Charlie Kirk was a founder of far right group Turning Point USA and a key Trump backer who devoted his life to far-right lies and bullying
Charlie Kirk once said gun deaths were “unfortunately” a price worth paying for the freedom to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the US constitution. The far right pundit’s argument was (almost) vindicated when he was shot dead on Wednesday, September 10.
He felt a small fraction of the violence against Palestinians, Black people, women and other oppressed groups that he glorified.
Kirk was a Make America Great Again (MAGA) extremist and fervent fan of Donald Trump. He called the US president “the bodyguard of Western civilization”. Trump called Kirk a “great warrior.”
He wants to canonise Kirk and use the shooting as an excuse for more crackdowns and a further right wing radicalisation of his regime.
In 2020, Kirk published The Maga Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win The Future, which became an Amazon best seller. He argued that Trump had “started a movement to reclaim our government from the rotten cartel of insiders that have been destroying our country.”
On April 5, 2023 Kirk told a rally, “I think it’s worth it to have the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other god given rights.”
His podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, was a cesspit of far right lies, vile racism, transphobia and anti-abortion bigotry that he built his career on.
He has 1.8 million followers on Twitter/X. But even Twitter once blocked Kirk for “violating rules against posting misleading information about voting” when he tweeted lies about supposed election fraud in Pennsylvania.
TURNING POINT?
Kirk set up Turning Point USA when he was 18 years old to humiliate, bully, and witch hunt education workers with progressive views.
Turning Point has spread its poison to over 2,000 campuses and has a staff of over 450 full-time and part-time workers scattered across the US.
In October 2017, members of Kent State University’s Turning Point USA chapter dressed up in diapers to protest against “safe spaces”—only babies need safe spaces. Get it?
Kirk was shot on the opening leg of his American Comeback Tour. More than 6,000 people signed a petition asking Utah State University to bar Kirk from coming onto its campus to spread his bigoted and violent views.
Some on the left have pointed out that Kirk was a human being with a family. That is true. But those human beings who devote their lives to oppressing, marginalizing, and humiliating should expect their chickens to come to roost.
Nine months ago Luigi Mangione became a folk hero when he shot Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare. The sector was notorious for declining to pay out policies for dying people.
INDIVIDUAL TERRORISM
Over 100 years ago, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote “Against Individual Terrorism” against the actions of the Narodniks and similar populist groups who relied on mass terror campaigns as a political strategy. But he never sided with the state against them. Trotsky argued that terrorism arose because of the tyranny and oppression of our rulers. It might be an inevitable product of despair, but was not an answer. This is still the basic Marxist attitude .
“In our eyes individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness…” wrote Trotsky. He also recognized that when the smoke cleared after a terrorist act, “life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen.”
This latter point is especially important at this moment. Today we must still be clear where the majority of violence comes from, while also pointing to effective ways of collective struggle, and avoiding giving an excuse for this state violence against our side.
REACTION
The day after the shooting, before anything was known about the shooter, President Trump gave a short chilling speech, praising Kirk and threatening the “radical left.”
He conflated the killing of Kirk, the previous shooting of Trump, and “attacks on ICE officers,” and pledged “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence.”
These comments were made in the context of Trump’s sending National Guard, Marines, and other federal forces supporting ICE agents into Los Angeles and DC, and the threats to send more into other cities, supposedly against “crime”. But the threats go beyond the state.
In the MAGA stronghold of Huntington Beach, CA, participants in a nationalist rally to honor Kirk chanted “white men, fight back.” The rally was addressed by neo-Nazi Bryan Sanchez, who reportedly called for violence against the left. Sanchez, leader of the Nationalist Network, had posted on X “Charlie Kirk must be avenged. We must destroy the Left once and for all!”
Repeated investigations have found “right-wing extremists” the most dangerous domestic security threat in the US, but the FBI under Trump and Director Kash Patel has effectively shut down parts of the organization dedicated to investigating them, diverting attention to Trump’s opponents.
The Base, an underground US-based international Neo-Nazi terrorist group which has plotted mass shootings and assassinations, seems to be re-building in Trump’s second term after previously having been decimated by defections and arrests following a FBI counter-terrorism investigation. More public-facing far right groups like Patriot Front and Blood Tribe are marching regularly.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Torrio had been sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy around the January 6th Capitol occupation, but was pardoned by Trump and now speaks regularly in Republican circles. Other figures involved in the January 6th and now pardoned are now calling for revenge, or civil war. “I’m going to be rebuilding Oath Keepers,” said leader Stewart Rhodes (on Alex Jones Infowars podcast), after Kirk’s killing, and said “American men” should start their own vigilante groups.
In the face of such onslaughts, we need to be clear on several points. Whether from vigilantes or the state, violence against the left has a long tradition in the US. But we are seeing a dangerous escalation of this now. Opposing individual terrorism does not mean a commitment to non-violence or abandoning self-defense by the working class and the oppressed. But any escalation of assassinations and violence in the US today would be extremely disadvantageous to left projects of organizing. It should also be clear that violent acts by individuals like the killer of Charlie Kirk are not the cause of violent reaction, but can be used as an excuse, and negatively affect popular opinion.
NOT TIME TO RETREAT
Unfortunately, this reaction has been enabled by cowardly statements by prominent Democrats and the mainstream press who feel they have to praise Kirk. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom posted after Kirk’s death that “admired his passion and commitment” and practice of “good-faith debate.” Democratic Governors have followed Trump’s suggestion that flags be flown half-staff for Kirk. Despite this rediscovery of “free speech,” several teachers and professors have been fired for critical comments about Kirk made after his death. MSNBC has fired senior political analyst Matthew Dowd, a former Republican strategist, for suggesting Kirk’s “awful words” could have brought on “awful actions.” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace sang Klein’s praises, noting his “eloquent words.” New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein heralded right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as “practicing politics the right way.” All this helps pave the way for targeting those who disagree.
It is not time to retreat on telling who Kirk was, or condemning and opposing the entire, increasingly authoritarian, Trump agenda.
The US establishment will wring their hands about political violence. But the US ruling class is responsible for far more violence, death, and destruction than any political terrorist. They are enabling the continuing horror of mass shootings in the US, diverting funds for life-saving healthcare to the violent ICE raids, and bankrolling the genocide in Gaza.
The ruling class will not give up all their power, wealth and privileges without a struggle. Socialists do not deny the working class and the oppressed the right to use violence against their oppressors. To rid the world of oppression and injustice requires not assassinations or blowing people up, but tearing up the roots of the capitalist system itself. The only force that can achieve this is the collective struggle of the working class.
Don’t mourn for Kirk. Mourn for the tens of thousands of victims of the US gun lobby and the MAGA fantasies of imperialist domination—and organize against it.
This is an updated and edited version of an article published earlier by Socialist Worker, Britain. -Marx21
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