IT’S A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA:
People can't decide if the problem is radical left-wing terrorists on Discord, radical left-wing terrorists on Reddit, or radical left-wing terrorists on college campuses. If only there was a common denominator we could focus on.
— Just Loki (@LokiJulianus) September 14, 2025
BRENT BOZELL: Where Were You When Charlie Died?
“Where were you when Charlie died?” Like the JFK assassination, this brutal murder will not be forgotten, not for many years to come.
You just felt it [Wednesday]. Something happened that pierced America’s soul — deeply. The non-stop media coverage across the dial (and the political spectrum) all afternoon and into the night. One analyst after the next choking back tears. The beautiful, heartfelt notes of sympathy from his political rivals. The announcement of his passing delivered to a shocked nation by the President of the United States himself, who then ordered all flags lowered to half staff.
Like Kennedy’s assassination, and the attempted assassinations of Reagan and Trump, 9/11, and the Challenger explosion, Kirk’s death is one of those moments we’ll all remember where we were when the news first broke, and then the dreadful news, about an hour and a half later that he was gone. RIP.
THE IGNORANCE AND IDIOCY OF HOLLYWOOD’S ISRAEL BOYCOTT:
If an alien descended and was asked whether actors in the West would tend to boycott the democracy or the extremist state, it surely would plump for the latter. The values of toleration, individual rights and free association that we hold most dear must surely be promoted.
You know where I’m going with this. This week, 1,300 actors and filmmakers including Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton signed a pledge to boycott Israeli film companies (which, tending to be rather left-wing, oppose Benjamin Netanyahu and the war in Gaza with greater venom than anybody else).
As Lee Smith recently wrote at Tablet:
Obama’s Iran deal restructured the Democratic Party. Inverting U.S. foreign policy by replacing Israel with the regime that embodies exterminationist antisemitism was also a domestic stratagem to break Jewish power in the Democratic Party. It’s helpful to understand the post-Oct. 7 pro-Hamas protests in that light.
While many lifelong Jewish Democrats were shocked that the demonstrations were so openly antisemitic, calling for genocide of the Jews, this was precisely the point of Obama’s design: Negating Israel and prioritizing anti-Israel activists in the party’s hierarchy could lead only to the Democrats sanctioning anti-Israel activists who celebrated the murder of thousands of Israelis. That is, the protests that honored the Palestinians’ campaign of rape, torture, and murder—remember, the rallies started even before Israel launched reprisals—showed how wildly Obama’s policy had succeeded.
Remember how shocking Mel Gibson’s antisemitic outburst seemed almost 20 years ago? 1,300 more filmmakers just signed onboard as well, and in 2025, the news lands with barely a yawn.
CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY: The Lincoln Project’s George Conway attacks fellow never-Trumper Meghan McCain:
The day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination (and on September 11th), Conway tweeted:
Exit question:
He doesn’t care: George Conway doubles down after comparing Nazi assassination to Charlie Kirk killing.
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN! Call to overthrow ‘bloodthirsty’ capitalist system ends in TX professor’s firing.
A Texas professor has been fired, accused of “inciting violence” after video surfaced on social media of a speech he gave at a socialist conference.
Thomas Alter, a history professor at Texas State University, in San Marcos*, was fired on Wednesday, Sept. 10 school officials said. His profile on the university website was taken down as of Sept. 11.
In the video, Alter is seen speaking on a Zoom call during a recent online Revolutionary Socialism Conference, wherein he calls for the creation of a “Revolutionary Socialist Party” and discusses why he believes previous attempts to establish a lasting, effective socialist movement in the U.S. have failed.
“Without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty**, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world, that of the U.S. government?” he says.
In a statement, TSU University System Chancellor Brian McCall said the university “will not tolerate conduct by any employee intended to incite violence,” pointing to “video recordings made public this week in which a … professor advocated for the overthrow of our government” as the reason for terminating Alter’s employment.
University president Kelly Damphousse echoed that sentiment in an X post, saying “after reviewing statements made … at a recent conference, I determined that (the professor) engaged in serious professional misconduct.”
