The ‘Kirkaversary’ speaks to the sickness of progressives

For many left-wing activists, the murder of Charlie Kirk last September was a moment of celebration. A year on, and their hatred for the American conservative icon is unabated. No sooner had a statue to commemorate Kirk been unveiled outside the organisation he founded – Turning Point USA – than it was defaced with red paint.

The vandal responsible took care to remind everyone of the details of Kirk’s killing, which appears to have been a politically motivated assassination. The paint is concentrated on the left-hand side of the statue’s neck, where the real Kirk was shot, by suspect Tyler Robinson, as he addressed students at Utah Valley University on 10 September last year. A large red cross was painted across his face – a warning to Kirk’s supporters, who would have been the first to see it, that holding the ‘wrong’ views can sometimes be fatal.

This desecration has been accompanied by other disturbing scenes elsewhere. Students at the University of South Carolina and Georgetown University held Charlie Kirk lookalike contests to celebrate the anniversary of his death. At the University of California, Berkeley, students hosted a ‘Kirkaversary’ to mock the 31-year-old father of two. ‘We carry the flame’, they chanted. A group of young men shouted ‘Jerk for Kirk’. It was all a reminder, one young man said indifferently, that they found Kirk ‘low-key evil’. But if there is any evil, it surely exists in the hearts of those who gloated, and continue to gloat, over Kirk’s assassination.

The anniversary of Kirk’s killing should remind us that left-wing violence is a growing threat in the West. In December 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on the streets of Manhattan – a murder celebrated by leftists as a blow against Big Healthcare (and because the killer was good-looking). A few months before that, in the UK, a Palestine Action activist attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer – fracturing the officer’s spine – while breaking into an Israeli business in Bristol. And militant transgenderists calling themselves ‘Bash Back’ have been encouraging supporters to attack ‘gender-critical’ public figures with weapons, and offering advice on how to get away with crimes. The grievances vary but the violence is becoming consistent.

We would all do well to remember what Kirk was doing when he was fatally shot. He was debating students who disagreed with him, in the open air – a style of event he had done at hundreds of campuses across the country. He went out of his way to debate university students because he believed deeply in free speech. He felt that the first step in arresting the decline of Western life was to reinstil the value of listening to people instead of silencing them – to humanise, and to take seriously, one’s opponents.

If the ‘Kirkaversary’ is anything to go by, this mission is more important than ever.