By James J. Devine
It’s almost a cliché at this point: A prominent right-wing figure spends years spewing incendiary rhetoric, platforming hate, and playing footsie with political violence—only to be posthumously canonized as a fallen saint of free speech and liberty the moment reality catches up with consequence.
Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot this week during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, was no ordinary conservative commentator.
He was a man who all but begged to be martyred—by rhetoric, by posture, and by the company he kept. In death, he is being transformed into the very kind of weapon he once claimed to oppose.
It is grotesque, but not surprising, to watch the right-wing media machine accuse liberals and Democrats of “ghoulishly celebrating” Kirk’s death. Teachers, firefighters, and military personnel are among those who have been fired from their jobs after sharing their opinion about the death of someone labeled as a fervent free speech advocate.
U.S. Secret Service Agent Anthony Pough was placed on leave and had his security clearance revoked after he targeted Charlie Kirk in a Facebook post, warning that Kirk “spewed hate and racism” and would ultimately “answer to GOD” and face karma.
MSNBC fired contributor Matthew Dowd for saying that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”
Barstool’s Dave Portnoy argued that while not directly to blame, Trump’s deeply divisive rhetoric and the left’s relentless labeling of opponents as “Nazis” and “fascists” created a climate of hatred that culminated in Kirk’s shooting, asking, “You can’t then be like, ‘What happened?’”
“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone. They want open borders,” said Trump, who refuses to turn down the temperature as tensions reached a boiling point in the wake of the latest killing.
This performative outrage is not about mourning. It is a calculated strategy to enshrine Kirk as a cultural martyr, to convert grief into grievance, and to turn yet another American tragedy into a political cudgel.
Let’s not get it twisted. Charlie Kirk made himself a lightning rod—not because he believed in free speech, but because he believed in provocation as a political tactic.
Far-right terrorism has outpaced all other forms in the U.S., including attacks by far-left extremists and jihadist groups. Since 1994, right-wing extremists have been responsible for the majority of terrorist incidents—and their attacks have surged dramatically during the Trump era.
White supremacists were responsible for more attacks than any other type of right-wing extremist.
Still, anti-government extremists, anti-abortion extremists, and other far-right-wing lunatics have also plotted and carried out attacks.
Charlie Kirk thrived on creating that kind of division; he galvanized hatred, and his organization trafficked in a brand of sanctimonious cruelty that disguised bigotry as patriotism. He also lied a lot. On the fact-checker PolitiFact, about 90 percent of Kirk’s claims were labeled “mostly false”, “false”, or “pants on fire”.
This was the same man who said the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of Americans by gun violence was worth it for the sake of the Second Amendment.
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year,” Kirk said, brushing aside a death toll over 40,000 with the casual nihilism of someone far more interested in ideology than human life.
Now that he himself has become one of those casualties, the fear-driven movement he led is using his death as a recruitment tool for more rage, more violence, and more war.
Instead of introspection, we get retribution. Instead of reflection, we get vengeance. Rather than pause to ask why a nation that loses nearly 40,000 people a year to guns is spiraling further into partisan violence, Kirk’s allies have opted for the scorched-earth approach—accusing their political enemies of murder, labeling dissenters as “demonic,” and calling for arrests, blacklists, and literal warfare.
The far-right ecosystem wasted no time spinning this tragedy into a fascistic fever dream.
Steve Bannon called Kirk a “casualty of war.” Matt Walsh invoked “demonic forces.” Elon Musk, in all his billionaire bluster, proclaimed, “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.” Jesse Watters spoke ominously of vengeance.
The white nationalist fringe is already fantasizing about RICO charges and political purges.
Top U.S. law enforcement officials at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence produced a strategic intelligence assessment on domestic terrorism, which says far-right extremist movements are the biggest domestic terrorism threat facing the country.
