by Clarice Feldman
This week, people -- mostly educators, medical professionals, media members, government employees, and even some acting military and one Secret Service member -- expressed the most repulsive, anti-democratic views in supporting the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
If by chance you were unaware of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University this week, he was a very articulate debater who treated respectfully those who debated him. He espoused views that were perfectly normal -- defending the West, Israel, and Christianity -- enlightenment views which matched those of the Founders and are encapsulated in the Constitution. You may see videos of his debates on the internet. He was skillful at it and had thousands of young followers. Indeed, many consider his successful work a big factor in youth support for the President.
As shocking as the assassination is -- an assassination that took place in the view of his wife and young daughter -- more shocking still was the outpouring online of vitriolic hate for him and support for his murder. There’s an odd juxtaposition in this. Some decades ago, Mao’s CCP encouraged critics of the communist regime to speak up. They were shocked to find out how much disagreement with their policies there was, and the brave (or feckless) ones who believed the Hundred Flowers campaign was a genuine effort to encourage free speech found themselves in prison, re-education camps, or dead.
In a way, I’m reminded of that campaign this week. People -- mostly educators, medical professionals, media members, government employees, and even some acting military and one Secret Service member -- expressed the most repulsive, anti-democratic views in supporting the assassination. They did so in the mistaken belief propagated mostly by teachers, universities, the media, Democrat officials, and celebrities, that these views were anodyne and held by all right thinkers.
As they face consequences -- shunning, firing, loss of business, loss of visas -- many of these same people are posting videos of themselves crying in shock that the views they hold are not acceptable and that they are being held to account for them. In the case of China, it was the government punishing citizens for free speech. In America today, it is citizens holding accountable those who think murder is an acceptable means to silence speech with which they disagree.
The Left cancelled people and harassed them for “microaggressions,” for having the “wrong” identities, for “triggering” them, and shouted that “words are violence.” Words aren’t violence. Violence is violence, and supporting it is nothing to be proud of. Political violence has been normalized for over a decade now by the Democrats, who made a habit of labeling Trump a “fascist, would-be dictator and even Adolf Hitler.”
Former President Barack Obama, says Lee Smith, bears a great deal of blame for the poisonous atmosphere.
How did 2024 Brooklyn come to look and sound like 1938 Berlin? In part, according to U.S. intelligence officials, it’s because Iran funded and incited the pro-Hamas demonstrations. Where would the regime that arms and pays for anti-American terror and embodies Jew hatred get the idea that it’s OK to participate in the American political system by creating the conditions for a nationwide pogrom?
In 2015 the Obama White House struck an agreement with the Islamic Republic, legalizing its nuclear weapons program and thereby legitimizing the tactics it employs to accomplish its strategic goals -- political violence, i.e., terrorism. The Iran nuclear deal was the instrument with which Obama normalized political violence.
Another Obama instrument cultivated it. Shortly before leaving office in 2017, Obama instructed his CIA Director John Brennan to produce an intelligence community assessment claiming that Vladimir Putin helped put Trump in the White House. The purpose of the official assessment wasn’t just to undermine his successor’s presidency and hobble his administration with phony investigations sourced to the perverted fantasies of an FBI informant once employed by British intelligence. No, lending the U.S. government’s executive authority to an information operation contending that one half of the electorate supported a foreign agent to govern the country was designed to destabilize America. Its purpose was to drive its citizens against each other.
That’s where we are today, still. These are the signs of a destabilized polity: the widespread prosecution of political opponents that was normalized in the wake of Jan. 6; mandating vaccines and villainizing those who resisted experimental medical treatments; recasting Trump supporters as domestic terrorists; opening borders to usher foreign criminals into middle-class communities; convicting elderly women for praying in front of abortion clinics; dispatching the FBI to raid the home of the opposition leader, unlawfully deputizing an officer to prosecute him, and most recently, but likely not summarily, the attempt on his life.
Of course, Obama’s incitement was fully shared by numerous Democrat leaders captured in online videos.
And should you doubt the contribution of prominent journalists to this stew of malignant hatred, Nick Sorter has gathered a fair sampling of them targeting Trump and his supporters as “fascists,” the very description Kirk’s confessed assassin used to justify his action.
It’s also prominent journalists who promote divisive and aggressive rhetoric that results in violence against conservatives! –
**Patrick Cockburn (Independent, The)**: In a 2021 article, Cockburn described the Republican Party's election nullification efforts as part of its "strange voyage towards becoming a genuine fascist party." He has reiterated concerns about Trump's politics turning the U.S. into an illiberal democracy akin to fascist-leaning regimes, labeling the GOP's trajectory as fascist in multiple pieces.
