On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University. A single bullet struck him in the neck, in front of thousands.
The killing has been widely called a “political assassination.” It happened just as Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour” was gaining momentum among young people. Turning Point USA - the conservative youth-force he co-founded - was pulling in large crowds, influencing campus politics, and helping mobilize young voters in favor of Trump. This was no random tragedy. It was an event with perfect timing, high symbolic value - and it benefits Donald Trump & Co. here’s how.
At this moment, Trump faces mounting backlash for violent decisions: crackdowns, police abuses, legislative assaults on civil liberties, healthcare cuts, inequality, and other brutal excesses. A public assassination shifts attention - media cycles, public outrage, political discourse - away from those policy battlegrounds. The more shocking the event, the darker the spotlight, which allows reactionary governance under cover.
Martyrdom and Mobilization
Kirk was popular among conservative youth. He wasn’t just a talking head; he was a symbol, a rallying figure. His charisma, media reach, and activity in mobilizing young people posed a soft threat to Trump’s monopoly over right-wing culture and youth politics. Silencing (literally) someone like Kirk sends a message: fervor around Trump must be channeled and controlled. It turns Kirk into a martyr - one that Trump then claims allegiance to, turning grief into loyalty.
Fuel for Repression
By declaring the shooter a “radical left” actor (before facts are clear), Trump and his circle can ramp up fear, push for tougher security laws, expand state power, clamp down on dissent, and collectivize public opinion against left groups. The cry of “political violence from the left” becomes justification for sweeping anti-people decisions: surveillance, policing, attack on free speech under the guise of “keeping the peace.”
Symbolic Mirroring
Consider the attempted Trump assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. When Trump was nearly shot, the photos of him standing strong, almost superhuman, played into his narrative of invulnerability. The visual symbolism mattered. Similarly, Kirk’s killing is precise, dramatic, visually shocking: the rooftop shot, the blood, the collapse. These images are suited to crafting myth - fear, outrage, and theater. The spectacle becomes a tool.
The Butler Precedent: “Too Attractive” to Be Mere Accident
The attempt on Trump at Butler was, on the face of it, an assault on his person. But the way it unfolded - the timing, the venue, the media reaction - served to heighten Trump’s aura: danger, persecution, survival. It allowed Trump to claim victim-hood, to consolidate support, to justify more radical policies in the name of security. If one believes in conspiratorial structuring, that event provides a pattern: orchestrated or allowed theatrical violence, to open up political space for stronger state power, more devotion, more loyalty.
Kirk’s death fits this pattern. The shot was “too accurate,” happening early in an event where atmosphere, optics, and audience already favored sensationalism. This suggests preparation, knowing where, when, how - a sniper from a rooftop, firing from a distance under cover.
What Trump Hopes to Win
What Trump and his circle hope to gain from the assassination of Charlie Kirk is clear enough. First, they seek legitimacy for repressive measures, using calls to “end political violence” as cover for attacks on dissenters, leftists, and independent media. Second, they aim at total control of the narrative, monopolizing mourning and blame so that any criticism of the regime can be branded as complicity in violence. Third, they intend to divert the people’s rage away from the real culprits - capitalist power, health cuts, police brutality, mass inequality - by redirecting anger toward cultural scapegoats and supposed “radical left terrorists.” Finally, they hope to turn Kirk’s death into a tool of electoral mobilization, a martyrdom story to galvanize conservative youth, harden identity politics, and drive turnout through fear.
The path ahead is predictable. We will see a sharp escalation in “security for politics” rhetoric: more metal detectors, more police at campuses and rallies, more militarization. New laws will criminalize protest and free speech, especially that of the left, under the banner of “preventing extremism.” Media will be censored or pressured to promote the official version - painting the radical left as instigators, as a violent threat to order. Meanwhile, regressions in welfare, healthcare, pensions, and civil liberties will slide through under the guise of national crisis and safety. The culture war will be intensified, providing spectacle and division, while the deepening of economic injustice is carried out behind the curtain.
Faced with this, our task is not just to accuse but to demand clarity and expose contradictions. We must ask: Who truly benefits from this assassination? What anti-people measures are being pushed through while the nation is distracted? Which layers of youth are being radicalized - not by socialist agitation but by unemployment, and poverty? To resist, we must connect this murder to the broader class struggle, unmask the profiteers of violence, and organize in solidarity. Only by linking outrage to systemic critique can we prevent this tragedy from being weaponized against the very people who suffer most under capitalism.
The killing of Charlie Kirk is more than another headline. It fits into a pattern of political violence being used as an instrument of power. If it was indeed arranged or allowed by those in the ruling class, Trump & his associates stand to gain not only in distraction but in consolidation.
We must not allow them to weaponize this tragedy. We should press for the truth, expose the power structures behind the spectacle, and organize so that ordinary people do not pay the price.
* Nathan Richardson is a writer: dawn1776.substack.com
