American Writer winces!
Sep 12, 2025
United States | Beyond debate
Charlie Kirk challenged liberals until the day he was murdered
The activist embodied a fiery style of conservatism and energised young voters
A selection : This reader longs for Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait, almost!
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Mr Kirk’s influence also stemmed from his reputation as a tribune of the right, someone who was unafraid to defend conservatism against an imagined horde of blinkered libtards.
Editor: The Oxbridgers at The Economist are not above using the slang of blinkered libtards ! To add a certain zest, to an onterwise wan apologetic for an American Political Hysteric: A Type that has metaticised since the Birth of The Tea Party!
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He believed that “wokism” threatened to destroy the country. America would be saved not at the ballot box but in the crucibles where culture is forged, like college campuses. A devout Christian, he wanted to carry on travelling from campus to campus, ripping the blinkers off liberal students’ eyes, educating them about the evils of critical race theory and gender ideology and urging them to start families and reclaim America for Jesus Christ.
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These have included an arson attack targeting Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania; a thwarted plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan; and another to kill Brett Kavanaugh, a Supreme Court justice. In 2022 a man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi, the then speaker of the House of Representatives, and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer. In June a state representative from Minnesota and her husband were murdered at home. Mr Trump was lucky to survive being shot at an open-air campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
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“People who are looking for a purpose, who want to claim a historical mission, are moved by a public conversation that says ‘you’ll get attention, you’ll be lauded if you hurt someone in a public way’,” notes Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank.
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Editor: The Economist Fellow Travelers apply the anodyne political medication, via Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University.
Two factors tend to influence support for political violence. When elites condemn it, citizens listen: people have a follow-the-leader instinct, says Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University. A second factor is partisans’ perception of what the other side thinks. Both Democrats and Republicans hold exaggerated ideas about how much their rivals tolerate violence when in fact both sides mostly abhor it. This fuels misperceptions all around.
Approval of political violence is not high in absolute terms, but it is still too high, says Mr Willer. Fixing that comes through engagement. Mr Kirk acknowledged this himself. Once a woman frostily asked him why he had come to her campus. He replied firmly, “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.”
American Writer.
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