[CW: This article discusses gun violence and assassination.]
[Correction (Sept. 19, 2025): A previous version of this article included a sentence in the 11th paragraph which, owing to its placement, could imply that Kirk was widely known for explicitly advocating for political violence. The order of quotes and information regarding Kirk’s stance has been reordered for clarity, and the aforementioned sentence has been deleted.]
On Wednesday, Sept. 10, conservative activist and political commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. He was 31 years old.
In 2012, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA, a right-wing nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses, with Bill Montgomery, a businessman and mentor to Kirk. Kirk also wrote numerous ideologically conservative books, with topics ranging from the supposed loss of academia’s credibility to his ardent support of President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. Notably, Kirk also hosted the daily conservative talk-radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which gained traction with young, conservative men in the United States. He was known for making inflammatory racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion, transphobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic and homophobic comments throughout his career, primarily on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
Richard Born, Vassar Professor of Political Science, commented on Kirk’s remarkable charisma and influence on younger generations: “As far as political influencers go, Kirk has been extremely good with organizing on campuses. I think it was 2,000 campuses in the United States where he has established Turning Point USA chapters.” According to its website, Turning Point has established over 800 chapters nationwide.
Late Thursday, Sept. 11, or early Friday, Sept. 12—different times were reported by Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Director Kash Patel, respectively—U.S. Marshals detained and held 22-year-old suspected shooter Tyler Robinson, who was then taken into custody by the FBI. Robinson’s father recognized his son from photos released by authorities and confronted him about them, urging Robinson to turn himself in. When Robinson refused, his father enlisted the help of a local pastor, who tried to calm Robinson, and then called the U.S. Marshals, who detained him.
On Tuesday, Sept. 16, Robinson was charged with aggravated murder, felony firearm discharge, obstruction of justice, witnessing tampering and several other counts. Utah County Attorney General Jeff Gray said that he plans to seek the death penalty for Robinson.
As of publication, Robinson’s motive in the killing remains unknown, despite speculation about his anti-fascist beliefs due to an engraving on one of the rifle casings found at the scene that read, “Hey fascist! CATCH!”
“I don’t think we really know anything about the assassin,” remarked Associate Professor and Chair of Greek and Roman Studies Curtis Dozier. “No one really knows, and, I think, we maybe never will know.”
Multiple Vassar professors identified the shooting as one instance in a larger chain of recent escalating political violence. Dozier said of the attack, “It feels to me that it signals a despairing citizenry, a citizenry that feels so poorly served by their government that in a nation of close to 400 million people, a certain number of people are going to turn to violence to express that despair.” Professor of Political Science on the Margaret Stiles Halleck Chair Sidney Plotkin explained, “The Charlie Kirk assassination is part of a stream of violence in recent American politics, that is evident. It’s not the start of something new. It’s part of something that has been going on and represents an intensification of it.”
In regards to this stream of violence, Plotkin also cited the attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi; the stalking and murder of Minnesota Speaker of the House Emerita Melissa Hortman, Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and both senators’ spouses; the planned kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, as well as other lawmakers; the shooting of a group of Republican lawmakers, including then-Majority Whip Steve Scalise; the two attempted assassinations of Donald Trump; and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Plotkin did note, however, that Kirk’s assassination deviates from the stream of violence in two major ways: “One, Kirk was not an elected official. Two, he was very, very young.”
Dozier remarked, “There’s a good article in [the socialist magazine] Jacobin about Charlie Kirk and political violence. His way of talking about the culture war—notice the violent metaphor—the culture war that he was engaged in and that he was going to wage against evil forces trying to destroy America. It’s a violent framing, and as I think the Jacobin article argues pretty effectively, he was, throughout his career, promoting political violence, not explicitly, but kind of making it a respectable and acceptable means of discourse.” The Jacobin article claims Kirk dehumanized and endorsed broad violence against liberals and the Left. In October 2023, Kirk said of Democrats, “We’re dealing with maggots, vermin and swine here.”
Born alleged that right-wing politicians immediately exploited Kirk’s assassination for political gain. Specifically, Born noted that Trump has been pressuring Indiana Republican politicians to redistrict; this would be a middle of the decade gerrymander, which violates normal redistricting protocol. Born continued, “There is an extremely right-wing newly elected [Indiana] senator, Jim Banks, who is exploiting the murder of Kirk to the hills [to justify the proposed redistricting], using words like ‘evil’ and ‘the devil’ towards the Democratic party… And the justification is that the Democrats are essentially the evil party, and I haven’t seen anything like that so far.”
Plotkin emphasized how unprecedented Trump’s comments have been compared to previous national leaders. “The habit of American presidents is to bring the country together, the way the governor of Utah tried in his immediate comments,” he said. “This President is pulling us apart, and he’s opening a chasm into which, I think, people who are prone to violence are more than happy to walk.”
In the wake of the shooting, Kirk’s comments at a Turning Point USA event on May 5, 2023, have resurfaced, at which he stated, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.” The event was held just days after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a school in Nashville.
“A lot of people are kind of relishing the irony that here’s Charlie Kirk, he promoted political violence throughout his career, and they want to say, ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword,’” noted Dozier. “And I will admit, I feel the attraction of that, but I think it’s bad for our nation if political violence is respectable. I think it’s bad for any society trying to live in peace.”
Plotkin described his initial reaction to the shooting: “I thought it was a horrible moment… I thought that the impact of this assassination of Charlie Kirk would do nothing but sorely aggravate an already grievously divided country, and would, in fact, likely endanger the lives of important, particularly young leaders on the Left. I am deeply concerned that the lives of people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or mayoral candidate [Zohran] Mamdani and others of that generation are in the crosshairs of some demented individual comparable to the young man who killed Charlie Kirk.”