Political disagreements are resolved with words, not with weapons.

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Deputy Head, LIM – Equality, Integration, Diversity

The debate at Utah Valley University ended in tragedy. Charlie Kirk was shot and died from his injuries. This was not just a loss of life, but an attack on the heart of democracy: the right to speak freely without fear of violence.

Last year, Donald Trump was shot at during a campaign event in Pennsylvania. He survived, but both incidents show how dangerous polarization has become.

Principle more important than person

I don't necessarily share Kirk's views, but that doesn't matter. Democracy rests on one principle: Words should be met with words, never with bullets. If we start making exceptions depending on who is speaking, we lose everyone's rights.

Red Youth leader where she joked about Kirk with a sarcastic tone. She deleted the video and apologized, but the damage was already done. Red leader Marie Sneve Martinussen condemned the video, but I think the party should go further.

A youth leader who ridicules the death of a political opponent should not remain in office.

I can't help but think: What if the situation had been reversed? If Simen Velle from FpU or Ola Svenneby from Unge Høyre had made a similar video after a left-wing politician was killed, the reactions would have been deafening. And for good reason.

But here's the problem: Condemnation cannot depend on who does what to whom. Either it's wrong to joke about political murders, or it's not. Respect for human life should be something we can all agree on, regardless of which party we vote for.

The man who wanted to talk

Charlie Kirk was many things, and I didn't agree with him on everything. But there was one thing about him that I actually respected: He didn't go undercover. While so many of us stay safe within our own political bubbles, Kirk actively sought out those who disagreed with him.

It may sound banal, but think about it: How often do you actually meet people who have completely different political views than you? Kirk understood something we have forgotten – that democracy is not about everyone having the same opinion. It is about us being able to disagree in a proper way.

Why we hate them

There's a fancy word for what researchers call affective polarization. In Norwegian, it simply means that we've started to hate people because of which political party they're on, not necessarily what they actually believe.

This is where it gets dangerous. When the other side is no longer fellow human beings with different opinions, but enemies who must be stopped, then people start to think that maybe violence is okay after all. Social media makes this worse – the algorithms reward the most extreme voices, because they get the most engagement.

Words as weapons

We often say that words are just words, but that's not entirely true. The way we refer to political opponents affects how we think about them. If we call them dangerous, sick, or enemies of the people long enough, some people start to believe that maybe they deserve the worst.

It's not about being overly cautious or censoring yourself. It's about taking responsibility for the climate we help create.

Let me be clear: If it were a left-wing activist who was shot by a right-wing extremist, I would write exactly the same thing. I would condemn the killing, criticize those who joked about it, and argue that political violence is always wrong.

It's not a question of who is affected. It's a question of principles that must apply to everyone, all the time.

Those who remain silent

What worries me most is not just the violence we see. It's all the violence we don't see – the silent censorship that happens when people choose not to say what they think because they're afraid of what might happen.

Norwegian surveys show that more and more people are keeping their mouths shut about things they really think, even here in Norway, where we are after all quite well off. When voices disappear from the debate due to fear, then we have already lost something important.

What we can do

We are not the United States. Not yet, anyway. But we are not immune to what is happening over there either. We need to invest in what I call communities of dissent – places where people with different opinions can actually meet and talk to each other in a proper way. It could be anything from debate clubs at school, like they have in the United States, to better moderated comment sections online. The key is that we create spaces where dissent is not only allowed, but desired.

We're never going to agree on everything. That's okay – that's how democracy works. But there's one thing we must agree on: That political disagreements are resolved with words, not with weapons.

The day we lose that understanding, we not only lose the debate. We lose the entire basis for living together as a free society.