The assasination of the far-right ‘Christian Nationalist’ podcaster and political activist Charlie Kirk has unleashed worldwide condemnation of the dangers of ‘political violence’. Establishment figures and media almost universally, unquestioningly echo Donald Trump’s attacks on the “radical left” whom he blames for “terrorism”.
The reality is that for ten consecutive years, the far-right has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of ideologically motivated killings in the United States, 75% can be classified ‘right wing’, just 4% ‘left wing’.
Kirk, who established the far-right campus pressure group ‘Turning-Point USA’ (TPUSA) in 2012, built a media career and personal fortune on the dissemination of hate speech directed at migrants, the queer, and especially trans, communities and people of colour, inflaming this campaign of terror.
Ironically, Kirk whose neck was pierced by a bullet from a legal, automatic rifle in a ‘free-carry’ state had declared that: ‘It’s worth it, to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.’
Turning-Point USA
TPUSA peddled the myth that US Universities are left-wing “islands of totalitarianism”, “poisoning our youth with anti-American ideas” – when in reality they remain dominated by big business, elitism and conservatism. The minority of left-wing and even liberal academics were targeted by the TPUSA’s ‘Professor Watch’ website.
Black journalist and professor Stacey Patton has written on facebook that “I am on Charlie Kirk’s hit list. His so-called ‘Professor Watchlist’ … is nothing more than a digital hit list for academics who dare to speak truth to power. I landed there in 2024… once my name went up, the harassment machine roared to life.
“For weeks my inbox and voicemail were deluged. Mostly white men spat venom through the phone: ‘bitch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘n****r.’ They threatened all manner of violence. They overwhelmed the university’s PR lines and the president’s office with calls demanding that I be fired. The flood was so relentless that the head of campus security reached out to offer me an escort, because they feared one of these keyboard soldiers might step out of his basement and come do me harm.”
“I am not unique. Kirk’s Watchlist has terrorized legions of professors across this country. Women, Black faculty, queer scholars, basically anyone who challenged white supremacy, gun culture, or Christian nationalism suddenly found themselves targets of coordinated abuse. Some received death threats… That is the culture of violence Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence. He curated it, monetized it, and sicced it on anyone who dared to puncture his movement’s lies…And now the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle.”
Whipping up hatred
Under the guise of campaigning for ‘Free Speech’ on campuses Kirk promoted a hostile environment for ideas which challenge the racial oppression, toxic masculinity, violence and corruption rife in US capitalism and academia.
He spewed an endless stream of frequently implausible lies, and bogus statistics directed at people of colour, Jews, the trans community, migrants, and even climate scientists. When called out (for instance on a completely fictitious claim to have lost a place at West Point military academy to a ‘far-less qualified’ lesbian candidate) he successively, defended his claims, altered them, and claimed they were sarcasm, or ‘something I’d heard’, before denying he ever made them!
Kirk and TPUSA were central to the attempts to overturn Trump’s 2016 election defeat, Kirk announced he was sending 80 buses to the ‘stop the steal’ rally which launched the January 6th Capitol invasion, typically subsequently revising the number to seven.
Conflicts in the far-right
Facts are emerging which suggest that counter to the official and media narrative that Kirk was struck down by a leftist ‘anti-fa’ terrorist, his assassin may in fact have crawled out of the racist cess-pit of the US far-right.
Tyler Robinson, the individual arrested after confessing to the crime comes from a Mormon, gun-toting, MAGA background. The slogans on his gun casings, touted as evidence of his anti-fascism, are equally compatible with the bizarre online ‘gamer’ culture of the ‘Groyper Army’, supporters of the fascist Nick Fuentes who have targeted Kirk for his alleged ‘betrayals’ of their cause at the Capitol and elsewhere.
Whether this proves to be the case or not, objectively a lone assassin substituting their individual actions, however brave and daring, for mass struggle, which mobilises the social power of the whole oppressed can only strengthen, not destroy, reaction.
Need to combat new dangers
Already, Kirk’s widow, in a carefully choreographed media presentation accompanied by posed pictures of her weeping over his coffin, has vowed to take revenge: “The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They should all know this: if you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across the country and this world.”
Similarly, Trump’s appointee as FBI director Kash Patel, ended his eulogy to Kirk with the words “Rest now, brother. We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.” Terminology snatched from Norse mythology, bizarrely addressed by a Hindu to a ‘Christian Nationalist’ can only make sense as a coded, but chilling, allusion to its appropriation by Hitler and the Nazis as the foundation myth of his totalitarian regime.
Averting the carnival of reaction anticipated by Patel and Erika Kirk will require a formidable mass movement of the oppressed and exploited against the real political violence ripping through communities across the USA – Trump’s racist attacks by ICE on migrant communities, the repression of Palestine solidarity actions on University campuses, the denial of bodily autonomy through abortion bans and the attempted erasure of trans and queer identity.
The time has never been more urgent to build an intersectional resistance to this which picks up from the traditions of Black Lives Matter and #Me Too and rebuilds them even stronger in every school, college, workplace and community across the continent.