He was also, as is now well known, staunchly against any kind of restrictions on gun ownership and use. In 2023, he argued that deaths were an unavoidable consequence of the freedom to own guns, saying, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
While it’s easy to find condemnation for senseless violence, and feel sympathy towards the wife and young children he leaves behind, it’s difficult to find empathy – an emotion Kirk himself once said, “does a lot of damage”.
Republicans close to Kirk scoffed when Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman was gunned down in Minnesota three months ago. Following her death, Trump failed to express any degree of sympathy or condolence, even refusing to mention Hortman’s name. The same goes for Paul Pelosi – former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband – who was the victim of a home break-in and an attempted assassination in 2022. On that occasion, Trump, Kirk and their band of far-right misfits mocked the seriousness of the crime and called for a “patriot” to bail Pelosi’s assailant out of jail. Yet, now, when it is someone important to them who is senselessly killed, they expect and sympathy and demand valorisation for Kirk.
While it’s tempting to believe this is a problem on both sides of politics, that the right and the left are equally polarised and that this kind of violence is merely a symptom of a broken culture, that is not the case. Every Democratic leader and official condemned Kirk’s murder within hours, and without hesitation.
Republicans, though, immediately blamed Democrats, as if criticism of Trump and his movement – the ordinary work of citizenship – were the provocation. This, even as the president spent the week threatening to invade Chicago and posting images of the city engulfed in fire. The kind of fury they have conjured is not a lapse or a misstep; it is the world they have chosen to make.
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The first truth is that Charlie Kirk was a victim, and that is a terrible thing. No one deserves to die for their political speech, and no one deserves to be the victim of political violence. The second is that he did a lot to make America the kind of place where this violence happens regularly. That he was a victim of a kind of violence that he was directly a part of inciting cannot be ignored.
The third is that his assassination, which should only be the stuff of third-world autocracies, will only add to the MAGA movement’s mythology, with Charlie Kirk perhaps their first patron saint.
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.
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