Charlie Kirk Was Not a Martyr: The Hypocrisy of Condemning "Political Violence"
Charlie Kirk -- whose pockets were lined by right-wing billionaires and corporations like the Wayne Duddlesten Foundation, the late advertising executive Jack Roth, the late Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, and Franklin Templeton’s former CEO Charles B. Johnson and his wife Ann -- was a right-wing grifter known for his “change my mind” style of debates on college campuses. Despite the overuse of logical fallacies and a heavy reliance on religious reasoning, owning the liberals gained him a significant following, especially among American youth. His rhetorical strategy became so popular that he went on to co-found Turning Point USA, which rivals even PragerU in spreading right-wing propaganda.
Kirk may not have publicly identified himself as a Nazi, but he clearly believed and advocated Nazi ideals. For example, when speaking with a German student, Kirk said, “Deutschland über alles,” a Nazi slogan that means "Germany over everything" and is specifically outlawed in Germany and much of Europe. He also believed in Great Replacement Theory, a theory championed by the KKK, that white people are being replaced by People of Color. Additionally, he claimed, "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s" and said, “I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” Kirk also publicly quoted a Bible verse which advocates stoning gay people, adding another ideological similarity between Nazis and Kirk.
The Right-Wing Response
The Trump regime has spared no expense in using Kirk's assassination as further justification for targeting their enemies. In the days following Kirk's assassination, the bourgeois media, law enforcement, and FBI Director Kash Patel made countless statements, which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be blatantly false.
Disinformation that suspected shooter Tyler Robinson was transgender, that the bullets were engraved with messages from the trans community, even claims that the shooting was organized by a ”trans terror cell“ were all put forward, not in pursuit of the truth, but as yet another opportunity to attack trans people across the country.
In spite of Robinson's fragmented political beliefs—beliefs that no one can prove with any degree of certainty—conservative politicians like Utah Governor Spencer Cox have already unequivocally stated that Robinson ”was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” Rep. Ronny Jackson said of transgender people, ”We have to get them off the streets [ . . . ] we can't let them communicate with each other,“ clearly implying that the trans community were somehow responsible for the shooting.
Robinson was largely uninvolved with politics on any significant level prior to his shooting of Charlie Kirk; this claim that he was influenced by organized anti-fascist groups is, broadly speaking, a lie. This is merely another flimsy excuse for the ruling class to do what they already planned to do: destroy the real threat to their power —organizations that represent the interests of the working class.
We see this time and time again in the wake of major shootings across the country. Before an investigation is launched, before the smoke has cleared, before the bodies even have time to hit the floor and grow cold, influential far-right voices are already lining up to place the blame squarely at the feet of leftists or marginalized groups who have little to no recourse in stopping the spread of misinformation. People who noted the irony in Kirk's death or tepidly criticized Kirk’s ideas after his death became the target of a massive online doxxing and firing spree.
But the buck does not stop with stochastic terror. In the weeks after Charlie Kirk was shot, President Trump passed several executive orders classifying anti-fascism as a terrorist ideology, and thus giving law enforcement express permission to go after any left-leaning political organization they deem a threat with impunity. These executive orders explicitly reference Charlie Kirk's shooting as an example of one such case of terrorism under Trump's definition.
The Liberal Response
While the right has been using Kirk's assassination to drum up paranoia against the Left, Democratic Party mouthpieces have joined Republicans to unequivocally condemn the shooting. Figures who posture as left-wing politicians have made it clear they believe Nazi ideology—spread by Kirk and others—should be tolerated and protected. Even Bernie Sanders released a statement saying, “Political violence, regardless of ideology, is not the answer and must be condemned.”
This same line was repeated by seemingly every current and former elected official, from Obama to AOC to the Clintons. The take is as idealistic and juvenile as it is hypocritical. Even a cursory study of history shows that mass political violence (revolutions, uprisings, and rebellions) has consistently been the single most effective means of achieving liberation, be it from slavery, autocracy, colonialism, apartheid or bourgeois dictatorship. This is what Marx meant when he said that “Revolutions are the locomotives of history,” and, "Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one."
For every instance of the oppressed using political violence as a means to fight for their freedoms, there are countless more instances of the ruling class using violence against working class people to maintain domination. The most widespread political violence is the violence of the everyday, the violence of the mundane. The innumerable people who suffer under capitalism: whose lives are cut short by starvation, by being kicked out on the street, by being denied medication, by being ripped away from their communities and deported. The state exists to uphold the system which allows for this suffering--the genocide in Palestine being a prime example--which makes these comments so hypocritical coming from state officials.
Trump has made use of and benefited from political violence countless times, most recently to slaughter Venezuelan citizens in international waters—a blatant war crime that Trump knows no country will be willing to prosecute.
On the other side of the political aisle, Obama greatly expanded the policy of bombing civilians and those with minimal to no connection to "terrorism" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries. Under capitalism, the United States enforcing its will upon the rest of the world is one of the the greatest perpetrators of political violence.
Liberals, with their inability to grasp things dialectically, only analyzing these things abstractly and in isolation from other factors, do not understand that speech is inextricably linked with action. The problem with protecting the free speech of fascists and Nazis is that their ideologies are those of genocide and systematic mass political violence. Allowing those ideologies to grow and spread not only risks their eventual ascendance within, and overthrow of, democracy (as is their goal); it also leads to more political violence here and now. A key strategy of fascists is systematic, intentional, and organized violence even before taking power in order to weaken their opposition (namely socialists, communists, and unionists).
To insist on protecting this kind of speech is to betray those who would sooner or later fall victim to fascist violence—the same people that Sanders and other Democrats claim to fight for. By now this should be no surprise. The Democrats are known to be a party that pays lip service to the demands of the working class just to turn around and stab them in the back. More and more people are coming to realize this every day. The Democrats are unwilling to effectively resist fascism. They are telling all of this now in plain language. It's time to abandon liberalism and the Democratic Party, embrace socialism and build a party that can fight for working and oppressed people and resist fascism.
Collective Struggle as the Path Forward
While we will never condemn political violence against Nazis, individual terror minimizes the role of the masses in their own struggle for liberation. It pushes the false idea that a great individual will be able to save society, and it seemingly diminishes the need for organized collective class struggle.
The more "effective" the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy. - Leon Trotsky, Why Marxist Oppose Individual Terrorism
Throughout history, individual acts of political violence have never advanced revolutionary goals, nor will these actions save the U.S. from sinking deeper into fascism. All cultural beliefs aside, there is only one oppressor: the capitalist ruling class -- equipped with racism, sexism, ableism, etc. -- that hoards wealth and controls the means of production, thus oppressing us by making us sell our labor to survive while continuing to strip away every social safety net. They are waging a war of political violence every day across the US and across the globe. Only through the raising of class consciousness throughout the poor and working class and the unification of this class under one banner, the socialist banner, can we struggle and fight together against the capitalist ruling class.
Those who dare to fight against capitalism will be deemed terrorists. We must fight political violence with greater political violence, but we did not choose this path. The bourgeoisie chose it for us. The sooner we accept this is the only way forward, the sooner we will achieve genuine liberation for every human being on the planet.