer agree on what’s right and what’s wrong.

I experienced the repercussions of this when I lived in Harlem as a single, white, immigrant woman, watching a neighborhood I loved turn hostile over race and ideology. I moved to Harlem in my fourth year in New York City, choosing a 5th-floor walk-up overlooking the projects. I did it purposefully. I wasn’t there to gentrify or make some cultural appropriation PR stunt. I wanted to understand the black-white identity politics that overtook every conversation in the USA. I spent hours with black folks from the low-income housing blocks, talking, listening, living alongside them. Over time, they learned to respect me, and I respected them in return. Walking home after dark, I’d get nods at the corner, a quiet sign I was okay in their eyes. We shared the local bodega, grabbing fresh bagels every morning. It wasn’t some Sex and the City fairy tale, but it was real: a community where people saw each other as people, not labels.

Then COVID hit. The NYC I knew ceased to exist. Businesses closed, streets emptied, and the city’s pulse was almost non-existent. I don’t think it’s ever rebounded since then, not really. Then George Floyd died, or was killed. I won’t use words that imply I’ve got the final truth; that’s not my point here. My personal opinion on it doesn’t matter. What matters is that a black man’s death flipped New York City (among other cities) upside down. Suddenly, the streets where I felt safe weren’t safe anymore, not for me as a white woman. You could feel the tension in the air. Barely any spot in NYC felt okay unless you were wearing a BLM T-shirt day after day, signaling you were on the ‘right’ side.

I’m not here to analyze BLM as a movement, but let’s be clear: it wasn’t some pure, authentic grassroots movement. It was years in the making, built underground with high-end strategists and PR personnel. Groups like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations poured millions into activist networks, and the movement had an endless supply of pre-made slogans, flyers, flags, T-shirts, and social media posts, functioning like a well-oiled machine. George Floyd’s death was the casus belli, the spark they needed, but the fire was already ignited.

It was aggressive. It used guerrilla marketing that demanded total compliance. If you didn’t fall in line, you were ousted. First, from the bodega or the local coffee shop, then from theaters, sports events, and eventually entire cities. If you were white, you were automatically the enemy, ‘the privileged,’ ‘the colonizer.’ It didn’t matter that you came from a post-communist, homogenous white country where millions of your own people were murdered by a regime. White meant enemy, full stop.

What hit me the hardest was the fact that the people who should have worked to restore peace—politicians, community leaders, and voices of reason—instead threw fuel on the fire. Ayanna Pressley said on MSNBC in 2020, “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” Maxine Waters told protesters, “We’ve got to stay on the street, get more active, get more confrontational.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez straight-up downplayed the looting we all watched on TV or experienced on our own skin, saying it wasn’t violence. The rhetoric they used to get airtime created a permissive climate where violent protests weren’t just excused but normalized. Property destruction, riots, and attacks on citizens became our new normal, and it’s been that way ever since.

Then, on September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a Christian, white, conservative thinker, was assassinated in cold blood in front of hundreds of students, his wife, and his children. This could have been a moment for all to rally for free speech, for the right to speak your mind without getting murdered for it. The practice of American pride: 1st Amendment rights. It could’ve been a chance to say, “No matter who you are, killing a person for his thoughts is wrong.” 

What happened instead was that many didn’t mourn, they celebrated. Social media got filled up with posts, liked and shared by thousands, with phrases like “Charlie had it coming.” Some went even further, saying his wife and kids should be killed too. Politicians, celebrities and influencers didn’t automatically condemn the murder; they doubled down on their poisonous messaging. AOC said in Congress, “His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans.” Ilhan Omar, infamous for her own hate-driven rhetoric, said, “I’m not going to sit here and be judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind. That should be in the dustbin of history.”

We need to stop and ask some hard questions: Why does the Democratic party that gloats about compassion, diversity, and radical acceptance fail to accept anyone who doesn’t share their exact beliefs? Why was George Floyd, a felon with multiple convictions, turned into a saint, his death sparking months of protests and a global movement, while a man like Charlie Kirk, whose only sin was standing up for his conservative and Christian values, gets vilified? Why were people shamed, ridiculed, and isolated for not joining BLM, but those who condemn Kirk’s killing are labeled as members of some “Nazi-inspired white Christian cult”? How did we get to a place where condemning a murderer isn’t a no-brainer?

This cultural double standard has crossed alarming lines. The property destruction, riots, and violence against citizens after George Floyd were framed as ‘understandable’ responses to ‘systemic racism.’ We were told to empathize, to see the bigger picture. But peaceful vigils, church memorials, and gatherings after Kirk’s death are denounced as ‘extreme,’ as if mourning a conservative is somehow dangerous.

This hypocrisy isn’t purely playing the race card; it’s about clashing ideologies, too. The same voices that demand that we ‘check our privilege’ are blind to complex realities like mine, that of an immigrant from a post-communist country, where my people faced actual oppression. They do not care about my story as long as my skin color is white; I am privileged. And they don’t care about the principles Charlie Kirk stood for either—free speech, faith, family—because those don’t fit their narrative. The Left preaches inclusion but practices exclusion, silencing anyone who dares to think differently.

What gives me hope is what I saw in Phoenix, Arizona, at a public memorial for Kirk. For two days, I felt I’d returned to a normal world. A world where basic conservative values like goodwill, respect, family, and faith still held strong. Where people knew right from wrong, and they weren’t afraid to say it. They weren’t celebrating death or division; in fact, they weren’t even asking for revenge. They were just mourning a man who stood for something and paid the ultimate price.

The contrast between these two sides—the one excusing riots as “justice” and the other mourning a murder as wrong—is screamingly loud. It’s a wake-up call. We can’t keep letting one side’s violence slide while condemning the other’s grief. It has reaffirmed me in my conviction that the only future that is worth building is one founded on conservative values, where we judge actions by truth, not by who’s loudest or what color their skin is.