Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on September 10. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)
Someone shot him in the neck.
I’ve now watched that video a couple of times, and it’s as unbearable to absorb as the video of the stabbing of a young woman on a train in Charlotte (whose neck was also sliced). Here we see two young people, living freely in a liberal society — one engaging in dialogue on a college campus, the other simply absorbed in her phone. Then, in seconds, in a flash of terror, you see two bodies slump lifelessly to the ground, gushing blood, before their minds have even been able to grasp what has just been done to them.
Gratuitous, graphic, public murders, murders directed at two core democratic principles: the right to be safe in public, and the right to speak freely without fear.
Charlie Kirk, in the last tweet he wrote, just before his assassination, called for the “politicization” of the Charlotte murder, because it brought to ever-more graphic light the reckless leniency of some judges in letting dangerous, unhinged men back on the streets. I don’t think he was wrong. Nor do I think it is wrong to “politicize” his own horrible assassination. Because it was an expressly political act.
It was political because it struck Kirk in the core act of liberal democracy: debating his opponents. We don’t know the precise motive behind the murder right now, but that’s irrelevant. This was aimed literally and figuratively at the jugular of a free society. In that respect, the murder resembles the hideous knife attack on Salman Rushdie three years ago — also on stage, also engaged in dialogue. It is akin to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, where cartoonists were killed by Islamists for drawing blasphemous images. It is a direct assault on a free society. It is where the illiberalism of both sides always ends up.
Here is the exchange that directly preceded the assassination of Kirk:
Question: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
Kirk: Too many.
Question: Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?
Kirk: Counting or not counting gang violence ... ?
His last words were those of a classic “master-debater,” as South Park recently quipped — a joke Kirk enjoyed. What he had “mastered” at 31 years was a staggeringly comprehensive data-set in his own head of every single stat or detail of any number of policies that he could deploy to win any argument with a woke college sophomore. Like Ben Shapiro, he could rattle off any number of gotchas — and obscure Bible verses — and barely break a sweat.
This wasn’t exactly wisdom; but it wasn’t entirely sophistry either; and in a university climate that remains so intellectually repressive, where the new orthodoxy is that free-wheeling debate is just another form of structural “oppression”, it was a blessing. And when I went back this week and caught up on Kirk’s videos, debates, and events, I was far more often impressed than dismayed. He treated opponents with respect. He looked them in the eyes. He made arguments — and the young victims of woke indoctrination, rather than arguing back, called it “hate”.
It’s a left technique pioneered during the Bork hearings all those years ago: take principled conservative positions out of context, and call them “hate”. We were told this morning that Tyler Robinson targeted Kirk because he was — surprise! — “full of hate,” a term the woke use to call arguments they disagree with.
So go check out the reddit list of the worst things Kirk has said, the “proof” of his “Calls for Political Violence.” There are no such calls (and no slurs). There are instead arguments. Take the notion — repeated mindlessly by Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates on X — that Kirk supported stoning gay people. No he didn’t. He was simply noting that using Leviticus literally as a guide to politics can cut both ways. Or the idea that he believed black people were “inferior” — when he was, in fact, noting that affirmative action casts doubt on the competence of all black employees, including the very talented. It does.
It is never “hate” to tell the truth: that men are not women; that children cannot meaningfully consent to sex changes; that an insane proportion of murder in America is committed by young black men; that affirmative action means promoting people who are not as qualified because of their identity. And it is not bigotry to be a fundamentalist Christian who opposes legal abortion.
Kirk opposed marriage equality — the cause dearest to my heart — to his last breath, but so fucking what? It’s a free society, and he can oppose a policy for reasons other than “hating” gay people. I would have loved to debate him on it, as I did countless fundies in the Nineties and Aughts. Kirk embraced MAGA gays warmly. He was, it’s true, slowly morphing into a full-on Christianist in the last few years, with eccentric views of the Founders and a garbled take on Tom Holland’s scholarship, but again ... so what? A free society allows for a variety of views, and I have found no personal animus, no individual cruelty, no rank bigotry — as opposed to Christianist doctrine.
Yes, he was provocative. Yes, he had a few off-moments. Who doesn’t? Yes, I obviously oppose the kind of populist, authoritarian cult that Kirk was enabling, and the Christianism he backed. But he wasn’t Milo. He wasn’t Candace Owens. He wasn’t Alex Jones. He wasn’t even Tucker Carlson. And he did the hard work of democracy: talking to those who disagreed with him.
For those reasons, we should all grieve Charlie Kirk — because free speech vs violence is much more crucial a divide than left vs right. And the proper response to this horror is serious introspection about how violence has burrowed its way into our widening, post-liberal gyre.
