Charlie’s critics would have you believe he was “far-right”. Actually, he was nothing of the sort. Charlie Kirk was a vanilla conservative. He believed in God, the right to life, traditional marriage, merit over race, secure borders, and small government.

Charlie Kirk assassinated at Utah Valley University

He was also a passionate defender of free speech and open debate. It was this conviction that prompted him to found Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — a multimillion dollar non-profit credited with winning hundreds of thousands of young and restless college students to commonsense conservatism. Indeed, TPUSA played a pivotal role in flipping the youth vote red in 2024, where support among 18-29-year-olds swung 21 points, helping Trump take back the White House.

Charlie Kirk loved debate because he hated violence. He believed America’s deep cultural and spiritual problems could be resolved by giving a hearing to even the worst ideas and persuading people with the truth.

In a video that’s gone viral since his death, he explains that he toured American colleges persuading young people because “when people stop talking, that’s when you get violence, that’s when civil war happens”.

A student who witnessed Charlie Kirk’s assassination reported that a group of his opponents in the crowd cheered when he was shot.

Talking heads in the legacy media indulged in ritual victim-blaming, suggesting that Charlie had invited his own demise by the views he expressed.

BlueSky, a platform widely billed as the left’s compassionate alternative to X, was reportedly a hotbed of hate this week — Daily Wire journalist Megan Basham said that upon searching for Charlie Kirk’s name, every single post “was either laughing at, sneering at, or suggesting there was something ironic in his death”.

This report from a republican in parliament shows the extent of the spiritual battle that is being waged: One of the most disgusting and evil things that I’ve ever seen. Just before we learned Charlie had passed, we tried to lead a prayer on the House floor – praying for his recovery after he was tragically shot. The Democrats started booing and yelling at us. It was absolutely disgusting. Their rhetoric caused this, and their actions today show they have no remorse!!!

Transgender and “antifascist” ideology was engraved on the ammunition found inside the rifle likely used in the murder, according to the Wall Street Journal, though the killer remains at large. It may be some time before we learn more about the assassin’s motive, but even when those answers come, they’ll only form part of the picture. Charlie Kirk’s murder did not take place in a vacuum.

Conservatives have been dehumanised in elite circles for decades. “They get bitter and cling to guns or religion,” Barack Obama scoffed in 2008. During her 2016 White House run, Hillary Clinton derided Trump’s base as a “basket of deplorables… racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”. Joe Biden, on the campaign trail in 2018, called them “the dregs of society”.

From there, the rhetoric only escalated. During Biden’s infamous Red Speech in 2022, he declared “MAGA Republicans” — of whom Charlie Kirk was undeniably a figurehead — a “threat to democracy” and to “the very foundations of our republic”. By this time, an entire genre of bloodthirsty discourse was flooding the internet.

Yes, anyone can find examples of untempered speech on both sides of politics, but the uncomfortable truth for US Democrats is that it’s coming not from their fringes but their frontlines. Donors, celebrities, congressmen, media pundits and more queued up to call Trump a Nazi, a fascist, and Hitler reincarnate right up to the moment an assassin almost felled him in the fields of Butler, Pennsylvania. And after a brief pause of national reflection, they resumed the name-calling in earnest.

It was Charlie Kirk himself who, in April of this year, pointed out that “assassination culture is spreading on the left”.

“Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk,” he explained in a now-eerie post on X, citing alarming research reported by Fox News. “Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump.” Charlie continued:

The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end.

Christians need to be aware that we are in the Biblical prophesied end times before Jesus returns. Persecution/Tribulation will increase exactly as Jesus predicted in His Olivet discourse. Sadly, a great falling away in the church is also prophesied and this is happening with much of the denominational church compromising with the world’s unbiblical values such as homosexuality, including homosexual marriage.

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” Matthew 24:9-12

Charlie Kirk understood the price he might have to pay standing up for the truth in the public square. May we have the courage to do the same.