Murder of Charlie Kirk Ignites A Digital Firestorm

Kyle Tabor | Contributing Writer

Charlie Kirk was a controversial name, but one that was familiar to anyone involved in politics. It will continue to be, albeit in a different context.

Mr. Kirk was the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, a highly influential conservative youth outreach organization. He became famous for his travelling tours of colleges and universities, in which he’d host impromptu debate-style discussions with passing students, gathering large and often passionate crowds.

His recent college tours have racked up tens of billions of views across every major social media platform. In September 2024 (almost exactly a year ago), his role as a debate host for Jubilee gathered over 30 million views on YouTube. Users had taken to stitching his shortform content on platforms such as Instagram, either deriding or supporting the Republican pundit.

It seems that everyone had something to say about Charlie Kirk, and now – with recent violent and shocking events – he may be remembered for things he never intended.

On September 10, while speaking to over 3,000 students at Utah Valley University for his “American Comeback Tour”, Kirk was fatally shot in the neck by a gunman who remains at large.

Utah Valley has suspended all university activities at the time of this writing. Federal agents are on-site and a manhunt is underway amid mixed messages from officials. Tens of millions of people have taken to social media expressing their sentiments – and reacting to a gory close-up video of the shooting which has been widely circulated cross-platform.

On our own campus, the platform Fizz has been a particularly potent outlet for anonymous student reactions. Messages like “completely deserved tbh” and “womp womp” share a feed with “gun violence doesn’t discriminate” and “praying for Charlie’s family”. Users have also taken the opportunity to mention several of Mr. Kirk’s most controversial statements.

Preeminent among these are his positions on gun violence and abortion. On April 5, 2023, Kirk, speaking at a TPUSA event in Salt Lake City, said that “I think it’s worth it 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.” He had also compared deaths of this type to automobile accidents. Some users on social media have pushed back on this statement, pointing out perceived callousness and detachment, and now, the manner of his death. One Fizz user posted a photo of a Kirk tweet which read ‘Guns save lives’ with a new caption, “but not yours”, attaching a winky face emoji. That post has currently received over 900 upvotes.

Another pressing contemporary issue, abortion, had landed Mr. Kirk in hot water. His famous incident came in a reply to an emotionally charged hypothetical question in his Jubilee video. The question ran directly as follows:

“If you had a daughter and she was 10 and she got raped, and she was going to give birth and she was going to live, would you want her to go through that and carry her rapist’s baby?”

After commenting that the question was “awfully graphic”, Kirk quietly responded in the affirmative: “Yes, the baby would be delivered,” to the visible shock of participants.

Scores of prominent US politicians, Democrat and Republican, have expressed their condolences, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and current Vice President JD Vance. The international response has been significant, with posts from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Argentine president Javier Milei, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among notable others.

All have condemned violence in any form. And their words have seemed altogether insufficient to quell swiftly rising agitation across the American political spectrum.

Charlie Kirk leaves behind his wife, Erika, and two infant children.