Charlie Kirk Must Be MAGA’s Last Martyr

Everyone who met Charlie Kirk has a good story to tell about him. When Kirk visited London in May, he set time aside to meet a friend and I to discuss how Britain could copy the success of the Trump revolution. The President knows he owes his second term in no small part to Charlie: he founded Turning Point aged 18, and grew it into the most influential youth movement on the right. Turning Point Action registered voters on college campuses across America, and Kirk converted thousands of default-liberal young men and women to conservatism. Without Kirk, Gen Z would not have vibe-shifted to the right at the last US election.

Kirk explained how Britain was a decade or more behind America in building institutions. I informed him about the problems caused by immigration, and the plight of the likes of Lucy Connolly, imprisoned for imprudent social media posts while sex criminals walk free. Charlie saw my country as the benefactor of all the freedoms he enjoyed as an American. He spoke movingly of his Anglophilia, remarking that “Britain is one of the greatest countries in the history of the world. … My country, America, became as great as it is because of what we inherited from you, from Britain. When I hear the slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ I’m also hearing, ‘Return America to its British roots.’” Without Kirk’s subsequent interview on GB News, and debates at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, the US government wouldn’t have as firm a grasp on how appalling things are here in England. For that, we owe him our gratitude.

When our meeting concluded, we shook hands, and committed to future media ventures together. He was going to come back and tour the UK’s university campuses, holding the same good-faith debates that changed the minds of many American students. I joked that it is always a pleasure to sit across from a future President of the United States.

Now, none of that will come to pass. Charlie Kirk was shot dead in front of his wife and children during a conversation on the Utah Valley University campus. He will be remembered as the last moderate who tried to change the minds of the deranged leftists who wanted him dead, and got their wish.

Last Friday, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson confessed to killing Kirk, after being turned in by his father. An ATF source provided an email to conservative pundit Steven Crowder, revealing “All [Robinson’s] cartridges have engraved wording on them, expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” Former classmates described Robinson as “a Reddit kid” and said he was “pretty left on everything… the only member of his family that was, like, really leftist… The rest of his family was very hard Republican – like gun-loving, everything… He was really the only one that was on the left.” Robinson had written “Hey, fascist! Catch!”, and “Bella ciao” — a reference to an Italian anti-fascist song — on the bullet casings. The 2019 Tacoma, Washington, ICE facility shooter, a member of Antifa, cited the song in his manifesto.

Another engraving read “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?” — a meme that will read like hieroglyphics to anyone who doesn’t live on sexually charged leftist and furry Subreddits and Discord servers. Robinson’s Spotify account suggests he was a fan of trans-activist artist Chonny Jash. He had an account on the pornographic website FurAffinity.net. It seems Robinson had been radicalised online by progressive content-creators, pornography, and in leftist echo-chambers. Weaponising Reddit threads and Discord servers to coordinate online pile-ons became a cornerstone of the Harris campaign. Although Discord denied that Robinson used their app to discuss his crime, Robinson’s roommate showed the FBI messages on Discord that instructed Robinson to retrieve a rifle from a drop point, and leave it in a bush wrapped in a towel.

While not transgender himself, Robinson was living with a trans-identifying male “roommate”, Lance Twiggs. Social media accounts reportedly belonging to Lance show he changed his name to Luna in December, 2024. A family member of Twiggs told Wisconsin Right Now that Twiggs is “not mentally well at all… he was in the process of transitioning… trying to take different medications… he is full of evil and hatred”. The family member also said Twiggs “had a boyfriend” and “wanted to have lunch with other family members to introduce his boyfriend”. Fox News have reported FBI sources are referring to Robinson as Twiggs’ “partner”. Accounts followed by Twiggs have celebrated Kirk’s death on X and TikTok. Multiple trans-identifying individuals alluded to knowing about Kirk’s murder: posting “something BIG coming soon” ahead of the event in Utah. There appears to be a network of transgender and antifa activists connected to Kirk’s killing — all of whom should be charged as co-conspirators.

