IF THE PARTIES WERE REVERSED, THESE MURDERED TEENAGERS WOULD BE POLITICAL MARTYRS NOW

The New York Times reports on the murder of two teenage girls in New Jersey, and the arrest of a teenage boy who was stalking one of them:

The two 17-year-old girls were riding their e-bikes down a quiet street in a small town on Monday, in the slanting light of a summery fall evening. The girls, Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas, close friends, were with Maria’s family, and they were going to get ice cream.

From down the block, a car came shooting up the street, said Maria’s uncle Emmanuel Niotis. “Next thing you know, there were bodies flying up in the air,” he said.

One twisted bicycle was embedded in the crushed front end of the Jeep S.U.V. The driver fled briefly, prosecutors said. Both girls were pronounced dead at the hospital.

And as word of the driver’s name seeped out, for the girls’ families and friends in Cranford, N.J., heartbreak turned to fury.

The driver, they said, was Vincent Battiloro, also 17, who had been fixated on Maria for months, at least. Maria’s mother told a friend she had called the police multiple times because he had parked outside the family’s house and would not leave. Two friends of Maria’s said he had harassed her. Online, where Vincent has tens of thousands of followers as a video game streamer, he had taunted Maria and her mother a week before the crash, ordering pizzas to their house as a prank.

The Times reports that the young man continued streaming even after his arrest, and even offered his "sincerest condolences to those girls, lost in that tragic accident." Townspeople wondered why he was free after his arrest. (His father and uncle are cops.)

But here's some information that's not in the Times story:

The alleged murderer had also been stalking one of the girls even before Kirk's assassination, but he said that he sent the pizza as vengeance over a Charlie Kirk comment.

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 9:49 PM

A report from a New Jersey radio station confirms this:

The video where he addresses the stalking and Charlie Kirk was just one of several that remain online....

In a clip from the same video, which has been posted on X, he accuses Maria of making fun of conservative speaker Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated by a gunman on Sept. 10.

"Hey, whenever Maria sees the pizza guy come, better think of Charlie Kirk for making fun of his f**king death. Stupid ass clown. Just remember that," the teen says. "She made fun of Charlie Kirk's death on TikTok on a repost. Maybe her mother should monitor her social media activity."

ok well here it is anyway pic.twitter.com/P7qPHD1USK

— Entomon (@JadedApyr) October 3, 2025

This is really a story about stalking and other toxic male activities. The suspect has been accused of circulating nudes of teenage girls without their consent, probably fakes. The Times quotes a text exchange in which he admits to creating fake nudes.

“I did it to one girl,” Vincent wrote. “I’ll do it to another.” He added: “Keep running your mouth and I’ll create your girls nudes” right now.

But imagine if a teenage boy who didn't like Charlie Kirk had killed a teenage girl who did. It wouldn't matter what other reasons there might have been for the murder -- this would have become another example of "the violent left" killing people on the right. The victim's name would be nationally famous. Every other person in America who'd criticized Kirk would be accused of being an accessory to murder. State after state would consider some form or another of "Maria's Law," which would allow prosecutors to treat critics of right-wingers as murder conspirators.

I'm not saying that Democrats should behave like Republicans and reduce every murderer with a political point of view to nothing more than that point of view. The motives of many high-profile murderers aren't simple. Some have forms of mental illness that leave them susceptible to violence. Others are motivated by a mix of ideas, frequently including misogyny. (The 101.5 story notes that the New Jersey murder suspect was known to make reference to Andrew Tate.) And some have a set of political ideas that range across the left-right spectrum, often in ways that don't make much sense.

But at a time when Republicans are arguing that politcal violence is overwhelmingly (or even exclusively) left-wing and that all leftists and liberals are complicit, Democrats should be shouting about the murders that prove Republicans wrong, like the Trump supporter who attacked a Mormon church in Michigan, or the PTSD-afflicted veteran who shot up a restaurant in North Carolina, and who believed that "LGBTQ White Supremacists" wanted to kill him because he was heterosexual and survived an attack in Iraq that he blamed on them. Democrats need to say that it's wrong to blame one side for violence when violent people's ideas can be left, right, center, apolitical, or utterly incoherent.

And they should ask whether Republican elected officials condone the behavior of this young man -- including the harassment directed at Maria Niotis for daring to criticize Charlie Kirk. It certainly seems as if Republicans think it should be legal to stalk a teenage girl if she has what an opinion about Charlie Kirk that Republicans consider incorrect. So what do you say, Republicans?