On Wednesday, the entire country witnessed the gruesome assassination of Charlie Kirk as he spoke before a crowd at Utah Valley University. His death was shocking both for the visceral nature of the gory footage and for the deep implications and ramifications it holds for America’s heated political moment.

Kirk was the cofounder of Turning Point USA, a group dedicated to converting and organizing Republican youth. He was a prolific and popular far-right commentator known for his abrasive debate style, which he typically employed against college students, as well as his enthusiastic support of President Trump and advocacy for Christian conservatism, both at the level of politics and the level of home life. 

At the moment he was killed, he was, coincidentally, debating American gun violence with an audience member – at virtually the same time as, next door in Colorado, America was hosting yet another school shooting. 

Obviously, there is something deeply wrong with this moment and with this country. No one can live here and not feel it if they have even a minimal level of awareness. 

So while this assassination speaks to multiple issues, including gun proliferation, it’s become a case study for our extremely elevated culture war rhetoric. And it all adds up to a grim reality: Whether we realize it or not, we are already in a cold civil war. It’s still up to us how hot it gets, but we are not currently on a course toward cooling tensions.

The pretext for increasing fascism

As of this writing, Kirk’s assassin is still on the loose. As far as we know, there is no suspect and no known motive, though that hasn’t stopped people from speculating. The natural assumption for many seems to be that one of Kirk’s political opponents committed the crime. President Trump quickly blamed “the radical left.” And while the killer may well turn out to be a leftist, Kirk had opponents on both the left and the right, including neo-Nazis. 

With only roaming speculation to go on, conservatives immediately called on Trump to dramatically escalate his war on “the left,” a collective that, depending on how you define it, could include literally half the country. 

• Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer who has been in and out of Trump’s inner circle, instantly tweeted, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization… Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.” 
• The X feed of another far-right influencer, Mike Cernovich, was filled with reactionary statements and veiled threats against “the left” broadly. 
• The right-wing troll account, Libs of TikTok, tweeted, “THIS IS WAR”.
• Far-right radio host Michael Savage called on Trump to revoke the broadcast license of MSNBC, essentially blaming their programming for Kirk’s assassination.

It’s not clear what crimes, exactly, Loomer wants prosecuted, and her vague phrase “Leftist organization” might include anything from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Democratic Party to a university, scientific or medical institution, or historical society. And since we have no idea at this point who the killer is, the declaration of war from Libs of TikTok could be aimed at just about anybody. In addition to these extremist takes, there have been innumerable calls for more violence from the right.

At this point, it almost doesn’t matter who killed Kirk. The stage is set, and it’ll be impossible to course-correct the narrative no matter what else we learn. But the fact that his assassination ratcheted up tensions so dramatically and so instantaneously speaks to the political moment we were already in long before he was killed — a moment Kirk himself contributed to. Some of us are simply chomping at the bit to go to war with each other.

The political violence that already surrounds us

We are in the midst of a violent political era. To take just one glaringly obvious point: President Trump has sent troops to occupy two major cities run by political opponents and regularly threatens more such actions, even using the imagery of the most brutal war movie ever made, Apocalypse Now, to describe how he plans to treat Chicagoans. 

Make no mistake: These are violent provocations. How long can Trump round up and deport people’s friends, neighbors, and coworkers, and intimidate citizens with armed troops, before some serious fighting breaks out? And if and when that happens, where will it lead? It will pour more fuel on the fascist fire, empowering Trump to reach and take a little more, necessitating ever-more forceful pushback from his opposition.

And how long can these occupations be combined with the white-hot rhetoric of the Loomers and Cernoviches of the world before something big ignites? How long before Trump decides to take their advice and declare everyone to the left of Sean Hannity an official enemy of the state, subject to searches, confiscations, imprisonment, or worse? It’s not that fantastical. His most high-profile supporters are calling for it. The shock troops are already in the streets.

Don’t let Republicans use this moment to gaslight you into thinking political violence is unique to, or primarily a feature of, the left. This is the party that turns killers like George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse into heroes. This is the party that worked on a series of bills in states around the country to protect drivers who run over protesters. This is a party that has run a 24/7 news operation for 30 years straight with some of the most incendiary, zero-sum rhetoric in the history of propaganda. Year after year, crime data is clear: right-wing extremism accounts for far more violence in America than the left.

