There’s scarcely a person on the Right who won’t have been affected by Charlie Kirk’s death. The news yesterday that the 31-year-old speaker and commentator had been shot dead while giving a talk at Utah Valley University, Utah, shocked us all. As so many others have already pointed out, Kirk died championing our most fundamental right to free speech, and his assassination marks a grim point of no return in American politics.
Kirk’s legacy will be enduring—not only in the organisation he co-founded, Turning Point USA, which will continue to promote free and open debate, but also in his wife and two young children who survive him. And while we should do everything to honour Kirk’s memory, we would also do well to remember the names and faces of the people who jumped up to justify or even celebrate this young man’s murder.
At the time of writing, the authorities are yet to find the individual responsible for the shooting. Nor do we have an official motivation. We don’t know for sure if the person who pulled the trigger came from the Left. But we certainly know what the Left thinks of the shooter. Before Kirk’s death had even been confirmed, ghouls with social-media accounts crawled out of the woodwork to express their joy. Their overwhelming consensus was that Kirk was a fascist hate-monger who deserved to die. “Charlie Kirk isn’t a martyr,” read one post on X, with over 300,000 likes, “he’s a casualty of the violence he incited.” Another, now deleted post, with more than 200,000 likes, read: “Charlie Kirk was a genocide apologist, anti-immigrants, anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights, anti-anything human rights, very racist and Islamophobic. I’m not saying he deserved it, but he deserved it.” “Breaking,” said another tweet, from a user with the trans flag in his screen name, “Charlie Kirk loses gun debate.” That one racked up more than 400,000 likes. Another deranged leftist wrote: “Maybe Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have spent years being a hateful demagogue fascist and this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he should take some personal responsibility.” Almost 180,000 likes. A professor at the University of Toronto felt emboldened to make a post under her full legal name, saying “shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist cunts.”
Over on Bluesky—the X alternative that leftists started fleeing to recently because X had become too ‘toxic’— things were even worse. “Thoughts and prayer you Nazi bitch,” wrote a certain Gretchen Felker-Martin, a trans horror writer who has since been fired from her position at D.C. Comics for the comment. Pages upon pages of posts expressed the same sentiment: “Nazis getting shot is a good thing.” “Hoping for the worst!” “God’s will if he dies.” One particularly depraved user boasted about being “in the middle of an orgasm” when Kirk was shot and joked how “my powers are terrifying.”
Perhaps more shocking is the fact that these people are so comfortable expressing their glee under their own names and faces. On TikTok, users posted videos celebrating Kirk’s death. “I… do cheer when bad things happen to bad people,” said one. A man claiming to be a comedian recorded himself justifying the murder, arguing that “some people do deserve to [die]. He was a demon.” A woman who is apparently an anaesthesiologist said she was “really glad Charlie Kirk got himself fucking shot.” I could go on almost indefinitely with similar examples.
Even worse are the commentators and journalists who rushed to dismiss the attack or to even blame Kirk himself for it. Before the news of Kirk’s death was confirmed, MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd wondered aloud whether “this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration.” Dowd then went on to almost hold Kirk responsible for his own death, claiming that he was “constantly … pushing … hate speech aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” MSNBC correspondent Katy Tur appeared more worried about the response to the attack than the attack itself. “You can imagine the [Trump] administration using this as a justification for something,” she mused. For what it’s worth, Dowd has since been sacked by MSNBC.
This kind of victim-blaming was shamefully widespread in the media. Liberal magazine The New Republic reported on the event, describing Kirk as a “MAGA troll” in the headline of an article. Sky News felt it necessary to caveat the news of Kirk’s death with the comment that he had been “accused by critics of promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories on issues, including COVID-19 and climate change and the 2020 U.S. election.” Here in the UK, ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme aired a segment in which commentator Nels Abbey compared Kirk to a KKK leader, calling him a “David Duke for the TikTok age.” Kirk was “quite clearly and comfortably a supremacist,” Abbey said.
