Last week, on September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk, one of the United States’s leading far-right political commentators, was shot and killed by an assassin. Within minutes of the announcement, conservatives of all stripes clamored for revenge, many speaking of a coming “Civil War” in which the right would get its revenge on the left.
President Trump even uploaded a seemingly AI-generated eulogy to the official White House YouTube page, denouncing the far-left beliefs many on the right assume motivated the shooter, despite no evidence suggesting at the time that this was the case. Trump was hardly alone in eulogizing the dead, with one Oklahoman pastor dubbing him the “modern-day MLK,” invoking the name of the similarly slain Civil Rights Leader.
Charlie Kirk was on record arguing the Civil Rights Act, the most concrete victory won by the Civil Rights movement MLK led, a “huge mistake,” making the choice of comparison in almost comical bad taste. Nevertheless, this pastor is hardly alone in likening Kirk to the great heroes of American history, no doubt part of an intentional effort to transform Kirk into a martyr for the cause to whom he dedicated his life.
That conservatives should wish to do this with Kirk is no surprise, it would have been perplexing had they not attempted this; the confusion comes in witnessing liberals and even leftists willingly contribute to the efforts!
Many notable figures who, during Kirk’s life, vocally opposed both the movement of which he was a part and his contributions to it,have, in the wake of his passing, accepted the self-serving narrative spun by Trump and his cronies at face value. In doing so, they are amplifying and lending to this myth credibility it does not deserve.
If Trump, and liberals parroting his talking points, are believed, Kirk was an unbridled champion of free speech whose legacy is one of open, honest exchange, a legacy allegedly all the more important in light of his assassination, the supreme silencing of free speech.
Those few who’ve dared challenge this narrative have received swift reprimands. Most notably, MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd was fired after having the audacity to correctly describe Charlie Kirk as one of the most divisive figures in modern American politics who regularly spread “hate speech… aimed at certain groups.”
Dowd is by no means alone in describing Kirk this way, as experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center have long identified Kirk’s organization TurningPointUSA as one whose chief ambition is to “sow fear and division to enforce social hierarchies rooted in supremacism”; Dowd had the common decency to respect the truth of Kirk’s life even after its conclusion, and is consequently now unemployed.
As a Marxist, none of this is surprising. It is precisely at moments such as these that the distinctions between liberals and radicals become most clear. It would have been astonishing had liberals reacted differently, especially with institutions like MSNBC whatever their so-called progressive credentials. The question was never if liberals would needlessly kowtow in the face of political violence such as this, only to what extent.
There are many angles from which this phenomenon can be approached, all worthwhile. Foremost, there’s something profoundly distasteful in telling marginalized peoples to feel sympathy for those whose lives have been dedicated to our subjugation and/or eradication. Charlie Kirk wasn’t just one man with bad opinions, he was, as a recent Politico piece said, “an institutional builder in a landscape where all the institutions had been dynamited.” Backed by billionaire money, Kirk did more to organize the far-right in this country, especially among the youth, than anyone else.
His death, therefore, represents far more than the silencing of a single voice, but a blow against a force making life harder for this nation’s most vulnerable people. Considering the concrete danger the Trump administration currently poses to us, chastising marginalized people for taking comfort in seeing those who advocate for our suffering punished is tone deaf for people who otherwise paint themselves as on our side.
As valid an angle as that is, it’s not what interests, or worries, me most. The moral cowardice of liberals is infuriating, but well-established; it is precisely this which led Malcolm X to infamously and correctly call the white liberal the greatest threat to black liberation. To be surprised by liberal cowardice in 2025 can only be a function of simply being ill-informed of the history of liberalism.
Far more troubling is how often this cowardice leads liberals to unwittingly provide aid to fascist causes. In many respects, liberals have shown a greater commitment to making Kirk a martyr than conservatives, with President Trump not able to even feign concern for his slain friend! <Insert clip here>
A far more moving display of empathy was shown in a recent Jacobin article by Ben Burgis and Meagan Day titled Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster. Though Burgis and Day have each critiqued Kirk and his ilk for years, noting that “Charlie Kirk has never received a warm welcome in the pages of [Jacobin],” they insist that history “doesn’t matter now.” While the bulk of the article is dedicated to lamenting the possible consequences of Kirk’s assassination, there’s a strong throughline of moral condemnation, best encapsulated in the piece’s concluding statement:
“In the short time since Kirk was slain, most on the Left have rightly condemned his murder. A not insignificant number, however, have reacted with an almost competitive lack of empathy. […] There is nothing to celebrate here. Indeed, there is much to fear.”
