Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in the neck yesterday as he spoke to a large outdoor crowd at Utah Valley University. The shooter is alleged to have also be on the campus, possibly on the roof of another Building, around 125 metres away. The 31 year old founded Turning Point USA in 2012, alongside Bill Montgomery, when he was only 17 years old, which went on to become one of the leading Conservative voices in University campuses across America. The organisation prided itself on “combating liberalism” by launching initiatives such as ‘Professor Watchlist’ which collated information on academics they perceived to “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”. It also attempted to influence student governors and created a School Board Watchlist which published names and photos of members who had adopted mask mandates and anti-racist curricula. He was a close ally of President Trump and one whom many credited for the increase of MAGA popularity amongst young voters.

Trump was quick to blame the “radical left” for the shooting of Kirk and condemned political violence, before going on to imply the violence that would be meted out to the perpetrator and every organisation they might be involved with. America only understands violence, at home and abroad. Benjamin Mileikowsky was also quick to condemn the attack, focusing on Kirks defence of “Judeo-Christian civilization”. Many other far right commentators were also quick to demand crack downs, incarcerations, and the full force of government. Elon musk, always happy to crawl out from under his glittery rock, said on X “The Left is the party of murder” and Christopher Rufo, from the Conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute, wrote ” The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all those who are responsible for this chaos”. There was no mention of course of the killing of the Minnesota Democrat, Melissa Hortman, in June this year nor of the targeting of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence in an arson attack the month prior. Neither did they quote the research conducted by the National Institute of Justice stating that “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.”

I for one will not be joining the crowds mourning the death of this fascist. Charlie Kirk built his entire career on being an enemy to someone like me. He hated women, he hated people of colour and he hated Muslims. He wasn’t shy about his half-formed opinions either, in fact he was loud, proud and successful with them. His entire personality was hate and violence. Fittingly, violence was also his last word. Moments before the shooter pulled the trigger, he was asked a question about Transgender mass shooters, to which he answered, “counting or not counting gang violence”. Charlie Kirk saw the world in Black and white, and of course he thought the latter was superior. In another twist of fate, Kirk, who was also a ardent supporter of the Second Amendment, said “I think it’s worth 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. It is rational.” So, he died for what he believed in (although the truth is he believed that others should die for his right to carry a weapon). The poetic justice.

Not for a nano-second will I be made to feel anything about Kirk and his comeuppance. He promoted violence with every breath. For the past two years we have seen children hanging from buildings with their legs torn off. We have witnessed pregnant women shot in their bellies and men raped and killed violently in israeli custody. If you haven’t spoken with your whole chest about the attempted antihalation of over 2 million people in Gaza, if you’ve been silent on the genocide and forced starvation in Sudan, and the daily violence against Brown and Black bodies across the world, including in America where 1 in 3 Black men are likely to be incarcerated at some point in their lifetime and where they constitute 32% of the prison population, whilst only being 14% of the general population, you don’t get to say anything about “violence” now, because you give yourself away as a valuing white male life above all others. Kirk spent the past two years parroting israeli hasbara and promoting genocide. The chickens came home to roost.

For the past 24 hours commentors across the pond and here in the UK have been echoing the phrase “there is no place for political violence in America” and I have to wonder if they know anything about America’s history. It is a nation built on the blood and graves of the Native Americans and slavery. Today its economy is built on weapons and warfare with super prisons being the new plantations. It also has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the world. America exports violence. Between 2001 and 2023 U.S. post 9/11 wars have caused an estimated 4.5 to 4.7 million deaths, with 3.6 to 3.8 million being indirect deaths from the broader war’s impact and over 432,000 being direct deaths. These figures cover the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. They don’t even include the atrocities of the past two years. Access to education, healthcare, housing, welfare are all rooted in America’s social and racial violence towards its citizens. America had white only restaurants and water fountains as late as 1964 under the Jim Crow laws. Segregation, disenfranchisement, and dehumanisation are all part of the great American story.

The same commentators that cheer on the political violence in Nepal, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan and all across the global south, somehow can’t face the prospect of political violence in their own lands. Why? People who cheered on the assassination of Saddam Hussain, Muammar Gaddafi, Thomas Sankara, Anwar Sadat, all of whose murders America had a hand in, are now suggesting that political violence is beyond the pale? America funds the rouge state israel, which in just this past week has bombed Palestine, Syria, Doha, Yemen and Tunisia – all acts of political violence, and yet when one white male podcaster dies, we are all expected to feign shock and indignation? It is estimated that 47 people died every day in 2024 from gun violence in America and at least 1,375 people were killed by police that same year. What do you mean that there is no space for political violence in America?

Kirk was a controversial figure, but more than anything else, he was a useful tool to the far right, in life and now in death. His murder will be used to sanitise his deceitful ideas and more insidiously, to demand more censorship, more police powers, and more crackdowns. The only people who benefit from his murder are his own base. And the only people who will suffer are the people he berated: Black Americans, immigrants, Muslims and women. Let us be frank, Charlie Kirk is more useful to the people he served in death because now he is lionised and his “values” aggrandised. We can’t escape the fact that Charlie Kirk was just a cog in the machine of a society and power structure that creates people like him. One that needs the constant fear of other to thrive. Kirk, and whoever killed him are products of the same society, but rather than introspection the machine of American violence will continue to churn out more of the same degeneracy.

Let me leave you with a few of Charlie Kirks notorious comments from his YouTube show:

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’ 2024

“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more” 2023

“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?” 2024

“The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.” 2024