Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be shot. Nobody does. For the MAGA movement to claim the moral high ground, however, is perverse.
I never paid much attention to Charlie Kirk.
Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a conservative youth movement, at the age of 18, in 2012. He was a right-wing culture warrior, and a rising star in the highly online MAGA-sphere. US president Donald Trump has attributed his election to the influence of his movement.
But I haven’t got much time for podcasters in general; let alone Kirk’s toxic brand of reactionary nationalism, overt prejudice and bigotry, and judgmental religious conservatism. So I didn’t pay him much attention.
A couple of weeks ago, I chuckled at South Park’s send-up of podcasters like Kirk: they named a fictional award the “The Charlie Kirk Award for Young Masterdebaters.”
When he was brutally assassinated during a public appearance on a Utah college campus, the immediacy and scale of the reaction, even in South Africa, took me somewhat by surprise.
Apparently, some people celebrated his murder. There were demands from the right that people who failed to show the appropriate amount of respect ought to be fired – so much for supporting “free speech” and opposing “cancel culture”.
Much of the commentary was overwrought. Reading the average MAGA talking head, Kirk was not only an upstanding Christian husband and father, but he was a veritable saint.
Local podcasters and minor celebrities engaged in an orgy of performative grief, as if Kirk had been a dearly beloved brother. Global MAGA influencers were falling over each other to express their horror at the violent silencing of supposed good faith debate.
From the outset, it was clear that MAGA intended to make a martyr of him: martyred for his faith and his patriotism (but not at all like those dirty Islamic martyrs, you understand).
Suspect unknown
Long before the identity of the suspect was known, the MAGA movement, with Donald Trump at its head, had already scripted the narrative.
To wit: “It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”
Thus spake the Don. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
The hypocrisy of this statement, coming from Trump, whose entire persona rests on insulting, belittling and demonising his political opponents, is nauseating.
One could easily turn this around against Kirk: his own record of demonising those with whom he disagreed day after day may be directly responsible for his assassination.
Quotations
Many questionable quotations can be attributed to Kirk. He has demeaned “prowling Blacks [who] go around for fun to go target white people”; attributed flood deaths to incompetent affirmative action hires; questioned the intelligence of black women like Michelle Obama with far more degrees from top universities than he had (he had none); called the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake” and Martin Luther King “not a good person”; and told women like Taylor Swift to submit to their husbands and have lots of children, which he hoped would stop them being Democrats.
He blamed Jews for funding anti-semitism: “Jewish donors have a lot of explaining to do. A lot of decoupling to do. Because Jewish donors have been the number one funding mechanism of radical, open border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews. And now it’s coming for Jews, and they’re like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ And it’s not just the colleges. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”
When someone quoted the Bible saying “love thy neighbour” in relation to gay pride parades, Kirk pointed out that “Satan quoted scripture,” adding: “How do you love someone? You love them by telling them the truth, not by confirming, or affirming, their sin. … It says in the same part of scripture that [homosexuals] shall be stoned to death. Just saying. [That is] God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
Said Kirk: “[When] I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman … it almost creates thought patterns that are not necessarily wholesome.”
Yeah, those thought patterns are called racism, my good Christian man, and no, they are not wholesome.
Trans shooter
Almost immediately, rumours began to fly that Kirk’s assassin might have been trans. Later, it emerged that his former romantic partner might be trans.
If so, then the motive might indeed have something to do with Kirk’s hateful position on trans people, which is that they are “crazy”, and “sick”, and we should just “take care of it [transsexuals in sport] the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s”.
Besides sharing the right’s view that transsexualism is a mental illness (a view which recalls the old-fashioned prejudice against gay people, and a view which professional psychiatrists do not share), Kirk has also cited this as a reason why trans people ought to be denied the right to carry guns.
In fact, at the moment when Kirk was shot, he was talking about how many “trans shooters” there had been. His answer: “too many”.
But all of that is speculation. We don’t yet know the motive of Kirk’s shooter. We might never know. That his romantic partner might be trans is not “all you need to know” about the case, as one South African influencer claimed on X.
What you need to know is that while any number of trans shooters, or shooters of any other persuasion for that matter, is by definition “too many”, there is no evidence that trans people are disproportionally implicated in violent crime.
Right-wing extremists
Said Trump: “From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”
Notably, he does not mention the assassinations in June of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted assassination of state senator John Hoffman and his wife. In that case, the shooter was an evangelical Christian with anti-gay opinions and close ties to the police. He had a long hit list when he was caught.
In fact, until an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day of 2025, which was committed by an Islamic extremist, all attacks linked to political extremism in the previous three years had been attributable to right-wing extremists.