The woke left — especially in the fringes the mainstream left adamantly refuses to rein in, condemn, or control — bears some responsibility, because it has long equated speech with violence. If that is true, then what happened to Kirk was legitimate; if his words were “violent”, then a bullet is no different in kind than a verbal provocation. This deeply illiberal idea has been insinuated into a young generation by the academic and journalistic left, as we saw when so many of these ideologues justified and enabled the BLM violence of 2020.
It is therefore absolutely no coincidence that as critical theory has burrowed into every humanities department and every college’s administration, the number of students who back violence as sometimes justifiable to stop speech they dislike has risen dramatically. FIRE just found that 34 percent of students view violence as justifiable in some way against a speaker uttering “hate”, up from 20 percent in 2022. Of course they do. Critical theory requires no less. It replaces reason with power; and violence is the ultimate power.
Then there is the trans issue, which is particularly charged on campuses drenched in critical gender and queer theory — where we have become familiar with rhetoric like this: “There is an anti-trans genocide and we keep shouting it from the rooftops.” The pattern is clear: First the queers dehumanize their opponents as génocidaire “terfs”; then slogans appear in demos: “Punch a Terf,” “Decapitate Terfs,” “Trans rights ... or else.” T-shirts with guns and knives proliferate — and are worn proudly by this statewide Democrat.
Here, by the way, are just some of the tweets directed at J.K. Rowling by members of the “LGBTQIA+” mob: “The j.k. stands for ‘just kill’”, “Girl I wish someone would get on with it and euthanize your old ass already,” “bitch i’ll kill you”. One trans influencer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, name-checked Rowling, Jesse Singal, Helen Joyce and others with the quip: “if they only had one throat, man.” There is a direct line from that kind of rhetoric to “Hey, fascist! Catch!” — the glib, sickening slogan on an unfired cartridge in Utah. “Punch a Nazi” can swiftly morph into “Shoot a Fascist.” And this is the grotesque subculture on the LMAO young far-left: joking about violence, smug, performative, dumb, and bigoted.
But the other revealing — and equally disturbing — aspect of these last few days is how many on the MAGA right have used this occasion to come out as proud, unashamed fascists. Laura Loomer — one of the activists closest to Trump, a woman who vets national security appointments — tweeted the following: “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” Clarifying, no? From a MAGA publisher with over 100,000 followers: “The admin has carte blanche. Don’t bother arguing. Just do what you’re going to do.” From Libs of TikTok: “THIS IS WAR.” And Milo:
Every network news operation, CNN, the Post, the Times. The Ford foundation. Bill and Melinda. Meta and Alphabet. Seize their assets. Shut them down. Do it today.
From Elon Musk: “The Left is the party of murder.” And Nancy Mace: “Democrats own this, 100 percent.” And we can’t leave out Matt Walsh:
We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell. They’re killing us in our churches. They tried to kill our president. They killed Charlie, one of our greatest advocates. … This is existential.
This may be the first time Walsh has approved of a plural pronoun for a single person. But a he, unconfirmed at that point, instantly became a “they” for Walsh. This is Weimar-style polarization, super-charged by social media and videos everywhere, videos that stir the subconscious, from George Floyd’s neck to Charlie Kirk’s.
Social media amplifies this in ways never seen before: images become symbols and symbols tribalize us; and tribes stop talking and go to war. A white cop’s knee on a black man’s neck triggers our collective amygdala shaped by centuries of history. A stabbed white woman’s terrified cowering on a train prompts more “they”s on X, where race war has become a constant theme. And in the blood gushing from a speaker’s neck, we see our own democracy literally bleeding out. Words connect with the rational part of our brains; images target the sub-rational. And in a sub-rational world, liberal democracy simply cannot exist.
I don’t want to offer a bromide in this moment, because it might seem insufficient to its gravity. Yes, America is not new to political violence or assassinations. As recently as the 1960s and ‘70s, we endured a wave of domestic terrorism. But we are in a more tenuous place now than we were then. So much has already unraveled.
The middle class has attenuated; our common religion has retreated or been turned into politics; social inequality has soared; Congress is effectively deadlocked; the media is fragmented; and social media is designed to foster civil conflict. Our usual defense in moments like these — a president who can call for calm and bring both sides together — is no longer an option. We have someone simply incapable of that, someone who has made inflammatory, cruel, personal, vindictive statements his whole identity, someone whose words and actions have intensified the crisis.
