all the POLLUTED People

When Charlie Kirk was killed, many people (including North Americans) of all races laughed and celebrated and threatened, attacked, and provoked other people (namely right-wingers and those associated with the political Right in North America).

"Ideology represents not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relations of those individuals to the real relations in which they live." -- Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays.

There is something deeply unsettling about the modern political imagination: people increasingly experience politics not as a conflict between imperfect human beings, but as a mythological struggle between embodiments of good and evil. Once this transformation occurs, empathy begins to appear almost immoral. Mourning becomes suspicious. Nuance sounds like betrayal. Even silence can be interpreted as complicity.

The death of a political figure -- whether admired, hated, or controversial -- often reveals more about the emotional structure of society than about the individual who died. In moments of collective reaction, ideological masks slip. The public sphere becomes a theater of instinct, resentment, tribal loyalty, symbolic revenge, and moral exhibitionism. Social media accelerates this process by rewarding emotional extremity and punishing hesitation. A cruel joke receives more attention than a careful reflection. Outrage circulates faster than grief.

This is not unique to the political Right or Left. It is part of a broader transformation in how ideology functions in late modern society. Althusser's observation becomes especially relevant here. Ideology is not merely a collection of opinions or policies; it is a structure through which people emotionally interpret reality itself. People do not simply "have beliefs." They inhabit symbolic worlds. They experience themselves as characters inside historical dramas. Their enemies become abstractions before they become human beings.

In this sense, many people were not reacting to Charlie Kirk as a mortal human individual with a family, fears, contradictions, memories, and biological fragility. They were reacting to what he represented within their ideological imagination. To some, he symbolized reaction, nationalism, conservatism, religious traditionalism, or the machinery of right-wing populism. For others, he represented resistance to cultural liberalism or progressivism, institutional distrust, and a defense of social continuity against rapid change. The actual person became secondary to the symbolic function assigned to him.

This symbolic substitution is one of the most dangerous features of ideological thinking. Once a person becomes a symbol, cruelty becomes easier. Symbols do not bleed. Symbols do not have mothers. Symbols do not cry in hospitals. A symbolic enemy can be mocked in death because the imagination has already stripped him of ordinary humanity.

Ironically, many people who consider themselves compassionate or progressive sometimes participate in this dehumanization while believing they are fighting dehumanization itself. Yet ideological hatred often mirrors the very structures it claims to oppose. The revolutionary (or progressive/leftist) and the reactionary (or conservative, right-winger) may speak different moral languages while sharing the same psychological mechanism: the reduction of complex persons into moral caricatures.

Modern politics increasingly resembles secularized theology. There are heretics, blasphemies, rituals of denunciation, public confessions, purity tests, and apocalyptic visions of salvation or collapse. The internet has intensified this quasi-religious atmosphere. Algorithms do not reward wisdom; they reward stimulation. Hatred is stimulating. Humiliation is stimulating. Fear is stimulating. Platforms built around engagement naturally cultivate emotional absolutism because emotionally balanced people click less frequently than enraged people.

This creates a peculiar contradiction. Western societies often speak the language of mental health, empathy, inclusion, and trauma-awareness, yet political culture frequently rewards public sadism toward ideological enemies. One may find people posting therapeutic language in one moment and celebrating another human being's suffering in the next. The contradiction is rarely felt because ideology fragments moral consciousness. Different moral standards apply to different tribes.

Part of the problem is that many people no longer believe their opponents are merely mistaken. They believe their opponents are existential threats. Once politics becomes existentialized, compromise begins to feel like surrender. The opposing side is no longer interpreted as a fellow citizen within a shared civilization, but as an invading force corrupting reality itself. This mentality generates an atmosphere of permanent emergency. And permanent emergencies justify emotional excess.

At the same time, it would be too simplistic to dismiss these reactions merely as "evil" or "irrational." Beneath ideological aggression there are often genuine fears, humiliations, economic anxieties, feelings of dispossession, social alienation, loneliness, cultural instability, and (historical) grievances. People cling to ideological identities partly because modern life has fragmented older forms of belonging. Political tribes now provide meaning, identity, emotional catharsis, and even friendship. For many individuals, politics has replaced religion, community, and sometimes family.

This is why ideological conflict feels so emotionally charged today. When someone attacks a political belief, many people experience it not as an intellectual disagreement but as an assault upon their identity and existential security. The reaction becomes visceral rather than reflective.

Yet there remains a profound moral question beneath all this noise: what happens to a society when death itself no longer interrupts hatred?

Historically, even bitter enemies sometimes recognized limits. Ancient tragedies, religious traditions, and older ethical systems often insisted upon the sacredness of mortality. Death imposed a temporary pause upon conflict. In many cultures, the dead were granted at least a minimal dignity simply because they had crossed the threshold separating the living from the unknown.

Modern ideological culture increasingly erodes that boundary. The dead are not always mourned; they are consumed as content. Their deaths become opportunities for performance, signaling, meme production, and tribal reinforcement. Grief itself becomes politicized.

This does not mean people must suddenly admire figures they strongly opposed. Moral disagreement does not disappear with death. One may criticize a politician's rhetoric, policies, influence, or movement while still recognizing their humanity. The deeper issue is whether modern societies are losing the psychological ability to perceive ideological opponents as fully human at all.

Althusser's insight helps explain why this matters. If ideology shapes our "imaginary relations" to reality, then political hatred often reveals less about objective reality than about the emotional-symbolic systems through which people interpret it. The enemy becomes a screen upon which societies project fears, frustrations, fantasies, and unresolved contradictions.

The danger is not only political polarization. The deeper danger is spiritual and anthropological. A civilization that cannot distinguish between opposition and dehumanization gradually loses its capacity for ethical seriousness. Once contempt becomes normalized, everyone eventually becomes vulnerable to symbolic reduction. Today's monster may become tomorrow's victim. The machinery of public hatred rarely remains confined to one faction forever.

The question, then, is not whether one agreed or disagreed with Charlie Kirk. The more enduring question is whether modern societies can preserve even a minimal sense of shared humanity amid ideological fragmentation. If they cannot, politics may increasingly cease to be a means of negotiating differences and instead become a ritualized form of moral annihilation -- one carried out not only through laws or institutions, but through language, spectacle, humiliation, and the gradual erosion of compassion itself.