At midday on Wednesday September 10, 2025, the conservative Christian activist and father of two, Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck by a sniper while speaking to a large crowd on the campus of Utah Valley University in the United States. This was at an event organised by Kirk’s organisation Turning Point USA, where students were invited to challenge his views in open debate. The shooting occurred about fifteen minutes after the start, just as Kirk was answering a question about mass shootings by transgender individuals. Kirk died of his wounds in a hospital shortly afterwards.

Using CCTV footage police investigators were able to quickly establish the sniper’s firing position and his likely escape route off the campus. They soon found the bolt-action rifle which had been used, wrapped in a towel and hidden in a wooded area just off campus. The following evening Tyler James Robinson, 22, went to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah to turn himself in for the murder, accompanied by his parents and a family friend. His parents had earlier identified both him and the rifle, which originally belonged to his grandfather, from images released by the police, and persuaded Robinson to turn himself in.

Robinson, who excelled academically at high school, was raised in a Republican and church-going Mormon family. Regarding his motive the State of Utah’s charge sheet noted that Robinson's mother had told them “that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left - becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” She also told the police that Robinson began to date his roommate, Lance Twiggs, “a biological male who was transitioning genders”.

This had all seemingly resulted in many arguments with his more conservative family members, “but especially between Robinson and his father, who have very different political views.” Robinson’s father was a strong supporter of Trump’s MAGA movement, in which Kirk was one of the leading figures.

“In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a ‘stupid venue’ for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate.” In a text exchange with Twiggs soon after Kirk’s assassination Robinson admitted to being the shooter. When asked why he had done it he replied: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.”

It is yet to be established whether others had prior knowledge of or involvement in the assassination. A broader question that needs far more serious reflection – especially from the Western media - is how the climate of opinion was created which led someone like Robinson to believe that killing Kirk was a virtuous and justifiable act.

This incident is part of a broader pattern, following two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, one of which almost succeeded, and an earlier attempt to kill the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A YouGov poll conducted in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting found that 26% of “very liberal” (i.e. leftist) respondents said it was acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, compared to 3% of very conservative respondents and 8% of all US adults. A quarter of “very liberal” respondents said that the resort to violence to achieve political goals could sometimes be justified, compared to 11% of US adults overall.

In conservative and classically liberal circles in the United States there is a tendency to regard all forms of speech as permissible, other than incitement. This had led to a blindness to the dangers of a certain type of vituperative propaganda which, when systematic, is arguably more dangerous than direct incitement.

This propaganda must be methodically and widely repeated as ordinary people won’t tend to be convinced by an individually voiced and disputed opinion. However, when they are repeatedly hearing the same thing about the same persons, from a wide array of trusted sources, this can be highly persuasive and morally reinforcing.

This occurs even if - in reality - the ‘line’ being taken emanates from a single dubious authority, is flawed or misleading, and has not been independently verified by any of those circulating and recycling it. Its purpose is to frame certain individuals (or groups) as a toxic element, a mortal threat to society etc., so that when the opportunity presents itself, various harmful actions can be meted out upon them. “If you want to drown a dog, first put out that it is rabid,” as the saying goes.

In a liberal democratic order, with a pluralistic media which adhere to basic ethical principles, such propaganda is unlikely to acquire significant weight. In such societies public debate aims at winning people over, and away from error, not to upend lives for poorly expressed or wrongheaded opinions. News publications should routinely verify information, especially from partisan sources, and counter any baseless or misleading allegations made by their competitors. The most basic offences against reasoned debate - such as arguing sophistically, suppressing facts or arguments, misstating the elements of the case, misrepresenting the opposite opinion, or stigmatising those holding opposing views as bad and immoral men - should be censured not celebrated.

Yet for whatever reason these offences are now routinely committed across swathes of the elite progressive media in the United States. The same flawed or misleading claims are repeated by different media outlets which are, ostensibly, independent of and in competition with each other. The highest purpose of such journalism appears to be to pin a variety of derogatory labels like “racist” onto conservative political opponents. A common and highly effective technique, which Charlie Kirk was directly subjected to, is to fixate upon a handful of quotations – shorn of context, meaning and intent - which frame the target in the most odious light possible. These were endlessly repeated, even after his death, while substantial countervailing evidence as to Kirk’s actual views and character were completely suppressed.

One purpose of this propaganda was to silence disfavoured but often valid opinions through cancellation campaigns targeting “problematic” individuals - and to intimidate others who shared their views. It also involved orchestrated, behind-the-scenes censorship or “deamplification” of dissenting opinions on social media platforms. Another was to mobilise progressive voters in last year’s US Presidential elections to secure the election of the Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris.

The danger of this propaganda, and the mentality that it fosters, is that when the question becomes acute – as it did with Donald Trump’s return to power, supported by Kirk and others – violence against those framed in this manner will come to be seen as necessary or excusable. No direct call to action is necessary for such propaganda to have deadly consequences. It was enough that Tyler Robinson was convinced that Kirk was a purveyor of “hate” who needed to be stopped. "I ha[ve] the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it," he wrote in a note he left for his roommate before the killing.

James Myburgh is Director of Bremen Democratic Research (BRE-DE-RE), an initiative to identify and counter threats to the liberty, comity and prosperity of democratic societies through historical and comparative research.