When the news broke last week of Charlie Kirk’s death by assassination in the USA, I had to google the guy because although he sounded familiar, I didn’t really know much about him, and the general reaction to his killing was like he was someone who mattered in this brave new world of ours.
Kirk didn’t hold public office but he was a crucial organizer of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. He co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to promote conservative beliefs among students. The group, which has more than 850 chapters, sends right-wing speakers to college campuses and convenes young people for political discussions, and was crucial in guiding young men to vote for Donald Trump in 2024.
He frequently visited college campuses for speaking engagements and debates, and videos of his Q&As have amassed millions of views on YouTube. He frequently criticized D.E.I. (diversity, equity, inclusion), abortion, immigration, and gun control, and was ironically answering a question about mass shootings (which he thinks aren’t that bad compared to losing your right to bear arms) when a single bullet pierced his neck.
As a key ally of Donald Trump, Kirk was at the leading edge of promoting far-right and Trump-aligned causes. His more controversial views included his criticism of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Martin Luther King Jr., promotion of COVID-19 misinformation, and false claims of electoral fraud in 2020.
This was a guy who said it was worth it to have some gun deaths every year just so Americans can have their beloved Second Amendment (the right to bear arms). He also said he disliked the word ‘empathy’, being quoted as saying on one of his shows: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually,” “I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage.”
The interesting thing about Kirk’s death is that he is now being made to look like a real American hero, especially by his good friend Donald Trump, who has announced that he would be posthumously given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Anyway, despite being someone I wouldn’t want my kids to look up to or listen to, or someone I would hate to get into a debate with, what is undebatable is that despite everything, Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to be killed, the same way nobody deserves to be killed. Not in assassinations, not in mass lynchings, or American-type school shootings, or through police brutality. Not after being Red-tagged, not for being an alleged drug addict, not for simply looking at someone the wrong way.
When regular folk, or “little” people die or are unjustly or publicly killed, they are usually forgotten by the public after the grieving period is over. In some rare instances, they can become rallying points, such as in the case of Kian de los Santos when he was gunned down by overzealous cops during the peak of the Duterte drug war. But the norm is that killing usually does the job of erasing the individual in the most efficient manner, leaving only the immediate family and those who loved them to remember the dead.
However, if a person of power or influence, such as Charlie Kirk, is killed by an act of political violence, that can have a vastly different result. The assassin probably thought that by killing Kirk, he was slaying an enemy or a monster. But what has happened is that he has created a bigger and more powerful problem for his cause, as following Kirk’s death, he has become MAGA’s greatest martyr. Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the rest of the MAGA movement will be raising Kirk’s banner and spreading his gospel at the very least, and worst case, this could be the spark they have been waiting for to start a war with their enemies, which could be those who do not believe in Kirk’s (and by extension their) beliefs and policies.
The world is unfortunately full of people that we do not or cannot agree with. Based on my life experience, that’s already at least 50% of the population. We have been fine with avoiding them and interacting only when necessary. And then, as with everything, there is the ultra-minority rare segment of the population that are really great at what they do, which in this case makes us really worry about their impact on society and our children’s future. We can still avoid or ignore these sorts of influencers or leaders, but their words and actions influence so many around us.
Charlie Kirk was very good at defending his beliefs, with misinformation and alternative facts, if necessary. That was his whole shtick and he was able to make it work. Maybe he was targeted for assassination because the shooter felt that he had to be neutralized somehow, but as we have seen, killing or political violence is never the answer. It just makes matters worse for everyone involved, in this case the people of the USA.
Killing is not a solution. Political violence only begets more violence, which if it spirals out of control, becomes a bloody civil war. We need to be able to settle our differences without coming to blows or killing each other. The scary part of all this is that in the USA, it looks like they are heading in the wrong direction.
Hopefully Filipinos are still able to learn from Americans, not in killing each other, but in avoiding that dangerous path.*