* Not to be confused with the San Marcos that already had their communist uprising:
** Wait until the history professor finds out how bloodthirsty the various forms of socialism were in the 20th century!
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
This is what he posted. https://t.co/PuDcRT1oqA pic.twitter.com/7eZ3qGEfGc
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 14, 2025
PLASTIC FANTASTIC: David Thompson: There Was An Attempt To Buy Instant Coffee, “Specifically, in a London branch of Sainsbury’s:”
Coffee in case in Sainsburys store in London
( saphling ) pic.twitter.com/rEEE1LpEpH
— London & UK Street News (@CrimeLdn) September 13, 2025
“We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.”
Just as it has in the bicoastal American utopias of San Francisco and New York:
GREAT MOMENTS IN COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: Roger Kimball: Why the Left Wants the Right to ‘Lower the Temperature.’
In the aftermath of the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, does the Right need to “lower the temperature” of its rhetoric? That’s what the usual suspects on the Left are saying.
As it happens, “lowering the temperature” while simultaneously raising the intelligence of discussion was one of Charlie Kirk’s specialties. A theme of his campus “American Comeback” tour (which his widow Erika plans to continue) was dignified debate. “Prove Me Wrong” was Charlie’s mantra. He eagerly engaged with college students who disagreed—or, sometimes, merely thought they disagreed—with him about a wide range of political, social, moral, and religious issues.
If you have never seen him debate, I recommend you consult Mr. Google or one of his professional counterparts and watch Charlie in action. He was robust but also unfailingly kind, patient, and attentive to his interlocutors. The reason? He wished to persuade his audience about the rightness of his point of view, about the virtues of America, the wisdom of Christianity, and the leadership of Donald Trump. Charlie was fundamentally a teacher.
How about his opponents? The internet is full of revelatory compilations of left-wingers denouncing their opponents as “fascists,” “Nazis,” and so on.
One series (and here is another) includes CNN’s Anderson Cooper asking Kamala Harris whether she thinks Donald Trump is “a fascist.” “Yes, I do” was her answer.
If we as a nation need to “lower the temperature,” then the left should be thrilled that conservatives are pointing out those went on a virtual wilding spree immediately after Kirk was murdered, but curiously, they’re having the exact opposite response:
Related: A leftist angered to the point of vandalism over the text on a sign.
He RIPPED the sign off my table just after saying that I am “destructive” to society and that someone must stop me.
What did the sign say?
“People shouldn’t be killed over opinions – R.I.P. Charlie” pic.twitter.com/E7hwra0Gjf
— Cam Higby 🇺🇸 (@camhigby) September 13, 2025
IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: NYT Publishes What Streamer Who Was to Debate Charlie Kirk ‘Would Have Said.’
The left’s favorite kind of debate. The kind against a party that can’t argue back. https://t.co/5aEtLzoLYG
— Dave Greene (@GreeneMan6) September 13, 2025
(Classical reference in headline.)
NICK FREITAS: My Response To The Left (Video).
ROBERT STERLING: “My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.”
(Warning: long rant)
My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.
I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll… pic.twitter.com/NeCxHqrFXi
— Robert Sterling (@RobertMSterling) September 13, 2025
Read the whole thing.
JONATHAN CAPEHART ON PBS: “I Am Very Concerned” About What The Reaction To Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Will Be.
PBS Newshour: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk and the tough questions it raises about the political environment in the country.
* * * * * * * * *
[Capehart:] But because of who the victim was, just in terms of our politics, but also who he was in terms of the president and this administration, this is one thing that I have to factor in to my thinking about all this when I look at the reaction from the president and his administration, that this just this wasn’t just the murder of someone who was a like-minded person.
This was family to them. And I try to keep that in mind as I watch the reaction. But I have to tell you, I am very concerned about what that reaction is going to be in the days and weeks and months ahead.
Norm Macdonald, call your office:
YOUNG TURK GOES BERSERK: Cenk Uygur Loses His Mind When Dave Rubin Reads His Own Words About Charlie Kirk Back to Him.
A 22-year-old wannabe professional gamer who lived with Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin gave cops incriminating text messages leading to his arrest.
Lance Twiggs turned over Tyler Robinson, who lived with him in a three-bedroom apartment in Saint George, Utah, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Twiggs showed police texts from Robinson about stashing a gun linked to Wednesday’s shooting of the prominent conservative activist at Utah Valley University (UVU), a law enforcement affidavit said.