Burgis and Day are right to suggest that there’s “much to fear” in how conservatives will exploit Kirk’s death to advance their hateful agenda. If the danger in this narrative has yet to be actualized in practice, it is not merely hypothetical; both in his eulogy and in subsequent addresses, President Trump has spoken frankly of the need to crack down on the far-left, again blaming us for the assassination sans evidence. Christopher Rufo, most famous for his successful campaign to villainize Critical Race Theory, writes in a recent piece that the “last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. […] It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Considering the Trump administration’s legal record, Rufo’s insistence that this must all be done “within the confines of the law” is of little comfort.
That the threat Burgis and Day fear is real does not, however, imply that the course of action they suggest is sound. Though their article contains no concrete advice to readers, it nevertheless leaves one with the distinct impression that the left ought to regret the assassination’s having happened and express this regret openly. What is the article if not an embodiment of such thinking? And, while the article emphasizes the fear of reprisal, Burgis and Day make clear that the regret we express ought to be moral and sincere. By implication, by expressing such sincere regret, we might stave off the worst of what is to come.
Though the impulse behind their kind of thinking is understandable, it is dangerously misguided. Were Brugis and Day alone, I may have written a dedicated response piece, but theirs is an impulse shared by many who consider themselves enemies of fascism. Christopher Rhodes warns in a new Al Jazeera op-ed of the dangers of “selective empathy”. He writes that “those of us who reject the MAGA ideology are at our worst when we tolerate, excuse, or even celebrate, violence against those who oppose us or who hold us in disdain.”
That a leading figure of fascism’s institutional power can be conceptualized as someone who merely holds non-fascists in disdain is a stunning illustration of how ill-prepared the left is for the moment in which it finds itself.
The error is basic, if pervasive: it assumes that fascism can be defeated non-confrontationally. Explicit in both Burgis/Day and Rhodes pieces is that empathy ought to be extended to fascists not only because they believe it the right thing to do, but because it is only by empathizing with fascists that their cause might be defeated.
Rhodes tells us that “to deny [the far-right] such consideration based on their views would be to undermine our own opposition to their divisive and even dangerous rhetoric.” Burgis and Day are perhaps more emphatic, arguing that any “anti-moral posturing [is] likely to turn off ordinary Americans, who abhor political violence, but it is also politically misguided and strategically naive.”
It is a curious experience reading a pair of leftists denigrate other leftists as “naive,” considering how accustomed leftists of all stripes are to being accused by their opponents of naivety. Who has not been told the socialist dream is unrealizable, or realizable only as a nightmare, on account of the darker undercurrents of human nature that socialists allegedly refuse to acknowledge and cannot account for?
I would argue the opposite, that only socialists have inquired seriously into why human nature appears to us today as it does, only we can account for it without recourse to superstitious notions like the Christian doctrine of “Original Sin.” Ironically, though intentionally, those most often charged with naivety are those who embody it least; the charge is aimed at those who question rather than regurgitate received wisdom.
By framing their opponents as “naive,” which is to say ill-informed and lacking in perspective, Burgis and Day can frame their banalities as more interesting than they are. Without this, their piece would hardly merit publication. The most basic technique in non-fiction writing is to counterpose what one says to what is being said by others, presupposing that what one says and what is being said by others are different; though published in an avowedly socialist magazine, Burgis and Day are in perfect accord with every mainstream news outlet in America.
Counterposing my thoughts to those above, I do not mean to suggest that I am in favor of assassination. Far from it, assassinations are folly, almost without exception. Certainly, the death of Charlie Kirk will do little to aid the cause of the exploited, oppressed, and marginalized in the United States, and will likely empower the right further as many fear. As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1911, “[i]f a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation?”[1]
That assassination is ill-advised, however, does not suggest it is in every case morally regrettable. As Trotsky also wrote, the Marxist opposition to assassination “has nothing in common with those… who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declarations about the ‘absolute value’ of human life.”[2] Kirk’s death may not merit celebration, but to lament it as tragedy would be to honor a life whose only legacy is death.
