Charlie Kirk - Part II
1993 - 2025
Note: This is the second part of a two-part essay. Read the first part here:
The Shooter is Caught - Surprise!(?)
[Black women] do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously. - Charlie Kirk, July 13th, 2023
For the first 48 or so hours after the murder, the media was afire with speculation. Most assumed that Kirk’s killer had to have been a radicalized liberal. After all, Kirk was a paragon of good and a pillar of the Right, so anyone who wanted to kill him had to be a filthy lefty, right?
That was obviously the assumption made by the President of the United States who, without any evidence to support it, posted a four-minute video laying blame for the attack squarely at the feet of the “radical left”. Notice also that Trump does not mention the assassination of Hortman in his Oval Office diatribe, he only talks about attacks on Conservatives.
At a time when a rational leader would realize that the temperature needed to come down, quick, Trump instead threw gas on the blaze, as he is often wont to do. This isn’t the first time the president has publicly claimed something without a shred of evidence. Remember all the way back during his first week in office when he insisted that the collision of a passenger jet and military helicopter was caused by DEI? There were still bodies in the water when he made this outrageous claim, but that didn’t matter to Trump, just as the actual facts regarding the Kirk killing don’t matter to him now.
He wasn’t the only one, of course. Several other GOP members, who are all allegedly adults, took to their social media megaphones and called for some evil shit to be done to all Democrats. ALL Democrats. After all, if the Dems could take out King Charles, then who was safe, right?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Wall Street Journal ran with a story from a “source” who claimed that bullets found in the killer’s rifle were etched with “transgender and antifascist ideology”. This, as you can imagine, fed the Right’s rage beast quite well. 1
As you can imagine, this put an already othered community even more in the sights of those who wish to do them harm. Not the least of whom was the ridiculous Representative from South Carolina, Nancy Mace. I took a moment to focus on her disgusting comments here:
Unfortunately, the vitriol wasn’t limited to politicians, as the unhinged Right took to their Town Square on X to call for Civil War, in no uncertain terms. To be clear, these are some of the most influential people on the political Right, and all of these comments were made on the day of the shooting, while the killer was still at large and, therefore, no one had any way to know their motives.
Tell me again, Mr. President, how it’s the rhetoric from the Left that is the root of our nation’s ills.
Then a funny thing2 happened. To the chagrin of all of these “patriots”, the shooter was apprehended late Thursday night.3 Against all precedent and in a truly stunning development, the shooter turned out to not be a transgendered radical left lunatic, but an (apparently) straight, white, young man. A man who was raised in a Conservative Mormon family. A family who, based on the photos on their various Facebook pages, were big fans of firearms.4 No, this kid is most likely not a lefty. In fact, there are strong indications that he is a terminally online 4 Chan kid. This white on white attack may actually be a form of intra-MAGA violence. We don’t know though, because he was just arrested and the evidence hasn’t been made public. So I will stop here before I make any sweeping assumptions about his motives.
What’s Next?
In a development that should surprise no one, the initial speculation surrounding so much of the Kirk assassination proved to be unfounded. But damage was most certainly done. How do we move forward from this?
There is no doubt that we are in one of the more dangerous and unstable moments in our nation’s history. The atomic nature of social media means that there is not one centralized source of news. While this should be a good thing, it also opens the doors for bad actors to try to influence and destabilize the country. In fact Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, said as much, publicly claiming that bots from Russia, China, and other overseas locations were attempting to inflame the situation. If more politicians were like Cox perhaps cooler heads could prevail.
Sadly, those who were immediately calling for liberal blood on Wednesday have either gone silent, pivoted to claiming Robinson’s was a good kid who was radicalized in college, or the old standby, praying for this poor lost lamb.5
I don’t know that I have an answer. I don’t see this administration ever accepting their role in the state of political discourse today. Even after the arrest was made, you had the President stating that radical Right folks were fine, that all of our problems were due to the radical Left. They are simply incapable of admitting that they were wrong, and that comes from the top.
My concern is that things like this can spiral. People who are constantly being accused of horrible things may start to develop a mindset of “if they are going to keep calling me a radical, then maybe I will do radical things”. I am not condoning it, but I know it happens and could happen here. The fact is people are being pushed. They see an administration that refuses to be constrained and are feeling helpless. They hear a constant stream of shit from a federal government that tells them that their beliefs don’t matter, that they are wrong, and that “true” Americans fully support this administration. Whether or not this is factually accurate doesn’t matter.