Even beyond politics, America is an extraordinarily violent nation that visits carnage upon people all around the world. We have normalized genocide in Palestine, revealing ourselves as a nation that just doesn’t care much about the worst form of violence imaginable. And at home, we have all but grown accustomed to regular massacres of our schoolchildren. Even Kirk once said, in a quote that went viral after his assassination, “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.”

Just who was Charlie Kirk?

Because of some of his past remarks, some observers found Kirk’s end poetic. You don’t have to look too hard to find people openly celebrating on social media. I won’t do that, but I also won’t write a fawning eulogy for a man whose impact on the country, and the world, was so toxic and grim.

Kirk’s operation, TPUSA, was funded by dark money from oligarchs, fossil fuel companies, and big business. His function as a propagandist was to inflame the tensions of culture wars, goading working-class people into bitter fights with one another over trans bathrooms or “traditional marriage” while shielding the high-level crimes of power — things like looting the lower and middle class, shredding our social safety nets, and bankrupting our national trust through global imperialism and war.

Kirk died doing what he loved best: debating a liberal. And he was debating him in his usual style, injecting polemic rhetoric to confuse and frustrate his interlocutor. He was pushing an idea that trans mass shooters are a major problem, and in the process inciting more hatred for trans people, despite them committing a vanishingly small proportion of mass shootings in America. 

Even in this one example, the last words of his life, we can see that Kirk did not engage in good-faith debate. He was not in the business of productive dialogue that brings Americans together. In the wake of his murder, outlets have been compiling some of his greatest hits, including:

• On the military occupation of America’s streets: “We got to go hard. We got to go big league. We’re talking National Guard, tanks – every street, you need military.”
• On affirmative action and successful Black women: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to be taken somewhat seriously.”
• On the civil rights movement: “MLK was awful… This guy is not worthy of a national holiday,” and, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
• On the role of women: “Maybe one of the reasons that Taylor Swift has been so annoyingly liberal over the last couple of years is that she’s not yet married, and she doesn’t have children… Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”
• On the genocide in Gaza: “They brought it upon themselves.”
• On trans people, a favorite and perennial target: “Against the natural law… A throbbing middle finger to god.”

One could go on and on. And, to be fair, if you comb through thousands of hours of recorded dialogue from almost anybody, you will find some nuggets that look ugly. But the picture is consistently clear, and this rotten philosophy has undoubtedly contributed to hate and division in America.

What comes next?

Trump has called on the nation to fly flags at half-mast in honor of Kirk’s memory. This is another provocative, political move. Kirk was the victim of a terrible act of violence, yes. He was also a bad-faith propagandist who put mental poison into the world. Both things can be true, and neither one changes the other. We can condemn violence without compelling people to mourn someone who called their existence an abomination. If you’re conflicted about it all, remember Kirk’s own words: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.”

We should not let Kirk’s death ignite more violence. Sadly, we have a president who is possibly the poorest-equipped person in history to provide a steady hand and guide us to calmer waters. Instead, he could use it as justification to ramp up his occupation of American cities, recruit more angry conservatives to his masked army of ICE agents, restrict voting and speech rights, and make other fascistic moves. Plenty of his most fervent acolytes are already pushing him in this direction.

I see nothing good in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. His rhetoric harmed this nation and the marginalized groups he targeted, and that deserves to be his legacy. But his murder does nothing to address the wrongs they face. It only rockets tensions through the roof and brings this country closer to an extremely ugly and dangerous edge. It empowers the worst, most fascistic impulses of an already dangerous administration. 

Things may simmer back down, but this is not a stable equilibrium for a nation to be in. Maybe something needs to break. Returning to normal is not an option. Normal is what brought us here. For my entire life, “normal” has been a relentless march toward increasing inequality and nonstop war. That’s nothing to look forward to for a society in the midst of a fundamental transformation. 

But it would surely be in everyone’s best interest not to erupt into a full-scale civil war. Your imagination is as good as mine at conjuring the horrors that might entail. The best thing is for people to realize their common interests, let one another live in peace and dignity, and oppose the forces in America that are selling our futures down the river — forces for whom Charlie Kirk was a devoted and effective sower of division.