His identity was revealed as separate reports emerged from Fox and the New York Post which stated that Robinson was living with a ‘transgender partner’ who is co-operating with the investigation.
If true, that could explain at least one of the carvings on the alleged assassin’s bullets:
damn it you made me look this up pic.twitter.com/XMKm6tZXIr
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) September 13, 2025
JIM TREACHER:
CNN put a reporter on an old lady's lawn because she had a Trump fan page on Facebook and they thought she was colluding with Russia. Too late to close the barn door now, Pete. https://t.co/bvUmrWBjbW
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) September 12, 2025
Pete works for a newspaper that published officer Darren Wilson’s address during the peak of the left’s Ferguson riots a decade ago.
A few years later, on the Fourth of July of 2017, CNN threatened to dox a guy for creating an animated gif of Trump in the wrestling arena smashing a chair onto a CNN logo.
QUESTION ASKED AND (PARTIALLY) ANSWERED: Why Did People Take Selfies During 9/11?
PEGGY NOONAN: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Feels Like a Hinge Point.
During recent national traumas we’ve heard the side argument over “thoughts and prayers.” Something terrible happens, someone sends thoughts and prayers, someone else snaps, “We don’t need your prayers, we need action.” They denounce the phrase only because they don’t understand it, and give unwitting offense. (I always hope it is unwitting.)
Prayer is action. It’s effort. It takes time. Christians believe God is an actual participant in history. He’s here, every day, in the trenches. He didn’t create the universe and disappear into the mists; his creation is an ongoing event, he is here in the world with you. When something terrible happens and you talk to him—that’s what prayer is, talking to him, communicating with concentration—you are actively asking for help, for intercession. “Please help her suffering, help their children, they are so alone.” “Help me be brave through this.”
It’s active, not passive. Catholics, when they’d pray over and over or with friends, used to call it storming heaven. It isn’t a way of dodging responsibility, it is (if you are really doing it and not just publicly posing) a way of taking it.
So pray now for America. We are in big trouble.
We all know this. We don’t even know what to do with what we know. But the assassination of Charlie Kirk feels different as an event, like a hinge point, like something that is going to reverberate in new dark ways. It isn’t just another dreadful thing. It carries the ominous sense that we’re at the beginning of something bad. Michael Smerconish said on CNN Thursday afternoon that normally after such an event the temperature goes down a little, but not in this case, and he’s right. There are the heartbroken and the indifferent and they are irreconcilable. X, formerly Twitter, was from the moment of the shooting overrun with anguish and rage: It’s on now. Bluesky, where supposedly gentler folk fled Elon Musk, was gleefully violent: Too bad, live by the gun, die by the gun.
Related: “This is a message to the center-Left. I’m assuming it still exists. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you guys may be the only faction in American politics who can move to prevent a hot civil war from happening.”
This is a message to the center-Left. I'm assuming it still exists.
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you guys may be the only faction in American politics who can move to prevent a hot civil war from happening.
Because the hard Left is doubling down. They're…
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) September 13, 2025
After the Al Jazeera reporter said he’d been filming in Gaza, Cotton asked how he had access to the territory.
“Who’s letting you go in to film in Gaza? That would be Hamas,” the Arkansas Republican said.
When the reporter revealed that he worked for Al Jazeera, Cotton laughed.
“That’s what I thought. Beautiful,” Cotton said. “What do you say about working for a terrorist sympathizing network?”
Al Jazeera journalists have repeatedly been tied to Hamas, with one holding Israeli hostages after Oct. 7. Another, Anas Al-Sharif, was a leader in the terror group—until he was killed by a targeted Israeli strike.
“You’re an embarrassment,” Cotton said. “You got anything more? I’m happy to keep going.”
Might as well go global; the man already owns the New York Times.
BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR: Scarborough teacher accused of showing Charlie Kirk murder video to kids.
The Toronto District School Board is investigating an allegation of this happening at a Scarborough elementary school.
First, a University of Toronto professor was sent home for an X post that appeared after the shooting suggesting shooting is “too good” for fascists, and now the TDSB has done the same with a teacher who allegedly showed a Grade 5 and 6 class Kirk’s assassination in Utah.
