Right-Wing Extremist Charlie Kirk Shot Dead, No Suspect in Custody

Reactionary media personality Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at a university event in Utah Wednesday (9/10). Video of the shooting shows Kirk answering a question about mass shootings in the USA when a pop is heard and Kirk jerks backward, blood erupting from his neck. No one else was injured in the shooting according to multiple monopoly media reports.

Kirk was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, at a Turning Point USA event that only progressed about 20 minutes before the shooting. School officials initially told monopoly media that the school police had a suspect in custody, and that the shooter appeared to have fired from a building 200 yards from Kirk, but later retracted the statement, saying the police have no one in custody for the shooting. The FBI have also released an initial detainee and have no suspect in custody.

Charlie Kirk was the founder and leader of the far-right wing student organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and various spin-off organizations. TPUSA is a country-wide reactionary student organization boasting financial support from ultra-reactionary financiers like Foster Friess, who was also a prominent donor to far-right commentator Tucker Carlson and the monopolist Koch Brothers’ reactionary political initiatives, among others.

Kirk built his media personality and political brand to appeal to youths disenchanted with the degeneration of US liberal politics and postmodernism, drumming up reactionary conspiracy theories and irrationalism to pull youth into the orbit of the Republican mafia. These include blaming Covid-19 on US imperialism’s social-imperialist rival China while promoting irrational rejections of vaccines, social distancing, and mask use, and setting up anti-Communist university activist networks and the “Professor Watchlist” website aimed against university professors TPUSA labels “leftist” and “anti-American”.

Kirk’s irrational, ultra-reactionary, anti-Communist politics align well with MAGA, both chauvinist and demagogic responses to the general crisis of imperialism, and in particular the degeneration of US imperialism which faces a growing economic crisis, military defeats against the oppressed nations, and contention from its imperialist rivals and allies alike.

Democrat and Republican mafiosos have both issued condemnations of the assassination, with Trump posting on social media that “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me”, while arch-genocidaire Joe Biden said: “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote that “we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.” Indeed, the assassination has rekindled the fears of the imperialist political mafias who have so quickly taken to crying over Kirk’s body.

Political violence in recent years is growing in the US as contradictions sharpen amid the imperialist crisis—as reaction grows more bloody and the people resist more fiercely, though sporadically and disorganized, in defense of their rights and living conditions.

Last year, UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated by a shooter motivated politically against health insurance companies’ vicious profit-making. Imperialist-in-chief Donald Trump himself was shot in the ear during a campaign tour in 2024. Multiple acts of political violence against Zionist targets have taken place in rebellion against the US-Zionist genocide, as well, including the annihilation of Israeli diplomatic staff in May. Far right mass shootings and smaller-scale attacks continue at a high pace, as well.

Far worse than the political violence denounced by the imperialist political mafias in unison is the very things they defend—the continuing mass layoffs of workers, mass detainment in torture camps and the mass deportations of immigrant workers and the terrorist ICE raids of worksites, imperialist aggression against Venezuela, and not least the continued perpetration of the US-Zionist genocide in Gaza and the criminal bombings of the people in resistance in the region.

Following the post-January 6 riot playbook, as well as the reactionary attempts to crack down on the heroic Palestine solidarity movement, the politicians and the police will drum up fear of left-wing violence and of the people’s resistance following Kirk’s killing, with an eye to further cracking down on the people’s rights, militarizing the police, and advancing their agenda of concentrating power in the executive branch while attempting to divide the workers along native and immigrant lines and strip their rights and crush their living conditions. In light of this, Harris’ concern that this does not lead to “more violence” means a concern to stop violence against the ruling class and their lackeys and mafiosos, not against the workers or the oppressed peoples of the world.

In the context of the general economic crisis of imperialism and its political expression in the restriction of democratic rights, common people are left without suitable legal address and compelled to disorganized and individual acts. The just temper of the people must be organized by the political party of the proletariat—which must be reconstituted in the USA—necessary to make the leap from spontaneity to people’s war to conquer and defend political power.

Image: A screenshot from a video on social media showing the moment just before Kirk is shot at the Utah event.

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