“Do you know who Charlie Kirk is?” she asked as we lay in bed engaged in our usual early-morning scrolling.
“Sure,” I said nonchalantly. “He’s a conservative American commentator, why?”
“He’s been shot,” Ivy announced. An hour later, we learned that the shot had been fatal. And thus began an ongoing global discussion accompanied by handwringing the likes of which I never have seen.
I wouldn’t exactly call myself a Kirk fan. As a way-too-avid follower of social media, of course, I’d seen many videos of him engaging in spirited debate on college campuses throughout the US and abroad. A strong Trump supporter, he was the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth advocacy group promoting traditional American values.
He was also a fundamentalist Christian, which is where we parted company.
As far as I could tell, though, the 31-year-old activist, husband, and father was an intelligent, articulate, sometimes-tough-but-often-gentle, crusader whose spirited discussions forced young people to consider ideas rarely offered elsewhere on their campuses. Among them: that a university education isn’t the only route to a meaningful life, capitalism is the best economic system, free speech and open debate are vital to democracy, and nonviolence is the key to its survival.
There were also more controversial notions, including the idea that there are only two biological genders, affirmative action and race-based preferences are racist, Israel has the right to exist and fight for that existence, birth control is bad, women should prioritize motherhood over careers, and preserving the American right to bear arms is worth any resulting casualties, presumably including his.
I didn’t agree with everything Kirk said, though I agreed with much. What I embraced entirely, though, was his right to say it without facing the threat of extinction. Which brings us to the point of this column: that America—and, to some extent, the world—has reached a critical crossroads.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expressions, 33% of American college students now believe it’s acceptable to use violence against speakers, up from 20% just five years ago. And a 2023 Buckley Institute Survey showed that fully 45% of the students interviewed agreed that violence is justified to stop so-called “hate speech”—up from 30% in 2017.
“We’re very clearly at a moment where the temperature of our political discourse is extremely high,” Ruth Braunstein, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, told the Los Angeles Times. The inescapable conclusion: that political violence—once a fringe phenomenon—is creeping into the mainstream.
But what exactly is hate speech, anyway? For decades, influencers on both sides of the political divide defined it as any pronouncement promoting animosity towards a particular race, sexual preference, religion, nationality, immigration status, or other identities of that ilk.
Lately, however, the definition seems to have been broadened to include political statements with which one disagrees. Thus, the insistence on only two genders becomes the hateful oppression of those who claim to have transitioned. And opposing abortion is viewed as the brutal suppression of women’s God-given rights.
On the left, this broadening has been aided most recently by the insistence that Donald Trump is Hitler, and his supporters are raving fascists. History teaches us what to do with fascists: put them in early graves. Thus, it’s no surprise that a bullet casing recovered near the rifle of Kirk’s alleged assassin bore the inscription, “Hey fascist catch!”
The irony, of course, is that Kirk’s death has made him far more influential than he ever was in life. His total social media following has grown from 19 million to around 32.2 million. And Kirk’s Turning Point USA has been inundated with inquiries about adding 37,000 chapters to its existing 9,000.
One of those new followers is my Filipino wife. “I’ve become a fan!” proclaims the woman who has now viewed dozens of Kirk’s videos online.
The big question: will those who hated him now become fans of nonviolence?
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David Haldane is an award-winning American author and journalist with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
