This week I inadvertently watched two videos I wish I hadn’t. The first was the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on public transport in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a mentally ill man with a criminal record – as other passengers sat impassively.
The second was of the shooting of Charlie Kirk as he spoke at a university in Utah. The image of him falling back with blood gushing from his neck is one that I fear will never be erased from my mind.
I am still stunned, sickened and angry that a man who spent his life going round universities to have discussions with people he disagreed with was shot while he was doing just that. He was wearing a T-shirt with the word ‘freedom’ on it and encouraging people to prove him wrong.
I spent the whole day after the shooting in shock and tears. Why? The last time I wept at the death of a celebrity I had never met was with the assassination of John Lennon. Was it just the shock of the footage? Or was there something more?
Perhaps it was because I could identify with a Christian evangelist/apologist who was also politically involved? Perhaps it was the fact that he died in the prime of his life – a 31-year-old man with two young children?
When I was a 31 year old with two young children I too was going round universities debating with those who disagreed with me. Like Charlie, I too recall getting threats, abuse and endless mockery. But there the similarity ends – I faced nothing like this. The seeds of modern intolerance were certainly sown in universities in my generation, but today those seeds are coming to fruition.
Kirk himself foresaw this. He argued that “assassination culture is spreading on the Left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump. In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione [the man accused of shooting dead UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson last year].
“The Left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”
This week the bomb went off.
One of the most perceptive comments was that from Konstantin Kisin, of Triggernometry fame, who wrote: “I hope I'm wrong. But tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn't even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever. Like the rules of the game had been permanently altered and there was simply no going back to the innocent, peaceful past.”
He later added, “But to murder a young father simply for doing debates and mobilising young people to vote for a party that represents half of America? This is something else.”
At the time of writing we do not know who killed Charlie Kirk, nor why they did so, although the authorities have since confirmed that anti-fascist slogans were etched onto two unused bullet casings found after the shooting. But even if the shooter was a right-wing extremist, or mentally ill, or an eco-terrorist, it would not be the primary issue. What is that issue?
As Kirk once stated, “You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.” In the same way you can tell a lot about a society by how it reacts when someone well-known dies. So, what have we learned about our society?
On the one hand there were the extremists, the mentally unbalanced and the just plain cruel. I stopped looking at my X feed for several hours because it was just too upsetting to see people celebrating this murder. One group of US students dancing and chanting ‘we got Charlie in the neck’ was just one example of this perverted thinking.
Lest you think that this kind of thinking just applies to the super woke in the elite universities of America, think again. Today I spoke to a group of school pupils in Australia. Having been told by some online activists here that this was nothing to do with Australia because no one knows who Charlie Kirk is, I was astounded to discover not only that they knew, but that the assassination had been the subject of discussion in their classrooms.
Even more astonishingly, they told me that all the pupils who spoke were celebrating Kirk's death – apparently he deserved it. They even told me that one teacher told them that they were glad Kirk had been killed. What chance do the kids have? They are being groomed to hate – all in the name of love.
In the UK the Socialist Worker party shamelessly tweeted “Charlie KKKirks chickens come home to roost.” Meanwhile George Abaraonye, the incoming Oxford Union President, allegedly made horrifying comments about the killing in a WhatsApp group. Oxford University and the Oxford Union have publicly disavowed his alleged comments, while Abaraonye has himself since issued a statement saying that he “reacted impulsively” and that his comments “did not reflect my values”. Nonetheless they were particularly grotesque, given that Abaranonye debated Kirk at the Union earlier this year. The fact that he could stand face to face with Kirk and then apparently write so coldly of his death is a sad reflection of the state of one of our top universities.
You can watch the whole Oxford Union debate here. Incidentally, it perfectly illustrates Kirk’s qualities as a debater – thoughtful, articulate, respectful and intelligent. He was not the neo-Nazi thug that some have portrayed him as. Sohrab Ahmari of UnHerd agrees: “Ben Burgis, a prominent socialist writer, recalled his debate with Kirk as one of the best he’d done in recent years, not least owing to that same earnestness and courtesy, and notwithstanding profound ideological differences. Many a university president these days extols ‘civil conversations’ across partisan barriers while narrowly circumscribing the range of acceptable views on campus. But Kirk meant it, and lived it.”
But it was not just the extremists. There were far too many mainstream commentators who while giving us the perfunctory ‘we are against political violence’ almost immediately moved into ‘he brought it on himself’.
