Earlier this month, at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk began to answer a question on gun violence when a gun silenced him. A single round cut short a public debate and turned it into a political assassination.
Kirk, a right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, left a divisive and controversial digital footprint that greatly aids in understanding his legacy regardless of how his supporters are overlooking his offensive and apathetic rhetoric and actions, in an effort to sanitize his legacy.
In the wake of Kirk’s death, individuals and institutions across the nation moved not just to condemn his killing and political violence, but to venerate him. It is unsettling to see politicians from across the political spectrum speak with reverence about a man who espoused racist, xenophobic and hateful comments and conspiracy theories.
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein named Kirk “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion” and a man who “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.”
California governor Gavin Newsom advised us to continue Kirk’s work by engaging “with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.”
Kirk, unconcerned with preferred pronouns, trigger warnings or the humanity of Palestinians, continuously used shock value to arise reactions from people he was “debating” during his tours of college campuses. It wasn’t just that Kirk held offensive, obnoxious and questionable views, like the fact that he was anti-abortion, believed in public executions or rejected the separation of church and state, it’s that Kirk took pleasure in his bigotry and narcissism — for the performance and virality of it all — rather than ideological persuasion.
Kirk has labeled members of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks,” and referred to transgender people with slurs. Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr. “awful” which is ironic as his supporters compared the two when in actuality the only thing they have in common is that they both were killed by white men.
Kirk also diminished the contributions of prominent and successful Black women, who went to Ivy League universities — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former first lady Michelle Obama, TV host Joy-Ann Reid and former Representative Sheila Jackson Lee — saying they had to “go steal a white person’s slot” as a result of affirmative action.
“worse” than the holocaust and habitually railed against “Black crime,” declaring that “Black America is poorer, more murderous, more dangerous” than when Black people were living under Jim Crow. He did this whilst repeating the rape accusations against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilman, calling him a “disgusting pig.”
Kirk’s “Prove Me Wrong” strategy wasn’t about convincing the people in front of him — it was about producing viral clips that could be framed as him “owning” liberals as he often relied on false or misleading arguments, statistics and unprovable generalizations.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his late-night talk show “indefinitely”after conservatives accused the A.B.C. host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The decision came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.), Brendan Carr, assailed Kimmel and suggested that the F.C.C. might take action against ABC because of Kimmel’s remarks.
The censoring of Kimmel is not only dangerous, but it’s unconstitutional as the federal government cannot suppress lawful expression of speech merely because it reflects views they oppose. It is longstanding court precedent that the First Amendment protects even offensive and hateful speech.
Kirk’s killing has also led to an escalation of rhetoric and action from the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers as the president himself hails Kirk as a “martyr” for the conservative base. On Kirk’s podcast, Vice-President Vance said political violence is “not a both-sides problem” and blamed the “incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism” for the attack carried out by a lone shooter who was unaffiliated with any political party and was listed as “inactive,” as has not voted in the last two general elections.
The most concerning proclamations from far-right activists and influencers are of a coming civil war and the need for retribution against the left for Kirk’s killing with Elon Musk posting “The Left is the party of murder,” on X (formerly Twitter) to his followers, before the gunman’s identity was even known.
Similarly, Oath Keeper (a far-right, anti-government extremist militia group) founder Stewart Rhodes, who had his sentence for seditious conspiracy with regards to the January 6 Capitol insurrection commuted, announced that it was time for him to restart his militia group in order to provide public protection for public figures like Kirk.
Regardless of his ideology, President Trump ordered that flags be flown at half-staff even though Kirk was not a member of the military nor a politician.
Less than an hour after the Kirk shooting, there was a school shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado that wounded two students. A day after both shootings, several historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), received campus threats that led to lockdowns, class cancellations and heightened security measures on their campuses across the country.
Instead of actively trying to identify the root causes of gun and political violence in the United States — our politicians are advancing efforts to pass resolutions that name Kirk’s birthday a “National Day of Remembrance.”
What about the tragic shooting of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman? What about our children and family members in high schools, colleges and universities or the countless innocent Black people murdered every day in this country by police?
Instead of genuine intellectual engagements on these pressing issues, more than 145 people have been fired or disciplined after making statements about Kirk after his death. Utah’s governor Spencer Cox even lamented being unable to blame an immigrant for Kirk’s death and was heard saying that he hoped and prayed the shooter “wasn’t one of us.”
It seems clear that Kirk’s rhetoric of “Christian” white nationalism, anti-transgender and anti-woke culture has moved into the center of Republican identity. What happened to Charlie Kirk is horrible and no person should ever lose their life to gun violence. However, how you die does not redeem how you lived. It is critically necessary that we realize that one side of the aisle is actively fighting to bring an end to unnecessary deaths by gun violence and it was not the side Kirk was on.
Copy edited by Daryl R. Thomas Jr
