On September 10th, 2025, a debate bro died in Utah. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and perennial crusader against “the woke left”, was fatally shot in the neck by a rooftop sniper at Utah Valley University. This was in front of 3,000 attendees on the first stop of his American Comeback Tour. He died doing what he loved, debating and engaging with youth, stoking the fires of division, and furthering the cause of the Republican Party.  

AP/Website

Origins

Charlie Kirk first broke into the media in 2012 with an essay published by Breitbart. At the time, he was just an idealistic student at Wheeling High School, located in the village of Wheeling, Illinois. Representing his conservative student group SOS Liberty, he claimed that the AP Economics textbooks provided to students presented an unfair and biased viewpoint of Ronald Reagan’s economic policies, which was a tactic of “liberal brainwashing”. This essay eventually earned Kirk his first appearance on national television on the Fox Business channel, when he was only 17 years old. 

In 2012, Kirk co-founded the nonprofit organization Turning Point USA, also known by its abbreviated form as “TPUSA”. The group’s mission statement (according to their website) is: “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”. They are essentially a group whose mission is to further the interests of the Republican Party by “sharing the good news”, as it were, amongst students and young people. Throughout the mid 2010s and 2020s, TPUSA quickly ballooned into one of—if not the most—influential right wing youth group in America. According to The Guardian, the organization drew from the wells of deep pocketed donors such as the Bradley Foundation and Donors Trust. This funding allowed the group to gain prestige and acclaim with the Republican Party, especially once Donald Trump’s MAGA ideology took hold. Essentially, the group became the de facto youth outreach wing of the party. Thus, Kirk’s place as a powerful and influential figure within modern conservatism was solidified: the youthful heir to the ideology whose foundation was constructed by Ronald Reagan many years ago.  

The Killing

On a lovely Utahn afternoon, Charlie Kirk was discussing the issue of mass shootings in America and, according to the BBC, the last word out of his mouth was “violence,” before he was struck in the neck with a bullet (how poetic). Blood surged from Kirk’s wound like a poorly tapped barrel of merlot as panic and chaos erupted in the crowd through screams of horror and anguish. Within minutes, footage began circulating online, captured from a range of far away and up close, uploaded to every conceivable social media platform. This began a firestorm that went on for days and likely will continue well into the next year, unless another high-profile assassination occurs. Naturally, opinions are divided, with some saying he deserved his death and others asserting that he did not. One question remained unanswered, looming large above the media circus: who killed Charlie Kirk? 

A brief manhunt led to authorities apprehending the suspect, a young man by the name of Tyler Robinson, on September 13th. Robinson is a 22-year-old student from St. George Utah, raised in a conservative household. Utah Governor Spencer Cox claimed that Robinson is in fact a leftist, based upon alleged interviews with his family. Despite Cox’s claims, very few details are known about the specifics of his ideology, or even if he is in fact a leftist. He has yet to make any declarations in his own words, except for the writings on some of his shell casings which read “Notices bulge, OWO what’s this?”, “Hey fascist! CATCH!”, “If you read this you are GAY lmao.”, and the lyrics of the Italian folk song “Bella Ciao”. If anything can be learned from these writings, it is that Robinson was clearly an avid internet user – very much online – seemingly yet another Gen Z assassin in the vein of Luigi Mangione and attempted assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks.  

The Reaction

On the right side of the political spectrum, Kirk was instantly canonized. He was framed as a martyr for freedom of speech who was laid low by an assassin allegedly inflamed by leftist ideology, though the political stance of the killer was complete conjecture. On X, influencers such as Laura Loomer demanded justice and vengeance against the nebulous “Left”. “Charlie Kirk gave his life for America. We all had our disagreements here and there but there was no denying Charlie Kirk was a patriot. We must all continue to fight for his legacy. The best way President Trump can reinforce Charlie’s legacy is by cracking down on the Left with the full force of the government.”. On September 10th, in a video uploaded to X, President Trump stated that “violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible”. He went on to also blame the radical left for the killing, despite no concrete information pointing to the perpetrator being a leftist. These two responses essentially encapsulate the conservative reaction to the incident. Even in posts expressing condolences to Kirk’s widow and family, they cannot resist spitting venom at the left, opportunistic to a fault as always.  

More curious than the conservative response was that of the liberals. On X, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris all expressed condolences and expressed the same sentiment of “we may disagree politically, but violence is wrong.”. A noble sentiment sure, but oddly misplaced, though typical of the ineffectual and impotent modern liberals. What seems incredibly strange is that Kirk himself never extended such grace and respect to his political opponents. This is exemplified by the brutal beating of Paul Pelosi by an intruder in his home, to which Kirk callously responded “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go bail this guy out”. Turns out, Kirk abhorred empathy itself as he once said on episode of his podcast, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.”. Though we cannot state for certain that Kirk would have reacted in the same way if, say, NY Congresswoman AOC or the talk show host and so-called “Millennial Jon Stewart” Adam Friedland were killed in a similar manner, it is abundantly clear that Republicans have a very different approach when it comes to sensitive topics such as political violence.  

