Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative voice who championed religious faith, family unity and loyalty to the Constitution, was murdered last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University.
He became the latest victim of a trend he often warned about: the ominous rise of “assassination culture,” where unprecedentedly high numbers of Americans, particularly from leftist circles, admit to being comfortable with political violence if it aligns with their political position.
Kirk, who was an avid Trump supporter, staunchly pro-Israel and unapologetic about his own religious faith, spoke regularly to huge numbers of people on prominent national issues. At 31, he had become one of the most influential figures on the American right.
To admirers, he was a defender of free expression in hostile territory. He faced antagonistic audiences on countless college campuses, willing to debate any student on any issue of their choice regardless of the vitriol he encountered.
During the Covid pandemic, he infuriated liberals with his opposition to lockdowns, forced masking and vaccine mandates. He was accused of spreading dangerous ideas that could “kill people.”
In recent months, Kirk sought to raise awareness of how violent norms have begun to define the political left. In a much-publicized online post, he pointed to a recent national survey by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), revealing that more than half of liberal and progressive respondents believed that killing President Donald Trump would be “somewhat justified.”
Kirk called the violent momentum on the left a “natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture.” “The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy,” he wrote. “Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response.”
He accused the left of tolerating “violence and mayhem,” while also slamming “the cowardice” of local prosecutors for their complicity in promoting the trend of violent attitudes.
“The cowardice of local prosecutors have turned the left into a ticking time bomb,” Kirk wrote.
Last Wednesday, the 31-year-old Kirk was debating college students in an outdoor college courtyard when the “ticking time bomb” ran the down the clock. A shot rang out, striking him in the neck and killing him.
“Presidents have been shot, and shot at, before. But to assassinate a young father for debating college students, for organizing young Americans to vote for a party representing half the country—that’s new ground for America,” wrote City Journal editor Christopher Rufo.
“This wasn’t an attack on an extremist or a fringe agitator, but on a highly visible, mainstream, optimistic figure. It takes a particular kind of evil to target a man like that.”
That evil was magnified after Kirk’s death was announced, by social media users exulting in a stomach-turning hate-fest. In a rampant display of ‘assassination culture,’ postings declaring that Kirk deserved his murder for being a “fascist,” “a Zionist,” “a racist” and “a bigot” flooded the airways.
On social media,” a New York Times article admitted, “it was easy to find left-wing posters reveling in Mr. Kirk’s death and suggesting he got what he deserved.”
Demonizing Political Opponents
In a video message the night of Kirk’s murder. President Trump blamed the “radical left” for the conservative activist’s death.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Left-wing ideology openly justifies the tearing down of the established social order, demonizing political opponents and enforcing strict censorship, all under the guise that allowing unwanted ideas to proliferate can endanger society.
In this vein, liberals and progressives insisted during the pandemic that questioning government policy such as enforced masking or vaccination could literally kill people, and that government must act quickly to shut that kind of talk down.
This demonizing rhetoric drove wedges between friends, neighbors and even members of the same family. It didn’t stop there. During the Biden years, administration officials branded a succession of conservative groups “domestic terrorists”—including people who believed the presidential election had been stolen or those who opposed the teaching of woke ideologies to their schoolchildren.
In October, 2021, former Attorney General Merrick Garland outrageously declared in an official letter that parents who complained to school boards about objectionable material in their children’s curriculum were to be regarded as potential “domestic terrorists.”
The media reinforced the notion that questioning government narratives was likely to stoke violence and therefore needed to be punished.
In 2022, Reuters ran a long story condemning Professor David Clements who was fired by New Mexico University for his videos alleging cheating in the 2020 election and for questioning the vaccines.
In the same vein, one recalls Colorado election clerk Tina Peters, who was trashed by the media after she provided journalists with evidence of alleged voting irregularities in Dominion voting machines. Peters was ultimately fired and imprisoned for the crime of “unauthorized access.”
Democrats cheered the maligning of “election deniers,” anti-maskers, and anti-Covid vaxxers, vilifying them for “undermining public health” by challenging “the science.”
For the “crime” of expressing an opinion that differed from government orthodoxy, these people were demonized as a menace to society. There were calls to have the doctors among them stripped of their licenses, and the others penalized and even prosecuted.
‘Assassination Culture is Real, and Growing’
“I write regularly about the rise in left-wing violence and often get asked if I believe it will continue,” writes Max Horder of the NCRI in City Journal.
