The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a horrific tragedy for civility in American politics that came on the back of several other horrific incidents in an escalating climate of political violence being normalized across the Western world since the end of President Obama’s administration.
It should be pointed out that Donald Trump’s base, for the most part, is peaceful, despite events like the January 7, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that showed the horrific side of incivility. However, this incident overshadows a much larger cultural phenomenon that has been slowly but surely degrading civility in political discourse.
Years before this occurred, universities across the West were being subverted by radical far-left activists who associated even milk toast neo-conservatism with fascism and Nazism. As a student at the University of Toronto (U of T) in the 2010s, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper was regularly called a fascist by the university faculty during lectures.
As a tenured professor at the U of T, Jordan Peterson’s free speech battle began in 2016. It kicked off a culture war that would spread across much of the Western world as a result of the U of T and its coddling of radical Marxist views and its disdain for freedom of expression. It comes as no surprise that in response to the gunning down of Kirk— ironically at one of his ‘Prove me Wrong’ events on a university campus, U of T professor Dr Ruth Marshall openly stated on social media, “Shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist cunts”.
Far from being an abnormal point of view with academic faculty, it’s become a regular talking point—without the cursing, something that is manifest in the left wing. The end result is actions like the assassination of Kirk. The leftist discourse is that conservatives are fascists and far right, and therefore cannot be trusted to entertain debate in civil society.
Flying in the face of all facts and logic, this extremely dangerous brainwrought rhetoric has also permeated federal institutions in Canada, including the CBC, which has repeatedly called Kirk far right in the time since his death, fueling the fire that led to the assassination in the first place.
Ironically, after the Minnesota church shooting, the CBC was very concerned that the man who went and shot up a church be referred to by she/her pronouns. The national broadcaster appeared more concerned with misgendering the shooter than it was with the dead children.
Charlie Kirk was not a far-right extremist. His knowledge of how to use public engagement and social interaction with opponents and supporters was a key part of growing the Republican base in the 2024 presidential election.
Despite being religious and a staunch constitutionalist, he never called for violence against anyone over political philosophical issues and instead lived as a “word warrior”, where debate was the battlefield. He was able to separate the person from the ideas being espoused and often thanked those with opposing views for speaking, and those unable to defeat him in debate simply turned and walked away.
The far left has posted and widely shared thousands of videos and tweets celebrating his death, as if a great enemy of civil society has been defeated. The broader problem is that Kirk was a moderate Republican in comparison to some of the elements waiting in the shadows of the Republican party base.
The painting of Kirk and his contemporaries, such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Konstantin Kisin and others, as part of the radical right has led the left into an echo chamber where they think they’re fighting actual Nazis and are doing Western civilisation a favour by censoring, cancelling, and now killing their opponents.
While much attention has been given to the threat of far-right violence, there has been little reckoning with the violence carried out by groups such as Antifa, elements of the pro-Palestinian movement, and parts of the Black Lives Matter movement. These groups, often operating under a ‘by any means necessary’ mindset, have at times justified physical violence as a legitimate tool to confront what they label as extremism on the right. This mentality has seeped into broader segments of the political left, fostering a dangerous belief that violent confrontation against conservatives is not only acceptable but morally justified.
Unless there’s significant institutional change in North America, including how we talk about our political opponents on both sides of the aisle, the continent will move increasingly towards a situation similar to the Italian Years of Lead, a 20-some-odd-year conflict between left-wing and right-wing militant groups and the government.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination will no doubt push some moderates more to the right and into the arms of actual extremists who have a growing presence in the right-wing media sphere. Killing a free speech activist is a message that out-debating somebody who ultimately thinks killing you is morally correct proves that there is no argument to be had anymore.
As Steve Bannon said in his April 2025 interview with PBS’s FRONTLINE, “Trump is a moderate” in the MAGA movement, as was Charlie Kirk. He states that Trump actually tempers the radicals in the party, and warns of a future without Trump as its leader.
The academic community, many of whom have never worked outside a university campus, need to be called out for labelling everybody they disagree with a Nazi or fascist. Universities and colleges need to be seriously clamped down and forced to remove radical communists from their ranks.
Entire generations of children have been led to believe that radical ideologies like Marxism and the values that undermine and question the very legitimacy of our nations and governments are normal in a free and democratic society. Training for a life outside of university should not be based on degrading other political views and our civic institutions.
If students weren’t being taught that they lived in an evil settler colonialist state and that anyone with an opposing view is a fascist, Charlie Kirk would be alive today.
The Nazis were defeated, totally, in 1945; it’s time we stop comparing our political opponents to them.
Photo: Courtesy the Associated Press
