It was a sunny day in Orem, Utah, and Kirk was 20 minutes into the first appearance on The American Comeback Tour. The series was scheduled to span university campuses across the United States over the following months, billed as a forum where Kirk would invite debate and challenge opposing viewpoints.
By the time this column goes to print, Charlie Kirk will have been laid to rest. Yet the anger and furore over his murder will not be buried with him.
I was lying in bed on the night he was killed, absent-mindedly scrolling through X, when the video of Kirk’s assassination appeared on my screen.
Initially, I didn’t — I couldn’t — register what I was watching: the clip auto-played without warning, and I found myself staring dumbly at my phone, feeling horrified and repulsed.
I wondered if it was some kind of sick joke or an AI-generated abomination, until the tidal wave of online reaction and Donald Trump himself confirmed its authenticity.
Let me be absolutely clear: no-one deserves to be shot. I am profoundly sorry for Kirk’s wife and children, and for those who witnessed this violence firsthand.
I am both shocked and appalled by his murder and by the broader escalation of political violence it signals.
But I absolutely refuse to mourn the man himself.
And so, the widespread posthumous sanitisation of Kirk’s legacy; the framing of him as a Christian "martyr" who merely championed "common sense" and "free speech" is both outrageous and galling, a testament to the utter audacity of historical revisionism when it suits an agenda.
Kirk believed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which finally afforded black Americans the same legal protections enjoyed by their white counterparts — should never have been passed.
Kirk derided Martin Luther King jun as an "awful" man and insisted that Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Rep Sheila Jackson Lee — all incredibly talented, successful black women — lacked "the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously".
Kirk dehumanised black people, painting them as inherently predatory, criminal and dangerous: he claimed that "all the time in urban America, prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact".
Kirk stated, "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them", and claimed Jews exercise control over "not just the colleges; it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it".
Kirk labelled gay and transgender people as "freaks" and "groomers", opposed gay marriage, called for a wholesale ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people, and believed that women should "submit" to men.
He vehemently opposed abortion; in one debate, he was asked whether he would, hypothetically, support his 10-year-old daughter in aborting a pregnancy conceived of rape. Kirk replied: "The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered."
Kirk called for a return of public executions, rejected the separation of church and parroted Covid-19 conspiracy theories, even as his Turning Point cofounder died of complications from Covid-19. Kirk glibly excused the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the US each year as "worth it" for the second amendment.
Kirk championed the "great replacement theory" and stoked fears of "white rural America" being replaced "with something different". He demonised Islam as "the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America" and spewed white nationalist rhetoric at every available opportunity.
I could go on, but there is only so much bigotry one can stomach. In short, Charlie Kirk was not some harmless "free speech warrior" — he normalised racialised fear and suspicion, magnified societal divisions, stoked moral panic, and directly contributed to real-world harm by portraying entire communities as existential threats.
What is perhaps more galling than the sanitisation of Kirk’s legacy is the rank hypocrisy of the right wing when it comes to quelling the voices of people who see Charlie Kirk for who he truly was. Reactions on social media have triggered a wave of sackings, including teachers, pilots, university professors, medical professionals, newspaper columnists — even a Secret Service employee — over posts deemed "inappropriate".
The US State Department has warned foreign nationals not to praise or joke about Kirk’s death, instructing consulates to mete out "appropriate action".
Politicians who once prided themselves on defending absolute free speech are now frothing at the mouth over people daring to do as little as quote Kirk himself. Last Tuesday, Vice-president J.D. Vance, while guest-hosting the Charlie Kirk Show, implored his listeners to "call them out, and hell, call their employer".
Last Wednesday, Rep Nancy Mace called for Rep Ilhan Omar to be deported to Somalia because Omar criticised Kirk’s rhetoric around guns and black Americans (even though Omar also described his killing as "mortifying" and expressed empathy for his family).
What is this if not the very "cancel culture" the right wing supposedly abhors?
It’s profoundly ironic that the death of a self-proclaimed "free-speech" absolutist — a man who literally died wearing a shirt with "Freedom" emblazoned across the front, a man who spent his life crisscrossing the country, lecturing and shouting at college students in the name of debate — is now being wielded by the very Maga movement and Trump loyalists he inspired as a cudgel to justify cracking down on free speech.
Disagree with me? To quote Kirk himself, "Prove me wrong".
Death invites hagiography — to quote the old Latin adage, De mortuis nil nisi bonum ("Of the dead, nothing but good") — but we owe it to ourselves and to truth itself to remain honest and clear-eyed about the legacy of someone as divisive as Charlie Kirk.
To disregard the hateful consequences of his rhetoric, to ignore the real-world ramifications of the poison he spewed is to rewrite history in real time and excuse the harm he caused. It is historical revisionism dressed up as respectability.
I take no pleasure in what happened to Charlie Kirk. I abhor political violence and will not celebrate his murder, regardless of how I felt about him personally.
Yet I cannot, and will not, mourn the man, nor will I elevate him to sainthood or disregard the disgusting and damaging parts of his legacy.
Charlie Kirk was hateful, bigoted and reckless. His passing is no great loss to humanity, and frankly, I am weary of those pretending otherwise.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
