The 47th school shooting of the year took place on September 10th, 2025. Three students were injured at a Colorado high school, and the shooter has now died from self-inflicted wounds. A kid with a revolver shot their classmates at Evergreen high for reasons yet unknown, and two kids are now in the hospital, thankfully with injuries that are not life threatening.
Half an hour earlier, the 46th school shooting of 2025 took place in Utah. Far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, also for reasons unknown. Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA, had become a force on the right, with chapters springing up on college campuses and even Donald Trump thanking Kirk for helping turn out the youth vote for Republicans in recent elections. Kirk was killed on the first leg of his “Prove Me Wrong” tour, moments after being asked a question about mass shootings.
His final moments were recorded, and they went like this:
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.
Then a single shot rang out.
He died as he lived. He died lying about trans mass shooters and spewing racism, core parts of the fascist project he had dedicated his life to. I don’t consider this speaking ill of the dead, but rather stating the reality of the deceased. Charlie Kirk was a fascist propagandist. That was his job, a job that made him rich and powerful in these bleak times. These are simply the facts of his life.
Charlie Kirk promoted violence against oppressed people and responded to school shootings by saying, “I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” That comment came a week after three children and three adults were killed at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. He called his line of thinking “a prudent deal.”
His acceptance of school shootings and gun violence were just one of ways he promoted death. Kirk also defended Israel’s genocide in Gaza, going as far as to say that, “The deaths of women and children in Gaza are the fault of Hamas, not Israel, just like the deaths in Japan during World War 2 were the fault of Japan, not America.”
Kirk also believed in forced birth; he was against abortion in cases of rape, even saying he would force his 10-year-old daughter to carry a pregnancy to term if she was raped. He regularly mocked the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, he wanted to repeal the Civil Right Act, he thought gay people should be stoned to death, he was antisemitic and homophobic and transphobic and more. Kirk once said that “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously” and when Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer, in a clear act of political violence, Kirk smugly stated that a ‘patriot’ should bail the attacker out. These are simply the facts about the victim of America’s 46th school shooting this year.
The right sees it differently, of course. Trump called this 31 year-old propagandist a “martyr” in a video released several hours after the shooting. Commentators have called him “godly” and “like a brother” among other eulogies. Then the calls for violent reprisals began, specifically against Democrats and the left, of course. It doesn’t matter that there is no suspect in custody, or that nothing is known about the shooter or their motives.
No knowledge was necessary for Elon Musk and GOP politicians and fascist talking heads to start crying out for reprisals. Within hours Fox News’ Jesse Watters was saying “They are at war with us” and “we’re gonna avenge Charlie [Kirk’s] death.” Who is the “they,” you ask? Well, that’s the beauty of it. His viewers know he means the left, Democrats, all the scapegoats and enemies that have been painted for them night after night, and he doesn’t have to specify a thing.
Elon Musk used the exact same rhetoric, saying, “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.” Elon will, of course, do no fighting himself, but he will play his role in drumming up more violence in response to this shooting. Laura Loomer, the ghoulish Trump advisor who has an odd amount of power in this administration, was more straightforward, calling for the shutdown, defunding, and persecution of “every single Leftist organization.” The list goes on. The MAGA machine is lining up behind its leader, eagerly using the death of one of their own to further the aims of fascism.
None of this is a surprise. And none of this is caused by the shooting (conducted for unknown reasons by an unknown individual). Rather, the killing of Charlie Kirk is a pretext for the President and his fascist cadre to pursue more fervently what they’ve already been pursuing. They’ve already been going after the left, attacking non-profits, trying to defund and criminalize Palestine protesters and more. Now they will rush to do more of the same, deliberately ignoring that lack of shooter and the lack of motive.
We can push back, we must push back. An aggressively dishonest narrative about “leftist violence” will be used as pretext for further attacking democracy, eroding free speech, and cracking down on organizing. And not only is there nothing to link this shooting to the left, there’s boundless evidence that the right produces infinitely more violence in the United States.
Just three months ago a conservative murdered a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota, and wounded another. Three quarters of domestic extremist killings in the U.S. have been conducted by people affiliated with the right over the past dozen years. 75%. Just 4% were associated with the left. These facts will of course be ignored by Trump and the MAGA apparatus and propagandists like Charlie Kirk, but they speak to a much bigger issue that we must force into the discourse, that we must place front and center — the reality that fascism is the driver of political violence in this country.
The lie is always that the latest violent act emerged from a vacuum. We will be told, with no evidence, that Charlie Kirk was killed for his bravery, for speaking the truth, for believing in dialogue, and that he did nothing to add to the climate of political violence in this country. The truth is that Kirk deliberately and consistently helped create a widespread atmosphere of violence. He ardently supported January 6th, he promoted violence against trans folks and Black people and others, he cheered on extra-judicial murderers like Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed multiple BLM protesters in 2020:
Political violence is awful, it signals the late stages of societal decay, and it spells more violence to come. It’ll get worse before it gets better. But we have to be clear that the fascist movement is premised on this violence. It’s premised both on legalizing ever more atrocious state violence, and on various forms of violence outside the law. The Proud Boys, the lone shooters radicalized by the far-right online, the Nazi salutes — the fascist movement is not the victim of political violence, they are the inciters and sponsors of it.
Defeating political violence over the long haul and defeating fascism are one and the same. Fascism is raw violence, both in policy and in sporadic violent acts. Until we get down and yank fascism up by the root, political violence will continue and accelerate. We have to be clear on this. We have to ignore the lies and deception that will be thrown our way in the coming days. In the wake of this killing fascists will demand that you conform to values they neither believe in nor practice. Decency, compassion, non-violence — you will be told to abide by these while the fascists demanding adherence tap dance on your grave.
All of this dishonest, two-faced, twisted nonsense must be ignored. It must be stripped away and prevented from distracting us, even in these difficult moments. Because beneath it all sits the cold truth. Beneath the veneer sits the reality that we have to defeat fascism to have a chance of ending the violence that has seized this country. Right now we have to be clearer than ever, firmer in our conviction to pull fascism up by the roots than ever. Only by defeating the far-right, and the systemic violence of poverty and oppression and oligarchy that enables them, can we end violence in this country. There is no other way. - JP
There has been an intentional consistent dehumanization campaign against liberals. It is becoming very very dangerous. Saying that the thousands of protesters are paid agitators, or whatever else they have spewed is setting the tone for a violent response and who cares about the rights of those liberals.
It appalling, albeit expected, how the liberal corporate media talk about Kirk as if he was a legitimate political figure, rather than a rabid fascist extremist.
The Democrats and the centre-right media have laid the groundwork for fascism, and continue to enable it by failing to call it what it is and offering mild, superficial critiques that only serve to make it seem like a legitimate different viewpoint.