People are also seeing an administration that is, by design, flooding the zone with shock and awe. They see the president of the United States posting memes about going to war against an American city. They see the Department of Homeland Security callously posting tweets about locking up innocent migrants. They see Congress abdicating their duty and letting all of this happen.
Perhaps most egregious, they see the courts try to rein in the lawlessness, only to have the admin ignore court orders and even publicly rebuke the judges. People can only see lawlessness go unpunished for so long before they start to harbor very dark thoughts. While I certainly don’t agree, I can see how people may feel like there is no other option.
We also have to navigate a toxic media environment. I am obviously including social media here, because that is where a majority of Americans now get their news. The media atmosphere is predicated on engagement. Media companies need to have clicks, links, eyeballs, etc., and sadly it seems that the easiest way to drive these numbers up is to piss people off. Anger drives engagement after all. The formula is simple: post something divisive and controversial. Those that agree with it will spread it because it reinforces their beliefs. Those who disagree will also share it far and wide, signal boosting it while decrying the message. And the cycle continues.
At the end of the day, we have to understand that the environment in which we currently live is one that was created, fostered, and maintained by this administration. They want this. This admin are masters and pissing people off to the point that they break, then saying “look at them break, the savages”. If any of the mainstream media outlets had an ounce of courage, they would call this administration’s behavior out. Instead, they cave to ridiculous threats.
Final Thoughts
In the wake of Kirk’s killing, Florida (of course) Representative Anna Paulina Luna called for a statue of Charlie Kirk to be placed the Capitol. I 100% agree. With one condition.
The statue should be part of an interactive exhibit that loops some of his greatest hits. I mean, if you are gonna venerate the man, you gotta share the reasons. Let everyone know just who it is that you revere.
Obviously, that is tongue in cheek. Again, Kirk was not an elected official. He was not an active duty or retired member of our armed services. He was a podcaster who debated kids that just got out of high school. It’s already beyond ridiculous that the Vice President skipped a 9/11 memorial to go to Utah. It’s beyond ridiculous that they loaded Kirk’s body onto Air Force Two to take him back to Arizona. It’s beyond ridiculous that Republicans are suggesting that Kirk lay in state in the Capitol.
Kirk made his mark by pissing people off. That was his thing. You can't make a living as an outrage merchant then act surprised when people get outraged. When political discourse panders to the ideological extremes in pursuit of ratings or clicks, then extremism is bound to happen. Charlie Kirk made a conscious decision to trade in these things, but doing so carries risks. When you try to rally extremists, there is always the chance that the extremists that respond are not the ones who agree with you.
At the end of the day, Kirk was consumed by the outrage environment that he played a large part in creating.
Some time after Kirk’s death was announced, a friend of mine posted the following. He had seen it on a Reddit thread. I searched and searched to properly attribute it, but could not find the source. The words, however, are too good and too fitting to not share. I will end with them.
Charlie Kirk built his brand on division, outrage, and fear, especially around guns, race, gender, and “culture war” politics. He’s spent years telling his audience that mass shootings are just the “cost of liberty,” that gun deaths are “worth it,” and that armed citizens are the solution, not the problem.
But today, that rhetoric came full circle.
No one deserves violence, not children in schools, not worshipers in churches, not innocent people in public spaces, and not even those who have spent years justifying it.
But we can’t ignore the boomerang effect of spreading hate, radicalizing followers, and shrugging off preventable deaths as a political tradeoff. When you pour gasoline on the fire of American extremism, it eventually burns everything, including those who lit the match.
Kirk once said gun violence is “part of liberty.” Today, he’s living the consequences of the world he helped shape.
Words matter. Hate has consequences. And the truth is, you can only normalize violence for so long before it finds its way back to you.
Take Care and Stay Strong, Together.
While there were messages on the shell casings, they had nothing at all to do with “transgender ideology” and even calling them antifascist is a stretch.
Not funny, of course.
Even though the shooter turned himself in on Thursday, no announcement was made until Trump could make one himself, Friday morning on Fox and Friends. Because of course.
I would share some of the photos, but I don’t have a Facebook account (and you shouldn’t either) and the family has been apparently deleting the photos.
It has been truly amazing to see the online right cycle so quickly through the various stages of denial.