If all this wasn’t horrendous enough, even elected political representatives have failed to treat Kirk’s slaying with the gravity it deserves. In the U.S. House of Representatives, during a moment of ‘silent prayer and reflection’ for Kirk, Republican representative Lauren Boebert requested that a prayer be said out loud instead. “Silent prayers get silent results,” she said. Democratic representatives proceeded to shout her down, accusing Republicans of having ignored previous school shootings. Across the Atlantic in the European Parliament, left-wing MEPs managed to put on an even more despicable show. In Strasbourg, Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, of the Sweden Democrats, attempted to use his allotted speaking time as a minute’s silence in Kirk’s honour. But the Parliament vice president chairing the session, Katarina Barley, continued speaking. “We have discussed this, and you know the president said no to a minute of silence,” she said, prompting cheers and applause from centrist and left-wing MEPs.
It would be hypocritical of me to say that the people saying these horrible things are themselves inciting violence and should face legal repercussions. Words are not violence—that was Kirk’s entire message. If anything, the idea that words are capable of causing real, physical harm is what has got us into this situation to begin with. Take a look at Kirk’s interactions with various blue-haired, they/them college students and it’s very clear they believe that someone having different opinions is painful or dangerous to them.
Maybe that is what particularly stings. Kirk did not see his adversaries as fundamentally evil or less than human. He thought they were misguided. That is why he dedicated his life to talking to these people and trying to change their minds, even when they made it abundantly clear that they were not and would never be interested in having a debate. Even in his death, they refuse to grant him the same dignity he gave them—of treating him like a human being.
Kirk recognised the power of free speech. He recognised the terror that awaits us as soon as we forget the importance of open discussion and refuse to treat our political enemies with basic humanity. When he died, he was literally wearing a t-shirt with the word ‘freedom’ emblazoned across the chest. In his own words, “when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.”
Charlie Kirk’s Death Has Exposed the Left’s True Colours
Charlie and Erika Kirk with one of their two children.
Erika Kirk on Instagram
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There’s scarcely a person on the Right who won’t have been affected by Charlie Kirk’s death. The news yesterday that the 31-year-old speaker and commentator had been shot dead while giving a talk at Utah Valley University, Utah, shocked us all. As so many others have already pointed out, Kirk died championing our most fundamental right to free speech, and his assassination marks a grim point of no return in American politics.
Kirk’s legacy will be enduring—not only in the organisation he co-founded, Turning Point USA, which will continue to promote free and open debate, but also in his wife and two young children who survive him. And while we should do everything to honour Kirk’s memory, we would also do well to remember the names and faces of the people who jumped up to justify or even celebrate this young man’s murder.
At the time of writing, the authorities are yet to find the individual responsible for the shooting. Nor do we have an official motivation. We don’t know for sure if the person who pulled the trigger came from the Left. But we certainly know what the Left thinks of the shooter. Before Kirk’s death had even been confirmed, ghouls with social-media accounts crawled out of the woodwork to express their joy. Their overwhelming consensus was that Kirk was a fascist hate-monger who deserved to die. “Charlie Kirk isn’t a martyr,” read one post on X, with over 300,000 likes, “he’s a casualty of the violence he incited.” Another, now deleted post, with more than 200,000 likes, read: “Charlie Kirk was a genocide apologist, anti-immigrants, anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights, anti-anything human rights, very racist and Islamophobic. I’m not saying he deserved it, but he deserved it.” “Breaking,” said another tweet, from a user with the trans flag in his screen name, “Charlie Kirk loses gun debate.” That one racked up more than 400,000 likes. Another deranged leftist wrote: “Maybe Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have spent years being a hateful demagogue fascist and this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he should take some personal responsibility.” Almost 180,000 likes. A professor at the University of Toronto felt emboldened to make a post under her full legal name, saying “shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist cunts.”
