Charlie Kirk’s assassination has had a surprising effect on many people, even in Australia. We have become inured to the increasing violence of our times being graphically displayed on our smart phones while we sit on the bus or lazily doomscroll on the lounge, but the gunshot to Kirk’s neck was something else.
For one, it was a clinical assassination. Unlike the comically “starving” actors in ragged costumes banging pots and pans in Gaza in Pallywood’s daily productions, or even the far more real successful and unsuccessful attempts to kill mostly white political opponents that have become normalised in these fractious times, this was painfully devastating and professional, performed live.
It seemed likely from the start that, whether the perp was working alone or with anonymous insurrectionists, he was not as amateurish as we’ve come to expect. The accuracy of the shot and the speed with which he got away, and the convenient distraction of the wrong suspect immediately being arrested, cast an unusually sinister shadow over the incident even before Kirk, God bless his soul, had been pronounced dead.
This impression will continue to intensify the longer it takes the FBI to catch the perp, assuming it will. At worst, we are witnessing the deliberate triggering of civil war, arranged by the totalitarian enemies who would benefit from the collapse of Western Civilisation.
But, foreign actors notwithstanding, there is another reason Kirk’s assassination — or to give it its more accurate term, martyrdom — has surprisingly rocked so many people, myself included.
We can now no longer be in any doubt — if in fact any of us still were — that the left hate us and want us dead. Debate is no longer tenable. The assassination of Kirk, a man who bravely sought to debate the most ardent random opponents he could find, proves it.
The myriad differences we have with the left — from their takeover of the education system, the bureaucracy and the media to the glee with which they use “multiculturalism” to trample all over our values, history and culture — no longer seem like discrete issues. They came together as one when, during the last day or two, the left collectively either ignored or applauded the death of a good man whose debating days they decided were over.
That he leaves behind a wife and two small children means nothing to them. Even the loving family unit, once a unanimously accepted institution, is dispensable to them. Whatever it takes, they are determined to destroy the society that paradoxically makes them free and prosperous. Why this is so, only they can say. But I doubt even they know.
As of the time of writing, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has not posted a word about Charlie Kirk’s death, despite it having such a profound impact on some of his own constituents, and a direct relevance to the same culture wars being fought here. My guess he’s never even heard of the guy.
But he does know leftist podcaster Hannah Ferguson, on whose show he appeared twice during the election campaign this year. Ferguson is one of the many Australian leftists who has said Kirk got what was coming, and that his silencing is a good thing for the world.
There’s no going back. There are, it seems, no political solutions for this, especially with a bunch of milquetoasts occupying the “Opposition” party in Australia.
The same factors that allowed us Australians to be so gloriously complacent about history now compel us to become more like warriors. It’s now becoming clear that the Luckiest thing about the Lucky Country was that, for almost all of our short history, the forces that violently shape the fate of nations never bothered to visit our shores. Or if they did, they shook off those pointless ancient acrimonies and joined us around a barbecue on the beach instead. Until now.
It’s unthinkable that the peaceful, friendly Aussie culture that so charmed the world until recently is now morphing into the sort of self-destruction that applauds the assassination of political opponents. But the sooner we all see this the better. Kirk’s death, although it didn’t happen here, was the catalyst.
Australia’s founding fathers were not so wary about which forces might tear their Federation apart, but their American counterparts were wide awake to them. John Adams wrote in 1814 that the “jaws of power” would always seek to “destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing”.
We are seeing this now in Australia, with the imminent introduction of absurdly cumbersome restrictions on the use of social media, which may well be followed by another attempt to introduce the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, which empowers government apparatchiks to define the truth and fine or jail any citizen who posts anything to the contrary. This doesn’t include the likes of Hannah Ferguson, obviously.
Thomas Jefferson said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Some other American, possibly H.L. Mencken, said it another way: “There comes a time when every man must hoist the black flag, spit on his hands, and start slitting throats.”
This is not a call to arms — yet. But it is a reminder that the war we are in has moved well beyond diplomacy and debate. The other side is not defending the tree of liberty. It is endeavouring to chop it down. Charlie Kirk spent his life civilly fighting them off. The left has declared that those days are over.
