Charlie Kirk’s Death and the Cost of Political Hate Speech
I’ve personally been having a harder time with this than I thought I would and just need to take a break from the gaming stuff.
Charlie Kirk is dead. Thirty-one years old. A husband. A father. Someone who believed in freedom of speech, freedom of life, and the idea that disagreement doesn’t have to mean destruction.
And now he’s gone.
Not because he was violent. Not because he called for violence. He never did.
He’s gone because our culture has been drunk on venom for years, cheering as it calls conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters “Nazis,” “fascists,” “racists,” “transphobes,” and whatever other left-leaning buzzwords that strip people of their humanity.
We act like words don’t matter, like “it’s just Twitter” or “they’re only memes.” But words lay the groundwork for action. Call someone evil long enough, convince yourself they’re the worst thing to walk the earth, and what’s left?
You’ve justified whatever comes next.
And in this case, “whatever comes next” meant a good man’s life cut short.
The Violent Rhetoric That Became Normal
This isn’t coming from the fringe anymore. It’s not some anonymous troll screaming into the void. It’s developers in the gaming industry. It’s influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers.
It’s anonymous droves on Twitter who drop words like “Nazi” as if they’re punctuation.
If you lean right, if you speak up for conservative values, you’re suddenly “the enemy.”
People don’t even argue ideas anymore – they just slap a scarlet letter on you: bigot, fascist, racist. They don’t bother to prove it. They don’t care if it’s true. The accusation itself is the point.
And it used to work.
Employers cut ties. Platforms silenced dissent. People were shoved out of communities, out of jobs, out of friendships, because someone decided “conservative” means “subhuman.”
But when Trump was elected by popular vote, the left began to feel their influence slipping and they started to become a little more extreme and a little less filtered.
That’s the climate we’re in and the culture that is being promoted.
From Words to Violence
Here’s the ugly truth: dehumanization has a pattern.
History shows us that before violence comes the rhetoric. Before someone gets targeted, someone gets labeled. Once you’ve been labeled evil, you’re not a person anymore, you’re just a villain in somebody else’s story and villains get destroyed by the people that perceive themselves as “the good guys”.
So when influencers cheer on “punch a fascist,” when Twitter threads call conservatives “a disease,” when devs laugh about “no mercy for bigots,” they’re feeding fire.
They’re building a permission structure for violence.
Even if they don’t swing the weapon themselves, they’re putting it in someone else’s hands.
And this time, that ended with Charlie Kirk dead. His kids left without a dad. His wife left without her husband. His family left with a hole that won’t heal.
Why This Matters Beyond One Man
This isn’t just about one life…though that alone should be enough.
It’s about the fact that anyone (your neighbor, a coworker, streamers, game developers) could be next. If rhetoric keeps escalating, if half the country keeps being branded as literally evil, the violence won’t stop here.
It also matters for the soul of democracy itself. Debate requires believing your opponent is still human. Once you don’t, debate is impossible. All that’s left is force. And if we’re sliding into a world where force replaces speech, then we’ve lost the very freedoms Charlie believed in.
Where Do We Go From Here?
First, stop pretending words don’t matter.
They do. They always have.
Influencers, developers, pundits – they all need to own the weight of what they put out into the world. Stop with the casual dehumanization. Stop with the lazy slurs. If you can’t make an actual intelligent argument without demonizing the person across from you, maybe you need to realize that you don’t have an argument in the first place.
Second, people need to start pushing back when they see it. Don’t just scroll past the “conservatives are evil” post. Don’t stay quiet when someone reduces their political opponents to monsters. Silence only tells them it’s fine.
And third, we need to draw a line: disagreeing with someone politically doesn’t make them evil. Supporting Trump, voting Republican, holding conservative values (heaven forbid) – that’s not a death sentence, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Charlie Kirk Didn't Deserve This
A man is dead because the culture decided that dehumanizing political opponents was sport. Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve this. His children didn’t deserve this. His wife didn’t deserve this.
The world didn’t deserve this.
None of us deserve to live in a world where violent rhetoric is normal and death is the outcome for publicly sharing your beliefs and opinions.
If we don’t stop now, if we don’t put an end to the rhetoric that glorifies violence and demonizes people for their politics, then Charlie won’t be the last.
And when the next name comes, we won’t be able to pretend we didn’t see it coming.
Please keep Charlie’s family in your thoughts and prayers.
I’m not going to promote any of my articles or anything here – I just wanted a place to get my feelings out.
I’ll be back to my regular content soon.
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Angie P
September 16, 2025
RIP Charlie Kirk
Ayefkay
September 16, 2025
Hey Angie, 100% agree. Keep him and his family in your prayers and thanks for stopping by!