Manuel Lopez | Staff Illustrator

On Sept. 10, 2025, the United States may have witnessed the bleakest instance of political violence in the 21st century. Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activism group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot and killed at Utah Valley University. While debating a student on the issue of transgender mass shooters at the event with around 3,000 students, Kirk was shot in the neck and pronounced dead later that afternoon.

This act of political violence is a grotesque stain on our democratic system that demands unambiguous, bipartisan condemnation. Yet, the tragedy forces us to ask the question: do these open forums for debate on college campuses, widely championed by Kirk and other conservatives, provide an adequate stage for civil political discussion? To me, and many others, it seems more like a political spectacle. We cannot allow performative politics to obscure the truth while searching for civic unity.

Videos of Charlie Kirk interacting with students from both sides of the political spectrum, and similar interactions with other political personalities, pervade social media, particularly on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Stop to watch a video of Kirk and you’ll see virtually the same scene unfold every time: Kirk seated under his tent, arms crossed, looking out to his challenger encircled by a sea of MAGA-hat-wearing students. The challenger will ask something along the lines of, “How do you respond to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?” and Kirk will retort, “Do you think Israel has the right to exist?”

“Why do you think abortion should be legal?”

“Do you think murder should be legal?”

“How can you justify Second Amendment rights when gun violence is endemic in America?”

“Well, how many of those gun deaths were the result of gang-related violence?”

There are many instances where Kirk, calculatedly, twists the challenger’s question into a whole different political or moral puzzle, evading the question at hand. Then, having cornered his challenger in a rhetorical dead-end of his own making, Kirk’s loyalist crowd erupts into a roaring jeer, declaring victory. This isn’t proactive dialogue, it’s public humiliation — modern-day tarring and feathering.

Likewise, some of Kirk’s opponents have not shown the respect they demand from him either. In one instance, a megaphone-wielding provocateur interrupted Kirk’s discussion, forced himself to the center of the crowd, and repeatedly branded Kirk an agitator and liar. During a debate about abortion on the YouTube channel Jubilee — a channel that often hosts debates on a variety of issues — one of the interlocutors caustically remarked, “His smile is creepy.” How did Kirk’s opponents expect him to converse with unadulterated decorum when they themselves did not practice what they preached?

In the quest for a broadened perspective, we cannot treat dialogue like a boxing match. Otherwise, each opponent, after taking a brutal hit, will return to their corners, itching to hit harder in the next round. And if one boxer knocks the other out, the defeated boxer doesn’t immediately yield to the victor, but instead leaves the ring with burning resentment. Democratic ideals have never called for the subjugation of our enemy’s view and the exaltation of our own; to do so would be to debase ourselves to the level of tyrants and autocrats.

So we must ask ourselves, what benefits do both sides receive from these rallies? TPUSA’s benefits seem to be twofold: to invigorate young conservatives and fill their coffers. TPUSA’s challengers get a platform to attempt to ridicule Kirk and express their disdain for his ideology. In either case, none of these is the intended end of dialogue. Dialogue is a means by which we search for the truth. Profit incentives and ideological hate give birth to a bastardized dialogue — one whose end is oriented to division and inflammation, not truth.

Ultimately, Kirk’s assassination was not a one-off incident; it was the culmination of increasingly hateful and divisive rhetoric spewed from both sides of the aisle. These debates, like the ones TPUSA hosted, have not remedied the virulent contempt that is endemic to our politics. Malaise has turned to illness, and if we desire to heal our deeply infected society, it requires the effort of every member.

It is every American’s duty to recognize and reverse the onset of this democracy-destroying infection, born of divisive rhetoric. Therefore, I call upon all Americans, not just college students, to restrain themselves in the face of anger and hatred. Wherever we WashU students find ourselves — whether in the classroom or in an informal conversation — we must not emulate the toxic debates we see online. To safeguard our society, we must first safeguard our campus against pernicious rhetoric. Like a disease, it spreads from the mouth and permeates our campus and the nation. How do we prevent disease? We must purify the air we share by speaking with honesty, restraint, and respect.