The Corvette Junior Public School teacher was not in class Friday while the TDSB investigates the complaint from parents that a class of 10 and 11 year olds was shown a graphic video of the slaying.
“Several students from his class went home and complained to their parents, traumatized at witnessing the on-camera death, which they were forced to witness numerous times over,” a source close to the situation alleged. “Parents subsequently reached out to school administrators, who will be putting him on leave at the start of the school day September 12th 2025.”
“While playing this video repeatedly, he gave a speech to his students regarding anti-fascism, anti-trans, and how Charlie Kirk deserved for this to occur,” the source claimed.
Exit question: “Can anybody imagine a teacher showing students as young as 10 the video of Charlie Kirk being murdered by a gunshot to the neck?” Sadly, after seeing the reaction by many on the left on Wednesday, we absolutely can.
Meanwhile, back in the States: NBC News Reports Teachers Are Being Fired Just for ‘Sharing Opinions’ About Killing of Charlie Kirk.
“sharing opinions on social media about the killing”
those opinions being the public celebration of a cold-blooded political assassination https://t.co/S8v9swCWCj
— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) September 13, 2025
(Classical reference in headline.)
LARRY CORREIA: “Not metaphorically. They want you to die. Some of us have known this for a long time because we pissed off the left somehow previously, but for the regular folks coming to that understanding is a life changing moment:”
Related: “Literally millions of peaceful, law-abiding conservatives who just want to be left alone have been woken up and suddenly realize that most Democrats would gladly see them dead:”
“And they’re getting bolder:”
It’s rather difficult to engage in “open dialog” with people want to see you dead:
UPDATE: Ace of Spades responds to Greenwald and writes:
No, Glenn, it’s not the same. We are not attacking the left for having differences of political opinion. We are not attacking them for having weird beliefs.
We are attacking them for celebrating assassination and murder. We are attacking them for calling for the next “pew pew” against the President Donald Trump.
If Trump goes down — we are at war.
You are right that most words are not violence. But some words are: Specifically those calling for someone to be killed, or praising an assassin for killing someone, with hopes that additional assassins will emerge.
Read the whole thing.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: The New Left-Wing Narrative: Tyler Robinson Was a White Supremacist Republican Trump Supporter.
Tyler Robinson was a normal kid from a good family who went off to college and got radicalized. It’s a pretty common story, and reminds us that colleges and universities are in desperate need of reform. Look at all the teachers and academics openly celebrating Kirk’s death.
People who go down this deep into a rabbit hole are being driven there by the gaslighting–and the gaslighters know exactly what they are doing.
In his Commentary newsletter, Abe Greenwald writes: How to Break a Generation. “To make a terrorist, you must first break the person. And that’s what we’ve done to so many in Gen Z:”
[T]heir personal discomfort was considered an intolerable condition. Every challenge was a threat. Even speech could harm them. They were ushered into therapy, diagnosed, and medicated. Some, it turned out, were discovered to have been born in the wrong bodies. This designation was to be celebrated while it turned their lives into a sci-fi nightmare.
But there were other competing nightmares to deal with. Climate change was forever on the verge of making the planet uninhabitable. Democracy was dying, while fascism waited in the wings.Then came Covid, disruption of what normalcy they knew, complete social isolation, and years lived entirely online.
By the time Gen Z were delivered into the hands of the revolutionary professoriate, they had been sufficiently broken down and were ready to be remade. AI could cover their day-to-day responsibilities while they devoted themselves to the propaganda on their screens and in their classrooms. All that was left was for them to go out into the world and finally be something.
The writings left by some Gen Z killers read less like manifestos than dystopian personal diaries. And that’s probably what they should be understood as, reflections on the devastated life that made them who they are.
Meanwhile today, within the leftist enclaves of social media:
We are witnessing levels of cope hitherto unknown to civilized man.
— Jarvis (@jarvis_best) September 12, 2025
UPDATE: The Banality of Banality: “Robinson appears to be exactly the sort of product that the education establishment and the progressive left hope to produce by age 22. Call him the New Soviet Man for the 21st century. It is fortunate that they captured him alive as a specimen that can be studied in isolation.”