Internet sleuths speculated Kirk’s killer was another transgender terrorist — the kind Kirk was answering a question about when Robinson pulled the trigger. Last month, transgender-identifying male Robert “Robin” Westman killed two children and injured 17 others in a mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis. Westman wrote the names of other mass shooting perpetrators, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish slogans, and “kill Donald Trump” on his rifle cartridges. In his manifesto and journal, Westman fantasised about “being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids” and wrote “If I carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews… FREE PALESTINE!” In case there was any doubt about Westman’s politics, he wrote: “I hate fascism… I also love when kids get shot, I love to see kids get torn apart… Targets like Musk, Trump or some significant exec.”

Westman was preceded by Iowa’s Perry High School shooter Dylan Butler, who killed sixth grader Ahmir Jolliff and principal Dan Marburger before committing suicide in January, 2024. Butler posted on r/trans and r/femboy on Reddit, claimed he “like[d] f***ing furries” on X, and used the trans and Pride flag emojis on his TikTok and Instagram accounts. Butler communicated with co-conspirators on Discord while he armed himself in a school bathroom, moments before the shooting. In February 2024, trans-identifying woman Genesse “Jeffrey” Ivonne Moreno opened fire at Lakewood Church, Houston, injuring two before being shot dead. In December 2023, trans-identifying male William “Lily” Whitworth pled guilty to second-degree assault for threatening to shoot three schools in Colorado Springs. Police found floor plans of schools, a make-shift bomb and detonation device, and a manifesto in Whitworth’s filthy home. His plea deal referred to Whitworth with they/them pronouns. Another Colorado Springs shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, shot five dead at a gay nightclub in 2022. He was referred to as “Mx. Aldrich” in court motions, and identifies as nonbinary.

These shooters repeat the suite of leftist talking points — trans rights, antiracism, and the plight of Palestinians — and were defended by political co-belligerents. In March 2023, trans-identifying woman Audrey “Aiden” Hale killed six, including three children, at Covenant Christian School in Nashville. Local authorities sought to suppress the shooter’s manifesto. Steven Crowder obtained a copy, and revealed Hale had written “Kill those kids!!! … I hope I have a high death count… Wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little faggots w/ your white privileges”. Hale had targeted Creswell Middle School in 2018, but abandoned the plan for fear she would be seen as racist because of the school’s high proportion of black students. Trans activists stormed the Tennessee State Capitol, promised a “Trans Day of Vengeance” after the shooting, and held up seven fingers to mourn Hale among the victims. They excuse lethal violence against their political opponents and their children — and every excuse is a promise of repetition.

Political violence is endemic to the American left. When Luigi Mangione was charged with the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, leftists put his face on candles and t-shirts. Mangione was canonised as a progressive saint: a Travis Bickle figure, fighting capitalism one cold-blooded killing at a time. In 2017, Bernie Sanders supporter James T. Hodgkinson shot six people, including Congressman Steve Scalise, at the Congressional Baseball Game. Both then-Representatives Ron DeSantis and Jeff Duncan were approached by Hodgkinson before the game, who asked whether Republicans or Democrats were practicing on the field.

Trump supporters have been specifically targeted. In 2020, during the BLM riots, activist Michael Reinoehl killed Trump supporter Aaron Danielson in Portland, Oregon. VICE conducted an interview with Reinoehl while a fugitive, in which he said “I am 100% anti-fascist.” Reinoehl was shot dead in Washington state, while reaching for his firearm, by the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service. In 2022, 41-year-old Shannon Brandt struck and killed 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson with his SUV. Brandt told 911 that he attacked Ellingson for being part of a “Republican extremist group”. Brandt was sentenced to just five years in prison. That same year, Nicholas John Roske was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland, for attempting to kidnap and kill Kavanaugh for his role in overturning Roe v. Wade. Roske pled guilty in April 2025.

