End Political Violence.

Tweet

Charlie Kirk is dead. The thirty-one-year-old husband and father of two was shot at the beginning of one of his signature debates at Utah Valley University. The alleged killer has now been apprehended, and officials have deemed it to be what it obviously is: a political assassination. Since news of the attack broke, there has been widespread bipartisan condemnation of Charlie’s murder. One of the first people to speak out was California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who invited Charlie onto the first episode of his new podcast “This is Gavin Newsom” earlier this year. In a post on X, Newsome called the attack on Charlie Kirk “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.” President George W. Bush (R) issued a statement saying that Charlie was “murdered in cold blood,” and the “open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct” on college campuses. Both condemned political violence.

Most lamented in the news of his death. Others offered prayers for Charlie and his family. Some celebrated. But all should recognize that this is a drastic escalation of political violence.

The concept of political violence is not new. While Charlie was not an elected official himself, he was a key political influencer and a close confidant of several politicians. Just this June, two Minnesota lawmakers were killed in their home. In 2024, there were two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump. Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise was shot while practicing for the annual congressional baseball game. President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. Robert F. Kennedy was murdered in 1968 while running in the Democratic primaries, and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was murdered in 1963. These are just a few examples of politicians being targets of violence.

The unfortunate frequency of politically motivated attacks has desensitized Americans to the violence. However, Charlie’s assassination shows a broadening of political violence the likes of which America has not seen since the early 1970’s. The escalation follows the repulsive upward trend of the increasingly divisive rhetoric to its logical, and tragic, conclusion. As a result, political violence has changed in America in two material ways.

Political Speech Alone

First, people are being targeted for the practice of free speech alone. Charlie’s political career was marked by a vivacious commitment to engaging with students and other young people in free speech and open debate. Debating anyone, anywhere, at any time was what made him famous, and what drew so much controversy. But he always kept the debate respectful, even in the face of hate. For instance, he appeared on Jubilee’s YouTube show “Surrounded,” where twenty-five people with the same or similar belief debated one person on an issue they disagreed on. Despite several attacks on his religion, his appearance and one participant hoping his daughter “got away from” him, Charlie never resorted to ad hominem.

There is an increasingly popular theory that speech is equivalent to violence. It is not. In The Coddling of the American Mind, First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff, and social psychologist Johnathan Haidt, both self-proclaimed liberals, argue just how destructive this belief is. They show how the “speech equals violence” theory has become a justification to shut people down, leads to black and white “us versus them” thinking, which leads to physical violence against those who merely disagree. The authors also demonstrate how free speech, and the free flow of ideas breaks down accordingly, as those who espouse ideas outside the accepted orthodoxy are punished, disinvited, attacked, or, in this case, killed. A chance of being shot while speaking on campus would make anyone think twice before doing an event. It also makes exercising one’s rights more costly and more likely to be canceled, as campus administrators use the cost of security to justify refusing to host the speaker.

As Charlie’s life ended, so did the type of open, outdoor event that he was holding. Universities can no longer tolerate the liability of allowing outdoor events, where thousands of people can hear a speaker for free simultaneously, due to safety concerns. This means sidewalks, courtyards, and amphitheaters, an important category of traditional public forum, will no longer be open for use. This loss restricts the speech of all, not just conservatives like Charlie. While the official motive for Charlie’s assassination has not yet been determined, it is almost certain that the goal of the assassin was to chill speech in this way.

Charlie, in thirteen years of political activism, certainly expressed opinions that others found hurtful, but he never physically harmed anyone. He was murdered, not for his actions, but for his speech. There should never be a risk of being shot while exercising an individual’s First Amendment right to free speech that is well within the bounds set by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A New Class of Victims

Second, those who use violence as a political tool have begun to target different groups. For example, people who are ostensibly non-political but deal closely with contested public policy issues have become frequent targets. Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, was shot in the back, unprovoked, while walking the streets of Manhattan. Mr. Thompson’s killer intended to make a political statement about the healthcare system. Despite Mr. Thompson having no real power over national public policy decisions, his killer received significant public support for murdering the forty-year-old husband and father of two teenage boys.

