Kirk spent years amplifying divisive, racist, misogynistic, and conspiratorial rhetoric
Like so many others across the US, I mourn Charlie Kirk’s death and offer my condolences to his loved ones. But mourning should not shield us from the frightening implications of this murder.
The shooting of the Conservative activist presented an opportunity for national leadership to call for calm and for political unity against a scourge of gun violence. Instead, many on the right have seized on the moment to inflame partisan divisions.
Hosting Kirk’s podcast on Monday, US Vice President JD Vance claimed “left-wing extremism” was partly to blame for the 31-year-old’s death. “We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years,” Vance insisted.
He is among many powerful figures pushing this narrative. Before the gunman’s identity or motives were known, prominent conservatives framed the killing as the inevitable result of political enemies and urged revenge.
Hours after Kirk was shot dead at Utah Valley University last Wednesday, Donald Trump claimed in a video broadcast from the Oval Office that “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”.
He added later: “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.” He vowed revenge against his enemies on the left.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed the Democratic Party was “an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defence of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organisation.”
Elon Musk said, “The Left is the party of murder”, and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer claimed, “The Left are terrorists.” Other right-wing figures — including Republican Derrick Van Orden, Alex Jones, Chaya Raichik, and Jesse Watters used language of war against political opponents. That reflex to weaponise grief deepens the polarisation that breeds political violence.
Tyler Robinson, 22, has been arrested over Kirk’s killing, but police have yet to determine a motive.
Whatever that is, the conservative claims are not rooted in reality. A 2024 study by the National Institute of Justice of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) found that: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left.” Far-right extremists “took more than 520 lives”, compared to 78 for far-left extremists, a ratio of nearly 7 to 1. The Trump administration has since purged this study from the DOJ’s website.
Kirk’s death is another symptom of a nation plagued by gun violence. The gun lobby and the firearm industry claim that America’s loose gun laws make us the safest among peer nations from gun violence. The opposite is true.
The US suffers from about 41 gun murders per day. The per capita gun homicides are 9 times greater than in France, 77 times greater than in Germany, 33 times greater than in Australia, and more than 300 times greater than in the UK.
The US experiences more than one mass shooting per day, including 47 school shootings this year.
Another school shooting occurred within minutes of Kirk’s killing. Yet, such tragedies have become so routine that the American leadership and press largely ignored this latest tragedy. The satirical outlet The Onion said, “No Way To Prevent This [mass shootings],’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
Mourning Kirk’s death does not require celebrating his life. He spent years amplifying divisive, racist, misogynistic, and conspiratorial rhetoric.
He called Martin Luther King Jr. “awful” and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that ended segregation and Jim Crow discrimination.
He said of Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce: “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”
He said: “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.”
In response to the hammer attack on former speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband by an intruder intent upon killing the former Speaker, Kirk called for “some amazing patriot” to bail out the assailant.
He said: “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact.“
He disparaged non-religious people and people of non-Christian faiths, saying, “You do not want to live in a non-Christian country.”
He endorsed the notorious “great replacement theory”, saying: “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
He said: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
He called Kamala Harris a “drunk” and Joe Biden a “drug addict”.
We should grieve any life lost to violence. We should also confront the policies and rhetoric that make such deaths more likely. If the United States hopes to be safer than it is, leaders of all parties must reject exploitation of tragedy, stop amplifying dehumanising language, and take serious, evidence‑based steps to reduce gun violence.
Perhaps during his state visit to the UK, Trump might study approaches that have helped curb gun deaths there and press allied democracies to cooperate in reducing political assassination and violence. Is asking the world’s most powerful leader to try to make that change too much?
Allan J. Lichtman is Distinguished Professor of History at the American University, Washington, DC, and author of Conservative at the Core: A New History of American Conservatism