The online left reacted to Kirk’s death in perhaps the most interesting way, oscillating between laughter, indifference, confusion, and elation. One X user stated, “My mom is like melting the f*** down about Charlie Kirk like actually grieving crying real tears. She didn’t even cry when her uncle died. We are Canadian what is happening”, and another jokingly referenced The Joker (2019): “you’re laughing? My 13-year-old cousin lost his biggest role model and you’re laughing?”. Charlie Kirk was seen by the left as at worst, a dangerous adversary who stood in opposition to everything they stood for and at best, a spiteful yet mostly harmless troll admired by edgy teenage boys. Some may call the presented reactions tasteless and borderline psychopathic, though they seem to represent a sense of nihilism that overlays much of leftist discourse in the post-pandemic era, where if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.  

Hypocrisy

Though Republicans claim to be staunch advocates for free speech and freedom of expression, this event has caused them to expose their true colours. “Journalists” such as Laura Loomer have began a crusade in the past few days, posting identifying information of those who mocked the killing to her X account and taking great pleasure in “owning the libs”, as always. The most damaging example of this is the now deactivated website Charliesmurderers.com, whose mission was made clear in their now inaccessible “about us” section which once read: “We seek to collect and archive instances of individuals promoting or glorifying of political violence, much like archive.org or archive.is. We firmly denounce all political violence and criminal activity.”. Though they claim that their repository was quite similar to archive.org, it was not even close to that. Archive.org (as any resourceful post-secondary student should know) is a free of charge and searchable database of art which includes literature, photos, videos, music, and even some video games. In reality, the Charliesmurderers site was meant to dox those who spoke ill of or criticized the deceased Charlie Kirk. It was a substantial blacklist which took open submissions including the full names, locations, occupations, and usernames of college students, comedians, and regular folk who dared to criticize Saint Charlie on social media. This site essentially placed targets on the backs of a great number of innocent people so that any wild-eyed neo-Nazi, gun obsessed Christo fascist, or shadowy G-man could “take care” of them. That may be an alarmist statement, but there are many ethical concerns with this sort of practice, and it is becoming a dangerous world out there.  

Naturally, the phenomenon of “exposing” the critics of the late Charlie Kirk has led to some terrible conclusions. A growing number of people have faced consequences in the real world for their criticisms online. Richard Luscombe of The Guardian claimed that a number of “teachers, firefighters, journalists, politicians, a Secret Service employee, a junior strategist at Nasdaq and a worker for a prominent NFL team” have been fired or suspended for their opinions as of September 13th, 2025. Perhaps the most prominent firing is that of Matthew Dowd, a political analyst for MSNBC who was fired after making this statement on live television: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”. This is seemingly innocuous, essentially “what goes around comes around”, and he is not wrong considering Charlie Kirk was a part of the modern conservative ideological machine which for the past 10 or so years has been sowing the seeds of chaos, discord, and fear of “the other”. It is only natural that somebody out there would get mad enough to do something drastic and take matters into their own hands.  

The Death Knell of Free Speech?

I feel like I should be completely clear at this point. Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die. He was abrasive, combative, and completely opposed to me politically, but he did not deserve death. He never personally brought harm upon any of the groups he spoke ill of, unlike many of his associates in the federal government, i.e., President Trump, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth. He was also not some dangerous and conniving billionaire such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg. Aside from his business successes, Kirk was unremarkable in terms of intellect and analysis skills. He was no William F. Buckley Jr. or Jordan Peterson. He was just another debate bro, like Hasan Piker, Vaush, Dean Withers, Ben Shapiro, and Destiny. Simply a copy of a copy of a copy. Though he was unremarkable, the Republicans seem hellbent on deifying him for some reason and I do not believe that reason to be sincere. It has been made clear that members of the right-wing community – in the U.S. and abroad – are utilizing the killing of Charlie Kirk as an opportunity to get back at “the left” for the whole “cancel culture” thing by threatening people’s livelihoods. One can only hope that “the buck stops here” as it were, but in truth, things will probably only get much worse from here. 

As the shot rang out across the quad at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk shuffled off this mortal coil. Amidst the din of the screams of horror from thousands of mouths, one could faintly here a ringing: the death knell for free speech and political moderacy, thus began America’s Years of Lead.