Authoritarianism does not begin with prisons or torture chambers. It begins with suspicion — when loyalty is measured not by what you believe but by whom you are willing to expose. In East Germany, the Stasi turned neighbors into watchmen. In Chile under Pinochet, a whisper in a café could summon the police. In Iraq under Saddam, cousins betrayed cousins, sons betrayed fathers. And in Syria, where I grew up, even the walls were said to have ears. Everywhere, the pattern was the same: a society taught to police itself.

That is why what followed the killing of Charlie Kirk unsettled me almost as much as the killing itself. Within hours, social media filled with denunciations. A website called “Charlie’s Murderers” appeared overnight, cataloging associates of the accused as if complicity were contagious. People justified their callouts as civic duty. They tagged employers, immigration authorities, and universities not only to “expose” others, but also to prove their own loyalty to the nation.

It was not the first time. After October 7, for example, social media became a battlefield of callouts. Screenshots of old posts circulated, and employers were flooded with demands to fire staff for their statements on Palestine and Israel.