Charlie Kirk was a national leader of young conservatives. His murder on Wednesday is shocking, and its implications will reverberate throughout America and perhaps down through history.
Much information will come out in the coming days and weeks, but Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) has called the shooting a “political assassination.” While the particulars of the motive are not yet known, it is already clear that the shooting was a political act and one that fits into an alarming recent pattern of conservatives being murdered for their beliefs.
The shooting of Kirk while he spoke to an open-air crowd of thousands on a Utah university campus adds to a growing list of terrible acts of political violence perpetrated by people on the Left. The list includes not one but two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, the murder of a health insurance executive, the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers, the murder of Catholic schoolchildren in Minneapolis, the shooting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the firebombing of a pro-Israel march in Colorado, and the burning of Tesla vehicles. If one looks a little further back to 2017, there was the assassination attempt by a leftist gunman who shot Republican members of Congress while they practiced for their annual baseball game against Democrats.
Some of these incidents have been properly condemned by Democratic officials, and the killing of Kirk has been met by elected Democrats with dignified and appropriate comments. These restrained responses suggest two things. First, Democrats may feel chastened by the enormity of what has just taken place, recognizing that the murder of a young married father of two who spent his life talking calmly and reasonably in an effort to persuade college students defies their usual efforts to turn any shooting into a debate about the ready availability of guns. Second, one hopes it also betokens an understanding that members of their party have been guilty of treating past incidents cynically or with levity and that they have grievously polluted our politics with a casual attitude toward violence.
After the attempted assassination of Trump, some Democrats belittled the event and made a punchline of jokes, as was the case with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Other incidents, notably Luigi Mangione’s killing of a healthcare executive, have been outright celebrated by many on the Left, including by prominent late-night talk show hosts, as has the burning of Teslas and Tesla car lots. Few Democrats bothered even to comment on a conspiracy to kill ICE agents in Texas.
Americans simply must not ignore how Democrats’ rhetoric is fueling this wave of atrocities.
On MSNBC, just minutes after Kirk was shot, but before his death was confirmed, Texas Democrat Matthew Dowd chose to blame the victim, saying, “He has been one of the most divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech, aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which often then to hateful actions.” That’s very nearly, “It’s his own fault; he had it coming.”
It escapes Dowd, who might be the least self-aware man on the planet, that Democrats are the principal purveyors of hateful words, which they aim at conservatives and their ideas. They simply will not accept that people of good faith can disagree with them. And their hateful words have been followed by hateful actions.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, called Trump a “fascist” who was seeking “unchecked” power.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the Democratic Party’s 2024 vice presidential candidate, called Trump’s government a “Gestapo.” He has called Trump a “wannabe dictator” and advised Democrats, “Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner, maybe it’s time for us to be a little more fierce.”
Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), a leading contender for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination, pandered to his base by comparing Trump’s government to Nazi Germany and advised his followers, “If we don’t want to repeat history, then for God’s sake, in this moment, we better be strong enough to learn from it.”
When failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke called Trump a Nazi on Newsom’s podcast, Newsom nodded along in agreement, which isn’t surprising because Newsom has also compared Republicans to Nazis.
As this publication noted just days ago, after the Catholic school shooting in Minnesota, “You can only call Trump and the Republican Party ‘Nazis’ and ‘threats to democracy’ so many times before your supporters start taking you seriously.”
Many Democrats have taken their leaders’ reckless words as gospel truth rather than the hideous lies that they are. A recent Rutgers University study found that 55% of self-identifying “liberals” believe killing the president is a justifiable means of pursuing their political goals. A large survey published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression this week found that over a third of college students said violence was at least sometimes acceptable to stop a speech on college campuses.
Which is what Kirk was doing when he was shot on Wednesday — he was speaking about controversial topics on a college campus.
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The Democratic Party is adrift without a positive vision for the future of the country beyond rent control, defunding the police, and government-run grocery stores. But it is impossible to deny the link between its histrionic rhetoric toward conservatives and the pattern of political violence we are now witnessing.
We hope Democrats will take the shooting of Kirk as a reflection point to tone down the demonization of people who disagree with them politically.