“I’ve been hesitant to make predictions, concerned about misjudging the situation. Perhaps, too, I don’t want to believe that America has arrived in the place that it has. These illusions can be sustained no longer. Assassination culture is real, and growing.”
“This was not just an attack against a person, this was an attack on a political movement,” Sen. Lindsay Graham, R.-S.C., speaking on Meet The Press, commented on the murder of Charlie Kirk. “I see this as being different. Charlie Kirk is one of the top three people in the country that allowed President Trump to win in 2024 by his efforts. This was an attack on a movement.”
“If there were one thing Charlie Kirk was most famous for,” attorney and conservative influencer Jeff Childers wrote, “it was his willingness to respectfully debate his ideas with anyone. They killed him during just that kind of reasoned debate, driving a final stake through any shred of hope that democratic debate could resolve the issues separating the sides.
“They don’t want to debate. They want to end debate, with a bullet.”
‘They Kill Innocents in the Name of One Leftist Cause or Another’
Commentary Magazine editor Abe Greenwald noted the drastic shift in America’s political culture in the past couple of decades.
“In 2001, it was almost impossible for Americans to understand how a group of terrorists could murder thousands of innocents and call it good,” he wrote. “In 2025, the country has untold thousands who have folded the claims of those terrorists into their own radical ideology, who echo the terrorists’ call for the destruction of the U.S. and Israel.
“And there are subsets among them who hunt and kill innocents in the name of one leftist cause or another. Radicals kill in the name of a free Palestine, anti-capitalism, anti-Trumpism, and as we see in the case of Charlie Kirk, as a response to unwanted speech,” the article noted.
“Their choice of targets has multiplied along with their causes. They shoot at politicians, CEOs, embassy staffers and counter protesters. Ideological violence has infused our politics like an invisible toxic gas, and it just keeps spreading.”
Rutgers Study: Left-Wing Authoritarianism Breeds Assassination Culture
In April this year, social scientists at Rutgers University published an eye-opening study entitled, “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became Acceptable Political Violence.”
The authors said the study was prompted by their concerns over left-wing celebrations of two recent stories: the firebombing of several Tesla dealerships to protest CEO Elon Musk’s friendship with President Trump, and the murder of insurance executive Brian Thompson by a twisted sociopath over “corporate greed.”
The scientists linked assassination culture with “left-wing authoritarianism,” a creed bordering on totalitarianism where coercion and silencing opponents are rebranded as humane tools of liberation.
Chillingly, the researchers found the problem is not just ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ – a seeming mental affliction affecting Trump critics in which anything the president says or does is excoriated for its perceived evil intent.
Rather, the problem is a worldview that allows for political violence as an acceptable tool to advance political goals. “This pattern,” the researchers noted, “suggests a broader worldview in which violence is seen as a legitimate political response.”
Leftists, they found, have turned violence into a virtue, glorifying it as necessary and justified, especially when directed at symbols of government power or conservative politics.
“These attitudes are not fringe,” the researchers warned. “They reflect an emerging assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in online discourse.”
Treating Disagreement as ‘Hate Speech’
Charlie Kirk’s successful Turning Point movement upheld a foundational American ideal enshrined in the First Amendment: freedom of speech. The left —once the staunchest defender of individual rights— has rejected this ideal, branding any speech they find unfavorable as “hate” speech, and equating it with violence.
In liberal circles, disagreement with progressive dogma is no longer debate—it’s ‘hate speech,’ and is treated as a threat. By this logic, questioning liberal policies is termed an act of violence, while silencing dissent is framed as necessary for the public good.
By equating undesired speech with violence, leftists conveniently grant themselves the ‘right’ to use violence under the noble banner of self-defense.
How did these bizarre notions gain traction in society? Consider these headlines from academia, a mere sampling of the liberal ideology of “micro-aggression” that enshrines victimhood.
“Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones but Names Can Really Hurt You: Justifying the Use of Force Against ‘Mere’ Words” (Pace University Law Review, 2008)
“Micro-Aggressions: Death by a Thousand Cuts” (Scientific American, 2021)
“The Violence of Free Speech” (Georgetown University Law Center, 2024)
The Invention of ‘Micro-Aggression’
These articles formalize the concept of “micro-aggressions,” a term popularized by a Harvard psychologist that refers to the act of creating a hostile environment with particular words or actions that appear benign but can “somehow” lead to violence.
