Kirk’s calculation that gun deaths were worth the price of liberty perfectly mimics the irony of capitalism.

The bourgeois press weeps for a fallen ideologue, framing the demise of Charlie Kirk as a tragedy of political violence. Let’s be honest, this wasn’t a tragedy. His assassination was the consequence of his own reactionary political ideology steeped in the rhetoric of violence. With this in mind, we must analyze this event not with liberal sentimentality and pearl clutching currently being bandied about, but with a materialist rigor that doesn’t moralize fallen reprobates. Kirk’s end was the logical conclusion of the very forces he unleashed, a violent symptom of a social order in a state of advanced decay. He lived by the gun, ideologically speaking, and he perished by it.

The crocodile tears of liberal politicians likes of Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, who preside over a system of relentless police violence, imperialist slaughter, and the slow death of economic deprivation, now feign horror at a single act of “reprehensible” violence. Their selective outrage is a performance meant to uphold bourgeois order. We are told to mourn Kirk, but when were we asked to mourn the thousands of Palestinian children immolated by the weaponry of capital’s imperial proxies? If these liberals could summon even a fraction of their current indignation for the victims of their own system, their pronouncements might carry weight. Instead, they inundate us with their sanctimonious noise, revealing that their concern is not for life but for the stability of their class rule.

Charlie Kirk was not a philosopher, he wasn’t even a decent debater, what he was, was a functionary. His purpose was to manufacture consent for the ruling class, to keep the proletariat confused and divided. His organization, Turning Point USA, served as a conduit for Christofascist ideology, packaging the interests of capital as the “God-given rights” of the common man. His frantic defense of the Second Amendment was never about popular defense against tyranny, it was about sanctifying private property and the right of the individual capitalist to protect their assets against the working class. By convincing a segment of that very same working class that their interests align with their exploiters, Kirk performed a valuable service, generating a thick fog of false consciousness to obscure the reality of class antagonism.

“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death… That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I think it’s worth 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 is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.

To fully grasp the American obsession with firearms that Kirk so effectively manipulated, one must understand the concept of commodity fetishism. The gun is not merely a tool, it is a fetishized object, imbued by bourgeois ideology with mystical powers of freedom, sovereignty, and security. This fetishism obscures the real social relations of its production and its function as an instrument of class society. It appears as a sacred relic of liberty, detached from the systemic violence it perpetuates. This is how a rational-sounding argument can be made for accepting thousands of deaths as a “prudent deal.” The real, material horror of a near-daily parade of dead children is rendered abstract, less important than the worship of a fetishized commodity and the ideology it represents.

The dialectic is a merciless process. A force, once unleashed, inevitably calls forth its opposite. Kirk and his ilk championed a society saturated with the instruments of death, arguing that an armed citizenry was the ultimate check on state power. What they cultivated was not a bulwark against government overreach, but a paranoid, atomized society where violence becomes the first resort for settling disputes, both personal and political. They sowed the wind of violent rhetoric and paranoid fantasies, and in Utah, the whirlwind was reaped. His death serves as an example of what the anarchists once called propaganda of the deed, an act of violence intended to inspire others to action.

“We have to be vicious, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”

This quote from his Twitter account the day before his assassination was a call to action. Kirk was telling those he had made a career out of manipulating that it was time to engage in violent acts against their perceived enemies. And in an ironic twist of fate the first act of violence was turned back on its most vocal proponent. In a way his death was his own kind of praxis, the unity of theory and practice, in its most brutal and direct form. His ideology of unrestrained viciousness became the force that destroyed him.

Now, the forces of fascist reaction, led by figures like Donald Trump, will attempt to transform this dead pundit into a martyr. They will seek to make Charlie Kirk the Horst Wessel of a burgeoning American fascist movement, using his death to justify greater repression, more surveillance, and the further arming of right-wing paramilitaries. The assassination of one man, however odious his views, will not advance the cause of liberation. Instead, his assassination will strengthen the hand of the state and provides the perfect pretext for fascism’s advance. Ultimately, this act of violence demonstrates the futility of individual terror. It is a satisfying expression of rage, to be sure, but it is not a strategy for power.

The christofascists that produced Kirk will simply find another to take his place, perhaps more polished, or more rabid, and with a smaller head. Removing a single easily replaceable ideologue, no matter how deserving, does nothing to alter the fundamental fascist trajectory of the American superstructure. Such acts are a politics of despair, a symptom of the absence of a mass, organized working-class movement. They allow the state to reinforce its monopoly on violence and portray all opposition to capitalism as criminal and terroristic, thereby isolating genuine revolutionaries from the masses whose support is essential. The proper response to the violence of capitalism is not the isolated violence of the assassin, but the organized, collective power of the mobilized working class.

Our task is not to target individual personifications of economic categories but to abolish the categories of class society itself. Nor should our goal be a form of self-sabotage where we push for the disarmament of the people while Trump builds a fascist cage around us. No, this moment requires the patient work of education, agitation, and organization to build mobilized class consciousness. The worker must learn to see that their enemy is not a single loudmouthed pundit, but the entire system of wage labor and private property. So, let the liberals perform their empty rituals of mourning and let the fascists attempt to construct their martyr. We understand that Kirk’s death was as meaningless as his life and that this incident is merely another crack appearing in the facade of a dying social order.

Rest in piss you sniveling fuck.

Jacobin’s Liberal Indulgences

The Jacobin article Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster epitomizes the empty moralistic condemnations we expect from liberals, not from leftists grounded in a material critique of class society. Authored by Ben Burgis and Meagan Day, their piece engages in the kind of liberal hand-wringing that holds leftists back by upholding bourgeois norms. By framing the event with the language of “tragedy” and “disaster,” they substitute bourgeois sentimentality for revolutionary clarity and suggest that political violence threatens the very fabric of liberation. This is a pitiful display of ideological weakness that fails to grasp the true nature of class conflict.

Instead of asking whether political violence is justifiable in the abstract, a materialist analysis asks which acts of violence serve the interests of the proletariat. The ruling class understands that violence is a powerful tool, wielding it daily through state repression, economic coercion, and imperialist warfare. Yet, Jacobin suggests the Left should unilaterally disarm, morally and rhetorically. This is an appalling betrayal, reinforcing the false liberal narrative that state violence and anti-capitalist resistance are morally equivalent. Such calls for calm and de-escalation only embolden fascist forces by indicating that the Left can be intimidated into passivity, a dynamic proven countless times to be a death sentence for the Left and the oppressed

The substantive critique of Charlie Kirk’s assassination is not its violence, but its strategic futility. The act appears to be an isolated and adventurist expression of rage, unconnected to any broader left working-class movement. Individual acts of violence, divorced from mass action, cannot substitute for the patient work of building proletarian organizations capable of wielding force collectively. Kirk was an enemy of the working class, and we need not shed tears for the lackeys of our oppressors. However, the real problem is that such actions are often cathartic but ultimately counterproductive, substituting individual expression for disciplined revolutionary practice.

To repeat myself, Jacobin’s analysis is fundamentally flawed because it embraces bourgeois humanism, asserting that no one deserves death for political expression while failing to recognize that politics is an extension of war by other means. By framing Kirk’s murder as a threat to “democratic norms” and “free speech,” they defend the very ideological covers used to maintain ruling-class hegemony. The Left must move beyond empty condemnations and develop a rigorous, materialist perspective that understands violence as a legitimate tool in the hands of a mobilized working class. Revolutionary clarity demands nothing less than a dialectical analysis of class struggle and the instruments that serve it.

It’s no wonder why I canceled my subscription after the first year.