On 13 July, 2024, President Trump was shot at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while shielding his wife and daughters. Two other men were injured. A month later, 58-year-old Democrat Ryan Wesley Routh attempted to shoot Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh derailed his trial last week, ranting about Ukraine, Gaza, and Adolf Hitler before being silenced by the Judge.

Before and after these attempts on Trump’s life, then-Sitting President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist and compared him to Hitler. In his blood-red “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech in 2022, Biden read from the teleprompter that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. […] They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.” He told Democrats “folks, it is within our power, it’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy.”

Two weeks before election day, Harris called Trump a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and “invoke[s] Adolf Hitler”. Harris’ running-mate Tim Walz is still accusing Trump of implementing “fascist policies” and insinuated to a crowd on Labor Day that “Just saying, just saying, there will be news [about Trump’s death] sometime” soon. Former MSNBC host Joy Reid, a week before the Butler shooting, said the election “is about keeping HitIer out [of] the White House”. New Republic amalgamated Trump and Hitler’s faces for the cover of its June 2024 magazine. Routh repeated these slogans about Trump being an “existential threat” and a “threat to democracy” on social media before the attempt on Trump’s life.

Democrat politicians, pundits, and NGOs earn a living by libeling and putting targets on the backs of their political opponents. Violence has been excused and encouraged. Congresswoman Maxine Waters instructed a rally in Los Angeles, in 2018, that “if you see anybody from that [Trump’s] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Hillary Clinton said, in 2018, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.” This has resulted in 48% of left-of-centre voters saying that murdering Elon Musk would be justified, and 55% supporting the assassination of President Trump, when polled. As Kirk posted prophetically on X in April: Radio Rwanda-esque rhetoric has produced an “Assassination culture [that] is spreading on the left.”

When alt-right staple Richard Spencer was assaulted in 2017, the left celebrated with calls to “Punch a Nazi”. “For many, there’s solidarity, as people laugh at the awful racist’s discomfort” wrote Tauriq Moosa in The Guardian.

“For too many, Nazism is viewed as merely another opinion – not an inherent threat – so a punched Nazi is something small to celebrate. … We’re not on an equal playing field. They’re not operating in good faith, so civility isn’t even possible. They’re Nazis. … However misguided the action, the moral rule ‘Make genocidal views unwelcome’ is a good basis and, by definition, can’t be equated with its opposite.”

Democrats have depicted their political opponents as Nazis, fascists, racists, confederates, and existential threats to democracy. These are the moral nadir of the post-War political order. Statues are built and movies made to valourise the men who fought, killed, and died to defeat these horrors in the twentieth century. Every time they slur someone as a fascist, they are putting a hit out on them. It has to stop.

Cable news have convinced their remaining viewers that the Klu Klux Klan are omnipresent, that immigrants will be put into concentration camps, and that there is an ongoing genocide of gender-confused children since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator a decade ago. Improperly applying these political slurs to President Trump and his supporters tells the most deranged and febrile parts of the Democrat base that Republicans are ontologically evil, that America is on the precipice of plunging into dictatorship, and that whoever prevents that from happening will be a hero. It is this constant rhetoric that got Charlie Kirk killed. It can only be called irresponsible and inflammatory if one assumes that wasn’t the goal in the first place.

Leftists celebrated Kirk’s murder on X, TikTok, and Bluesky. They made t-shirts, 3D-printed models, and a video game mocking his death. Others sought to justify the shooting with complaints about Kirk’s politics. MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd was fired for suggesting Kirk could have been struck by “a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration”. While his fate was still undetermined, Dowd described Kirk as “one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups”. Appearing to blame Kirk for his own murder, Dowd said, “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.”

