Rest in Piss Charlie Kirk
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, her 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.
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 child’s death 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 viscous, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”
This quote from his Twitter post the day before his assassination was a call to action, an act that was turned back on its most vocal proponent. In a way his death was his own praxis, the unity of theory and practice, in its most brutal and direct form. His ideology of unrestrained viscousness 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 an expression of rage, not a strategy for power.
Removing a single easily replaceable ideologue, no matter how deserving, does nothing to alter the fundamental fascist trajectory of the American superstructure. The Christofascists that produced Charlie Kirk will simply produce another, perhaps more polished or more rabid, to take his place. 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 themselves. This requires the patient work of education, agitation, and organization to build 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 is merely another crack appearing in the facade of a dying social order. The way forward lies in disciplined collective struggle.