I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on pretty much everything, but his shocking and morally repugnant assassination is deeply concerning, and not just because it’s another example of the lethality of our politics. Kirk’s killing is also sending prominent conservatives on a warpath, setting the stage for a dangerous expansion of federal government repression.

Kirk was a social media megastar and the founder of Turning Point USA, the foremost rightwing youth organization in the country. His political positions were to the far right, and his language was often combative, to say the least. He called Martin Luther King, Jr “awful” and said “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s”. He believed in the so-called great replacement theory, which asserts that elites are encouraging mass migration to undermine white people in western countries. “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote on X the day before he was killed. He also blamed “Jewish dollars” for funding “cultural Marxist ideas and supporters”.

Kirk said being “trans is a mental delusion”. He portrayed himself as a free speech champion while also running a “Professor Watchlist” against liberal professors. “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price,” he said, explaining his opposition to gun control. “I think it’s worth … [the] cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so we can have the second amendment.” And he also

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