On September 10, 2025, a single bullet created a devastating ripple in our country. Within minutes of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, before he was even pronounced dead, the shooting itself turned into an opportunity for political gamesmanship, rather than opportunity to exercise empathy and reflect on how we got here.
Charlie was a prominent figure, of course. He was known for his “Prove Me Wrong” segments in which he traveled to college campuses across the country and facilitated and encouraged respectful discussions with students, professors, and staff. He believed that college was meant to challenge views and perspectives, not serve as a safe harbor from ideas outside the “norm.” He was a man of conviction, who was unwavering in his beliefs and proudly stood up for them.
Whether you agreed with his views or not, all of the above made him incredibly influential. He, alongside his organization Turning Point USA, is largely credited with encouraging and mobilizing the youth vote in America, which resulted in a substantial boost in President Trump’s Gen Z numbers in the 2024 election. While Charlie himself was not a politician, it could be argued that he was in fact a political figure. However you choose to define his role in our political landscape, Charlie’s assassination was nothing short of a pivotal turning point in American politics – and in our country.
Within the last decade, various types of speech tend to be siloed into two default political categories: right or left. There is very little gray area in terms of how speech is interpreted, regardless of whether that speech is overtly political or not. For example, if you hang an American flag outside of your home, many people will make assumptions about you and what you believe politically, but they often do so silently – a passing thought flitting through their minds as they drive or walk by your house.
This is contrary to how assumptions are spread on social media. Online, judgments and assumptions are amplified in the echo chamber that is our own algorithms, exaggerated by the few among us that are the loudest. Of course, it is well known and documented that social media applications are designed to show us what we want to see – content that we are likely to engage with and promote. As such, the algorithm on various social media platforms has a tendency to elevate the most outrageous content and bring it to the top of our feeds, which perpetuates the perception that these “hot takes” must be the prevailing opinion of the majority. After all, if it’s on social media and we generally agree with it, it must be true – right?
Wrong. The small sample size of people yelling louder than everyone else on the internet is not representative of society as a whole. No matter the rhetoric being spewed online about Charlie, it’s evident that his assassination was a senseless act of political violence, and the young man that pulled the trigger left two young children without their father. He left a wife without her husband and a partner with which to build the future they had planned and worked for. He left Charlie’s parents without a son to watch grow and thrive.
For better or worse, Charlie’s platform and following were substantial, whether people engaged with his content because they agreed with him or because they wanted to hate-watch everything he posted. Unfortunately, anyone that did not know him or have the opportunity to meet him has only his public persona to reference or understand in terms of interpreting who Charlie was as a person. How you feel about his posts on social media, his personal beliefs, his opinions, and his values doesn’t matter. He was a regular guy with conviction that built a platform on his desire to facilitate discussion and dialogue with people of all walks of life, and he did so in the hopes that it would promote free speech and reduce violence toward those we disagree with. And yet, he was assassinated for it. If it could happen to Charlie Kirk, it could happen to any of us, could it not?
However, very little (if any) of what he said was indistinguishable from the millions of honest and well-intentioned Americans that have also openly spoken about their conservative beliefs. The difference is that they did so without fear of overt violence or physical retribution, and Charlie’s assassination threatens to erode our comfortability with our right to free speech as it incites fear into the concept of speaking your truth. That fear creates hesitation if not cultivates silence, and that in and of itself diminishes our sense of freedom.
Let us not forget that whatever side of the political spectrum you fall on (or if you don’t identify with either end of it at all), a basic tolerance of all speech is vital to a functioning, free, and democratic society. That doesn’t mean we must agree, love, or even appreciate what others are saying, but it does mean that we should have a basic tolerance for opinions that exist outside the scope of our beliefs and/or our algorithmic echo chambers on our social media feeds.
A general dislike or disagreement with the content, language, beliefs, or values perpetuated by others is a sign of true freedom. In fact, the inability to vocalize how we truly feel or what we believe would be demonstrative of an absence of trust, and we have to be able to trust that we can openly engage in free speech without fear of physical retribution. That is why the danger of what happened to Charlie does not just exist within the confines of his death – it is bigger than the death of one man. It exists and permeates as a greater risk to our society as a whole. It erodes our trust in one another and in turn, erodes our trust in our freedom of speech. That means one thing and one thing only: the potential erosion of true freedom in America could very well be next.
That is, if we allow it to be so. My hope is that after the shrillest, loudest, and most obnoxious of voices subside and find something else to talk about, we can collectively – as a society – view the tragedy that occurred as an opportunity to engage in courage. The courage to be steadfast in our beliefs. The courage to be unapologetic about how we feel. The courage to speak up, even when we feel pressured into silence. The courage to be brave, without fear of being killed for exercising our first amendment right to free speech.
The last thing I want to once again emphasize is this: how you feel about Charlie Kirk’s personal beliefs will never be the point. The point is that a man was killed for exercising his first amendment right, and that shouldn’t sit right with any of us, no matter what we believe. Do not allow the loudest voices to drown out common sense: our freedom and our constitutional right to free speech outweighs our desire to only hear opinions that align with our own.
With a heavy heart (but a fighting spirit),
Paige McElwrath