This point has been made by many online, albeit without the platform of publications like Jacobin or Al-Jazeera, but most often on the grounds that his was not a life worthy of mourning. Though I echo such sentiment, there’s also practical reasons to object. In regarding the death of fascists as something to be regretted publicly, we implicitly accept fascists as part of the political community.
It is a matter of material fact that Charlie Kirk was part of the American political community, but the presence of him and those like him is something the left has for years postured as contesting. To accept him after death is not only to honor the memory of man best forgotten, it erodes our ability to object to the presence of living fascists in the political discourse.
This is something the fascists themselves grasp instinctively. I suspect we’ve all seen conservative social media users repeat with bizarre insistence that Kirk was somehow a “moderate,” an absurdity plausible only in the era in which Donald Trump is the measure. I cannot know if the conservatives repeating this lie know it’s a lie, but it matters little.
For fascists, the supreme political virtue is power, and that includes the power to shape perception. A world in which Kirk is a moderate is a world in which the most extreme reactionaries will be given a seat at the table, their goal. That they can successfully position Kirk as a moderate in the eyes of so many is a stark indication of how close they are to succeeding; perhaps the only thing in their way now is President Trump’s indifference to politics beyond his own amusement.
The left does not venerate power for its own sake, and so are in no position to deny the reality that Kirk was an important part of mainstream political discourse, however much we may wish that had not been the case. Nevertheless, we should contest that he is missed. At least, he will not be missed by me. That Kirk’s voice was prematurely silenced does not mean the left is obligated to pretend we wish we still heard it.
That many feel the need to pretend we miss his voice is emblematic of how little the American left has done to separate itself from liberalism, however much we might critique it. The moral cowardice of liberals, their tendency to clamor for the respect of their opposition at any cost, is a function of the mistaken assumption that we’re all ultimately on the same page.
Despite recognizing the growing threat of fascism for years, liberals fail to adjust strategically to what that entails. “Fascism” is not merely an extreme form of conservatism, but a qualitatively distinct philosophy that breaks from the philosophical roots of democratic capitalist society.[3] Fascism is not a faction within democratic society, but an enemy of it.
That liberals fail to see this is unsurprising. Being the ideology of the status quo, liberalism has the privilege of believing itself natural, and therefore inevitable. To acknowledge that mainstream conservatism has become fascist would be to confront liberalism’s mortality. Fascists also have the good sense not to hide the incommensurability of their values behind a veil of plausible deniability, allowing liberals to cling to the belief their ideas remain universal. What is most concerning is that this trick somehow works on Marxists.
Marxism too has values incommensurable with the status quo. Where liberalism takes for granted the apparent harmony of capitalist society’s political community, and hence affirms its institutions as embodying the highest good, Marxism recognizes fundamental divisions of class. Marxism therefore prefers to work outside and even against society’s institutions which by design functionally deny the reality of such division. Marxism has historically either understood itself in opposition to liberalism or ceased to understand itself at all.
Though contemporary Marxism pays lip service to this distinction, it less reliably acts according to it. Today’s left is not confident with drawing lines in the sand or showing its neck to the world for fear of it being cut. Such fear is rational, but, as the recent cancellation of late-night cable staples Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel show, even the most milquetoast of liberals are not safe. To believe radicals can ever moderate enough to appease fascists is an error. Fascists do not spare those too fearful to fight but hold them in contempt. Never has anyone escaped the horrors of fascism by surrendering to them without a fight.
To reiterate, none of what I have said suggests Kirk’s assassination should be emulated; acts of terror are categorically useless tactics in the fight for collective self-liberation. However, such tactics must be rejected without softening our stance on fascists in the process.
We must accept the uncomfortable reality that our enemies are in power, they are entrenching their position and ramping up their assault on society’s vulnerable. It is time to abandon foolish hopes for reconciliation and accept we’re in a fight for our lives.
From https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm
Also from https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm
Do I need to substantiate this claim?
Art Book Review Books Capitalism China Climate Emergency Conservative Government Conservative Party COVID-19 EcoSocialism Elections Europe Fascism Film Film Review France Gaza Imperialism Israel Italy Keir Starmer Labour Party Long Read Marxism Marxist Theory Palestine pandemic Protest Russia Solidarity Statement Trade Unionism Ukraine United States of America War