By Sohrab Ahmari, UnHerd.
The footage is unbearable, though it’s ubiquitous online: Charlie Kirk, having apparently answered a question from his audience at a Utah university, drops his handheld mic to his lap. Just then, a bullet strikes him in the jugular. Blood gushes out of his neck. Kirk’s body spasms, then goes limp. The conservative activist, Turning Point USA founder, and prolific campus debater wouldn’t survive this.
We scroll through the “X” (formerly Twitter) newsfeed and run across this video, sandwiched between other snippets of random violence — a Brazilian motorcycle thief getting his brutal comeuppance from angry locals, a pair of drunk young men throwing punches and karate kicks in a parking lot — and OnlyFans soft porn. It isn’t hard for Kirk’s killing to blend in with the same nihilistic brutality that defines much of the social-media landscape in 2025.
Reduced to its bare matter, the Kirk video is scarcely different from these other instances of human degradation served up by the infinite scroll. It elicits the same vague outrage and obscene titillation before we move on to nicer things — maybe a gourmet cooking video or a cat that plays mother to a baby koala. But we must resist this internet flattening effect. We have to try to hold the full historical weight of what took place on Wednesday at Utah Valley University.
What took place was this: an activist who’d embraced the spirit of open debate was gunned down while he was exercising this most American of ideals.
Read also: Are we at a turning point? by Laura Dodsworth
What We Have Lost: The Assassination of Charlie Kirk by Jonathon Van Maren, The Bridgehead
The murder of Charlie Kirk: cancel culture turns lethal by Tom Slater, spiked
Charlie Kirk was a better anti-fascist than most of the left by Brendan O’Neill, spiked
A shocking watershed for America by Melanie Phillips
The response to Charlie Kirk’s death is revealing the subtext of our hearts by Andy Kind, Premier Christianity
The murder of Charlie Kirk by Peter Ladd, CARE