In the killing of Charlie Kirk, we may well have experienced our first pro-trans assassination.

Is anyone surprised?

The trans cause has been infused with an irrational fervor from the beginning, its ethos deeply illiberal and even threatening — just ask JK Rowling.

Whether it was accurate or not, the implicit message of the gay-rights movement was “Live and let live,” while the implicit pro-trans demand is, “Agree to every claim we make, no matter how implausible.”

The late historian and librarian of Congress James Billington wrote an intellectual history on the European revolutionary tradition, “Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith.”

What we’re talking about here is, Fire in the Minds of Them.

What accounts for the intensity and anger of trans advocates?

First of all, the people who have “transitioned” have poured a massive amount of emotional and financial investment into their choice, and there is no going back.

The last thing that they want to hear — from anyone — is that it is all a fraud, that they’ve wasted all that psychic energy and money, that they’ve harmed themselves via hormones or surgery for no reason.

The level of delusion involved in the trans cause, meanwhile, requires pushing on all fronts, to get every claim of the trans advocates accepted and to squash all dissent: If there’s one crack in the edifice, it discredits the entire enterprise.

The trans sports issue, for instance, wouldn’t seem like a hill to die on, given the popular opposition that it engenders.

But if so-called trans women can’t play against real women in competitive sports, then that unacceptably calls into question their legitimacy as women.

In a similar vein, it’s not enough to accept the pronouns of trans people — everyone needs to start stipulating their own pronouns on every email and every document

The whole thing is a little like the film “Shutter Island” (plot spoiler), in which the staff of an insane asylum indulges the delusions of a demented man as the best way to treat him.

The notion of suicide hangs over the trans debate.

Trans advocates blame the physiological distress of people suffering from gender dysphoria on those who question trans orthodoxy, so they think that those who refuse to go along are literally causing trans people to kill themselves.

This comes up again and again, and makes the acceptance of trans claims a matter of life and death.

Never mind that the narrative around suicide — as the ACLU’s attorney admitted before the Supreme Court in oral arguments in the Tennessee case of US vs. Skrmetti — is false.

On top of this, every major issue for the left is always the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Whatever the new cause is, it must be invested with the moral urgency — and the unquestionable righteousness — of the civil rights struggle.

In moral terms, the progressives always put themselves in the position of Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall, the advocates on “the right side of history,” while their opponents are perpetually standing in the schoolhouse door.

The trans debate over the past decade is bookended by two alarming events.

One came in 2015, when the transgender journalist Zoey Tur threatened during a TV debate to put Ben Shapiro in a hospital for not accepting his pronouns.

The other occurred earlier this month, with comedian Graham Linehan’s arrest at Heathrow Airport for X posts opposing the trans agenda.

Both incidents demonstrated fanaticism and an unwillingness to tolerate any opposition.

This fervor doesn’t suggest self-confidence: People tend to be most emotional in debate when they are defending a vulnerable position or fear that they are losing.

Even when they were making the biggest gains, the advocates of the trans cause seemed to realize the fragility of their own case, a Jenga tower of irrationality that couldn’t bear the slightest examination.

And now someone who, as his mother put it, had become more “trans-rights oriented” and, in his own words, wanted to stop Charlie Kirk’s “hate,” assassinated a high-profile dissenter from the trans orthodoxy.

Tyler Robinson’s means was shocking, but his illiberal impulse on behalf of the trans cause was very familiar.

X: @RichLowry