The day before the United States of America commemorated the 24th anniversary of when civilians were mass murdered by extremists in the September 11 terrorist attacks, terrorism was signaled as a mainstream strategy in the country with the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
The death of Kirk, who was mortally wounded by a sniper on Wednesday while addressing students at a Utah University event, was a tragedy for the family and friends he left behind, but also a dire omen for the country he loved.
Through promotion of conservatism at schools with his nonprofit Turning Point USA, Kirk had devoted himself to democratic politics – the art of universal and public negotiation, debate, and participation to determine how resources are allocated, what laws are established, and how society is governed. There are many styles to the art of statecraft, but for the styles mastered by Kirk, that of the free society, integrity can only be maintained if the means of resolution remain in the bounds of civility – speech, arbitration, and moderation. A free society is based on the faith that the path of civility will be followed by opposing participants.
Kirk explained in a June 24 TPUSA YouTube video that he held debates and discussion on campuses because “that’s what is so important to our country, to find our disagreements respectfully – because when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity,” Kirk continued.
If one does not believe a disagreement or a clash of interests can be ameliorated by speech, courts, or the ballot box, then only the impulsive and instinctual option of violence remains. Violence is normally a last resort, when all other avenues fail to provide defense or a counter to the denial of life and liberty.
YET THERE is a temptation to use violence beyond these desperate parameters, to be able to maximize one’s demands of how society should be governed without the difficulty and tedium of conversation and persuasion. In democratic societies, much of the violence is monopolized by the state to prevent such abuse.
If such a practice is used liberally to solve problems, then it results in the degradation of society, as the more it is normalized, the returns on politics of the tongue are lessened, and increased for politics of the fist. Once enough participants in the broader Prisoner’s Dilemma of society see violence as a simpler and more certain option for success in achieving political ends, it becomes a war of all against all, everyone seeking to promote their interests against others with naught but the might of their hands.
War is a continuation of politics by other means, but even war has rules for civilized states when diplomacy fails. There is conduct so vicious that it leaves great hemorrhaging wounds in the world. There are those, who in their desire to see their will done in other states or societies, who ignore the flow of blood because they see their objectives as so virtuous that it is worth every ounce of flesh. Those breakaway non-state actors who believe that the ends justify the means – who seek to further their political agendas by deliberately targeting innocent civilians – we call terrorists.
The strategy of terrorism was once reviled, but with the discrediting of speech as a means of resolution, there has been an equal and correlated rise in the glorification of those who engage in political violence.
Since the 2010s, activists, especially those on campuses, have argued that speech is violence. Certain words and utterances can cause harm equal to that of physical violence. The equation between speech and violence is meant to undermine the legitimacy of certain speech, but it has also inversely served to raise the legitimacy of violence by putting it on equal footing.
The calculus also made those engaging in certain types of speech become legitimate targets of violence. If one is the target of violence, then it is in reason that the target utilizes the just application of force for defense. If one is engaging in self-defense, then speech is an irrelevant tool.
Student activists and the concept of 'ideas are violence'
THOUGH NOT verbalized as such as its predecessor, student activists have graduated the concept into “ideas are violence” – that those who hold certain beliefs, be it conservatism, liberalism, or Zionism, are inflicting violence on the world, and their proponents themselves are therefore legitimate targets of violence in return. There is no shortage of social media users using the phrase “conservatism is violence.”
According to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Aya Ghanameh, a Rhode Island School of Design Students for Justice in Palestine activist, said in a 2021 speech that “Zionism is genocide. Zionism is racism. Zionism is violence.”
In response to Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre’s outrage over Kirk’s murder, one X/Twitter user said that, “Homelessness is violence, poverty is violence, colonialism is violence, residential school denialism is violence, Zionism is violence, eugenics is violence. If politicians ensure that all that other violence happens, then political violence is inevitable.”
There has been a cavalcade of justification for Kirk’s murder, many of it simply determining that he deserved to die because he was supposedly a “fascist” – not truly a reference to Kirk’s actual beliefs, but a shorthand for conveying that the 31-year-old conservative activist’s beliefs were forms of violence and oppression. Columbia University encampment leader Khymani James, who said in a 2024 meeting that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” wrote that people were “rightfully celebrating the inevitable and just fate of fascists.”
