|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
On September 10, 2025, a husband and father of two young children was assassinated while speaking to a large crowd of college students in Utah. There is no motive yet, as of this writing the perpetrator has not been captured, but all signs point to this being a deliberate attempt to silence a well-known conservative voice.
Charlie Kirk, 31, founder of Turning Point USA, collapsed on stage at Utah Valley University after being struck by gunfire. He later died at the hospital. The shock of his death comes just over a year after two assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, underscoring a disturbing escalation of political violence in America.
The Rhetoric That Preceded the Violence
For years, Democratic leaders have painted Trump supporters not as opponents but as existential threats. During a primetime speech in 2022, President Joe Biden declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He called the movement “semi-fascist,” language that sharpened the divide between ordinary political competition and mortal enmity.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris accused Trump of being a “fascist”. Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned of a “sinister MAGA campaign” and claimed Republican policies would cost lives. The Democratic National Committee institutionalized this messaging, launching weekly “MAGA Malarkey: The Extremism You Missed From Republicans This Week” posts. Outside activist groups like the SPLC went further, targeted Kirk’s Turning Point USA by name as an “extremist group.”
This rhetoric framed millions of Americans—and figures like Trump and Kirk in particular—not just as wrong, but as dangers to democracy. That is a narrative that invites radicals to see violence as justified.
A Timeline of Escalation
In the past decade, a pattern has emerged. Conservative leaders have been repeatedly targeted with bullets and violence. Liberals have faced incidents too, but far fewer. The imbalance is striking.
- 2017: A left-wing gunman opened fire on Republican members of Congress practicing for a baseball game, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. Later that year, at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, a neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd, killing counter-protester Heather Heyer.
- 2017–2018: Sen. Rand Paul was tackled and injured by his neighbor in Kentucky, and later accosted with his wife on the streets of Washington, D.C.
- 2020: Federal agents broke up a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. While heavily infiltrated by the FBI, it still underscored how political violence had entered mainstream politics.
- 2022: Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker Pelosi, was assaulted with a hammer in his home by an unstable intruder who cited political grievances.
- 2022–2023: Solomon Peña, a failed Republican candidate in New Mexico, orchestrated drive-by shootings at the homes of Democratic officials. No one was killed, but it showed the trend spreading.
- 2024: Two assassination attempts were made against Donald Trump during his presidential campaign — one in Pennsylvania where a rally-goer was killed, and another in Florida where an armed man was arrested before firing.
- 2025: In Minnesota, Vance Boelter targeted Democratic legislators at their homes. Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were wounded, and others were on his list. Three months later, Charlie Kirk was shot dead in Utah.
This timeline shows that while both sides have endured violence, the most prominent assassination attempts and killings in recent years have disproportionately targeted conservatives, culminating in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
What Fascism Really Is
Historically, fascism was not just harsh rhetoric or authoritarian leanings. It was a system of government: one-party rule, suppression of opposition, censorship of media, militarized street enforcers, and violence normalized as politics. Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts didn’t just argue — they silenced opponents through beatings, intimidation, and killings.
But fascism doesn’t vanish when it loses power. Stripped of government, it becomes a movement, still using intimidation and violence to delegitimize and silence its opponents. A fascist minority is no less fascist in its methods; it simply operates from the streets instead of the state.
That distinction matters today. America is not a fascist state — Trump was elected democratically, institutions remain intact, and opposition parties operate freely. But the tools of fascism — demonization, scapegoating, and the silencing of dissent through violence — are appearing with alarming regularity.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination is the clearest example yet. He was not censored by a dictator’s decree but by a bullet meant to silence his voice. That is violent censorship. His murder was not only the loss of a young husband and father — it was a warning of where America is heading if violence becomes the way we decide who gets to speak. For his wife and two children, the political arguments don’t matter. They lost him because someone decided his words should be answered with bullets. Real fascism is an American murdered for exercising his free speech.
Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Commentary, National News
Congratulations liberals… this is on you.
Stand with Charlie Kirk.
Is anyone else with a conscience feeling the same sick unease today as we all did 22 years ago? Back then it was a coordinated attack on the entire Country by radical moslems. Yesterday’s assassination has to be assumed to be part of the incessant attack by radical leftists, also directed at the soul of this Nation. On Sept. 11, 2001 there were pockets of malevolent people worldwide applauding the deed, and we have to assume there are mentally-twisted leftists cheering today after Charlie Kirk became a latter-day Martyr. May God hold dear and give comfort to his family and supporters and help deliver us all from from the ravages of this malignant enemy in our midst.
Excellent commentary…
I am told that as a state representative this is the moment where I’m supposed to express my heartfelt condolences and then stand in solidarity with those on the other side of the aisle as we condemn political violence and stand unified as one people.
But we aren’t “one people” are we?
The truth is we haven’t been for some time now, and there is really no point in pretending anymore, if there ever was.
We are two very different peoples. We may occupy the same piece of geography, but that is where the similarities seem to abruptly end.
I convinced myself for a long time that whenever the left called me a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a fascist, a “threat to democracy” for even the most innocent of disagreements, that it was simply hyperbolic rhetoric done for effect.
And now the “effect” is a widow and two orphaned children, because the left couldn’t bear the thought of a peaceful man debating them and winning.
I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is.
It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.
Charlie tried to win that fight through argumentation, through discussion, through peaceful resolution of differences.
And the other side murdered him.
Not because he was “extreme” or “inciting violence” or any other hyperbolic slur they hurled at him. They murdered him because he was effective. Because he was unafraid. Because he inspired others and made them feel like they had a voice, that they were not alone. And he did it at the very institutions which have fomented so much hatred toward conservatives.
I don’t want to “stand in solidarity” with the other side of the aisle. I want to defeat you. I want to defeat the godless ideology that kills babies in the womb, sterilizes confused children, turns our cities into cesspools of degeneracy and lawlessness…and that murdered Charlie Kirk.
Social media is aflame right now with leftist celebration of Charlie’s death.
I wonder if any among them understand what has just happened. If there is a Yamamoto somewhere in their midst warning, that all they have done is awoken a sleeping giant.
I doubt it. I think they gave up such introspection and self-awareness long ago.
I don’t know exactly what will happen next. I just know that it won’t be the same as what has happened in the past.
There will be thoughts and prayers…Charlie would have wanted prayers. Not for himself but for those left behind and for the country that he loved.
But then there will be a reckoning.
My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me. It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism…quite the opposite.
So every time I feel tired, every time I feel discouraged or overwhelmed, I am going to watch the video of a good man being murdered in Utah…I will force myself to watch it…and then I will return to the work of destroying the evil ideology responsible for that and so much more.
Rest with God Charlie, your fight is over.
Ours is just beginning.
~Nick Freitas
Thank you, Tom.
Thanks so much for passing along those powerful words…
I hope people will take the opportunity to forward Nick Freitas’ thoughtful and inspiring comments.
Tom, comments like “It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.” are not helpful. Do you WANT to see violence in the streets of America?
In response to Mr. Yoder: Acknowledging that there are intractable differences between ideologies is not an incitement to violence. It is already well established by the radical left/antifa/tranny terrorist activists that they have no interest in playing nice with others or in respecting the right to free expression of anyone that disagrees with them. The act of savagery committed by Charlie Kirk’s assassin is yet another violent expression by the ideology that hypocritically accuses our President of being a “threat to democracy”.
Just remember they accuse us of what they actually do! The DO matters.