
<p>The past week saw a man named Kenneth Darlington become famous, or infamous, worldwide after he reportedly shot dead two climate protesters in Panama. And not all reactions to the shooting have been sympathetic to those killed.</p>



<p>The incident, widely reported in all major news sources, was caught on video and media ran clips of the shooting with a Graphic Content warning. Kenneth Darlington, a 77-year-old attorney with dual citizenship of United States and Panama, was seen walking up to the climate protesters who were blocking the Pan-American Highway on Tuesday. He argued with the group of activists before losing his cool to draw out his gun and shoot at the protesters.</p>



<p>As reported in <em>The New York Post</em>, one of the protesters died on spot and the other succumbed to the bullet wounds at a local hospital. Darlington was arrested and taken away in handcuffs by the police. Per the details of the incident, blocking the highway was part of the broader series of protests that climate activists in Panama launched three weeks ago in reaction to a large mining contract awarded by the Panama’s government to a Canadian mining company.</p>



<p>The media coverage of the shooting of climate protesters by Darlington depicted the shooter as an aggressive vigilante. But many blamed the climate protesters for inciting such violent reactions from civilians who can’t take such disruption of their lives anymore.</p>



<p>One Twitter/X post called the protesters “climate kooks” and included FAFO (Fuck around and find out) in his post to blame the dead for the way they ended.</p>



<p>(the Twitter link was deleted…)</p>



<p>Another went further and hinted that the incident gives Europeans an idea of how deal with “Just Stop Oil” protests.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">European Public can learn a lot from Kenneth Franklin Darlington Salas on how to deal with “Just Stop Oil” protests<a href="https://t.co/4aZoDvui6K">https://t.co/4aZoDvui6K</a></p>&mdash; Remedios Webster (@RemediosW96465) <a href="https://twitter.com/RemediosW96465/status/1722599859675689003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p>Well-known and at times controversial libertarian commentator Andrew Tate invited some backlash after he posted Darlington’s picture on Twitter/X with a comment that many took for an approval of Darlington’s action.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The masculine urge to instantly fix the problem. <a href="https://t.co/G5vCOGbfXm">pic.twitter.com/G5vCOGbfXm</a></p>&mdash; Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) <a href="https://twitter.com/Cobratate/status/1722731417442890200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p>Darlington is not the first person to get violent with protesters blocking a highway. On 1st November, a foreign national ran over and killed one of the protesters blocking a street in western Panama.</p>



<p>Similar incidents have made news in America over the past several years, particularly during the Donald Trump’s presidency when leftist protesters blocked streets in different parts of the country. In August 2017, a woman died in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a car rammed into an Antifa protest and ran her over. In December 2020, a car plowed into a crowd of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in New York City and left six people injured.</p>



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Was It Too Much to Gun Down Two Climate Protesters for Blocking the Highway?