Over on Bluesky—the X alternative that leftists started fleeing to recently because X had become too ‘toxic’— things were even worse. “Thoughts and prayer you Nazi bitch,” wrote a certain Gretchen Felker-Martin, a trans horror writer who has since been fired from her position at D.C. Comics for the comment. Pages upon pages of posts expressed the same sentiment: “Nazis getting shot is a good thing.” “Hoping for the worst!” “God’s will if he dies.” One particularly depraved user boasted about being “in the middle of an orgasm” when Kirk was shot and joked how “my powers are terrifying.”
Perhaps more shocking is the fact that these people are so comfortable expressing their glee under their own names and faces. On TikTok, users posted videos celebrating Kirk’s death. “I… do cheer when bad things happen to bad people,” said one. A man claiming to be a comedian recorded himself justifying the murder, arguing that “some people do deserve to [die]. He was a demon.” A woman who is apparently an anaesthesiologist said she was “really glad Charlie Kirk got himself fucking shot.” I could go on almost indefinitely with similar examples.
Even worse are the commentators and journalists who rushed to dismiss the attack or to even blame Kirk himself for it. Before the news of Kirk’s death was confirmed, MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd wondered aloud whether “this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration.” Dowd then went on to almost hold Kirk responsible for his own death, claiming that he was “constantly … pushing … hate speech aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” MSNBC correspondent Katy Tur appeared more worried about the response to the attack than the attack itself. “You can imagine the [Trump] administration using this as a justification for something,” she mused. For what it’s worth, Dowd has since been sacked by MSNBC.
This kind of victim-blaming was shamefully widespread in the media. Liberal magazine The New Republic reported on the event, describing Kirk as a “MAGA troll” in the headline of an article. Sky News felt it necessary to caveat the news of Kirk’s death with the comment that he had been “accused by critics of promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories on issues, including COVID-19 and climate change and the 2020 U.S. election.” Here in the UK, ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme aired a segment in which commentator Nels Abbey compared Kirk to a KKK leader, calling him a “David Duke for the TikTok age.” Kirk was “quite clearly and comfortably a supremacist,” Abbey said.
If all this wasn’t horrendous enough, even elected political representatives have failed to treat Kirk’s slaying with the gravity it deserves. In the U.S. House of Representatives, during a moment of ‘silent prayer and reflection’ for Kirk, Republican representative Lauren Boebert requested that a prayer be said out loud instead. “Silent prayers get silent results,” she said. Democratic representatives proceeded to shout her down, accusing Republicans of having ignored previous school shootings. Across the Atlantic in the European Parliament, left-wing MEPs managed to put on an even more despicable show. In Strasbourg, Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, of the Sweden Democrats, attempted to use his allotted speaking time as a minute’s silence in Kirk’s honour. But the Parliament vice president chairing the session, Katarina Barley, continued speaking. “We have discussed this, and you know the president said no to a minute of silence,” she said, prompting cheers and applause from centrist and left-wing MEPs.
It would be hypocritical of me to say that the people saying these horrible things are themselves inciting violence and should face legal repercussions. Words are not violence—that was Kirk’s entire message. If anything, the idea that words are capable of causing real, physical harm is what has got us into this situation to begin with. Take a look at Kirk’s interactions with various blue-haired, they/them college students and it’s very clear they believe that someone having different opinions is painful or dangerous to them.
Maybe that is what particularly stings. Kirk did not see his adversaries as fundamentally evil or less than human. He thought they were misguided. That is why he dedicated his life to talking to these people and trying to change their minds, even when they made it abundantly clear that they were not and would never be interested in having a debate. Even in his death, they refuse to grant him the same dignity he gave them—of treating him like a human being.
Kirk recognised the power of free speech. He recognised the terror that awaits us as soon as we forget the importance of open discussion and refuse to treat our political enemies with basic humanity. When he died, he was literally wearing a t-shirt with the word ‘freedom’ emblazoned across the chest. In his own words, “when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.”
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