Charlie Kirk built a career on political outrage – but outrage must not lead to violence

The footage of her being stabbed went viral online: in it, she gasps, grabs her face, and then collapses on camera. Kirk’s last post on X was about her death. “America will never be the same,” he wrote on Instagram.

Last night social media was flooded with a new, horrifying video: Kirk’s own murder as he was shot while speaking at a Utah Valley university campus.

President Trump, who has ordered that all US flags be flown at half mast in Kirk’s honour, has announced that his young supporter and friend will posthumously be awarded the presidential medal of freedom. Mourners are attending pop-up vigils around the country. There is speculation that the funeral may be delayed until after Trump’s state visit to the UK next week.

The assassination of Kirk was met with immediate condemnation. Trump issued a statement sharing the nation’s “anger and grief” and said that it was a “dark moment for America”. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on whose podcast Kirk has been a guest, called it “vile”. Michelle and Barack Obama deemed it “despicable”. Nigel Farage called it a “dark day for free speech”.

But if this moment feels particularly bleak, it is not because of the violence alone. It’s because of the recursive familiarity of it all: how one video begets another, one horror spiralling into the next. The attempts to assassinate Trump. The killing of the Minnesota state speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband, Mark Hortman, and their dog. The time Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in his home and beaten with a hammer.

We do not consume these images, they consume us.

Today it is easy to live in an online world permanently infused with the aesthetic of violence – not just its presence but its constant re-appearance, edited and shared on social media. Kirk thrived in this world. He was one of America’s most popular conservative activists, and he was young – 31 when he died.

He had garnered millions of followers through his debate videos, where he went to college campuses and asked students to discuss controversial topics such as abortion and religion. He formed a close relationship with the Trump administration, even as he sometimes vocally criticised their policies. His organisation Turning Point USA, which he set up at 18, played a significant role in getting young people engaged in politics, and voting for Trump.

Kirk understood that outrage moves faster than legislation, and that political capital is no longer gathered by consensus but by rupture. He was a genius at finding the pressure points of the American psyche and squeezing hard. It’s easy to dismiss him as a provocateur, but he at least understood that the old language of consensus politics no longer held.

Frontline politicians may move through the choreography of their grief as they condemn the political violence that killed him, but violence doesn’t listen. The polarisation they denounce is also what fuels their campaigns and their policies.

Have we entered a phase of American life in which the political no longer precedes the violence, but is shaped by it? The answer may lie in understanding the way that social media algorithms push images of violence upon us. It’s unsettling and worrying and no one knows what will happen next.

As we wait to find out more about Kirk’s killer – the FBI has released pictures and is “hunting a murderer” after recovering a weapon – the question haunting the country isn’t just why it happened, but how easily it could happen in a place where rage goes viral and guns are everywhere.

If there is a grim feeling settling in today that we have already accepted that bloodshed is the price of staying politically awake in America, then we need to resist it. It is not unusual for many to feel numbed to online images of violence but it doesn’t have to become the norm. The preservation of sensitivity may be our strongest weapon.