**Rich Benjamin (Journalist and Author, Contributor to The Guardian and Others)**: In 2020, Benjamin stated that Trump's political movement is "shot through with fascism," directly tying it to Republican support for Trump's birtherism, racist rhetoric, and anti-immigration policies. He has extended this to the broader GOP in essays on white supremacist elements within the party.
**David Frum (The Atlantic)**: Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter turned journalist, has compared the Trump-appeasing GOP to European fascists of the interwar period, noting parallels in foundational lies (e.g., election theft claims) and alliances with reactionary forces. In 2022 analyses, he explicitly called the Republican Party's direction "fascist" in the context of the January 6 insurrection.
**Ed Kilgore (New York Magazine, Intelligencer)**: Kilgore has labeled the Trump-era GOP as akin to interwar fascists, citing "foundational" lies like Nazi claims post-World War I and Republican election denialism. In 2022, he described MAGA Republicans as exhibiting fascist traits, including violence endorsement and religious extremism alliances.
**Robert Reich (The Guardian, Substack, Former Labor Secretary and Columnist)**: In a 2023 Guardian op-ed, Reich wrote that the modern Republican Party is "hurtling towards fascism," accusing it of win-at-any-cost politics, expulsion of lawmakers, and authoritarian tactics legitimized by Trump. He has repeatedly called the GOP the "American fascist party" in columns and social media.
**Noah Berlatsky (Independent Journalist, Substack "Everything Is Horrible")**: In a 2023 essay titled "Yes, The Republicans Are Fascists," Berlatsky argued that the GOP embodies fascism through white identity politics, racism, violence justification, and redefinition of decency to include disenfranchisement, drawing parallels to Nazi Germany.
**Mehdi Hasan (MSNBC, The Guardian, Zeteo Founder)**: Hasan has frequently called Trump and MAGA Republicans fascists on MSNBC broadcasts, describing the GOP as a "fascist threat" in 2022 segments. He echoed this in interviews, tying it to election subversion and authoritarianism, and compiled videos of such rhetoric.
**Dean Obeidallah (SiriusXM Radio Host, CNN Contributor)**: On MSNBC in 2022, Obeidallah declared the GOP a "white nationalist movement" and "fascist threat to our nation," calling it "not hyperbolic, it’s academic" in reference to Republican policies and Trump's influence.
**Stephen Colbert (CBS Late Night Host, The Late Show)**: In October 2022, Colbert called Trump a "tan-faced, troop-insulting fascist with raccoon hair," extending the label to the Republican Party's support for him amid midterm election coverage.
**Bret Stephens (New York Times Columnist)**: Stephens, a conservative commentator, called for the "fascist" label to be applied to Trump after January 6, arguing in 2021 that it was now "acceptable but necessary." He has critiqued the GOP for enabling fascist-like behavior.
**Max Boot (Washington Post Columnist)**: In 2015-2016, Boot labeled Trump's Muslim travel ban proposal "fascist talk," and has since described the Republican Party under Trump as fascist, citing authoritarianism and dictator admiration in columns.
**Bret Stephens (New York Times, as above; duplicate for emphasis, but confirmed in multiple pieces)**: Reiterated in 2024 that quoting sources like John Kelly on Trump's fascism.
Of course, you and I are smart enough to know that nothing is more fascist than killing political opponents.
Obama most certainly was a key architect of what Michael Shellenberger calls “an entire malignant culture that made political violence inevitable.”
That the assassination took place at a university is not a surprise, either.
There are many guilty parties in the rise of political violence. But to our minds, among the biggest culprits are the universities. In the same way that madrassas radicalize jihadis, America’s campuses are among the places in the U.S. most hostile to disagreement and debate. Where they preach “inclusion,” they actually practice exclusion -- shouting down speakers they disagree with, for instance. Where they promote “diversity,” they actually enforce a uniformity of thought, denying tenure to dissenters.
The very fact that Kirk had to have armed bodyguards and appears to have been wearing a bulletproof vest is a sign of how far things had already unraveled.
The intolerance on college and university campuses is nothing new, of course. It goes back at least several decades, as shown by Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987. But you needn’t go back that far to see clearly the toxic, hostile, illiberal environments these places have become. Think back to 2017, when the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of California at Berkeley -- and the school had to spend $836,421 on security, which included dozens of police in full riot gear who created a perimeter around the hall where he spoke. Again and again in recent years, colleges and universities have had to cancel speaking engagements by nonprogressive speakers in the name of “public safety.”
The very fact that Charlie Kirk had to have armed bodyguards and appears to have been wearing a bulletproof vest is a sign of how far things had already unraveled.