In the US following the shooting, MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd placed the blame for the shooting on Kirk himself due to his rhetoric. He argued that hateful thoughts lead to hateful words and then to hateful actions. Dowd also suggested that Kirk’s shooting came from a “supporter shooting their gun off in celebration”. This was too much even for MSNBC, who fired him. My only question is: where was the ‘hate’ in Kirk’s words – never mind his thoughts and actions? Dowd on the other hand dripped with bitterness and bile.
In the UK Ash Sarkar, the self-proclaimed ‘luxury communist’ who for some reason the BBC think is worthy of being a moral guide on The Moral Maze programme, tweeted out “I think Charlie Kirk died by the code that he lived by”. Charlie’s code was Christianity. He was not killed by a Christian. Sarkar was trying to make a smart comment about Kirk’s support for the Second Amendment. But Kirk was not advocating for the freedom of people to go round shooting other people. It was a crass and hateful comment.
In Australia the media journalist Hannah Ferguson posted “Am I glad Charlie Kirk will no longer spread his extremist messaging? Yes….” She also went on to say that while she did not agree with the shooting, sometimes violence is necessary. It is this kind of language which ultimately leads to political killings.
Label someone extremist. Label them Far Right. And then you justify killing them – if they are equivalent to Hitler. Which is why you get a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who wrote on Facebook in March 2023: “So here is what I think about free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”
It is the very antithesis of the approach that Kirk took. His whole position was to listen to people and to seek to persuade them. Not to shout them down or kill them. Kirk went into the lion's den, and the lions killed him.
In the UK ITV had a man coming on saying that Charlie was the KKK and David Duke, and then moralising that Charlie Kirk never thought that being shot could happen to him. It was astonishing that this ignorant falsehood was left unchallenged. More examples of such ignorance can be found on the ABC in Australia, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian etc.
But there is an even more disturbing aspect of the reaction to this murder: the way that it demonstrates the deepening divisions within our society. The conspiracy theorists were out in force, like the ‘influencer’ Ian Carroll tweeting out to his 1.3 million followers that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel.
Meanwhile the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine mob were quick in on the act, numerous engaging with ‘whataboutery’. As if saying ‘what about the dead in Gaza?’, justifies the murder of Charlie Kirk. One commentator said that the Palestinian issue is the only issue that matters. Such single-minded fanaticism only breeds death and destruction.
The divisions within the US were exemplified on the House floor. Rep. Lauren Boebert requested a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk. Democrats were heard shouting "no!" Then, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna shouted back "y'all caused this!" The lack of dignity, respect and compassion was shocking. Little wonder that the Utah Governor, Spencer Cox, said “our nation is broken”.
Having said that, there were a few shafts of light: Former presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, uniting in condemnation of the killing without adding a ‘but’; California Governor Gavin Newsom and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, likewise, uniting in a left-wing condemnation. Good for them.
But the Church all too often sadly reflects the divisions of the culture, rather than the unity of Christ. I saw some Christians posting that Charlie Kirk was the very opposite of what Christ taught. I have a suspicion that they were basing their posts not on what they had heard from Kirk, but rather from what they had been told he had said from the media that they consume. Christians need to learn to think differently. If fact, as Kirk would have argued, we need to learn to think!
I believe that Kirk was assassinated as much for being a Christian as for his politics. Greg Sheridan in his new book, How Christians Can Succeed Today talks about the death of Polycarp: “The crowds were baying for his blood, screaming that he was a ‘destroyer of the gods’”. There are those who will bay for the blood of Christians in today’s society. After all, we are the ones who dare to question their gods.
It disturbs me as someone who used to be regarded as a socialist, that I can be labelled Far Right just because I hold to Christ’s teachings on marriage, sex and children. For most of us the only persecution we may face will be loss of face, income and status. But increasingly, those of us who make the case for Christ in public may find that people who have been taught that it is ok, even necessary, to silence speech with physical violence come to pose an increasing threat.
If Charlie Kirk's murder causes people to be quiet, the assailant will have won. But if we are motivated to be bolder, then we follow in Charlie’s footsteps - and, more importantly, in Christ's.
These are troublesome and stormy times. Our confidence should be that of Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, who tweeted just before the murder of her husband: “Psalm 46:1 - God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
In Christ alone our hope is found. There are other verses that are salient for these times but I leave you with this one:
"They called out in a loud voice, 'How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?'" (Revelation 6:10).
David Robertson is the former minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee. He is currently the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales, and blogs at The Wee Flea.
