Could This Be a Turning Point for the USA?
Charlie Kirk’s life was ended at 31 years by a still unknown assassin during an outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University. Kirk was a political commentator well known for his Turning Point USA organization and his college campus visits, where he would debate students on virtually any political or cultural issue. Kirk leaves behind a young family with two children. I hope his death will be a catalyst for a significant legacy and place in history.
Kirk’s views were conservative, with him taking up steadfast positions on abortion and gun control. For much of his career, I thought Kirk was a bit of a relic, somebody who promoted views that were somewhat lacking for current-day politics. Posts about shrinking government size or race not being real fall flat for me. When the Left wants to use the government to crush their enemies, it doesn’t help that conservatives want to merely make it a bit smaller. We will still be crushed, but maybe under a smaller anvil this time. And when whites are attacked for their race or are passed over for jobs due to their race, I fail to see how denying race will fix that issue.
That said, Kirk’s views evolved over the years. He continued to gain nuance, continued to move further to the Right, and refined his positions. As Kirk’s career advanced, his views became more tailored to what normal Americans experience daily and moved away from his earlier vague platitudes about big government and freedom.
I think of the political spectrum like a long road sometimes. People headed one direction are on the Left, those heading the other direction are on the Right. Some of us are faster, or started further from the center, or never looked back, and are way down the road on the Right. Some of us are more extreme on every issue than those who are headed the same way but still behind us. And I always thought of Kirk as headed down the same road, just not as far. People have their reasons for that. Some want to appeal to larger audiences, so they need to stay closer to where the others are. Others have a view of society that I might find a bit antiquated or naïve. Perhaps what they believe was accurate once, yet has become somewhat archaic. Looking through Kirk’s posts online about BLM, Covid, immigration, and crime — issues I care about— I find it difficult to disagree with any of it, except, again, I’m a little more “radical.”
Kirk’s views on Israel have been mostly favorable, with recent glimmers that his enchantment was fading away. I have noticed a lot of times that political beliefs come “packaged” or are clustered in certain ways. Those who dislike Muslims migrating to and living in the USA and Europe often sympathize with Israel as they see the problems Arabs and Pakistanis cause in the West, and assume Israel is dealing with the same issues in their country. Those views are often clustered. Those further along the road do not see Israel as a natural ally because we might share a similar issue, but as much of the reason why there are so many Muslims in the West to begin with, and why the US has been involved in Middle East conflicts for decades.
As jarring as watching the video of Kirk shot, slumped over, and losing a tremendous amount of blood, nearly as jarring has been the incredible volume of people saying Kirk deserved his untimely murder. There is a small group who believes Kirk was a “gatekeeper” and far too friendly to Israel, thus worthy of being killed. The concept of a gatekeeper implies there is nobody with legitimately held views that are more moderate than the person claiming they are a gatekeeper. I do not have reason to believe Kirk was purposefully keeping anybody from becoming more right-wing; if anything, much of his advocacy was to move the American youth further right.
A handful of antisocial types are celebrating the assassination because Kirk was not far-Right enough, and they believe Kirk would not have defended the death of anybody he considered a “Nazi,” despite being called one himself incessantly. Suppose that is true, suppose Kirk would not defend those further Right had one of us been killed over politics, it does not mean anything to me. That is why I am far Right — it means I believe I have a deeper understanding of how this operates, and as such, I am willing to defend people who are not as far along the road as I am because the same justification used to kill Kirk or attempting to kill Trump would be more than enough to do the same to those with my views. People who do not have the instincts to understand when they are also in danger have no place commenting on politics because they are so off-kilter it renders the majority of their analysis useless and impractical. Those who do not “get it” in this atmosphere are never going to get it, and it has never been so clear.
A quote attributed to Lenin comes to mind: “When the train of history makes a sharp turn, the passengers who do not have a good grip on their seats are thrown off.”
The majority of those celebrating the shooting believe Kirk to be a fascist, Nazi, white supremacist, or some variation of Right-wing extremist. The reality is, despite their haranguing about Kirk’s “violent rhetoric,” these people are happy when their political enemies are killed. Political violence is a firm reality when groups that are too different to reconcile attempt to live in the same place under the same government.
General sentiments from liberals seem to be that Kirk was actively working to “harm” transgender people through his “rhetoric” and that he “incited hatred” against “vulnerable populations.” As such, they find his death to be justified. One person celebrating Kirk’s death quoted Kirk saying, “blacks commit more crime than whites,” which is as true as saying bees make honey, and for that comment, they said it was “such racist speech that Kirk deserved it.”
“When you spew hateful rhetoric, what do you expect?” – A Facebook comment on the assassination. That comment is probably the purest summation of thousands of posts I have read since yesterday.
I have sympathy for Charlie Kirk because he was on the right side with his heart in the right place. From the time he was a young man, Kirk believed the country was turning into something ugly, and he wanted to make America a better place.
He spent his life working towards making things nicer, and I cannot think of anything more admirable. My sympathy for Kirk does not come because I condone all political violence, but because it happened to somebody who also felt that something had gone deeply awry in the United States. I have sympathy because Kirk was one of the good ones.
Kirk built a large audience and platform, and in his last days, he spoke about rampant crime, the death of Iryna Zarutska, foreign visa abuse in the US, and restricting legal immigration. He died doing exactly that. Charlie is a genuine martyr.
Finding who is responsible for the death of Kirk and executing him (or them) is not enough. Executing the killer of Iryna Zarutska is not enough. The problem is much larger and has been for many years. With high-fidelity cameras now prevalent, more of these crimes will be witnessed by millions of people. They are no longer a mere statistic or brief news story, but are immortalized on video, where the image haunts viewers.
We cannot keep living like this. We should not have to live like this. The reality is that half of the nation believes in letting in as many foreigners as possible and making the lives of normal Americans miserable. If we object to the crime and foreign populations, they call us Nazis and declare us worthy of liquidation. This is an untenable scenario that will boil over sooner or later.
It cannot be stressed enough that the freaks cheering and mocking Kirk’s death want the same for every one of us who is not willing to accept their version of history and their vision for the future of society. I am not willing to live in crime-ridden filth surrounded by aliens just so losers from the third world can have a “better life” because their people are unable to provide even basic levels of civilization. It has always been us or them, and that is now more evident than ever.
One of Kirk’s last posts was a photo of Iryna Zarutska dying and the words “America will never be the same.” I hope for her sake and Kirk’s that he is right. America should not be the same after this. I refuse to accept this level of crime and Left-wing terror as the new standard. We must continue down that long road for as long as it takes to end this nightmare for the last time.