The press were no better. The New York Times used Kirk’s obituary to claim he was “vocal in his willingness to spread unsupported claims and outright lies” and “tweeted relentlessly with a brash right-wing spin, including inflammatory comments about Jewish, gay and Black people”. Elizabeth Spiers wrote for The Nation that “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning”, calling Kirk a “white Christian nationalist provocateur [who] preached hate, bigotry, and division” and “an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct”. After Kirk’s death, LGBT Pravda Pink News complained “Charlie Kirk was discussing ‘trans shooters’ conspiracy moments before being shot”. Rolling Stone complained conservatives are hypocritical for reporting people celebrating Kirk’s murder to their employers, despite previously arguing that “Cancel culture is a way for a new generation of people to practice free speech” and “the poison to those in power that have benefited from unchecked free speech”.

These aren’t just fringe figures: they are teachers, healthcare workers, university professors, union members. They are majors, captains, and master sergeants in the military. They work at NASA. They are the mainstream publications and politicians on the left. They are trans-identifying men who, for some reason, are employed by the conservative Manhattan Institute. They are everywhere. They will not stop. They think it’s morally right to kill anyone standing in the way of absolute equality. We cannot coexist with these people.

It’s not just in America: George Abaraonye, the incumbent president of Oxford Union, celebrated Kirk’s murder over WhatsApp. He had debated Kirk in May, and previously called his political opponents “cancers in society [who] must be taken down by any means necessary”. In an interview with the New Statesman, the unrepentant Abaraonye said “My words were no less insensitive than his—arguably less so”. Abaraonye played the victim by saying “It is disheartening that those who hurl abuse at me are often the same who claim to value free speech and oppose ‘cancel culture,’ yet apply those principles inconsistently.” Abaraonye appealed to standards he does not hold, demanding grace that he would not grant us. Antiwhite author Nels Abbey called Kirk “a David Duke for the TikTok age” on television the morning after his death. Bob Vylan, the rap duo who gloated about dispossessing the English people of their country and chanted “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury, told a crowd “if you talk s*** you will get banged, rest in p*** Charlie Kirk.” If left unchecked, Kirk’s death will be a call to action for the left to do the same to any rightwinger in any nation that empowers them.

The day before Kirk’s murder, during the discourse about Iryna Zarutska’s stabbing, the Black Lives Matter Instagram account posted a reel which said “All oppressed people have a right to violence.” This followed the release of CCTV footage depicting the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Zarutska by schizophrenic serial offender Decarlos Brown Jr. Brown had 15 previous criminal charges and spent five years in prison for armed robbery. He was released on cashless bail without conditions for his most recent charge, before killing Zarutska.

Brown comes from a family of congenital criminals: his brother Stacey Dejon Brown was sentenced to 27–36 years in prison for second-degree murder and armed robbery in 2014; his sister, Tracey Vontrae Brown was arrested in 2024 for larceny, felony conspiracy, and shoplifting; and his father, Decarlos Brown Sr., arrested for allegedly breaking and entering, felony conspiracy, larceny, and possession of a weapon on a university campus. There seems to be a racial component to the crime too, with Brown repeating “I got that white girl” after stabbing Zarutska, unprovoked. Commenting on this, Kirk accused Black Lives Matter of “justifying the murder of Iryna Zarutska”, and asked why progressives were pretending the attack “had nothing to do with race?”

Van Jones accused Charlie Kirk of “race-mongering” on CNN, and said “we don’t know how to deal with people who are hurting in the way this man [Brown Jr.] was hurting.” Jones, like his fellow leftists, believes in the blank slate account of human nature: that all human beings are fundamentally equal, ergo all inequality is a result of oppression, ergo all violent criminals are the victims of society, ergo anyone noticing differences between groups is perpetuating inequality and thereby crime. If we just ignore all differences and give the perpetrator more compassion than their victim, we would unleash their latent egalitarianism and live in John Lennon’s Imagine. Jones cast Kirk as the stumbling block to utopia. If you knew Heaven-on-Earth was within reach, wouldn’t you kill the Devil too? The rhetoric and policies based on delusional blank-slate ideology are as much to blame for Kirk and Zarutska’s murders as the killers themselves.

