Charles James Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and conservative influencer, was murdered during a college event in Utah last week. He was assassinated for spreading conservative and pro-American ideas and messages to younger generations. This is the most prominent assassination of a political activist since Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, and the nation has lost a giant of unprecedented proportions because of it. Charlie leaves behind a wife and two children.
I met Charlie very briefly when I attended CPAC in February 2020. He was on the way to speak on the main stage and I spoke to him for a minute. I was immediately awestruck at his stature, both physically (standing at 6’5) and within the politically conservative community. He was 26 at the time, yet he was surrounded by staff and mobbed by fans. Even though he was rushing to his speech, he took the time to greet everyone and take quick pictures.
I do not share this story to sound cool or important. Having spent the last decade in the political sphere, I’ve attended several conferences and met many public personalities. Meeting Charlie Kirk was, at the time, one of many people I met at that conference. Now, however, this story is a life raft that I am clinging to in the vast sea of grief that I have over this tragedy. Charlie was not just a great advocate for the principles I, and millions of Americans, believe in, but he was also a good man—a son, a husband, a father, and a leader to his employees and his devoted followers.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination proves that the First Amendment to our Constitution, the right to free speech, is worth no more than the paper it is printed on unless we are willing to defend it. Unless you are ready, willing, and able to speak about the topics that may make others uncomfortable in the pursuit of the truth—even under the threat of a sniper’s bullet—we don’t truly have free speech.
Charlie was a titan in the marketplace of ideas. He engaged in every platform available to him—which was nearly every platform. He was the first guest on left-wing California Governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast. At every event on every campus he went to, he invited the students who disagreed with him to come to the front of the line. He knew that he, someone who never attended college, could outwit all of the most credentialed adversaries that approached him, simply because he was speaking the truth and they were spreading lies.
Of all the videos that have been circulating the past week, the ones that stuck out are the ones that showed how quickly the leftist adversaries of Charlie Kirk succumbed to violent rhetoric or attempts to get him deplatformed. There was the elderly man who, after being proven wrong by Charlie, demanded they physically fight. There was the young woman who surreptitiously exposed herself trying to get Charlie’s videos deplatformed by YouTube. There were the endless throngs who hurled accusations and insults at him because they couldn’t answer questions that he posed to them, like “What is a woman?”
The reactions to his murder have been both uplifting and utterly demoralizing. In West Hempstead, there was a candlelight vigil, one of countless memorials around the country for Charlie. Pastors recited Biblical verses and preached the gospel that Charlie preached. Admirers spoke about what Charlie meant to them. I asked the organizers for the opportunity to honor Charlie in accordance with the Jewish tradition, by saying Keil Maleh Rachamim, the Prayer for the Soul of the Departed.
Although Charlie was a devout Christian, he was a staunch defender of both Judaism and Israel, the one Jewish state. Charlie began keeping a version of Shabbos by unplugging from the world from Friday night to Saturday night to spend time with family—a message he was sharing in his soon-to-be-published book, Stop, in the Name of G-d: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life. That book immediately shot up the best-sellers list on Amazon despite it not being released until December. This message from Charlie will hopefully transform the world.
The demoralizing and demonic reaction to Charlie’s murder comes courtesy of those who tend to preach empathy and compassion above all else. Social media, especially the left-wing Bluesky, is replete with celebration for this heinous act. (Not coincidentally, many of these accounts have Palestinian flags in their bios.) In an act of moral correction, many people are actually getting fired from their jobs, like Matthew Dowd at MSNBC, for their reactions.
While people may claim this is a right-wing version of cancel culture, that is utterly false. Cancel culture exists when someone is fired by their employer after an online mob pressures said employer because the person said something within the Overton window—the window of acceptable political and social discourse. It is an attempt to take a normal thing, like “men cannot get pregnant,” and move it outside the Overton window. No employer is required to keep an employee who publicly celebrated the murder of a political activist. That is well outside the Overton window, as well it should be.
Then there are those who suffer from Israel Derangement Syndrome, a close cousin to Trump Derangement Syndrome that has plagued many for nearly a decade. IDS can be seen in people who immediately and repeatedly claim that “Israel did it” the moment Charlie was shot, despite having absolutely zero evidence to back that claim. This take was so atrocious that even those who criticize Israel for a living had to balk at it.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, like October 7 and September 11, not only will exist as a tragic day in world history, but also as a moment in time. For many it is a unifying moment in the face of unspeakable evil. For others, it is a moment that they were exposed for being complicit with monsters. What we as a society must do is honor Charlie’s legacy by being active, being engaged, and being unafraid to champion the causes that we believe in.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.