As Sean Fischer and Maya Sulkin note in a story we published today, 34 percent of college students believe that the use of violence to prevent someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, according to a survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Another recent poll showed that 20 percent of young Americans -- those between the ages of 18 and 29 -- think that “violence can sometimes be justified.” Those are astonishing statistics.
To counter this trend -- which holds the potential to tear this nation apart -- we believe schools should consider making a condition of enrollment the recognition that words are not violence, that violence is unacceptable on campus, and that so is silencing those with whom one disagrees. Students should be told that violation of this compact will result in serious penalties, including expulsion.
Obama, pardon the expression, triggered this because he “dehumanized in the eyes of his supporters half the country.”
What followed and continues to follow is a long list of incidents of political violence, including the 2017 shooting of four Republican congressmen during a baseball game, two assassination attempts on the President, and the firebombing of the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, among others.
Violence on the right is not “evenly balanced” in type or scale.
Right-wing violence tends to be perpetrated by loners: conspiracy theorists, Jew-haters or fringe individuals who subscribe to the paranoid lies, perversions and dark theories infesting far-right websites.
By contrast the left, which dominates the culture -- in universities, unions, the media, the Democratic Party -- has been whipping itself into an unhinged frenzy over Trump, white people, “gender-critical” women, the climate “emergency” and everyone who dissents from progressive orthodoxies.
Such dissenters, all of whom they term “the right,” aren’t regarded as opponents to be argued with but as the embodiment of evil. To the left, the “wrong” kind of speech constitutes violence. It therefore follows that violence used against such dissenters is justified.
Thus, activists are told to take direct action against their targets, such as white people, climate-change “deniers” or “colonialist” statues.
These same leftists are driving the frenzy of antisemitism in the West. Indeed, some of the instant reactions to Kirk’s murder displayed the same warped thinking with which they attack Israel.
They instantly deflected the blame for the murder from their own side onto Kirk himself or his most prominent supporter, Donald Trump.
On MSNBC, Matthew Dowd said that Kirk had been one of the most “especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech… aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions”.
Dowd’s colleague, Katy Tur, called Kirk a “divisive figure” and said the Trump administration would use the shooting “as justification for something”. And the Democrat governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, rushed to blame Trump for inciting political violence.
In exactly the same way, the left blames Israel for its own victimisation while sanitising its Palestinian Arab attackers. That’s why left-wingers excused or ignored the atrocities on October 7, 2023, and seek to prevent Israel from defeating the genocidists of Hamas.
To the left’s Israel-haters, just as Kirk deserved to be killed, so, too, “colonialist” Israel deserves to be annihilated. Israeli residents in the “West Bank” are “illegal settlers” who therefore deserve to be murdered.
The posters of hostages kidnapped by Hamas and other Palestinians were torn down because Israeli Jews aren’t to be considered victims; if they were raped, tortured, murdered or burned alive on October 7, then they had it coming to them just because they were Israeli Jews.
Telling themselves that they stand for virtue, conscience and compassion because they are committed to liberal universalism and the brotherhood of man, left-wingers denounce all who are committed to the West, the nation-state and Israel as the “right,” “fascists” and “Nazis”.
What should you do with Nazis? Why, destroy them. Thus, left-wing demonisation leads straight to murder.
In sum, “Mainstream conservatives react with visceral horror to right-wing violence. Within the extreme right-wing echo chamber, violent acts are typically followed by the spinning of conspiracy theories (“the Mossad killed Charlie Kirk”) and other nonsensical and bigoted falsehoods.
But the Left uniquely turns the political murder of its foes into a moral project to be celebrated, promoted and incentivized.”
JK Rowling, who has been fighting her own battles in the UK to protect women’s rights, describes well the sort of persons caught up in this mass psychosis against those with differing views: they have “fixed beliefs, zero evidence, inventing grievances to justify a desire to silence people who say things [they] don’t like.”
“If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.”
NBC reports that teachers and professors nationwide are being fired and disciplined for their repulsive online hate. Other reports indicate that this is extending to some bureaucrats, federal workers, and the military. One cable news commentator has been fired, and Comcast has warned broadcasters on stations it owns. Comcast’s MSNBC has been the worst offender.
And there are some scattered reports of actions taken against visa holders for online support of violence.
If they’d studied history, the violence lovers would have known what Iowahawk did:
“The Jacobins, even with their highly advanced overheated pea brains, couldn't fathom that their heads also fit in the guillotines.”
Unfortunately, I don’t think they have yet captured this in their “pea brains,” so keep on naming them and holding accountable the leftists and the institutions they work for (many of which condone this). Remind them who’s doing the accounting now.
Clarice Feldman
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/some_thoughts_on_the_assassination_of_charlie_kirk.html
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