Someone must continue Charlie Kirk’s amazing work. Minds were changed and lives transformed by his patient, compassionate conversations on college campuses. But you cannot debate with those who say that “hate speech” is violence, and respond with violence in kind. The Republicans calling to “turn down the temperature” do not understand what time it is. We aren’t arguing the merits of tax cuts and capitalism versus funding public services through socialism any more. We are fighting for survival against people who want to kill us for our race, our belief in our nations’ founding Christian faith, or our refusal to build a fantastical utopia contra human nature. Refusing to put an end to this is tantamount to surrender. We cannot share a country with people who want us dead.

The left just killed the last man who was still adamant that we could change their minds. Kirk was the moderate option. There will not be any more Charlie Kirks going forward. There are no moderates left among the young men who watched one of our own get gunned down for having a conversation. We tried talking. They didn’t listen. Debate died with Charlie Kirk.

President Trump is calling for peace. Peace is preceded by justice. Speech is only useful as the prerequisite to organised political action. Otherwise, it siphons off righteous anger into a cathartic talking-shop, and immobilises us until the next one of our friends is taken from us. The only way to prevent escalation to tit-for-tat violence is exercising state power to permanently crush leftist terrorism. People will get desperate if the state does not act.

Trump needs to go full Bukele. The House Ways and Means Committee will investigate nonprofit groups with ties to leftist terror cells. Anyone encouraging, financing, and participating in leftist violence must be imprisoned for a very long time — in many cases, indefinitely. Antifa and Black Lives Matter should be designated domestic terror organisations. All those who have participated in Antifa violence and encouraged riots should be imprisoned. Asylums must be rebuilt. The mass prescription of SSRIs must be stopped. Cross-sex hormones must be banned.

White House Chief of Staff, Steven Miller revealed on Fox News that the last message Kirk sent to him was “that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organisations in this country that are fomenting violence”. He suggested that its members will live in exile. Miller is right: you cannot live with these people. The only lasting solution to this problem may be banishment. The talking heads who earn a living libeling their political opponents as Hitler-in-waiting must be exiled from public life. They must be replaced with saner voices, or else the stations platforming them should have their broadcast licenses revoked.

The same goes for leftist streamers like Hasan Piker, who tell terminally online mutants that “America deserved 9/11”, call to “Kill those motherf***ers, murder those motherf***ers in the street”, and instruct “leftwingers, liberals, you need to be showing your opponents guts on there, you need to be gutting them, you need to be shanking these motherf***ers and letting their intestines just writhe on stage… Slice ‘em up!” For Steven Bonnell II (alias Destiny) who has “moved full-on to the political violence level, or the real violence level, when it comes to conservative people”, mocked and celebrated the murder of Corey Comperatore, and said “I hate Charlie Kirk, I think he is a satan spawn” on CNN. For Twitch itself, who permit and amplify incitement to violence against rightwingers on their platform. They should not be deplatformed for holding objectionable views: they should be imprisoned for repeatedly encouraging their thousands of followers to commit acts of brutality the likes of which just took the life of Charlie Kirk.

All foreign nationals who rejoiced at Kirk’s death should be deported. The State Department intends to revoke the visas from immigrants celebrating Kirk’s murder on social media. Deputy Secretary Landau is accepting submissions from the public. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar — long suspected of committing immigration fraud by marrying her brother — should be first on the list. Omar should be stripped of her US citizenship and returned to Somalia for listing Kirk’s sins against progressivism and sharing videos that excused his murder. Measures must be taken that will be decried as authoritarian to secure the future of the American republic. Any impediment to this agenda within the government must be removed.

When we saw the footage of Charlie getting shot, young men in politics felt like we lost one of our own. That is nothing compared to how his friends, colleagues, and family must feel. His wife Erika, son, and daughter were in the audience in Utah. Both children are too young to have strong memories of their father, but they just watched him get shot. It is our responsibility to honour Charlie by telling stories they can look back on and learn how respected he was, and how much he gave to the movement. It is also our duty to avenge him by making sure no more children lose a parent to leftist terrorism.

Charlie Kirk must be the last martyr of the MAGA movement. America’s future depends on it.