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Khymani James, the former Columbia encampment leader who once boasted on camera that “you’re lucky I’m not going around murdering Zionists,” reemerged this week to celebrate the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Taking to X, James praised Kirk’s murder and stood firm on rhetoric that makes political violence not just thinkable but desirable. His words weren’t fringe mutterings from a lone agitator. They reflected a broader cultural sickness that is metastasizing inside the progressive movement, where nihilism has replaced hope, and hatred masquerades as justice.
James is not alone. The Democratic Socialists of America, a group that has spent years burrowing into mainstream politics, has seen its leaders openly rejoice at Kirk’s death. Canary Mission documented several disturbing examples. Aron Ali-McClory, cochairman of Young Democratic Socialists of America, tweeted gleefully: “Shut The Fuck Up Friday has come early, dear comrades!” His position is not ceremonial. As YDSA cochairman, Ali-McClory also sits on the National Political Committee of the DSA, which directs the organization’s political priorities. In other words, he is not a fringe member but a national leader.
AFTER KIRK’S DEATH, SCALES FALL FROM AMERICA’S EYES
Rather than tamp down this dangerous gloating, senior DSA leaders chimed in with their own nihilistic takes. Megan Romer, cochairwoman of the DSA’s National Political Committee, responded approvingly: “When weeks are decades, shut the fuck up friday is not bound by linear time.” A man is dead, his wife is widowed, his children are fatherless, and the response from leaders of a prominent political organization is dark humor and joy.
This is not the normal rough-and-tumble of politics. It is evidence of a cultural shift in which opponents are not only wrong but evil, and their removal by any means necessary is cause for celebration.
The threat doesn’t end with campus radicals or socialist caucuses. The most potent strain of this nihilism comes from climate activists. Lucy Biggers, a former climate activist who has since turned away from the movement and now works at the Free Press, put it starkly in an interview with the Washington Examiner: “When the world is at risk, which is what the climate alarmists push. … The media pushes it, and the activists push that the world is ending. It’s really scary, because if the world is ending, isn’t anything justified?”
Biggers is describing more than a theoretical danger. Once people are convinced the end of the world is imminent, traditional limits on moral behavior vanish. Why respect laws, norms, or even human life if the planet itself is on a countdown clock?
This mindset has already borne violent fruit. In 2017, shots were fired at an Alabama office building that housed a climate change skeptic. The gunfire, according to reports, appeared to target the skeptic’s office floor specifically.
The episode didn’t make national headlines, but it illustrated the dangerous logic Biggers described. If you sincerely believe certain people are “destroying the planet,” the next step is to treat them as enemies of humanity.
Even academia is feeding this radicalism. At the University of Pennsylvania, senior administrator Michael Mann, best known for his controversial “hockey stick” climate graph, has taken to X with a series of unhinged rants about Charlie Kirk. Mann reposted comments calling Kirk the “head of Trump’s Hitler Youth.” He then sneered: “The white on white violence has gotten out of hand.”
This is not the language of a fringe troll. Mann is the director of Penn’s Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media. He represents the university in the public square. Just a few years ago, Mann even called for people to “take up arms” and form a militia against Trump. Now, after Kirk’s assassination, one must ask: Does Penn agree with its senior administrator? Is what happened to Kirk the kind of “militia action” Mann has fantasized about against the president?
His own legal history further stains Mann’s credibility. According to court documents, Mann was sanctioned for “knowingly feeding the jury false data” in a manner of misconduct that was extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent. That someone with such a record holds an academic directorship at one of America’s elite universities should trouble anyone who believes higher education exists to elevate truth rather than degrade it.
What ties these disparate threads, campus radicals, socialist leaders, climate alarmists, and academics together is a shared nihilism. They insist the stakes are so high that normal moral boundaries no longer apply.
On campuses, students are told Israel is committing “genocide.” In climate circles, they are told the world will be uninhabitable in a decade. In liberal politics, they are told conservatives are fascists who must be destroyed. Once these premises are accepted, violence becomes not only justified but righteous.
This indoctrination does not happen overnight. It seeps into young minds through social media feeds, activist clubs, and classroom rhetoric. It creates a binary worldview: to dissent is not merely to disagree but to betray. And betrayal must be punished.
Consider again Khymani James, the Columbia student whose advocacy at the Gaza encampment made him a hero to some on the Left. His infamous remark, “You’re lucky I’m not going around murdering Zionists,” was dismissed by sympathizers as hyperbole. But now that James has openly cheered Kirk’s murder, should anyone still doubt that he meant it?
The lesson for administrators, politicians, and the media is clear: words matter. When young activists are praised for incendiary rhetoric, when professors excuse radical threats as “speech,” and when political organizations amplify dehumanizing slogans, they are not merely engaging in debate. They are cultivating a culture where assassination feels like a natural next step.
America has seen political violence before. But what makes this moment different is how eagerly it is being mainstreamed. The DSA is not a marginal group. It has infiltrated Democratic politics to such a degree that it boasts elected officials in Congress and city councils across the nation. New York has at least 18 DSA members in elected office, and its poster child is running for mayor of New York City as the Democratic nominee. Climate alarmism is not confined to the fringes. It is preached from the halls of academia to the offices of federal regulators.
And now, after Charlie Kirk’s murder, we see how words shape action. If Zionists are murderers, if conservatives are fascists, if skeptics are planet destroyers, then why not kill them? The nihilistic logic writes itself.
The ultimate danger is not simply the radicalization of current activists but the indoctrination of the next generation. Children are being told from an early age that the world is ending, that political opponents are guilty of genocide, and that dissent equals betrayal. When urgency is weaponized against impressionable young people, the line between activism and extremism blurs.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk should serve as a national wake-up call. It underscores the danger of teaching young people that political opponents are not just wrong but evil, even responsible for “perpetuating genocide” or “destroying the planet.” Schools, social media, and youth organizations have too often framed debate not as a clash of ideas but as a battle between good and evil, where evil must be eradicated.
YES, CELEBRATING MURDER IS GROUNDS FOR SOCIAL EXILE
We now stand at a crossroads. Will political movements continue down this path, crossing the line from urgency into indoctrination and from persuasion into justification of violence? Or will leaders of conscience, left and right, draw a firm boundary and declare that violence has no place in democracy?
If they do not, more Khymani Jameses will rise, more DSA leaders will laugh at assassination, more academics will sanctify militias, and more impressionable children will be groomed to see violence as virtue. That is the legacy of nihilism, and unless it is stopped, it will be the legacy of our time.