Charlie Kirk and The Turning Point

At about 6:30 a.m., sunlight cut into my small room in Switzerland—like any other day. Out of habit, I scrolled through the headlines. Then the alert: Charlie Kirk, shot dead during a campus event at Utah Valley University. Age 31. The words did not sit right; they hovered, somewhat unreal.

For most of my countrymen back home, his name barely registers unless they track U.S. politics. I may be among the few. Since Trump’s first run in 2015, Kirk’s profile climbed with Turning Point USA, the student organization he helped build, and a reel of campus debates and viral clips. He lived by the pen and the microphone. Reactions came fast and mixed: grief, anger, and, shamefully, celebration in some quarters. This is not a trial of his ideas. A man of faith will believe it is bad to speak ill of the dead. This is about what his death says about the condition of discourse in America and across the West.

Here’s the blunt truth: a murder on a debate stage is a rupture. It announces that a growing share of public life no longer trusts words to do politics. For many on the right, it will read as proof that the classical liberal model, which argues, persuades, and coexists, is collapsing. A man who his detractors have accused of violent rhetoric was shot on a campus stage, before a large audience, during an open debate, the very forum built for disagreement and conversation. The irony could not be more palpable.

His assassination is not only a tragedy, but a grim precedent. Surely, Kirk’s rise was built on confrontational conversation. He thrived on Q&A lines and the back-and-forth. His critics said he stoked culture-war resentments; his supporters saw a needed counterweight to progressive dominance in universities. Both can be true: he was polarizing and effective, with the ability to capture a huge chunk of the American right. But he chose argument as his instrument. Answering that with a bullet is a statement that debate and the freedom for conversation have come to an end.

It is tempting, especially online, to say he “lived by the sword" and had "paid the price" through the sword. On the contrary, he did not organize militias; he organized microphones. He did not smuggle weapons into auditoriums; he smuggled ideas people might loathe. And when gatekeepers decide who is inside the bounds of the sayable, the crowd learns to sort neighbors into devils. It is no longer the elite versus "the people"; it is the people versus people. Call speech “violence” long enough, and actual violence will occur in the face of speech. At that point, there is nothing to talk about anymore, because the microphone is already staring down the muzzle. Whatever Kirk's vision on his organization, his life and end is certainly a turning point, for better or worse. The liberal, democratic order that the West once imagined is breaking apart, not due to those against it, but by those who believe in protecting it. The democratic process of dialogue was put to an end by a bullet in the name of democracy.

The media and the Democratic Party officials are no innocent in the making of this tragedy. They have advanced and groomed the current situation for over a decade. President Biden, in his speech on 1 September 2022 in Philadelphia, PA, on The Continuous Battle of The Soul of America, has called the MAGA movement, in his own words,

"And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution.  They do not believe in the rule of law.  They do not recognize the will of the people. 

They refuse to accept the results of a free election.  And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country."

Kamala Harris, former presidential candidate, has called President Trump a "fascist" throughout her campaign trail (Tait, 2024). The world after the Second World War understands that to call an opponent as fascist is the same as to put a bounty on their heads. They deserve no space in the conversation. The result? Trump himself has survived through several assassination attempts. Not to mention, plenty of left-leaning news outlets, have called upon Kirk's death as deserving due to his opinions alone, even within his obituary (Klee et al., 2025; The New York Times, 2025; Tomlinson, 2025) . As further evidence, data provided by YouGov per 11 September 2025, found 25 (14 percent unsure) percent of very liberals and 17 percent of liberals (12 percent unsure) see political violence as justified, compared to only 6 percent of conservatives (9 percent unsure) and 3 percent of very conservatives (5 percent unsure) (Montgomery, 2025). We could go on, but the evidence is clear, the radicalization of the left exists, supported by the official political party and media.

A land ravaged by nihilism, distrust, envy, and rage toward itself will not stand for long. The results of progressivist discourse have helped harden an inconsolable divide. The progressives have been obsessed with preaching the issues of "othering" and their strive for inclusivity, so that they have failed to see their own sins, with no remorse and no empathy. A society that preaches love and compassion while branding opponents as violent, unsavable devils can never be at peace. The West has believed that in the post-World War 2 era, it had succeeded in removing the essence of violence from politics. But the coming force that has been born out of it is a violent, nihilistic ideology filled with hatred of self and others. There is no existing tool to fight against this. A need for deradicalization is imminent. For when one side has blatantly demanded for the deaths of the other, there is no conversation left that can be made. The current US administration must take decisive actions. It is no longer a conversation of national stability; it is a deeper problem with the future of civilization itself.

It is a mistake to leave out that the dominant left-wing narratives that treat speech as violence and opponents as illegitimate have contributed to a climate where a debate-stage killing becomes imaginable in the West once again. The celebratory reactions by a large and loud crowd on the death of a person, completely desensitized by the gravitas of such violence, illustrate the cost, and they were clear: those people deserved it. Perhaps for those who still believed the rules of peaceful discourse still bind both sides, like Kirk himself, this could be a brutal correction. How long before others become disillusioned, give up their trust in law and order, and take matters into their own hands while the pleas for peaceful discourse and normalcy can no longer be acceptable and fall on deaf ears? This environment cannot continue.

First, they came for the alt-right, and I did not speak out—Because they deserved it.

Then they came for the conservatives, and I did not speak out—Because they deserved it.

Then they came for the centrists and the apolitical, and I did not speak out—Because they deserved it.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me, because I have been cheering for others' deaths all this time.

References:

Connor Tomlinson. (2025, September 17). The Left Are Lying About Charlie Kirk's Killer [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/usH_moKxjDY?si=pCGASHSGV4R2fP7X.

Klee, M., Dickinson, T., Ramirez, N.M. (2025, September 10). Charlie Kirk, Right-Wing Activist and Trump Ally, Dead at 31. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-founder-dead-1235424931/.

Montgomery, D. (2025, September 13). What Americans really think about political violence. YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll.

Tait, R. (2024, October 23). Kamala Harris denounces Trump as ‘fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked power’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/23/harris-trump-fascist-hitler-comments-election.

The New York Times (2025, September 10). Charlie Kirk, Right-Wing Force and a Close Trump Ally, Dies at 31. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/charlie-kirk-dead.html.

The New York Times (2024, July 13). Trump Is Safe After Assassination Attempt; Suspected Gunman Is Dead. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/charlie-kirk-dead.html.

The White House. (2022, September 1). Remarks by President Biden on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation. The White House. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/09/01/remarks-by-president-bidenon-the-continued-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-nation/.