One year ago today, Charlie Kirk was murdered. As with all assassinations, Kirk’s death was two things: first and foremost, it was the tragic death of a man before his time, leaving behind a grieving widow and two fatherless children, which can be responded to only with heartfelt sympathy; but it was also a political act by a left keen to remove from the board one of its most talented opponents, which must be responded to politically. His passing could, therefore, have been a moment of unity for the right, and could have justified a necessary crackdown on far-Left terrorism alongside a series of sweeping conservative reforms. Instead, his murder splintered the American right, who were more interested in promoting conspiracy theories around his death and squabbling about far-away countries than uniting to oppose their murderous domestic enemies.
Let us take a moment to remember who Charlie Kirk was. Kirk was 31 when he was shot in the neck in front of a crowd of thousands of students at Utah Valley University on 10 September 2025. In his short life, he built a vast conservative youth activist network, Turning Point USA, which boasts well over half a million lifetime members and a presence on more than 6,200 high school and university campuses. Kirk built a vast ground game operation in key swing states that helped President Trump win the 2024 election. TPUSA’s events are attended by thousands across America.
More importantly, Charlie Kirk was a voice for a generation. He inspired millions of young people, not just in his homeland but around the world. His social media reached over 100 million people every month, and his words touched millions more through his thousands of interviews on various TV networks and radio stations. He espoused a popular conservative message, and he did it with eloquence and a smile. Charlie’s debates were his most popular content; he believed in engaging with his political foes as the way to bridge political divides and cultivate the republican civic virtue on which American democracy rests. For that, they shot him in the neck, a man with a wife and two small children, so that he could no longer speak, organise, fundraise or debate.
When President Kennedy was killed in 1963 by a communist-sympathising lonely young man, the American Left passed a series of radical reforms that changed the country forever. The Machiavellian Lyndon Johnson used his predecessor’s murder and the political capital it generated to pass sweeping legislation. Five days after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, Johnson told Congress: ‘No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill.’ The following year, he passed the Civil Rights Act, creating what Christopher Caldwell has called a ‘rival constitution’ that paved the way for the bureaucratic entrenchment of systemic discrimination against white Americans throughout the state and across society in general. He did not stop there: in 1965, he oversaw the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which threw open America’s borders to mass immigration. In the same year, he enacted vast expansions of the welfare state through his Great Society programs, including the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid.
In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the collective drawing in of breath from the American left could be heard around the world. The second Trump Administration had proven that the Republican Party was not quite the herbivorous creature it had been in decades prior, coming into office just nine months beforehand and taking unprecedented steps to change policy and dismantle aspects of the federal bureaucracy. Trump’s actions until that point, however, had largely danced around the edges, yet to strike at his opponents directly. Projecting their own shark instincts onto their opponents, the left assumed that Kirk’s death would provide the impetus and the justification for precisely that.
They were wrong. Despite some initial noises, not a single law was passed to defend freedom of speech on university campuses, let alone crack down on left-wing terrorist networks such as Antifa, their allies, and their donors. Even after multiple attempts on President Trump’s life and organised Left-wing violence against deportation agents, Republicans have failed to seize on the issue or rally behind a serious legislative response. Nor was the moment deployed in support of broader political priorities. The Republicans’ flagship SAVE Act, which would require Americans to prove their citizenship before registering to vote in federal elections, remains stalled in Congress, with little prospect of becoming law in the next two years.
Right-wing podcasters instead chose to go to war over the issue of Israel, indulging in deranged conspiracies around Kirk’s murder. Candace Owens, Kirk’s former colleague at Turning Point, has claimed that Israel and the French Foreign Legion were involved in his shooting, while accusing figures within TPUSA of covering up the circumstances of his death. She has specifically accused Erika Kirk of being a liar, and, to give you a flavour of Owens’ clickbait crusade, one of her many videos on Charlie’s widow is entitled ‘Here’s Why It’s Time For The Police To Question Erika Kirk’. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican Congresswoman, amplified suspicions surrounding Israel’s role in Kirk’s death, while podcast host Tucker Carlson said Kirk was ‘most likely murdered for his evolving views on Israel’.
These conspiracy theories have consumed thousands of hours of discussion in the United States. Just three weeks ago, Candace Owens sat down with conservative commentator Andrew Wilson to debate the circumstances around Kirk’s murder in a three-hour YouTube video. Well over six million people watched it. Those indulging in these theories have not only wasted the chance to make something meaningful with Kirk’s memory; they have allowed the left to literally get away with murder by placing the blame elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the left responded to Charlie’s assassination with glee. Thousands posted messages online celebrating his gruesome murder. Far-left streamer Hasan Piker just last month mocked his death in front of a live audience, scornfully singing a song written in tribute to the late conservative activist. Kirk has become a meme; AI videos of him as a resurrected robot gain millions of views on social media platforms. Nobody has paid any cost for this. In fact, they have learnt an important lesson: violence works, and they can get away with it.
I knew Charlie Kirk, a little bit. I first met him in London in 2018, when he was setting up the British version of Turning Point USA, and was later able to interview him myself. He was a deeply charismatic and impressive young man, full of vitality and vision. He did not deserve to die, and no political response could possibly lessen or justify the tragedy of his passing. But Charlie dedicated his life to politics for a reason, and this horrific moment could have provided an unprecedented opportunity to advance the causes in service of which he died. Instead, his murder has deprived the American Right of a rising star, and plunged the conservative movement into moronic rabbit holes and irrelevant debates. RIP Charlie Kirk — we will never see his like again.
This article was written by Steven Edginton, a documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist. You can find more of his work on his Substack. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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Of course Republicans didn't pass any laws protecting free speech on campus. They had been cracking down on it after the pro-Palestine protests in 2023. Now I don't expect anyone here to be sympathetic to Palestinians but it's obvious Republicans don't really care about free speech either for the most part. Especially the establishment.