The murder of Charlie Kirk was very wrong and should not in any way be justified, let alone cheered. But it does real harm to try to whitewash Kirk into some kind of champion of free speech and principled exchange of views, as some Democratic Party politicians and liberal columnists have done.

In response, many have correctly pointed out that Kirk made his name organizing students to compile professor watch lists and get teachers fired for teaching classes that were “transgressing” their Christian fascist lunatic dogma. 

But it is much more fundamental than that. Kirk devoted his adult life to promoting fascism. And for the past nearly ten years, he was a highly effective organizer for the American Hitler, Donald Trump. 

Fascism is not a swear word; it is a term that accurately describes what Trump is moving to rapidly put in place, and using Kirk’s death to do it. Trump/MAGA Fascism includes as key features: rule through open violence and terror based on white supremacy; the hatred of women and LGBT people; the demonization and persecution of immigrants; anti-scientific, religious fundamentalist fanaticism; the subordination of the universities, the legal profession, the sciences and other parts of society to its open dictates. In short, using the power of the government to forcibly compel obedience to its dangerous and destructive lunacy, and viciously persecuting those who dare to oppose or resist.

That is not “hate speech”; that is scientific truth.

Some of those who have prettified Kirk as some kind of free-speech champion are opposed to Trump, but with this praise for Kirk they are objectively promoting conciliation with fascism. They are blurring people’s vision and undermining their understanding that what we are dealing with in the Trump/MAGA forces really is fascism, with the full implications of that. 

Especially at a time when the fascists are full-out distorting the truth, making violent threats of war against those who stand on the side of justice and concretely calling for FBI infiltration and mass arrests against organizations and individuals standing up against Trump, this blurring over of Kirk’s fundamental fascist mission does real damage. It undercuts the determined, uncompromising struggle against this fascism that is urgently, urgently needed.

At the same time, the positions of those who actually cheered this murder are very wrong and very harmful. What we are facing is extremely serious, and there can be no room for infantile posturing without any sense of the consequences for the masses of people. Moreover, we cannot fall into the trap of adopting the same twisted values and harmful lust for revenge as those we are fighting. We are—or need to be—fighting for a better world, an emancipatory world, and we need to fight for a morality consistent with that.

To return to the fundamental point: Truth remains truth, and fascism remains fascism. The fact that someone is killed does not change what they were, and what they were part of. Kirk was a fascist.

Finally, these fascists are cynically using the murder of Charlie Kirk to call for vengeance and violence, and clearly see it as an opportunity to speed their drive for the total makeover of society. We cannot back off one inch but must instead intensify our efforts to defeat this fascism. This means very concretely supporting the truly urgent call of Refuse Fascism, for millions to “flood DC in nonviolent protest. Surround the White House. Surround the Capitol. Surround the illegitimate fascist-packed Supreme Court. Come back again and again. Across the country, refuse to comply. Every person of conscience, millions of us together, grind the machinery of the fascist regime to a halt,” and to “not stop until Trump is removed.”