The brutal killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, has sparked widespread debate on violent crime in American cities and how the response of the mainstream media to acts of violence is dependent on the racial background of both the victim and perpetrator.
Graphic footage of the horrific attack shows Zarutska in a state of shock after being stabbed – eventually collapsing and left to lie in a pool of her own blood by apathetic passengers nearby.
DeCarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old African-American career criminal with a violent past, was initially arrested and charged with first-degree murder over the unprovoked attack on Zarutska, who was sitting in front of him on the train.
He has now been charged with a federal crime by the Department of Justice (causing death on a mass transportation system) – making him eligible for capital punishment. US Attorney General Pam Bondi has said that the Justice Department would seek the maximum penalty.
It is remarkable that many of us have only become aware of the fatal stabbing of Zarutska in the last few days or so – even though it took place all the way back on August 22nd. One of the leading voices who drew attention to the killing of Zarutska was prominent conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who declared that “America will never be the same” after her murder.
Yesterday, Kirk was shot dead - taking a bullet to the neck during a university campus event in the city of Orem in Utah. The assassination of Kirk, one of the leading figures of the ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement backing President Donald Trump, has sent shockwaves throughout the US and beyond – a young husband and father killed at the age of 31.
Two despicable acts of violence reveal the demented reality of identity politics - Rakib Ehsan
|Reuters/Charlotte Area Transit System
The murders of Zarutska and Kirk are particularly notable for the exceptionally graphic footage, which was so readily accessible on social media platforms such as X – with fears of widespread desensitisation to such horrific acts of violence.
What they also expose is how significant elements of the liberal-Left have all but abandoned basic levels of civility and decency.
There is little doubt that there has been a mainstream progressive liberal reluctance to highlight the killing of Zarutska - a young female refugee from war-torn Ukraine who searched for safety in the US, a country she reportedly adored, only to be brutally killed on American public transport (with the man charged having a record of fourteen prior arrests and well-documented mental health issues).
This act of horror, after all, is an inconvenience to the white oppressor-oppressed black paradigm at the heart of BLM-style identity politics. CNN’s Van Jones accused the American Right – including the likes of Kirk - of ‘pure race mongering’ over the incident.
Meanwhile, the reaction in some quarters to the murder of Kirk has been nothing but ghoulish. Take, for example, Matthew Dowd, the now-fired MSNBC analyst who appeared to blame Kirk for his own assassination.
In recent times, a flurry of American commentators have intervened in matters of social cohesion and democratic freedom in Britain – even suggesting that England is on the brink of a full-blown civil war.
While I am under no illusions over the challenges we face on these islands, the murders of Zarutska and Kirk across the pond and the intense polarisation on show in their aftermath suggest that such American big-brain analysts should focus on affairs much closer to home.
While it is extremely difficult to do so due to the established political and cultural bonds, Britain would do well to insulate itself from the toxic political culture of the US – a relatively youthful experiment which is bursting at the seams.