Charlie Kirk is dead. The conservative political activist was assassinated on 10 September doing what he did best debating students on a university campus. His death represents not only a personal tragedy by leaving behind a grieving family, but also a grave assault on the sacred principle of freedom of speech.

A powerful voice

A uniquely gifted rhetorician and organiser, Charlie Kirk seemed destined for a bright political future. In the years before the 2024 US presidential election, Kirk would appear on university campuses across the United States, calmly engaging crowds of jeering, hostile students.

He made many enemies, but with every appearance the number of smiling young men wearing red ‘MAGA’ caps seemed to multiply in the audience, and you knew that Trump was going to win.

Kirk was upfront about his partisanship and his conservative worldview, but his politics rested on a deep commitment to the founding American values of individual freedom and justice. No matter how fiercely he debated, he always showed respect towards his opponents.

It is a tragic irony that a man who used his voice to engage in civic discourse and reasoned debate was ultimately silenced by a bullet to the throat.

Why free speech matters

Freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of Western civilisation. It is a foundational freedom upon which every other freedom rests.

In the realm of politics, freedom of association means nothing without free expression because political organisation cannot take place unless you can articulate your ideas and rally others to your cause.

Without the freedom to criticise and oppose, how can you reason your way to better policy decisions or expose abuses of authority?

What use is the pen to the writer or the paintbrush to the artist without the ability to challenge prevailing beliefs and societal norms?

Religious freedom ultimately rests on freedom of speech. In 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, he birthed the Protestant Reformation. It was a heretical act at the time, but one which influenced an entire religious movement.

The Judeo-Christian tradition is characterised not by uniform opinion, but by a plethora of competing interpretations of the holy text. Without the ability to challenge the established orthodoxy, religion can easily descend into dogma.

Scientific knowledge too, requires open enquiry and debate. The sixteenth century physicist, Nicholas Copernicus, had to wait 36 years to publish his seminal work De revolutionibus due to the controversy of challenging the long established Ptolemaic belief that the sun revolved around the Earth. Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the solar system is a basic truth that we now take for granted today.

Five hundred years later, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we were told to unquestioningly “trust the science” and contrary views were swiftly silenced. But science is a process of constant interrogation and refutation. To paraphrase another physicist, Max Planck, without free speech, science can only advance one funeral at a time.

British philosopher, John Stuart Mill, reminded us in his 1859 essay, On Liberty, that free speech is a necessary defence not only against government power, but also against the “tyranny of the majority.” Free speech enables us to test our assumptions, to overcome our own fallible beliefs and “exchange error for truth.” Mill believed that we should allow bad or even dangerous ideas to be ventilated, as it affords us the opportunity to identify and counter these erroneous falsehoods.

Growing threats

Charlie Kirk’s life and work embodied his fierce commitment to free speech, but his death highlights how free speech itself is increasingly under threat in the Western world.

In many countries, authorities use digital communications laws to punish dissenting voices in the name of protecting the public against what they deem “misinformation” or “discriminatory” speech. In the United Kingdom in 2023, there were a reported 30 arrests per day over offensive social media posts that caused “annoyance”, “inconvenience,” or “anxiety” to others on the internet.

At a recent forum of liberal policy organisations and think tanks in Nairobi, Kenya, I was heartened to meet fellow classical liberals from around the African continent. However, I was also discouraged to learn that many of these brave activists face considerable harassment and coercion in their home countries for criticising their governments. It was a reminder that South Africa’s culture of free speech is unique in the African context and worth defending.

Double standard?

However, we should not rest on our laurels. Recently, a restaurateur in the Free State was hauled before the Equality Court for placing images of prominent political leaders in urinals. While distasteful, this is a legitimate form of political expression and should not be prohibited.

One of the images in the urinal was of Julius Malema, a powerful politician who has openly called for violence against ethnic minorities in South Africa. While the Constitutional Court refused to hear the hate speech case brought against Malema by AfriForum, a civil rights group, the Supreme Court of Appeal held in a separate judgement that the mere display of the old South African flag was in itself an act of hate speech, revealing the judiciary’s double standard on the right of freedom of expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Lefties losing it

Coming of age in the 1990s and 2000s, it was always the left wing of the political spectrum that seemed to me to be on the side of free speech. Today, it is the political left that wishes to control speech in the name of protecting the vulnerable.

Speaking to The Common Sense in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Joel Pollak, senior editor at large for Breitbart News, noted that there is “an uneven application of moral outrage to the right rather than the left when it comes to violent rhetoric […] The left reserves the right to use violent rhetoric because they believe they are fighting for a higher good.”
In a chilling foretelling of his own tragic fate, Charlie Kirk himself observed the rise in “assassination culture” on the political left. On 8 April 2025, Kirk posted on X.com:

“Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump. In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione. The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”

A commitment to freedom of expression should be an obvious non-partisan issue that everyone can agree on, but that is regrettably not the case. In fact, the left has increasingly used speech codes to protect themselves against legitimate critiques of their ideological agendas such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Anyone who criticises these ideas is labelled a racist reactionary and often censured.

This intolerance is particularly prevalent at universities. Kirk was an autodidact with no university degree who was bold enough to challenge the credentialed elite on their own turf, so the fact that he was slaughtered on a college campus is darkly symbolic of the climate of intolerance prevalent in academia today.

Je suis Charlie

Ten years ago, on 7 January 2015, the world witnessed a horrific terror attack against the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. Gunmen stormed the newspaper’s Paris offices, brutally murdering 12 people. Their sin? Depicting images of the Prophet Muhammed in the pages of their publication. This event shocked the world and prompted many people to adopt the slogan, Je suis Charlie (“I am Charlie”) as a demonstration of commitment to free speech and a rejection of political violence.

Ten years on, as the world reels from another avoidable tragedy of an innocent man who was slain for merely exercising his free speech rights, it is time to revive and adopt Je suis Charlie as a call to arms to defend free speech with renewed vigour.

Today, I am Charlie Kirk. Vive la liberté. Je suis Charlie.

David Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.