Charlie Kirk’s Murder and the Permission Structures Fueling Political Violence

When peaceful change is dismissed as futile, violence presents itself as the only option.

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About the Author

Julian is a columnist for Reality’s Last Stand and a member of the Braver Angels media team. He’s also the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to combating illiberalism via spiritual formation and rebuilding the American community.

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Yesterday, Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed while attending an event at Utah Valley University.

No motive has yet been identified, and it would be irresponsible to speculate. Still, given Kirk’s outspoken conservatism, many assume his murder was an act of political violence. If so, it would not be the first such incident this year. Political violence is becoming disturbingly common on both the right and the left. As Amanda Ripley observed in Persuasion this July:

Last week in Alvarado, Texas, ten people were charged with attempted murder after a police officer was shot in the neck outside an ICE detention center on July 4. In Minnesota last month, a man was charged with stalking and murdering state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband before shooting and wounding state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. In April, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro had to flee his burning home with his wife and children after an arson attack. In January, a man armed with a handgun made it past security and took a tour of the U.S. Capitol before being arrested. In the first five months of this year, according to the Threats and Harassment Dataset at the Bridging Divides Initiative, local officials reported more than 200 threats or harassment incidents. Meanwhile, threats against federal judges spiked in March and April, around the same time that President Donald Trump and his allies began blaming judges for blocking the administration’s agenda.

To their credit, many politicians and commentators across the political spectrum have condemned this violence and urged Americans to recognize the humanity of those across the aisle. I share those calls.

But I also believe our country will be stronger if, alongside appeals for depolarization, we confront the deeper causes of political violence. I have no wish to politicize Kirk’s death or turn this into an ideological polemic. Still, the fact remains that certain ideologies—both left and right—create a permission structure that normalizes, even valorizes, political violence.

Much attention has rightly been given to the “pipeline-to-extremism” ideologies on the right. Here, however, I want to focus on what I see as the most widespread and troubling pipeline on the left: Social Justice Fundamentalism (SJF).