Truth and Assassinations

Stacey Patton says she was ill-treated by her black Pentecostal stepmother when she was a child, so she ran away from home. She blames those beatings on the white men who enslaved her ancestors 160 or more years ago.

Now Patton teaches Multimedia Journalism at Morgan State University and has written a book against corporal punishment. A journalist herself, she publicly bemoans the failed assassination attempt on President Donald Trump — not the attempt, but its failure – and recently celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Villainous as such essays may be, I won’t wring my hands over them. I join most Americans in mourning Kirk and feeling for his wife and young children. But the radical world is a crowded and no doubt competitive space. If its members feel the need to morally disgrace themselves to grab attention, I am not inclined to reward them with the shock or horror for which they evidently yearn.

What affronts me more about Patton is her contempt for truth. As a fellow teacher, I think kids should be taught to care about facts.

Appropriate Criticism, Inappropriate Reaction

A friend who is a left-leaning Christian philosopher shared her thoughts in a post from Occupy Democrats:

“BREAKING: Journalist and college professor Stacey Patton goes viral by penning a stunningly powerful statement about how she was on Charlie Kirk’s ‘digital hit list’ and recounting the horror that he inflicted on her.”

Patton explained:

His so-called “Professor Watchlist,” run under the umbrella of Turning Point USA, is nothing more than a digital hit list for academics who dare to speak truth to power. I landed there in 2024 after writing commentary that inflamed the MAGA faithful. And once my name went up, the harassment machine roared to life.

Patton neglects to mention that the “commentary that inflamed the MAGA faithful” consisted of an article mourning that Donald Trump had not been killed by his would-be assassin. As a journalism professor, she should know that not offering readers like my gullible philosopher friend this basic fact deceives them and those with whom they share her tirade. It is a gross sin against journalistic integrity.

Nor did Patton simply “speak truth to power.” This is a dim-witted shibboleth, anyway: Everyone has power. Journalists have power over readers, teachers over students, parents over children, bullies over nerds, street musicians over the pedestrians they please or afflict, and assassins over their targets and those standing nearby, physically or emotionally.

Kirk had power, yes, but so did the academics he attacked. In a free society, power is balanced in part by freedom of expression, including the freedom to criticize those you disagree with. And criticism is especially appropriate among academics.

Misuse of Power

Patton used her power to implicitly justify an attempted murder. Kirk’s offense — the reason she rejoiced when he died — was that after Thomas Crooks shot Trump in the ear, Kirk quoted her accurately:

For a moment on Saturday, we (black people) held our collective breath. We were suspended in uncertainty, caught between desperation and hope, asking: What if?

Is it immoral for us to be tantalized by the siren songs of alternate histories where the world isn’t scarred by hatred, totalitarianism, genocide, lynching, segregation and world war?

I hardly belong to what Patton called the “MAGA faithful.” My first article here pled with readers to nominate some Republican for the presidency other than Trump. (I later expanded that article into a short book.) But Patton reveals her lack of concern for truth not only by hiding what she said, but by treating Kirk as the villain for allowing people to read her actual words. Notice the serial untruths she crammed into that last sentence like clowns into a tiny car.: America is “totalitarian?” (Then how do we read her articles?) Trump started world wars? Segregated races? Lynched people? Committed acts of genocide?

Patton must know this is all threadbare slander. But as she blamed nineteenth-century white men for her stepmother’s alleged violence, so she blames one modern white man for sins committed around the world by other people of many races. The “bad guys” coalesce in her head into a rogues’ gallery of SPECTRE villains. So shoot at (verbally or with bullets) any of them, and you become a hero by attacking villainy collectively.

Block Lies with Truth

Lies are a codependent vice to the violence that people like Patton (of any ideology) justify. The truth blocks their bullets, and therefore must be dismantled.

Kirk “spreads too much hate,” said Tyler Robinson, his killer. As a founding member of “Assassins Against Hate, Utah chapter,” Robinson admitted in text messages to his transgender boyfriend that he shot Kirk. Without introspection or irony, Patton justifies that murder on the same grounds. The world is “scarred by hatred,” so shooting KAOS villains is justified.

After Kirk brought her editorial on the Trump assassination attempt to light last year, Patton apparently became the target of abusive language and behavior herself:

For weeks my inbox and voicemail were deluged. Mostly white men spat venom through the phone … They threatened all manner of violence.

If anyone reading this article is tempted to contact Patton in anger, please put the phone down. Pray for her instead. And if you can’t set your phone down, ask others to pray for you.

Patton adds that other professors on Kirk’s list also experienced abuse. So Kirk’s shooting is an instance of chickens coming home to roost:

That is the culture of violence Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence. He curated it, monetized it, and sicced it on anyone who dared to puncture his movement’s lies.

The Genesis of Evil and Offense

As a journalist who claims to dislike lies, Patton should back up these claims with evidence. How did Kirk “normalize violence”” Give us his exact words — in context, please.

And now the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle.

Speaking of coming full circle, recall how Patton blamed slaveowners long ago for how her stepmother treated her. If blame can be shifted over centuries, to what ancestral abuse might slaveowners point to explain their actions? How far back must we go to find the ultimate source of human evil? To Adam and Eve?

At some point, someone needs to stand up and say, “The buck stops here.” “Father, forgive them.” “Return good for evil.” “Pray for those who persecute you.”

I do fear for Patton’s students. I have seen how schools ingrain a sense of victimhood, grievance, and guilt in young minds. When one liberal white man chastised Patton for her reckless words on Substack, she used almost equally wild words against him in return. He melted immediately, abjectly apologized, and thanked her for his own verbal flogging.

But aside from the anger she models, which her hard upbringing may partly explain, the way Patton hides or distorts the truth to make a point concerns me even more. A journalism professor should model love for truth, above all. And whatever personal or cultural difficulties we may face, if William Douglass or Booker T. Washington, both born into slavery, could overcome awful firsthand experiences to become educated, balanced, and just men, or Christians who endured China’s Cultural Revolution can do the same, what excuses are there for such intemperate and dishonest outbursts eight generations later?

Telling the truth to ourselves – even when half-truths or lies stir up our followers better – is the first step to becoming just and useful citizens, and to making peace.

David Marshall, an educator and writer, holds a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.