Which makes the next three years so perilous and so vital. It really is up to us. We can tip this broken democracy into an abyss or we can walk back slowly, calmly, with perspective. Cool the rhetoric. Find someone in your life you disagree with and have a conversation. Get off social media. Remember how much we still have in common, how blessed we are in this country in so many ways we forget. Tell the truth fearlessly but always be open to correction. Decency, civility, nonviolence, humor, humility, grace: these are the virtues a free society needs to endure. Lose them and it won’t.
We’re trying to do this here on the Dish in our own way — to model robust, civil disagreement in our pods and with our reasoned dissents. Support the sites that do this; leave the sites that don’t. Social media is not going anywhere, so reforming it matters. And stop taking the emotional bait. It’s understandable. It’s human. I get it. I’ve been there. But it’s killing our democracy.
And don’t be afraid. A terrible outcome would be self-censorship for fear of violence. Big provocative ideas can be expressed clearly and civilly — and we need them. The alternatives lead to hell for all of us. Nothing justifies them. Nothing. History tells us that. And the hour is not too late.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a debate with Jill Lepore on the Constitution; listener dissents over the Niall Ferguson pod; reader dissents over my piece on Trump’s war on wind; six notable quotes from the week in news; 14 pieces on Substack we enjoyed this week, mostly on the Abundance conference; a Mental Health Break of a beautiful “Bohemian Rhapsody”; an artistic window in Florida; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
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New On The Dishcast: Jill Lepore
Jill is a writer and scholar. She’s a professor of American history at Harvard, a professor of law at Harvard Law, and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She’s also the host of the podcast “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.” Her many books include These Truths: A History of the United States (which I reviewed for the NYT in 2017) and her new one, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution — out in a few days; pre-order now.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on FDR’s efforts to bypass the Constitution, and the worst amendment we’ve had. That link also takes you to a bunch of listener comments on last week’s pod with Niall Ferguson, along with an assortment of reader emails.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: John Ellis on Trump’s mental health, Michael Wolff on Epstein, Karen Hao on artificial intelligence, Katie Herzog on drinking your way sober, Michel Paradis on Ike, Charles Murray on religion, David Ignatius on the Trump effect globally, and Arthur Brooks on the science of happiness. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
A reader pushes back on last week’s column, “Why Is The President Breaking Wind?”:
I believe the main issue with wind and solar is that they are produced in China. When you add all the fossil fuels to mine, manufacture, transport, install (massive amounts of concrete) and maintain, wind is not as clean as advertised. And once the subsidies are removed, and you consider the lack of continuous energy generation, wind and solar are not a great deal. Nuclear seems to be our best bet, and I’m glad to see the current administration placing an emphasis on this clean alternative.
Another writes, “As little as I want to defend Trump on anything, I am sympathetic to his perspective on this issue”:
Trump learns that his golf course in Scotland is going to have a wind farm on the horizon, ruining its view. Most of us would feel sad to have a beautiful, historical vista like that destroyed in this way.
Continued at length here. This next reader has a nit to pick:
You wrote, “That’s arbitrary power distilled like a fine Scottish whiskey.” I’m sure the mixologist from your VFYW contest has already emailed you, but if it’s Scottish, it’s “whisky”. Must be your Irish heritage, where they use the “e”.
Anyways, it’s late. In the words of Groundskeeper Willie, “Now for a wee nip and a wee nap.”
As always, keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers topics such as the Abundance conference, Trump’s flaccid economy, and postpartum psychedelics. Examples:
Some inspiration from Zach Klein to create your own urban garden.
Lawrence Krauss has 20 interviews with contributors to The War on Science (many of them Dishcast alums).
If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Our resident chef wrote last week:
I hope you and Chris had a restful and rejuvenating break. We spent the first half of August in Tucson, waiting for the monsoon, then gave up in the 110º heat and fled back to Asheville. We took a side trip to visit daughter no. 2 in Coeur d'Alene Idaho, where she has landed after a grueling residency in neurosurgery. She is still pretty busy doing 14-hour surgeries removing brain tumors, but she has time for her new passion: wake surfing on the lake. One of her doctor friends has a special boat that diverts all the wake onto one side. It also has speakers that blast music — apparently a must for the surfer to concentrate:
It was so nice to be able to celebrate a VFYW dinner with her. We made a simple meal of Kulajda — a traditional Czech mushroom soup with potatoes and dill, and a nice balance of sweet and sour flavors. Since I only have one food photo, here is the view from her window as well, along with a photo of a beautiful blue-tailed skink we saw on a hike (for the VFYW’s biologist in Milwaukee):