Mr. Thompson’s killer receiving such broad support shows how political violence has been normalized in America. Most people have had a bad interaction with the healthcare system, but does that justify murdering a person in no position to change health care policy? Thankfully, Charlie’s assassination has not received the same kind of broad support in the days since, but why are some types of political assassination more acceptable than others?

Judges have also been the victims of increased political targeting. Back in 2020, Federal Judge Esther Salas’ son was murdered while her husband left in critical condition by a “self-proclaimed anti-feminist,” who was targeting female judges and doctors. While only four federal judges have been killed since 1979, the number of threats and assassination attempts against judges has significantly increased. Including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh shortly after the leak of the Dobbs decision, when a man came to his house, where his wife and two daughters were staying. The man intended to murder Justice Kavanaugh, and had the locations of several other Associate Justices’ homes marked down. While judges might expect to get threats from those whose trials they preside over, or people with personal animus, it is a novel phenomenon that judges, and their families, are targeted for murder because of their constitutional jurisprudence.

However, Charlie belonged to the newest group that is now targeted for their political speech: media personalities. Charlie hosted “The Charlie Kirk Show,” a popular conservative podcast news show where he discussed the news from a political perspective in a way that interested young people. Despite his extensive political activism, Charlie neither ran for office nor was appointed to any position. He was merely a private citizen with a very public job.

Journalists, commentators, and media personalities are not murdered very often. When it does happen, it is usually in pursuit of, or due to, a story. However, the new era of mixing political activism and media threatens to change these statistics. For example, Al Sharpton, one of the most prolific American civil rights activists has his own show on MSNBC. Sharpton also condemned Charlie’s assassination, comparing it to his own attempted assassination. Political activism should not subject anyone, let alone media personalities, to murder.

Charlie’s murder is a special case, and is so broadly impactful because it is more personal than anything we have seen before. Whether or not you agreed with his politics, there is no doubt that he influenced millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle. America got to know Charlie through his shows, debates, and speeches, just like we know Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Ben Shapiro through theirs.

The public didn’t know Brian Thompson before he was killed. Nearly two-thirds of Americans can’t name a single Supreme Court Justice, let alone a circuit or district judge. But America knows Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Ben Shapiro. And America knew Charlie Kirk. Whether they loved him or hated him, they knew him. The death of someone you know carries far more impact than that of someone you don’t.

The shift to responding to speech with murder, combined with the new classes of targets has fundamentally altered the American political climate. While we have previously seen threats against media personalities, but  Charlie is the first to be murdered, exclusively for their speech, on American soil. Members of the media, as a product of their reach, hold more responsibility than most for the dissemination of information, ideas, and speech. Consequently, when they are cudgeled into silence by images of their colleague shot dead in front of three thousand people, it has a negative effect on the free flow of information to everyone. People already fear being “canceled” for their speech. Now they will also have to fear being shot for it.

The Resolution

The country now stands at a crossroads. We can choose to stop this; to change the path we are barreling down. Too many people, for far too long have turned up the temperature of political rhetoric. The water has been bubbling for a long time, and now, it has boiled over. We can continue to call those who disagree with us “fascists,” “snowflakes,” “threats,” and “enemies of freedom.” Or, we can have actual discussions about the problems facing the country. Not both. We cannot work together while attacking one another.

A red line has been crossed, and we must realize that and decide to turn down the heat. We must make a conscious effort to proactively discourage this sort of behavior, and begin modeling respect, prudence, and decency at all times, through our words and actions. Until that happens, tragedies will continue to occur, pointlessly, over what amounts to differences in opinion. Sadly, these are characteristics lost, in my opinion, a long time ago. I wish I was hopeful we would find them again, but history doesn’t bode well for the future.

I know it is possible, but I doubt we are willing.

For now, a man is dead. A wife, a widow. Two children, fatherless.

End Political Violence.