Charlie Kirk is dead. He was a champion of free speech and he died speaking freely. He had an extraordinary reach for the young of his generation – my son, a student, and my daughter, a teenager, knew all about him. I knew next to nothing until he was shot last night.
“It’s happening”, said my daughter darkly. “This is going to be meltdown.” What she meant was that this could be the trigger for violence, at least in the US, a breakdown of the consensus that accepted that you may disagree with people but your disagreement would be confined to argument and debate, and not murder. Assassination is the end of free speech, not only because it silences the man who makes arguments but because it makes a civilised exchange of opinion less likely in the future.
Kirk was only 31, and young people were his main audience. Although he didn’t go to university himself, he made a point of engaging with with students in universities here as well as in the US, that is, he went straight to the audiences that were most likely to disagree with him as a Trumpian conservative. That was brave, even without a gunman at large.
Now he is dead and silenced for ever. In a poignant picture taken just before the speech he’s seen in front of a stand saying, Prove Me Wrong. The gunman didn’t prove him wrong. Rather, he made clear his importance. In a remarkably prescient piece written for The Spectator about his visit to the UK in May to speak at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Kirk wrote:
“…at Oxbridge I found the dominant outlook to be a depressed and depressing near-nihilism. They were students who hardly cared their country has less free speech than 50 or 100 years ago. They were appalled that a person might think life begins at conception. They loved the abstract fight for ‘democracy’ in Ukraine, but find the actual outcome of democracy in America very icky.”
And he was right; free speech here is under threat. But it is in America that the threat takes the most concrete form: it was in New York that Salman Rushdie was stabbed – at an event to highlight persecuted writers – by 25 year-old Hadi Matar, who disagreed with his views on Islam; it was in Utah that Charlie Kirk was shot. At least Salman Rushdie had the last word on his assailant with his coruscating book about the attack, Knife. And this summer he presciently observed that “people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of”.
Donald Trump in his anger and grief after Kirk’s death has apportioned blame: “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today.”
He has a point. We may not agree with Kirk – I would have taken issue with many of his views – but there is a mindset in liberal circles that does not hesitate to demonise those on what it designates the far right without foreseeing where this will lead. One fatuous columnist observed after Kamala Harris was nominated as a presidential candidate that she and her friends were really worried that some right-wing lunatic would try to assassinate her; but there wasn’t a peep from that quarter after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
The sense of apprehension amongst conservatives suggests that violent intimidation works, that murder succeeds. And it mustn’t be allowed to
The conservative journalist Paul Johnson once observed that liberals felt free to be disagreeable because they feel they have already proved their moral worth through their opinions, which means they had less incentive to behave well. The flipside is that the same people are likely to feel that conservatives, with their ghastly views about Islam/immigration/trans issues, aren’t moral people and are probably a danger to society. It’s a short step to the view that removing the menace is a service to society. Let me give a real example: Ricky Jones, a Walthamstow former Labour councillor, roused a crowd in Walthamstow in August last year by referring to anti-immigration activists as “disgusting Nazi fascists” and suggesting their throats should be cut – drawing a finger across his throat in case anyone didn’t comprehend his point. He was, remarkably, cleared of encouraging violent disorder after saying his remarks were directed towards far-right activists who he claimed had left stickers on a train with razor blades hidden behind them, and telling police they were never intended to be "taken literally by anyone".
We shall have the opportunity this weekend of seeing how the Kirk assassination this plays out when the march organised by Tommy Robinson, a hate-figure if ever there were one, takes place. Lots of people loathe him, but it is a test of a free society as to whether he and his followers can say what they think in public – so long as they don’t incite others to violence. Mind you, I keenly resent the money spent on police overtime that this will entail, but if there are to be highly-policed Palestine demonstrations (I saw a notably peaceable one yesterday) then those with other views – on immigration, say - should have their turn.
But already the killing has had its effect. In the US, Peter Sessions, the conservative politician, observed that although Republicans had tended to hold meetings in the open air, “this will change us and the way we express ourselves”. There’s a sense of apprehension among combative conservatives: Jeremy Clarkson has said that: “For the first time in my life, I’m genuinely frightened about being a newspaper columnist”. That suggests that violent intimidation works, that murder succeeds. And it mustn’t be allowed to.
The best response to the killing is to assert all over again that in a civilised society we are entitled to express our opinion and to have that opinion heard. We advance towards the truth through debate and argument and the free expression of contrary views. And if a man is cut down, like Charlie Kirk was, then, as was the case with Martin Luther King Jr (a much greater man), a dozen others must step forward to take his place. This has been a terrible time for free speech. And the answer to this attempt to silence debate on the issues Kirk raised is more and better debate – and more civility in conducting it.
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist
