Springfield, Illinois has no shortage of people who show up at City Council to lecture everyone about “community,” “accountability,” and “speaking truth to power.” Few do it with the same combination of volume and bile as local activist Ken Pacha.
Pacha has made a habit of treating the City Council microphone like a personal pulpit against the Springfield Police Department, Mayor Misty Buscher, and anyone insufficiently enthusiastic about his vision of society.
What the City Council public comment period does not capture is the content of his Facebook feed.
There, the man who demands civility from police and elected officials routinely daydreams about political violence directed at people he considers the enemy: CEOs, ICE agents, Republicans, and “the rich” in general.
Pacha shared a Department of Justice statement announcing that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Pacha’s caption: “Free Luigi. He did nothing wrong. In fact, we’d be in a better place if he was more inspiring.” This is the same activist who treats every police use of force as an existential crisis.
He celebrated an Arizona attorney general’s comments about self-defense laws potentially applying to masked ICE agents.
“Yeah buddy. Light em up!!!!” he wrote. “These violent domestic terrorists are murdering citizens openly and engaging in gang tactics. We can no longer be peaceful in the face of their brutality and cruelty.”
Federal law enforcement officers enforcing the law are, in Pacha’s opinion, terrorists who deserve to be shot.
When referring to “the rich”, Pacha brought the French Revolution cosplay: “The sooner we recognize that they’ll never part willingly with their money, access, or privilege… the sooner we can start erecting guillotines.”
When referring to the CEO of OpenAI, Pacha commented “Altman should have his head displayed on a pile,” Subtle.
Pacha had a particularly violent fantasy about the now-deceased Senator Lindsay Graham: “There’s only one way to handle people like Lindsay Graham. Turn him into ashes. Pound his face until it’s a fine mist. Bury him in an unmarked grave. These people are monsters and inhuman demons. There is NO MIDDLE GROUND.”
Riley Gaines, the swimmer who objects to men in women’s sports, inspired this gem in late January: “Every time I see Riley Gaines shit out another thought, I try to astral project myself to her brake lines so I can finally silence the loudest fifth place loser in history. Shut up you fucking bigot.”
Then there is Charlie Kirk. After Kirk was assassinated, Pacha posted about him 62 times in three days. It appears that has never been so gleeful.
Just moments after the murder, Pacha posted instructions to his Facebook friends on how to view the video of Kirk being shot, calling it a “river of gore”.
Among his 62 posts about Charlie Kirk within 3 days of the murder, Pacha posted a meme of a televangelist praying, “Jesus, I see what you’ve done for Charlie Kirk, and I want that for other republicans”.
Even data centers are not safe from his violent fantasies. Pacha posted a Unabomber meme with the caption “Data center won’t burn itself down, just saying.”
A man who spends his public life accusing others of brutality and authoritarianism spends his free time on Facebook fantasizing about guillotines, arson, heads on pikes, tampering with brake lines, and celebrating the public assassination of a 31-year-old father. He frames federal immigration officers as “domestic terrorists” while treating the murder of a healthcare CEO as insufficiently inspiring.
Keep in mind, this is just a small sample of Pacha’s Facebook posts. He posts hundreds of times each month.
Springfield residents who sit through Pacha’s city council lectures on morality might reasonably ask why he doesn’t hold himself to a fraction of the standard he requires of other people?
Ken Pacha’s violent fantasies are not subtle. They are posted in plain text, with pictures, for anyone willing to look.