Content warning: This article contains quotations of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and anti-queer rhetoric, as well as discussions of political violence.
On Sep. 10, 2025, American podcaster and right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed during a question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University (UVU). Preliminary reports tell us that the individual who allegedly shot him is in custody. American politicians of all stripes have condemned the shooting as a travesty, and President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until Sep. 15 in his honor.
Mr. Kirk’s killing is certainly disastrous for the American body politic, and I do not take his death lightly. Political assassination has no place in any society that calls itself free. But I do not mourn his death and shed no tears for his loss. The response from the Trump administration—labelling Kirk as an American hero and “free speech warrior”—sanitizes Kirk’s destructive history, and lowering the flag for him is a disgrace to both the American flag and what the country claims to stand for. The precedent the government’s response sets is unjustifiable.
Political violence is clearly on the rise in America. Since Sep. 11, 2001, there have been two hundred and ninety-three lives lost to terror attacks in the United States. Terrorists come in all political stripes, from extreme left to extreme right. New America describes a modern terrorist threat—a label that includes political violence—that “crosses ideologies and is largely disconnected from traditional understandings of terrorist organizations.”
This upward trend in violence occurs among students as well; the increasing population of American students who believe the use of force can be justified against speakers exceeds three in ten. This figure has increased among both self-identified Democrats and Republicans and represents a grave danger to the American project.
Voices in the American right have called Kirk’s shooting the start of a civil war. They perceive Kirk’s killing as part of a “common threat” from leftists—that “The Left,” vaguely defined, poses an existential threat to the conservative movement and its members. Trump said the same, claiming that “[r]adical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.” He cited the assassination attempt against himself to back up his claim.
The data, where we have it, does not back Trump up. The suspect in Trump’s attempted assassination in Butler, PA, was a registered Republican. More broadly, extreme-right violence was the most common of the types New America considered, responsible for 139 of 293 (47%) recorded deaths. (For comparison, extreme-left violence was responsible for 3 [<1%]).
By any and all measures, Kirk was an extremist figure with substantial ideological biases. Here is a brief and definitely non-exhaustive list of problematic things he has called for:
- He called on Taylor Swift to “Reject feminism [and] Submit to your husband,” noting that Ms. Swift “wasn’t serious” about her engagement if she did not change her surname.
- He claimed that Black professionals should be treated with skepticism, before walking it back: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’”
- He labelled the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake.”
- He believed in a Jewish conspiracy, claiming that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
- He said of transgender individuals, “Someone should’ve just taken care [of them] the way we did in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”
- He advanced the debunked “great replacement theory,” which believes that “they [unspecified, but likely non-White immigrants from context] won’t stop until you [White rural America] and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.”
Despite these moral shortcomings, Kirk does not deserve to die. He may deserve harassment charges, but he does not deserve to die.
The government’s response to Kirk’s death is distasteful at best and a national disgrace at worst. In his address to the nation, Trump mentioned attacks against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. He mentioned the attack on his own life. He mentioned a 2017 attack on Rep. Steve Scalise. Yet he did not mention attacks on key Democrats: Trump’s list omits the arson attack against Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (2025), shooting of Minnesota Dems Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman (2025), “the 2020 attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, [and] the brutal attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022.” In the last case, Trump publicly mocked Mr. Pelosi.
In response to Mr. Kirk’s death, Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for three days. At first glance this seems consistent, as it was an honor he gave to two children killed while worshipping in August. Yet this administration’s general policy on lowering the flag for political deaths is simple: if he likes you, the flag comes down. He demanded the flag be raised early after Jimmy Carter’s death and kept it raised after Hortman’s death, though she (like Kirk) was assassinated in cold blood.
American politics is not a war, not in the traditional sense. Its instruments are words, not weapons; ballots, not bullets; legislation, not legions. Kirk had First Amendment rights to speak for what he believed, just as I do and just as every person in this country does. He can reasonably be described as an activist, a conservative firebrand, or a beacon to young people who saw themselves as conservative. But he was not a national hero, nor should he be treated as one. Kirk’s policy positions and extremist rhetoric caused significant damage to the United States of America and significant distress to those I love. While others may be mourning, I shed no tears for him.