Even as the suspect’s motive remains unknown, the narrative is clear: This wasn’t an isolated incident—it was, according to the far right, an assassination planned and sanctioned by an ideological enemy. And just like that, the same voices who cry crocodile tears over “political violence” are fanning the flames of something far darker.
The hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. This is the same political movement that defended—or outright celebrated—the January 6th insurrection.
The same movement that brushed off school shootings with “thoughts and prayers” while deregulating firearms.
The same movement that cheered as Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with an AR-15 and killed two people during a Black Lives Matter protest.
And let’s not forget: Kirk himself praised the January 6 riot as “historic.” His organization, Turning Point USA, literally funded buses to the Capitol. In his own words, this was a man who believed empathy was a weakness and called transgender healthcare a crime warranting “Nuremberg-style trials.”
There is no moral high ground to be claimed here. The very people now demanding “justice” were until yesterday champions of stochastic terrorism—using platform after platform to dehumanize immigrants, demonize LGBTQ+ people, spread racial fear, and peddle anti-Muslim and anti-Black dog whistles.
The personal attacks even turn inward, against rivals for power among the right-wing fringes that so bitterly divorced themselves from mainstream America.
Eric Greitens, a former Missouri governor and ex-Navy SEAL who resigned in 2018 amid sexual assault and campaign finance scandals, reemerged in 2022 with a shocking campaign ad. In it, he racks a shotgun and leads armed men in a raid to hunt so-called “RINOs”—Republicans in name only—declaring, “Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”
The blood wasn’t even dry before they began naming enemies and issuing veiled threats. A blacklist website, “Charlie’s Murderers,” has emerged to dox and shame social media users deemed insufficiently reverent.
Laura Loomer wants the government to “crack down” on left-wing groups.
Right-wing influencer Matt Forney, a white supremacist, antisemite, and misogynist writer, calls Kirk’s death Trump’s “Reichstag moment”—a green light for authoritarianism. Without evidence, Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler blamed communists for the 1933 Reichstag Fire and used it to claim emergency powers from President Paul von Hindenburg, leading soon to the suspension of freedom of association and the press.
Make no mistake: This outrage isn’t about Charlie Kirk. This is about power. About grievance. About weaponizing tragedy for political gain.
G. Elliott Morris wrote, “If your goal is to avoid future assassinations of political figures, you probably don’t give the speech Trump gave on Wednesday. And you do not call for civil or say Democrats are the ‘Party of Murder.'”
And in death, just as in life, Kirk is serving the same purpose he always did—to accelerate the division he so gleefully nurtured, to keep the hate machine well-oiled, and to give the culture war a fresh corpse to rally around.
But here’s the truth they don’t want to hear: Charlie Kirk didn’t die because America hates conservatives. He died in a country where nearly forty thousand people a year are gunned down, in a culture of violence he helped cultivate, under laws he fought to keep toothless.
He didn’t die despite his politics. He died because of them.
And now, the very voices who dismissed gun violence as an acceptable “cost of freedom” are demanding sympathy, silence, and subjugation from the rest of us. That is the real indecency. That is the real outrage.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox urged calm after Kirk’s assassination, but Trump and Elon Musk are stoking rage instead. While Cox called for unity, Trump agitated for retaliation, and Musk inflamed tensions, calling the left “the party of murder” and urging Republicans to “fight.”
The right wing dismisses a wave of recent attacks on their opponents, including the assassination of Representative Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s former Democratic House Speaker; the bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic; and an attempted murder by arson of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro.
Kirk was not a casualty of a leftist plot.
He was a casualty of a nation that has long ceased to distinguish between speech and sabotage—between provocation and policy—between patriotism and persecution.
He was a casualty of a movement that does not differentiate between politics and war.
The question now is whether real Americans will let the right twist his death into an excuse for more of the very violence they pretend to oppose.
The truth is ugly. But it’s our reality.
And if America doesn’t confront it, there will be many more Charlie Kirks—not martyrs, not heroes—just more fuel for a fire they started and now cannot control.