MORE:
From The Guardian—an openly left-leaning newspaper. I think we can dispense with the sophistry now. Kirk was killed by Robinson because Kirk said things that Robinson did not like. There is nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. The facts are are they are.… pic.twitter.com/5ia2GlXLhL
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 12, 2025
HOW IT STARTED: In his 1980 non-fiction anthology In Our Time, Tom Wolfe wrote, “In the fifties there was the martini. In the sixties there was vodka on ice. In the early seventies there was the glass of white wine. In the late seventies there was the bottle of Perrier, a French soda water. The fashionable American expense-account lunch drink became lighter and lighter, but not cheaper and cheaper. The soda water sold for $2.50 a glass in Manhattan restaurants.”
How it’s going:
I ran into an investor friend who was summering in California. He ordered a glass of Santa Barbara pinot and told me: “I didn’t drink for a year. Then on New Year’s I woke up and realized how boring my life had become. So I had a few drinks that day, and suddenly life had color… pic.twitter.com/snQkRlu9aF
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) September 12, 2025
Earlier, from Roger Simon: Living Forever: Putin, Xi and Djokovic.
WHAT KILLED CHARLIE KIRK: And, more importantly, can we stop it?
The list of iniquities, sadly, goes on and on. In the name of “criminal justice reform,” for example, hordes of violent criminals were let loose, backed up by progressive attorneys general and activist judges and local legislators who robbed law enforcement officials of any means of meting out justice. Bail, we were told, was modern day Jim Crow. Prison was slavery in other forms. Policing was racist. And when savages like Decarlos Brown Jr., with 14 prior violent convictions to his record, were set loose, it was only a matter of time before they produced a knife and slaughtered Iryna Zarutska, a young Ukrainian refugee, on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina. When brave men like Daniel Penny, who successfully neutralized a deranged violent criminal threatening to harm fellow commuters on the New York subway, intervened, they were dragged through the coals in court and on TV. When a police officer detained a repeated violent felon high on fentanyl and methamphetamines, leading to his death, American cities burned for days, with Democrat politicians taking a knee and corporations paying vast fortunes to a group, Black Lives Matter, that vowed to dismantle the nuclear family and failed to report what it was doing with its vast funds. Put bluntly, then, we have angry, violent, and hopeless people because many of our societal institutions worked assiduously to produce them since at least 2008.
All of this should be entirely coherent to any serious student of politics. What we have here is a group of people assembling an entirely coherent construction for the purpose of holding and maintaining power. And to keep this charade going even when it got patently ridiculous—arguing, say, that there were 57 genders, or that houses of worship had to be closed during COVID but liquor store and nail salons were welcome to do business as usual, or that the race riot that torched up your town was a mostly peaceful protest—the left applied its most trusted weapon, that of the permission structure. When every academic and every late night talk show host and every newspaper editorial told you that Trump was Hitler, good luck wearing your MAGA hat to the neighborhood picnic and not facing severe consequences.
At the NRO Corner, Jeffrey Blehar has a breezy look at Kamala’s campaign memoir, 107 Days, headlined, “America’s Most Famous Female Fredo Speaks,” in which he concludes:
And in the end, I am overwhelmed with the pathetic meaninglessness of it all. Reading the excerpt from 107 Days is like listening to the complaints of America’s most famous female Fredo: a washed-up loser complaining that she failed because she was given only low-stakes assignments and a lack of support from the Biden “family.” With every word, I hear her voice whining that she’s smart — not stupid, not like everyone says. (See what I mean when I say we may be in the presence of a genius ghostwriter?)
She has failed to convince anyone. In fact, she would be wise to observe the opposite of her own sage advice from above: Kamala Harris was given much; she should feel free to give us all a little bit less from now on.
But it’s worth noting that, likely with terrible internal polling data coming in, by the end of her campaign, she too willingly went along with being part of the aforementioned “permission structure” that led to Kirk’s assassination:
Where did Charlie Kirk's murderer learn to call conservatives "fascists"?
"Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?"
Kamala Harris: "Yes, I do. YES, I DO!" pic.twitter.com/RxDjgOYjKY
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 12, 2025
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