The tragic irony of Charlie Kirk’s assassination

3 days ago 4

Opinion

September 11, 2025 — 3.30pm

Charlie Kirk was fatally wounded by an assassin’s bullet while fielding a question about gun violence. At a university rally in central Utah on Wednesday afternoon, US-time, the youthful conservative firebrand and brilliant MAGA organiser was taking questions. He delighted in being confronted with arguments from the left, which he could then demolish, to the delight of his young and appreciative audience.

Video posted on social media of the moment is a bit hard to hear, but the questioner says: “Do you know how many massacres there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in Utah on Thursday.

Riposted Kirk: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

It was a nice feint. Mass murders by mentally disturbed people using pistols and rifles, and worse, are of course a plague in America. Kirk was ignoring the questioner’s point, instead pivoting to what he called “gang violence”. In the parlance of right-wing America, that translates immediately to “violence from black people”. Gang violence is a problem in some cities, but violence in America across the board has been declining for decades and, of course, immense police power has always been wielded against criminals of colour. And we all know that violence and crime remain an intractable part of poverty in the country.

But such feints were what Kirk was good at. It was his well-polished technique to, in effect, defend and rationalise the carnage that unfettered gun ownership wreaks in the US each year. And right after he uttered those words, a shot rang out, he fell backwards to the ground, and the crowd began fleeing in terror. What seems to have been an assassination – a targeted killing based on his politics – will now open up a new and disturbing plot line in what is already a terrifying chapter in American history.

Kirk had been a fixture in right-wing politics for years, but was still only 31. He built his movement – dubbed Turning Point USA – by firing up young Americans with the usual class and race resentments and caricatures of the left as hating America, the constitution and democracy in general. But his youthful mien and untroubled countenance were a striking contrast to the unkempt racists, good-old-boy southerners and poltroonish politicians who usually espoused similar talking points.

There has been disturbing political violence directed at prominent people in both political parties of late. A pair of Democratic Minnesota politicians were shot just a few months ago. A police officer and former marine riled about vaccines shot hundreds of rounds at the headquarters of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta last month. Those attacks seem to have come from the right … but, of course, Donald Trump has survived two assassination attempts. The sad thing that all these events have in common is that the shooters shared mental problems, which became potentially lethal due to the ready availability of guns.

That didn’t stop the warriors of social media from leaping into action. From the right, the rhetoric became inflamed immediately. There’s no word as I write this about who the killer was, but many jumped to conclusions. Sean Davis, editor of The Federalist web magazine, a right-wing propaganda site, started talking about one of the right’s favourite targets: the unspecified “they”. “They assassinated him and are now dancing on his grave,” he posted.

The usual ultra-MAGA elected officials dialled up the rhetoric to 11 immediately: “The Democrats own this,” Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from deep red South Carolina, said in an interview outside the Capitol shortly after the shooting.

On the left, from what I could discern on my platform of choice, Bluesky, the reaction was a bit more measured. I saw some refusing to mourn Kirk by pointing to his attacks on trans people. This quote of Kirk’s, from 2023, was spread widely: “It’s worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.” But most of the sophisticated figures on the site decried the violence.

One prominent X poster and Elon Musk favourite, Tim Urban, wrote shortly after the shooting: “Every post on Bluesky is celebrating the assassination. Such unbelievably sick people.” That was plainly not true.

The sad thing is that, if this was a political assassination, it was an effective one. It took out an effective communicator. However, right-wing media will no doubt keep the focus on the tragedy, correctly sensing it will be a powerful cudgel to portray the left as murderous. We also have an administration that is not shy about using governmental force in extralegal ways with little provocation. It’s likely that Charlie Kirk’s killer will do more harm than Charlie Kirk ever could.

Bill Wyman is a former assistant managing editor of National Public Radio in Washington. He teaches at the University of Sydney.

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