Many Ivy League universities officially prohibit micro-aggression, which in turn justifies the perceived need for “safe spaces” on campus, as well as the need for “cancel culture.”
In one example of the rush to coddle students by protecting them from “micro-aggression,” Brandeis University officials last year rescinded their invitation to the famed Somali writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose criticisms of radical Islam were said to have violated the school’s “core values.”
Brandeis officials claimed allowing her to speak would be hurtful to Muslim students, a form of “micro-aggression.”
The repugnant irony is that these same institutions that ban micro-aggressions against some minorities turn a blind eye to hardcore aggression against Jewish students.
In a glaring example of double standards, a 2024 lawsuit by Jewish students accused Harvard of staggering hypocrisy—remaining indifferent to open calls for genocide against Jews and Israelis, even as it outlawed the most trivial ‘micro-aggressions’ against other minorities.
“Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel,” the brief argued, while the same administration warns students against micro-aggressions such as “sizeism,” “fat-phobia,” “ageism,” racism, or “ableism.”
These are “new-age” terms for any action or comment that makes a thin-skinned person feel belittled for his size, weight, color, or lack of aptitude.
In another example of dual standards, Vassar College faculty and students held a meeting last year to discuss the school’s movement to boycott Israel. Before the meeting, an English professor announced the dialogue would “not be guided by cardboard notions of civility.”
In other words, instead of holding participants to the guidelines of civilized discourse, any and all speech, including the abusive kind, would be allowed when the subject was Israel.
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Micro-aggression At Its Most Absurd
A number of universities have published guides, training courses, and statements on micro-aggressions, as part of university campaigns to eliminate these perceived offenses. Some of the examples are so absurd, it defies belief that anyone with any degree of intelligence would take them seriously.
A few examples of supposedly “micro-aggressive racist” statements taken from one of the training manuals:
“I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” Why is that considered racist? Because the speaker is perpetuating the notion of meritocracy—that one must demonstrate merit in order to get ahead—which negates DEI doctrine that became a national government policy under former president Joe Biden.
[DEI preaches that to be fair, all job appointments must be equally distributed, regardless of superior or inferior talent, job performance and qualifications. One of President Trump’s first executive orders after he assumed office was to sweepingly dismantle DEI programs across all government branches.]
Other innocuous statements or questions deemed unacceptable by the university training manual are: “Where are you from or where were you born?” Such questions can cause discomfort and embarrassment to members of a minority group, especially one who is illegally in the country, the manual explains.
Yet another so-called form of ‘micro-aggression’ is ‘denial’—refusing to validate someone’s sense of victimhood. Even a harmless comment like, ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by that,’ when told of a racist remark, is branded as hurtful and (micro) aggressive.
Attack on Free Speech
Micro-aggression theory is nothing less than an attack on free speech, critics say. Tyrants have always started out supporting free speech as it serves as a basic tool for indoctrination and propaganda.
Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability to those in power and must be suppressed. This can increasingly be seen on university campuses and in many quarters in broader society.
Western values of liberty are under relentless assault from the academic elite on campuses across America, experts warn. Their goal is to replace free speech, religious freedom, and other personal liberties with government control.
The tactic is simple but chilling: brand all opposition as ‘hate speech’ and a threat to safety—thereby excusing censorship and even violence as acts of self-defense.
Universities have thus devolved into bastions of irrationality, absurdity and authoritarianism—eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, with its groupthink, doublespeak, and state-engineered thought control.
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Zero Tolerance
Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau warned this week that foreign visitors in the U.S. who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination could have their visas revoked.
After personally responding to the first wave of posts, Landau said that as the reactions multiplied into a flood, he instructed consular authorities to monitor the social media threads.
Two military officers, Army Col. Scott Stephens and Army Reserves Maj. Bryan Bintliff, were suspended after posting comments cheering Kirk’s assassination, Fox News reported.
An Army spokesperson confirmed Stephens’ suspension and said there is an investigation underway into his conduct.
The Hill ran a story headlined, “Pentagon tracking employees who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” in which Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell vowed to track all those military personnel praising or mocking the assassination of a fellow American.
“It is unacceptable; the Department of War has zero tolerance for it,” he said.
In a similar vein, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller scored teachers and government workers for celebrating the assassination, noting “there is a radical domestic terror movement in this country.”
“We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile,” Miller addressed those who reveled in the assassination and called for similar retribution against “racists” and “Zionists.”
