There are a lot of reasons Charlie Kirk was effective. An underrated one is his grasp of who the enemy was, who it wasn’t, and how to aim the considerable amount of organizational and oratory resources at his disposal.
In the years since his early days of talking about “debt and deficit,” Kirk’s grasp of the battle he was fighting had obviously crystallized. Of his many roles, one of his most influential was as a thought leader, framing the conversation about how to protect the country he loved in a way that helped others understand what time it was. He steered his many listeners away from foolish distractions on the internet and toward real things, like getting married and having children, devoting their lives to Christ, and using their spheres of influence to put real points on the board.
His death is a great loss, not just for his friends, but for the future of the conservative movement. Communicators like Kirk will be needed as the right continues to break away from the tired talking points of a failed establishment and refashions itself as the vibrant intellectual home of patriots who want their children to inherit the country their forefathers built. Kirk was smart enough to understand the endgame and articulate enough to bring others along with him.
In death as in life, he has had a crystallizing effect. If you didn’t understand that there exist evil forces on the left who want you dead because you believe the same things Charlie did, you should now. Understand that a significant subset of people on the left are celebrating the death of a husband and father who stood for the same things you do, and understand that they will not be assuaged by generic words about unity because they do not want unity with you.
Understand, also, that the shooter did not come to exist in a vacuum. Directly or indirectly, he is a product of the financiers of domestic terror groups like Antifa, who promulgate ideologies of violence like those Kirk’s assassin reportedly engraved on his shell casings. His ilk are radicalized by the media and other Democrats who incite political violence by engaging in breathless character assassination against people like Kirk, smearing them as Nazis and threats to democracy for no other crime than peacefully trying to change minds. Young people like him are driven to darkness by the gruesome false gospel of transgenderism and its clerics, who teach their adherents to hate the very image of God. Every investigative, prosecutorial, and persuasive power at our disposal should be used to constrain such actors from precipitating more violence.
It’s important for everyone in the crosshairs of the same ideology that killed Kirk to recognize what we are up against. It should be obvious that the greatest threat to the right is the people who want to shoot us dead. There are strategic and productive ways to fight that threat, like investigating the NGOs funding Antifa activity or investigating groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center that place targets on organizations like Kirk’s by labeling them “hate groups.”
Instead, some Republicans are finding ways to make this moment about their complaints with the right. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., used the words “cheap, disgusting, and awful” to condemn not the architects of left-wing violence but “talking heads” on the right whose reaction to Kirk’s death was to say “we’re at war.” Billy Binion of Reason lectured about “irresponsible rhetoric” on the right and suggested that if you pin Kirk’s murder on “the left” you are “part of the problem.”
If anything, Kirk’s murder should put to rest such finger-wagging both-sides-ism.
If leftist lunatics keep shooting men like Kirk for having earnest conversations, there may come a time when a significant contingent on the right feels they have no civil options left and acts accordingly. But we’re not there, and it’s not productive for self-appointed gatekeepers on the right to indulge the delusion that we are, just so they can flatter themselves for their own temperance. The most productive way to keep that from happening is to show everyone who is grieving that the system in which they’ve lost so much trust can still be effectively used to punish evildoers, which means using every legal means to go after the entire leftist cabal that got us here.
It is beyond obvious that violent extremism is a spiritual outgrowth of the left’s desire for chaos and agitation. It’s descended from the left-wing terrorism of the ’70s, as both Mark Hemingway and Chris Bray have thoughtfully pointed out. It’s not a coincidence that radical adherents of transgenderism have shot up Christian schools, or that Donald Trump was shot after a decade of leftist rhetoric comparing him to Hitler, or that when leftists don’t get their way, cities burn.
The existential threat is not coming from irrelevant trolls on X who say stupid and offensive things. We don’t need Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray to lecture us about “policing our ranks” or the “far right.” There is no right-wing equivalent to the infrastructure created on the left for the purpose of wreaking chaos, destruction on you and your loved ones. The call is not coming from inside the house, it’s coming from the guy with a rifle outside who is trying to shoot you.
Of course, there are internet randos who say vile things. But the best way to render them irrelevant is to ignore them and keep on doing important things for the country. Charlie Kirk did more than almost anyone to steer the conversation on the right in an effective direction, and he did it by giving airtime to important things and talking about them persuasively. He didn’t fret about who should be allowed to have a voice on the right or use the leftist tactic of shutting down speech by smearing it as “extremist.” He just made better arguments.