With speech and even beliefs themselves seen as violence, it is no wonder that those who seek to engage in “resistance” against them are increasingly glorified as heroes. This phenomenon is not monopolized by any political stream, as can be demonstrated by the worship of mass murderers like Elliot Rodger. Yet since the October 7 massacre, it seems that certain factions of the Left, more than other American groups, have canonized domestic terrorists as saints for their ideology.
This malignant issue in elements of the American far Left
WHEN THE 2023 Hamas-led pogrom in southern Israel occurred, the outpouring of support on college campuses was often disregarded as the nonsensical cosplaying of privileged students as revolutionaries. Yet their capabilities should not have been the focus, but their resolve toward the violent enterprise of “revolution.” Since the massacre, protesters in New York City have repeatedly normalized calls for “resistance” by “any means necessary” with a “global intifada.”
As writer Najma Sharif infamously wrote on X on the day of the attack: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
This malignant issue in elements of the American far Left was noted by Kirk himself, who warned in April about the extent that Luigi Mangione – who is accused of assassinating UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson allegedly over his gripes with the American healthcare system – had been turned into a folk hero.
“Assassination culture is spreading on the Left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump,” Kirk said on X, citing a Network Contagion Research Institute survey. “The Left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end.”
Indeed, Mangione was praised by cultural figures as wide as comedian Bill Burr to journalist Taylor Lorenz. Mangione is far from the only example of assassination culture.
American anti-Israel groups, led by a network connected to a terrorist group, has launched a petition to free and pay for the legal fund of alleged Washington DC Israeli embassy staff murderer Elias Rodriquez
“What we are asserting is more than a recognition that the violence and oppression meted out by the Zionist movement will inevitably give rise to counter-violence, an indisputable truism,” said the petition started by the Tariq el-Tahrir (Liberation Road) Youth and Student Network. “We are saying that such counter-violence is legitimate. It is justice.”
The anti-Israel movement, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, also embraced serial arsonist Casey Goonan and UK Palestine Action political vandal Tueta Hoxha during their recent hunger strikes. Hoxha allegedly participated in the 2024 Gloucestershire Horizon facility attack in which it was breached with a van, and a security guard and two Bristol Police officers were wounded by activists armed with sledgehammers, whips, and other homemade weapons. Goonan pleaded guilty to a series of June 2024 firebombing against federal and UC Berkeley buildings that were motivated by anti-Israel sentiment.
Why an invisible line has been crossed in Kirk's assassination
WITH SO many examples of political violence in recent years, at first glance, Kirk’s assassination should not have any greater weight than the murder of Thompson or the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Yet as podcaster Konstantin Kisin expressed on X on Wednesday, an invisible line felt like it had been crossed.
“Tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn’t even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever,” said Kisin: “Like the rules of the game had been permanently altered and there was simply no going back to the innocent, peaceful past.”
Wednesday’s assassination was different because Kirk didn’t wield financial or political power that could directly influence ideas – regarding which, though wrongfully, arguments could be made about oppression or evil policies. Kirk had no such power; he only traded in ideas.
The invisible line that was crossed may have been the threshold for which violence, rather than faith in speech, was seen as the main mechanism in solving disputes. The changing game may be the alteration of rules, in which political violence is now more effective than speech.
Calla Walsh, an American communist political activist, replied to rumors that Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro had canceled his college speaking events in the wake of Kirk’s death by gloating on X that “Direct action works... Fascists should be scared to go out in public.”
Walsh is not alone in seeing the effectiveness of “direct action.” In a survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) of 257 academic institutions published a day before Kirk’s death, a third of student respondents had some level of acceptance of resorting to violence to stop campus speech.
While the American political elite has come out in bipartisan support against political violence, there is no denying that it is a phenomenon that is well in the mainstream discourse of their voters. Only by working across party lines is there any hope of pushing society back over the line, and restoring faith in the exchange of ideas.
Kirk excelled at engaging in discourse about the best course for his nation, and despite all the death threats, despite the opposition from radicals on both sides of the spectrum, he demonstrated through his actions – until the very end – that he believed in speech over violence. For the sake of the entire Western world, let us hope that the critical wounds of civil political discourse can be stabilized, unlike those of one of its most vocal and visible recent proponents, which led to his tragic and premature death.