“We are not as they are. Nor shall we ever be.”

 

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a horrific reminder that the left is based on nothing other than terror, violence, and aggression.

This has been true since Karl howled to Friedrich that the bourgeois would someday pay for his plague of skin boils. The history of the Left is a history of violence. Scarcely a single leftist government has gained power without violence or the threat of violence. No leftist government has ever remained in power without violence.

Violence is built into the very foundations of leftist ideology. Marx himself fantasized in print over the apocalyptic events that would accompany the revolution of the proletariat. Mikhail Bakunin preached the “propaganda of the deed” – political activism by means of bombing and assassination. Sergei Nechaev was so eager for blood that he began killing his own followers (he was also crazy enough to terrify even Bakunin). Pyotr Tkachev calmly asserted that 10% of the bourgeoisie would have to die following the revolution, a sentiment echoed by none other than Obama’s bestie, Bill Ayers. All this rhetoric came to a head in the next century thanks to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mengistu, and a legion of others, at the cost of 100 million dead or more. The Age of Massacre could not have occurred without the Left.

Leftists simply cannot attain their goals without bloodshed. They can’t so much as win an argument or prevail in a debate without threats and menacing behavior. They not only settle for it – they revel in it. Anyone doubting this can take a look at all the dancing and laughing memes and emojis that greeted Kirk’s murder or the victim-blaming from MSNBC and CNN. It was all Charlie Kirk’s fault, you see. He didn’t have to show up on campus. He could have hidden in his basement. He could have ducked.

The only sane answer to this is that of Solzhenitsyn: “We are not as they are. Nor shall we ever be.”

The shooting of Charlie Kirk is only the latest of a long line of atrocities, many of them buried to a point that they scarcely made a mark in the record. Late in the 19th century, anarchists triggered a worldwide campaign of assassination that accounted for a Spanish prime minister, an Austro-Hungarian empress, and even an American president. (The anarchists claimed that McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was just a hanger-on. Today’s Left will say the same about whoever shot Charlie Kirk once he’s picked up.) Today, we have the Alexandria shooting. The Las Vegas shooting. We have Butler, PA, and Mar-a-Lago. And we have Orem, Utah.

The American Left will back off. They always do. They will give us the standard pious sighs, the sad head shakes, the calls to overcome “divisiveness.” Don’t buy it. The Left gave permission to Charlie Kirk’s killer the same way it did to Lee Oswald in 1963, the same way the Jim Crow segregationists sanctioned James Earl Ray in 1968, the same way that Palestinian fanatics did for Sirhan Sirhan that same year.

The point of this killing, as with all the others, is to terrorize us. To force us off the public square into frightened silence. They have lost, and they know it. They are on the run, utterly defeated by Donald Trump and his MAGA legions. So, like the anarchists of the 1890s, like Lenin and his Bolsheviks, like the Red Guard and Khmer Rouge, like the Weathermen and the SLA, like every left-wing tyrant down to this day, they have reached for their hole card. For the assassin’s bullet. For the gunshot that comes out of the crowd. For fear, terror, and bloodshed.

The answer to this is defiance. We must not back down. We must not give expression to our fears, however well-grounded they may be. We must not “reach across the aisle.” We must return to the campuses to carry on Charlie Kirk’s great work. There must be marches and demos on the radical campuses and in the blue cities. We must spit in their faces and tell them to do their worst. We must act like the majority that we are, like the country that we embody. That is how we honor Charlie Kirk and carry on his mission.

Let us gird our loins, and let us go amongst them.

by J.R. Dunn at americanthinker.com on September 11, 2025

Over the past decade, major media outlets, often aligned with progressive ideologies, have characterized Republicans and conservatives as extreme threats, using terms like "Hitler" or "Nazis." This rhetoric has been employed to unify a diverse Democrat base that encompasses a wide range of issues and priorities. Without a common adversary to rally against, the Democrat Party risks internal fragmentation, potentially undermining its electoral success. However, this strategy of labeling political opponents as existential dangers has contributed significantly to the heightened political division and violence observed today.

The persistent narrative that conservatives are inherently dangerous has been reinforced through various institutions, including educational systems, mainstream media, and entertainment industries. For years, younger generations have been taught that their conservative neighbors represent a moral or societal evil. This indoctrination has had tangible consequences, manifesting in a series of violent incidents targeting Republicans and conservatives. Notable examples include the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Utah campus event, attempted assassinations of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and an attack on the Senate Majority Leader. Additionally, the 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice, which gravely injured Representative Steve Scalise, along with swatting incidents and public assaults on conservatives, underscore the real-world impact of this rhetoric.

The Democrat Party bears responsibility for this escalation. The celebration of Charlie Kirk’s death on the Left, as evidenced by numerous posts on social media platforms like X, reflects a disturbing acceptance of violence as a response to ideological disagreement. These actions are not isolated but rather the predictable outcome of a prolonged campaign to demonize political opponents. The Left’s narrative has framed dissent as not just wrong but morally reprehensible, fostering an environment where violence against conservatives is increasingly justified by some.

The Democrat Party must address this internal crisis. The current trajectory of escalating hostility threatens further division and tragedy. This is not a "both sides" issue; the pattern of inflammatory rhetoric and subsequent violence has predominantly originated from one side. The Democrat leadership’s goal of fundamentally reshaping the nation has led to a strategy of vilifying those who disagree, labeling them as evil or extremist. If this approach continues unchecked, the consequences will only worsen.

The Democrat Party has accepted divisive rhetoric, condoned violence, and destroyed the political climate that prioritizes civil discourse. It has eroded the fabric of American society.

by William Hillman at americanthinker.com on September 11, 2025

RESPONSE FROM A MODERATE DEMOCRAT:

My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.

I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.

Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious.

And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.

Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.

I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.

Here are the facts:

Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.

Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.

Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.

These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.

Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:

These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.

These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.

When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.

They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.

And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.

When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”

They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.

And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.

And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.

For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.

In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.

In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.

“What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)

“What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)

“What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)

“What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)

In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.

“It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)

“I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)

All BS. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.

You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.

Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.

If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.

anonymous post on Reddit on September 15, 2025