Charlie Kirk and the Future of Political Violence

God help us.

On Wednesday, I watched some of the worst footage I’ve seen in my life. An assassin’s bullet cut down Charlie Kirk, one of the nation’s most prominent conservative activists and commentators, at a public event on the campus of Utah Valley University.

Kirk was a husband and the father of two small children. He was also a hero to countless conservative college students. And now he’s gone.

Kirk might have been the most successful conservative political personality in America not named Donald Trump. He helped found Turning Point USA in 2012 and built it into the most influential conservative youth organization in the United States.

And that was only one part of Kirk’s empire. He put together a vast get-out-the-vote operation for the 2024 election. He hosted a popular podcast. But to simply recite a list of his accomplishments is to understate the impact of his life and of his death.

As Emily Jashinsky, a Washington correspondent for Unherd, put it on X: “Charlie Kirk is a fixture of the Gen Z social media diet. People feel like they know him. This will hit very, very close to home in ways we are not prepared for.”

That is exactly right. When an assassin shot Kirk, that person killed a man countless students felt like they knew, and the assassin killed him on a college campus. Many students will take this loss personally. Many others will now feel a sense of dread on their own campuses.