MADRID – The death of Charles Kirk and the way it has been received in public and media spheres allows for a profound political analysis of how the right to mourning and commemoration is regulated in the contemporary world.

Kirk, despite being an extremist and highly polarizing figure—whose rhetoric and actions have been marked by direct attacks on immigrants, women, and minorities—has received significant public recognition upon his death, even in liberal media outlets that do not share his ideology. This phenomenon offers a starting point to understand how symbolic and political hierarchies are constructed around which bodies deserve to be mourned and which are systematically stripped of that right.

The essential issue lies in the fact that Kirk, by virtue of his belonging to certain social and political groups and the visibility he occupies within the Western political system, is granted legitimacy to be commemorated. His death is inserted into narratives that, while acknowledging his contradictions and extremism, defend his humanity, his right to memory, and public protest against his assassination. This public legitimization extends even to actors critical of his ideology, who understand that condemning his murder constitutes a defense of democratic values and freedom of expression.

However, this inclusive and legitimizing logic of mourning is not applied equitably to other populations. In particular, Iranian victims of Israeli attacks during the twelve-day war, as well as Palestinians killed in the genocide in Gaza, face systematically limited or denied media and political recognition. Although these lives have been subjected to systematic and massive violence, their right to public mourning and political commemoration is denied. In the case of Palestinians, media visibility consolidates only when the scale of violence and the number of victims make total silence impossible.

This forced presence, however, does not guarantee full humanization or equal recognition; rather, it reflects an exception imposed by the brutality of the events, as under normal circumstances these lives remain invisible and stripped of the status of subjects worthy of international mourning.

Meanwhile, Iranian victims of the recent war remain in a political and media limbo. Their names rarely appear in public narratives, and the grief accompanying their deaths is erased or displaced from the global collective memory. This exclusion renders their deaths “unmournable”: they do not occupy a symbolic space of shared humanity, are not the object of legitimate mourning policies, nor of universal demands for justice or reparation.

The hierarchy of mourning thus has a deep political significance. Recognition or exclusion from the right to be mourned functions as a device of power through which the humanity of certain bodies is regulated while others are dehumanized. Death ceases to be a mere biological fact and becomes a political problem that teaches how power relations and exclusion operate on a global scale.

Within this framework, Kirk can be assassinated but is not discarded as a human being worthy of mourning. His extremist and contradictory figure is symbolically reconstructed so that his death evokes collective emotions and public protest. In contrast, when Palestinians or Iranians die, the global system denies them that affective and political space, reaffirming their condition as marginal and subordinate bodies.

The media visibility of Palestinians killed in Gaza, especially during the recent genocide, has been a complex phenomenon. Only the unprecedented scale of violence and the continuously increasing number of victims have managed to open spaces for visibility. However, this media presence does not necessarily translate into a universal right to mourning and dignified memory. Exposure is often fragmented, politicized, and conditioned by global strategic interests. Frequently, narratives about these deaths are reduced to numbers or presented as isolated episodes of violence, stripping the bodies of their human dimension and the possibility of full empathy.

Kirk’s case exemplifies the political arbitrariness in the selection of recognized mourning: it does not matter that his ideas were rejected or condemned, his death receives visibility and public debate. The politics of death and grief, therefore, not only legitimizes individual loss but reveals the social and political position of the body that dies within a racialized and hierarchical global order.

The right to be mourned is consequently a power-mediated and regulated right that determines who deserves to be recorded in public memory and who is relegated to oblivion. Possible mourning is linked to discourses of citizenship, belonging, race, religion, and geopolitics. Legitimate mourning not only recognizes the loss but also legitimizes the life that was lost and reproduces political and symbolic hierarchies within the global human community.

Thus, Kirk’s death, in a context where his privileged and recognized positioning prevails, becomes a mobilizing public event. In contrast, the deaths of Iranian and Palestinian victims—only exceptionally visible during mass crimes or genocides—remain outside the framework of recognition and empathy, reaffirming their symbolic marginalization.
This observation is key to imagining a truly universal and just politics of death and mourning. Questioning these hierarchies implies claiming a right to mourning that does not discriminate based on identity or geopolitical location. It means defending the dignity of all bodies and the political respect for all losses, transforming collective memory into an inclusive and just space.

Finally, the political discussion about who can be mourned and who cannot must interrogate the roots of racial, political, and economic exclusion operating in global necropolitics. Memory and mourning, far from being mere sentimental exercises, constitute the spaces from which legitimate forms of life and death are contested, and, by extension, the possibilities of justice and shared humanity in a world marked by violence and inequality.

To expand the analysis, it is necessary to consider how these mourning hierarchies intersect with media narratives and the construction of what could be called the “symbolic value of life.” Public recognition of Kirk does not arise from his intrinsic humanity but from his placement within a system of values that prioritizes certain bodies over others. In other words, the right to mourning is articulated around global, racial, and political power networks that determine which losses matter and which can be ignored.

Moreover, comparison with other political deaths throughout history shows that this practice is not new. From the assassinations of political leaders in colonial contexts to attacks against minorities in modern conflicts, the pattern repeats: some bodies are turned into symbols of global moral outrage, while others remain invisible. This demonstrates that death and mourning are ultimately instruments of governance and social regulation that reflect structural inequalities and the allocation of symbolic value according to criteria of power and belonging.

The case of Palestinian and Iranian victims exposes the need to rethink the notion of universality in political and human rights. Shared humanity cannot be conditioned by cultural, political, or racial proximity, nor subordinated to Western media logic. To achieve a truly universal politics of mourning, it is essential to recognize and confront the structures that determine which bodies deserve to be mourned and which are systematically marginalized, questioning the inherent bias of public visibility and political memory.

In this sense, Kirk’s death and its media treatment offer a critical mirror to examine the arbitrariness of the mechanisms that legitimize mourning. The extension of his memory and the centrality of his death on the public agenda show how empathy and outrage are assigned selectively, reproducing hierarchies of political and human value. The politics of mourning, then, becomes an ontological field of dispute: it determines not only who deserves to be mourned but also which lives are recognized as fully human within the existing global order.