To quote the Anti-Defamation League’s Centre on Extremism: “All the extremist-related murders in 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds, with eight of the 13 killings involving white supremacists and the remaining five having connections to far-right anti-government extremists. This is the third year in a row that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings. This trend has also been interrupted by the New Orleans attack.”
The narrative that the left in the United States is uniquely violent, and the right is innocent of anything more than trying to defend itself and the country, is simply not true.
Fuel on the fire
Trump himself has said that the “radicals on the right” are just interested in less crime, while the “radicals on the left are the problem”. Ergo, right-wing extremists are perfectly justified, while the left is in the wrong. A leader couldn’t be more divisive if he tried.
Right-wing commentators, too, are pouring fuel on the fire. On Fox News, host Jesse Watters ranted: “They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or… they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we are going to have to ask ourselves. … We are sick. We are sad. We are angry. And we are resolute. And we are going to avenge Charlie’s death in the way that Charlie wanted to be avenged.”
Bombs were found under news media vehicles in Utah in the wake of Kirk’s assassination. That would be the same news media that Trump routinely promises to “hold accountable”, and demonises as “fake news” and “biased” and “far left”.
Speech versus violence
The picture the MAGA movement is trying to paint of Kirk, as an upstanding patriot who valued debate over violence, is nothing but hagiography. It is a beatification of a man who, frankly, does not deserve it. His views were divisive and hateful. He did not deserve to be shot, but he does not merit being venerated as some sort of saint.
Of course debate is always preferable over violence, and violence is rarely, if ever, justified. For the MAGA movement to pretend they are the innocent victims in all this, while the left is some sort of hive of violence, is simply contrary to the truth.
For Trump to say that demonising political opponents is what caused this violence is brazenly hypocritical, and could equally apply to Kirk himself.
Nobody should ever be shot over their political views. But then, nobody should be demonised over being female, gay, trans, atheist, immigrant or black, either.
For the political right in the American culture wars to pretend it holds the moral high ground here is perverse.
Sanest voice in the room
Meanwhile, the most sane comment I’ve seen on Kirk’s death, with which I agree entirely, is the following:
Thank you very much for joining me. I want to say a few words regarding the terrible murder yesterday of Charlie Kirk. Someone who I strongly disagreed with on almost every issue, but who was clearly a very smart and effective communicator and organizer and someone unafraid to get out into the world and engage the public. My condolences go out to his wife and his family.
A free and democratic society, which is what America is supposed to be about, depends upon the basic premise that people can speak out, organize, and take part in public life without fear, without worrying that they might be killed, injured, or humiliated for expressing their political views. In fact, that is the essence of what freedom is about and what democracy is about. You have a point of view. That’s great. I have a point of view that is different than yours. That’s great. Let’s argue it out. We make our case to the American people at the local, state, and federal levels. And we hold free elections in which the people decide what they want. That’s called freedom and democracy. And I want as many people as possible to participate in that process without fear.
Freedom and democracy is not about political violence. It is not about assassinating public officials. It is not about trying to intimidate people who speak out on an issue. Political violence in fact is political cowardice. It means that you cannot convince people of the correctness of your ideas and you have to impose them through force. Every American, no matter what one’s political point of view may be, must condemn all forms of political violence and all forms of intimidation. We must welcome and respect dissenting points of view. That’s what our Constitution is about. That’s what our Bill of Rights is about. That in fact is what freedom is about.
The murder of Charlie Kirk is part of a disturbing rise in political violence that threatens to hollow out public life and make people afraid of participating. From the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States capital to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to the attack on Paul Pelosi to the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Whitmer to the murder of Minnesota’s Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband to the Austin attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to the shooting of United Health Executive Brian Thompson and the shooting several years ago of Representative Steve Scalise. This chilling rise in violence has targeted public officials across the political spectrum.
Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. We all remember the assassinations of President Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy, John Lennon, Meda Evans, and the attempted assassinations of President Ronald Reagan and Alabama Governor George Wallace.
This is a difficult and contentious moment in American history. Democracy in our country and throughout the world is under attack and there are a lot of reasons for that which need serious discussion.
But bottom line, if we honestly believe in democracy, if we believe in freedom, all of us must be loud and clear. Political violence, regardless of ideology, is not the answer and must be condemned.
Thank you very much.
That is the view of the radical left-wing socialist, Bernie Sanders. When a socialist is the sanest voice in the room, you know there’s something very wrong with the body politic in America.
[Image: Charlie Kirk, an activist and podcaster who founded the conservative youth movement Turning Point USA, Photo: IMAGO/SOPA Images. Used under CC BY-SA 4.0 licence]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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