Far-right activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on September 11 at Utah Valley University. Kirk spearheaded the right-wing youth movement in recent years, using his platform and organization Turning Point USA to spread anti-trans, misogynist, racist, and anti-worker ideas. Kirk’s last words were, literally, a racist dog whistle about “gang violence.” His death will not be mourned by those of us fighting for a future free from capitalist oppression.
The suspect is a white youth from a Republican family background. Regardless of the motive, Kirk’s assassination is not a victory for the left and the oppressed but will in fact hurt the struggle against the far right. The key question is what strategy do workers and the left need to politically defeat the right—and what strategies actually set us back?
Kirk’s death will embolden Trump and the far right to unleash even more violent repression against the left and the oppressed than they have so far. Seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities went into lockdown in response to threats made against their campuses or nearby institutions.
WIRED reported that in the wake of Kirk’s death, “far-right influencers and extremist communities lit up social media with calls for violence against the left.” Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and pledged to rebuild the Oath Keepers to protect far-right leaders and activists. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” said far-right podcast host Alex Jones yesterday on his livestream. White supremacist activist Matt Forney said, “It is time for a complete crackdown on the left.”
Make no mistake, Trump’s repression and far-right violence can get worse. The dictatorship-style disappearances and eventual release of students who support Palestinian liberation were just the tip of the iceberg. The Republican-controlled Senate is accusing the Party for Socialism and Liberation of aiding and abetting criminal activity for supporting the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests in June. Before Kirk’s killing, the Department of Homeland Security had already been urging law enforcement across the country to crack down on peaceful protesters more harshly, and this will now get even worse. In particular, the crackdown on college campus activism could escalate dramatically.
Without an organized working-class force to challenge him, Trump’s authoritarian regime can go much further, and he will use every excuse at his disposal to do so. Defeating Trump and the far right can’t be accomplished with individual acts of violence—it will require a mass, multiracial, multi-gender movement of workers and young people using working-class methods of struggle like mass demonstrations, occupations, and strikes.
In late 19th-century Russia, during the brutal Tsarist autocracy, a secret left-wing terrorist organization called Narodnaya Volya managed to assassinate a number of important Tsarist officials. The revolutionary socialist Bolsheviks were opposed to this type of tactic. The Narodniks, as they were called, hoped the assassinations would draw the working masses into action, but as we wrote recently: “The masses they hoped to rouse were reduced to passive spectators of struggle, and a generation of revolutionary youth perished under the endless cycle of repression-terrorism-repression.”
The murdered Tsarist officials were simply replaced with others, while scores of young revolutionaries were killed as punishment. Similarly, in Kirk’s absence, new far-right youth leaders will arise, espousing the same vile message if not worse. It took a mass working-class movement to overthrow the Tsar in the 1917 Russian Revolution, and to replace the authoritarian regime with a democratic, workers’ republic.
Since Kirk’s shooting, Democrats have had nothing to share but condolences and condemnations of “senseless violence.” What they don’t offer is any meaningful way to actually neutralize the growth and influence of the right, and are even afraid to criticize Kirk’s politics under right-wing accusations of fanning the flames. That’s because the last thing Democrats want to do is encourage working-class struggle, let alone campaign and fight for the basic things working people need.
It will not be easy, but the only path forward is getting organized to build mass working-class movements against oppression, the far right, and capitalism—independent from ruling-class forces like the Democrats. No individual act can accomplish this task. Like in 1917, a mass revolutionary movement is needed today. The capitalist system is at the root of the abject misery and brutality of human society today, and it will keep breeding hateful creatures like Trump and Charlie Kirk over and over again until we overthrow it. Socialist Alternative is committed to building that struggle.
