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I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on pretty much everything, but his shocking and morally repugnant assassination is deeply concerning, and not just because it’s another example of the lethality of our politics. Kirk’s killing is also sending prominent conservatives on a warpath, setting the stage for a dangerous expansion of federal government repression.
Kirk was a social media megastar and the founder of Turning Point USA, the foremost rightwing youth organization in the country. His political positions were to the far-right, and his language was often combative, to say the least. He called Martin Luther King, Jr “awful” and said “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s”. He believed in the so-called great replacement theory, which asserts that elites are encouraging mass migration to undermine white people in western countries. “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote on X the day before he was killed. He also blamed “Jewish dollars” for funding “cultural Marxist ideas and supporters.”
Kirk said being “trans is a mental delusion”. He portrayed himself as a free speech champion while also running a “Professor Watchlist” against liberal professors. “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price,” he said, explaining his opposition to gun control. “I think it’s worth … [the] cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so we can have the second amendment.” And he also suggested a “patriot” should pay the bail of the rightwing conspiracy theorist who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull.
So, yeah. I find a lot of what Kirk peddled to be reprehensible, but he should still be alive to say it. Obviously, no one should be killed for their views. In an open society, people like Kirk should be able to say what they want, just as I should have the right to say what I want. And that includes the right to criticize. For example, when Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, says that “political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are,” I should have the right to point out that political violence founded this country and political violence has taken many of our most important leaders, including Abraham Lincoln and Malcolm X. That list is getting longer now. The Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, the leader of the state House Democratic caucus, was assassinated along with her husband just this past June at their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, in a politically motivated killing.
As political violence is escalating in the country – what the University of Chicago professor Robert Pape has dubbed “violent populism” – it is being performed with a mix of motives. Sometimes this violence comes from the left; more often it comes from the right, while the motives of some others, such as Thomas Crooks, the young man who shot Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024, remain unclear.
But if you listen to the Maga-sphere, today’s political environment is made uniquely murderous only because of a mythically powerful and extremely organized radical left. (A passing familiarity with the disputatious US left will quickly cement how farfetched such beliefs are.) The motives driving Kirk’s shooter, still at large as I write this, are unknown. But that doesn’t matter. Sensing an opportunity, some of the most influential Maga conservatives are now hellbent on completely destroying “the left” – which in practice is anyone who voices opposition to their agenda – with all the might the federal government holds.
Christopher Rufo, an influential conservative activist with close ties to the Trump administration, posted on X that the “last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Hardly a call for lowering the temperature of the discourse.
Jesse Watters, a Fox News host, told his audience: “We are going to avenge Charlie’s death in the way that Charlie wanted to be avenged.” He continued: “They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us.” The Maga political strategist Steve Bannon told his audience that “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.” Elon Musk wrote on X that “The Left is the party of murder.” The far-right activist Laura Loomer (who holds significant influence with the president) wrote: “The best way President Trump can reinforce Charlie’s legacy is by cracking down on the Left with the full force of the government,” adding: “We can’t allow for these people to live among us in society. If you threaten people over their political views, you should be jailed for 25 years or more.” Loomer seemed oblivious to fact that she was in fact threatening people over their political views.
Not to be outdone, Trump chimed in with a statement: “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity,” he said, “and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it … 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.”
Trump makes no mention of, say, the assassination of Melissa Hortman or the attack on Paul Pelosi. He conflates public opposition to Ice’s militarized policing with extreme political violence, and he insinuates, without evidence, that a broad leftwing conspiracy is directing events behind the scenes. Fanciful in description, Trump’s words are utterly terrifying in their meaning.
Why? Because despite what you might think, Trump is not saying that all political violence comes from the left. Rather, he is suggesting that all that comes from the left is political violence. And once that lie is accepted as true, the call to destroy any and all opponents, and by every means available, won’t lag far behind. Our collective commitment to democracy and the right to free speech, including Kirk’s, demands that we reject such destruction.
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Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
