Yves here. To state what may seem obvious, the assassination of Charile Kirk has the potential to considerably deepen already large schisms in American politics. Kirk, as the circumstances of his death show, made a point of going to college campuses and as a youngish man, was a \u201crelatable\u201d figure. Even though he stood for conservative ideas that many abhor, he was opposed to the war in Ukraine and even though he had been a staunch Israel supporter, he had started questioning Netanyahu\u2019s conduct. But what set him apart from most political commentators and activists in the US was that he was willing to speak across doctrinal lines and (by reputation, I have not watched him enough to have an independent point of view) remained civil and would even concede that the other side had a point. He was also apparently genuinely outgoing and solicitous and was extremely well-liked by media professionals and elected officials; their grief about his death is apparently genuine.<\/p>\n
Despite, as we\u2019ll see below, calls from many prominent conservatives to punish the \u201cradical left,\u201d as in domestic enemies, the workings of the right wing hive mind may be diffusing this impulse. Early report focused on markings on the bullets found with the assailants gun. For instance, see the most recent Wall Street Journal headline: Early Bulletin Said Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology; Some Sources Urge Caution.<\/a> The reason for the later Journal caveat (earlier headlines weren\u2019t qualified) was that the information on the markings came via an internal police report.<\/p>\n But the bigger reason is a lot of conservatives aren\u2019t buying it. It seems too tidy even in light of Kirk\u2019s final exchange with the crowd. From the Independent<\/a>:<\/p>\n [Kirk] responded to a question from an audience member who asked: \u201cDo you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Kirk responded \u201ctoo many\u201d, which resulted in some cheers from the crowd. After the individual said there had been five, they then asked the conservative political activist how many mass shootings there had been in the US in the last decade.<\/p>\n Uttering his last words, Mr Kirk asked: \u201cCounting or not counting gang violence?\u201d before a sniper\u2019s bullet hit him in the neck.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A conservative contact who monitors its media intently focused on the fact that Trump and others almost immediately depicted the shooting as the involving more than one person (and this was separate from condemnations of lefties as stokers of \u201cterrorism\u201d). The emerging consensus in right mass opinion seems to be that the shooter was a foreign operative, The fact that as of this writing, he remains free suggests a certain level of tradecraft. At this point, he could have gotten to Mexico. If this belief gets traction, it will take some of the air out of the campaign to use this tragedy to the advantage of authoritarians and censors.<\/p>\n Ken Klippenstein provides confirmation<\/a>:<\/p>\n Today on 9\/11, it occurs to me that both the attack 24 years ago and the one that took Charlie Kirk\u2019s life yesterday are plagued by many of the same wild allegations. Foreign intelligence involvement, federal coverup, a manufactured false flag; the parallel conspiracy theories are surreal.<\/p>\n Before the assassin has even been identified, countless people (including the president) have concluded it must have been a group effort, with Fox News alluding to unspecified \u201cforeign intelligence\u201d involvement. Others on the left, meanwhile, insist that the killing was orchestrated by Donald Trump to divert attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.<\/p>\n The reason behind the insta-theories is simple: nobody trusts what the authorities have to say. That\u2019s understandable. Consider how almost a quarter of a century after the 9\/11 attacks, there are still key documents that haven\u2019t been declassified. This despite Trump\u2019s repeated promises to declassify them (and even references to a Saudi Arabian role in the attack).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n For instance, if you click through to the comments on this video clip, you\u2019ll see a lot of questions about it:<\/p>\n pic.twitter.com\/BDEeUE7Kn8<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ali (@MerruX) September 12, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n At the same time, the usual suspects are not letting this crisis-of-sorts go to waste. From Chris Hedges<\/a>:<\/p>\n The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. While toxic rhetoric and threats are lobbed across cultural divides like hand grenades, sometimes spilling over into actual violence \u2014 including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump \u2014 Kirk\u2019s killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration.<\/p>\n His murder has given the movement he represented \u2014 grounded in Christian nationalism \u2014 a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.<\/p>\n Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good. War is the final aesthetic. This is what is coming.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to have steely resolve,\u201d said conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on his show \u201cWar Room,\u201d adding, \u201cCharlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf they won\u2019t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,\u201d wrote Elon Musk on X.