“Prove me wrong.”
For years, that tagline of Charlie Kirk and his group, Turning Point USA, enraged many on the left. In “an age of rage,” nothing is more triggering for the perpetually angry than an invitation to debate issues.
Indeed, someone has now killed him for it.
What is most chilling about the assassination is that it was not in the slightest degree surprising. This follows two attempted assassinations of President Trump and the killing of a pair of Minnesota politicians.
I heard of the assassination in Prague as I prepared to speak about the age of rage and the growing attacks on free speech. I was profoundly saddened by the news. I knew Charlie and respected his effort to challenge the orthodoxy on college campuses. We all have received regular death threats (and Charlie more than most), but there is still a hope that even the most deranged will leave these threats at the ideation rather than the action stage.
This killer left Charlie’s wife, Erika, and her two young children as the latest victims of senseless violence against someone who refused to be silenced.
We do not have to know much about the shooter to recognize the rage. The person who killed Charlie did not view him as a father or even as a person. That is the transformative, enabling effect of rage.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about rage and the uncomfortable truth for many engaging in rage rhetoric: “What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts, flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths. Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. … Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”
Charlie was brave, and he was brash. He refused to yield to the threats while encouraging others to speak out on our campuses.
He was particularly hated for holding a mirror to the face of higher education, exposing the hate and hypocrisy on our campuses. For decades, faculty have purged their ranks of conservatives and libertarians. Faced with the intolerance of most schools, polls show that a large percentage of students hide their values to avoid retaliation from faculty or their fellow students.
Charlie chose to change all that. TPUSA challenges people to engage and debate them. The response from some on the left has been to trash their tables and threaten the students. Recently, at UC Davis, police stood by and watched as a TPUSA tent was torn apart.
Charlie is only the latest such victim, and he is unlikely to be the last.
For months, some of us have warned about the rise in rage rhetoric. Some believe that they can ride a wave of rage back into power. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) has called for people to take to the streets to save democracy and posted a picture of himself brandishing a baseball bat.
Likewise, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”
Various radical groups welcome such rage rhetoric, particularly Antifa. The most violent anti-free speech group in the U.S., Antifa has long attacked journalists and others with opposing views. In his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” Professor Mark Bray noted that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Alleged shooter Tyler Robinson, 22, reportedly left telltale Antifa markings on evidence, including marking bullets inscribed with the lyrics: “Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao”(from an Italian anti-fascist anthem) and “Hey, fascist! Catch!”
I previously testified in Congress about the dangers of Antifa, and I discuss the group in my book. Despite such warnings, Democratic leaders have dismissed those dangers or actually embraced Antifa.
Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison (D), now Minnesota’s attorney general, previously celebrated how Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. Liberal sites sell Antifa items to celebrate the violent group, including onesies for “Antifa babies.”
Some politicians have privately expressed alarm at the rising violent speech in their ranks. One Democratic member told Axios, “Some of [our supporters] have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.”
Protesters are burning cars and dealerships. Even lawyers and reporters on the left are throwing Molotov cocktails at police. Some on the left have rolled out guillotines and chanted, “We got the guillotine, you better run.”
Just before he was shot at Utah Valley University, Kirk rallied the group with its signature chant of “prove me wrong.” Someone responded by killing him.
Of course, the murder proved nothing except that senseless hate is sweeping over our country. Someone preferred to kill Kirk rather than engage with him or others who held opposing views.
It is precisely the lack of debate and dialogue that has triggered this type of violence. For those dwelling deep in the hardened silos of our news and social media, dissenting voices become increasingly intolerable.
Charlie is still exposing that hypocrisy. As I prepared to address Charlie’s murder in Prague, anti-free speech groups were already using his murder to justify even greater limits on free speech to combat hate and disinformation. This is the ultimate dishonoring of his life and his legacy. Charlie died in the fight for free speech, challenging speech codes and censorship.
Greater censorship will not make political violence less likely; it will only make the likelihood of another Charlie Kirk less likely. Europe shows that extremists flourish under speech controls. The neo-Nazis are having a banner year in portraying themselves as victims.
It is the rest of us that are deterred by speech codes. According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.
Charlie was hated because he exposed the left’s intolerance of opposing views … all in the purported cause of achieving greater tolerance. By challenging others to debate, he triggered a generation of speech-phobics who are more interested in silencing others than speaking on their own account.
Charlie was hated for stripping away the pretense and self-delusion of those canceling, blacklisting, and attacking others for holding opposing views. He did so by standing in harm’s way.
The conservatives that Kirk coaxed out of the shadows can honor his memory by showing that they will not be silenced. They can step forward and renew his same challenge: “Prove me wrong.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
