Dan La Botz
Posted September 17, 2025
WE WANT TO draw readers’ attention to this important article by Dan La Botz, to begin a discussion of the dangerous escalation of the Trump regime’s campaign to terrorize dissent and cripple progressive organizing. The murder of Charlie Kirk presents Trump with the pretext that the 9/11 attacks gave to the George W. Bush administration, for unleashing domestic repression and global war — with such disastrous results for this country, Afghanistan, Iraq and the world.
While facts are slowly emerging, there is no indication that the shooter had any connection whatever with the organized left (or the right, for that matter) or any coherent ideology at all. Of course, this will not prevent the Trump gang from its post-Constitutional rampage against freedom of speech, or organization, or democratic rights in general. This is a dangerous moment not only for the left, but for our entire society. —The ATC editors
THE ASSASSINATION OF Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old leader of the far-right youth organization Turning Point USA has intensified the political polarization in the United States and has led to calls by Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement to call for the elimination of the left from American political life.
Kirk was assassinated by a single rifle shot while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Within two days, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old student, turned himself in to the police and was charged with the murder.
Following Kirk’s killing, President Donald Trump in a national address stated, “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, and it must stop right now.” Laura Loomer, who influences Trump, wrote, “We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.”
Kirk was a devoted follower and friend of President Donald Trump who saw his organization Turning Point USA as the youth group of the MAGA movement. In 2024, the group mobilized young people to vote for Trump, helping him to win the presidential election.
Kirk was a white Christian nationalist who routinely suggested that Black people, especially Black women, were intellectually inferior. He argued that Jews were responsible for the Great Replacement of white Americans by people of color. He said that women should reject feminism and submit to their husbands. He believed that LGBT people violated God’s Biblical law.
While claiming to be an advocate of free speech, Kirk’s Turning Point USA maintained a “professor watchlist” aimed at driving progressive professors out of academia. He stated that Muslims would kill every Jew on earth. He said that Palestine did not exist and asserted that claims of starvation of children in Gaza were fake news. He dismissed climate change, falsely claiming there was no scientific consensus on its cause.
Tyler Robinson, grew up in a Christian, Republican family in Utah. He was an excellent student, liked video games, and had become interested in politics, but was apparently not a member of any organization. He reportedly confessed to the murder, but if he is the murderer, we don’t know why he killed Kirk.
But we have some clues. Some unfired cartridges found near the rifle used in the shooting had been engraved: One read, “Hey fascist! Catch.” Another read, “Bella ciao,” a lyric from a song of the Italian anti-fascist resistance of World War II. So, perhaps Robinson had become an anti-fascist who wanted to kill the leading youth organizer of an American fascist movement. If so, we think he made a terrible mistake.
We socialists have always rejected individual acts of terror, such as assassinations. First, large organizations or social movements are not likely to change direction or to be stopped by the killing of one person. On the contrary, the murder of a charismatic and popular leader like Kirk could create a martyr around whom people will organize.
Second, assassination leads to repression such as we are witnessing now, as rightwing agitators, politicians, and the government take advantage of the murder to call for a purge of leftists in America.
We on the left, as well as progressives and liberals, are in danger. Even before Kirk’s killing, Trump was sending troops to American cities. Several right-wingers on social media now call for a civil war. Leaders of armed, violent groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have called upon their members to mobilize. We will have to be vigilant and to organize to defend our organizations and our rights, while continuing to oppose Trump, the Republicans, and the far-right.
International Viewpoint, 14 September 2025
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