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire Right has to band together. Enough of this in-fighting bullshit. We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell,\u201d wrote commentator and author Matt Walsh on X. \u201cPut the personal squabbles aside. Now\u2019s not the time. This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Republican Congressman Clay Higgins wrote that he will use, \u201cCongressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk\u2026\u201d He further states \u201cI\u2019m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I\u2019m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s more of that sentiment in Hedge\u2019s post, and even more in the wild. Doxxing has begun<\/a>, along with threats to the DNC (soon deemed \u201cnot credible\u201d<\/a>) and some historically black colleges<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now to the main event.<\/p>\n By Julia Conley. Originally published at Common Dreams<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Despite the fact that the murderer of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk remained unidentified and still at large, President Donald Trump<\/a> declared the \u201cradical left\u201d as \u201cdirectly responsible\u201d for the assassination in remarks from the White House on Wednesday night\u2014comments that critics say shows Trump is more than willing to exploit the killing<\/a> for his own purposes while sowing more, not less, political violence in the future.<\/p>\n In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump said that criticism of Kirk from the left was \u201cdirectly responsible for the terrorism that we\u2019re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The president didn\u2019t specify which opponents of Kirk he believed contributed to his killing; over the years the influencer, who frequently visited college campuses to debate students, clashed with and was criticized by supporters of abortion rights<\/a>, gun control<\/a>, and immigrants\u2019 rights<\/a>. But Trump said his administration would \u201cfind each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump did not detail how the White House would determine what groups \u201ccontributed\u201d to Kirk\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n \u201cRadical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,\u201d he asserted, though he did not mention any of the political violence\u2014which is statistically more pervasive\u2014on the political right.<\/p>\n Trump: “For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/dQwhTv52a9<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The president was echoing sentiments expressed by far-right influencer Laura Loomer who has played a key role in shaping the Trump administration, lobbying for the hiring and removal of certain aides.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization,\u201d Loomer said<\/a> Wednesday, even before Kirk was publicly pronounced dead. \u201cWe must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The left is a national security threat.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Thursday op-ed<\/a> for Common Dreams<\/em>, author and journalist Christopher D. Cook laments how \u201cKirk had barely been declared dead when President Trump hideously used his killing to falsely blame and attack the left.\u201d<\/p>\n The president, writes Cook, \u201cseized the moment of widespread mourning to spread more hatred and division, in a reckless, angry televised speech that hurled blame at the left despite not a scintilla of evidence about Kirk\u2019s assassin or their politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump named a number of victims of political violence in recent years, including US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was shot in 2017 by a man who opposed the president; and Trump himself, who survived two assassination attempts last year.<\/p>\n The president did not mention the killing<\/a> earlier this year of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat. The suspect in Hortman\u2019s killing was an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) also asserted<\/a> without any evidence that critics of the far-right agenda that Kirk embraced were to blame for his killing, specifically suggesting that her Democratic colleagues were implicated in the assassination.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats own what happened today,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cSome raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck.\u201d<\/p>\n Mace added that it was \u201cridiculous\u201d to suggest that by her logic, Republican lawmakers \u201cown\u201d Hortman\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n The comments from Trump and Mace, wrote Cook, only show that these are \u201cnot the people who are going to lead us out of this ugly toxic pit\u201d of political violence now pervasive in the United States.<\/p>\n At Zeteo<\/em>, journalist Mehdi Hasan listed<\/a> several other recent acts of political violence in which the suspected or confirmed perpetrators held right-wing ideologies, including the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> earlier this year; the assault of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband in 2022; and the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no equivalent or even similar<\/em> list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years,\u201d wrote Hasan. \u201cIn fact, according to<\/a> statistics compiled by the ADL\u2019s Center on Extremism, 2024 was the third year in a row<\/em> in which all <\/em>of the extremist-related killings in the United States were carried out by\u2026 right-wingers.\u201d<\/p>\n On the social media platform X, Texas Monthly<\/em> senior writer Robert Downen pointed<\/a> out that some far-right white supremacists had also \u201creviled\u201d Kirk.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not speculating about the shooter,\u201d said Downen. \u201cI just have been stunned how quickly people have jumped with certainty to partisan conclusions. Because in extremism spaces, the Charlie Kirk Hater-to-Nazi pipeline is canon. It\u2019s how we got a generation of antisemitic extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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