Charlie Kirk killing puts America to the test over the freedom to disagree

There’s a risk that political violence becomes a weapon in the culture wars

- Kenan Malik

We still know little about Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. What we do know, or at least should know, is that, whatever his motive, there is no political or moral measure by which killing someone for their political views, however objectionable, can be justified. Nor is there any possibility of building a democratic leftwing movement within a culture that responds to arguments with a bullet. Not least because authoritarians who rarely need a second invitation to the ball now have an opportunity to spin new myths and crush dissent.

“Violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree,” President Trump declared after the shooting. The rhetoric of the “radical left... is directly responsible for the terrorism we are seeing in our country today.”

It has become one of the defining stories following Kirk's murder: that the left bears responsibility for America’s political violence and that most welcomed Kirk’s assassination. Most Democratic leaders, from Barack Obama to Zohran Mamdani, the leftwing candidate in the upcoming election for New York’s mayor (and someone whom Kirk had described as a “parasite” and an illustration of the “problems of legal migration”), and media outlets from the centrist New York Times to the Marxist Jacobin, have unequivocally condemned the attack.

Nevertheless, in the swamps of social media there were certainly many who suggested that Kirk deserved what he got or who celebrated the killing. Inevitably, those who condemned the murder have been largely ignored while those who celebrated it are taken as defining the left.