By Nikos Mottas
The assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah has been immediately seized upon by the bourgeois press and state as a national tragedy, a “political assassination” that must unite society against “radical left extremism.”
Yet while the ruling class floods the airwaves with solemn denunciations of violence, it continues daily to unleash far greater violence upon the working class and oppressed peoples — through war, police repression, and the slow violence of exploitation.
Marxist–Leninists must respond to this event with clarity. We do not share the crocodile tears of the bourgeoisie. But neither do we glorify or endorse the method of the assassin. On the contrary: individual terrorism and political assassination are alien to proletarian struggle. They serve only to strengthen the hand of the bourgeois state, while misleading the people away from the true path of emancipation.
Kirk was not a “neutral” political commentator. As the founder of Turning Point USA, he built a career mobilizing youth behind the most reactionary currents of U.S. politics: the defense of capitalism, the glorification of U.S. imperialism, and the culture-war demonization of workers’ movements, migrants, women, LGBTQ+ communities, and anti-racist struggles.
From a Marxist–Leninist standpoint, Kirk was a petty-bourgeois demagogue in the service of finance capital. Antonio Gramsci described such figures as “morbid symptoms” of the crisis of bourgeois hegemony, when “the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born.”¹
The reaction of the ruling class to Kirk’s assassination exposes its deep hypocrisy. His death is treated as a national calamity, an assault on democracy itself. Yet every day, working people perish in factories, fields, and mines, their deaths written off as mere “accidents” of production. Thousands die prematurely due to poverty, lack of healthcare, and unsafe working conditions — deaths which provoke no national mourning.
Even more grotesquely, the bourgeoisie turns a blind eye to the millions killed in imperialist wars. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombings of Libya and Yugoslavia, and the ongoing support for the Israeli government's atrocities in Gaza have cost countless lives. These deaths are treated as collateral damage, invisible in bourgeois discourse.
As Engels wrote: “The modern representative state is an instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital.”*²
Thus, the tears shed for Kirk are not for “human life” in the abstract, but for a representative of bourgeois power. When the exploited and oppressed die, there is silence. When a tribune of reaction falls, the establishment cries out in grief
From the beginning, Marx and Engels rejected conspiratorial and terrorist methods, insisting that socialism could not be delivered as a gift by heroes but only through the conscious self-activity of the working class: “The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself.”*³
“Revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily. They are the natural results of circumstances… of the development of the productive forces.”*⁴
Assassinations, no matter how spectacular, do not alter these circumstances. They substitute individual will for collective power.
Lenin, who directly confronted terrorism in the Russian revolutionary movement, was emphatic: “Far be it from us to deny the significance of heroic individual blows, but it is our duty to sound a vigorous warning against becoming infatuated with terror… Terror can never be a regular military operation; at best it can only serve as one of the methods employed in a decisive assault.”*⁵
“The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations … such methods divert our best forces from agitation and organization, destroy contact with the masses, and spread distorted ideas of the tasks of our struggle.”*⁶
For Lenin, terrorism was not simply “ineffective.” It actively harmed the movement: provoking repression, confusing the masses, and excusing passivity by suggesting change could be achieved through conspiratorial acts.
From his side, Ernesto Che Guevara also warned against this kind of assassinations: “Terrorism is generally ineffective; the killing of an individual who is replaceable within the repressive apparatus only results in greater repression and the loss of valuable lives for the revolution.”*⁷ Thus even within armed struggle, terrorism was seen as strategically destructive.
Every assassination of a political figure gives the ruling class a pretext to expand surveillance, militarize the police, and clamp down on dissent. It creates the perfect narrative: that “extremists” threaten democracy, and therefore the state must protect society by curbing freedoms. In this sense, individual terror does not frighten the bourgeoisie — it serves it.
As Lenin concluded: “To substitute terrorism for the class struggle of the masses means to play into the hands of reactionaries.”*⁸
Charlie Kirk’s ideology was deeply reactionary, a force mobilized against the working class and oppressed. His death at the hands of an assassin does not alter that character — nor does it advance the cause of socialism. On the contrary, it strengthens the bourgeoisie, who will use it to legitimize repression and silence dissent.
Communists answer both Kirk’s reactionary politics and his assassination with the same principle: only the organized, conscious struggle of the working class can break the power of capital. The bullet of the lone gunman is no substitute for the revolutionary might of millions.
Kirk was not a “neutral” political commentator. As the founder of Turning Point USA, he built a career mobilizing youth behind the most reactionary currents of U.S. politics: the defense of capitalism, the glorification of U.S. imperialism, and the culture-war demonization of workers’ movements, migrants, women, LGBTQ+ communities, and anti-racist struggles.
From a Marxist–Leninist standpoint, Kirk was a petty-bourgeois demagogue in the service of finance capital. Antonio Gramsci described such figures as “morbid symptoms” of the crisis of bourgeois hegemony, when “the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born.”¹
The reaction of the ruling class to Kirk’s assassination exposes its deep hypocrisy. His death is treated as a national calamity, an assault on democracy itself. Yet every day, working people perish in factories, fields, and mines, their deaths written off as mere “accidents” of production. Thousands die prematurely due to poverty, lack of healthcare, and unsafe working conditions — deaths which provoke no national mourning.
Even more grotesquely, the bourgeoisie turns a blind eye to the millions killed in imperialist wars. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombings of Libya and Yugoslavia, and the ongoing support for the Israeli government's atrocities in Gaza have cost countless lives. These deaths are treated as collateral damage, invisible in bourgeois discourse.
As Engels wrote: “The modern representative state is an instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital.”*²
Thus, the tears shed for Kirk are not for “human life” in the abstract, but for a representative of bourgeois power. When the exploited and oppressed die, there is silence. When a tribune of reaction falls, the establishment cries out in grief
From the beginning, Marx and Engels rejected conspiratorial and terrorist methods, insisting that socialism could not be delivered as a gift by heroes but only through the conscious self-activity of the working class: “The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself.”*³
“Revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily. They are the natural results of circumstances… of the development of the productive forces.”*⁴
Assassinations, no matter how spectacular, do not alter these circumstances. They substitute individual will for collective power.
Lenin, who directly confronted terrorism in the Russian revolutionary movement, was emphatic: “Far be it from us to deny the significance of heroic individual blows, but it is our duty to sound a vigorous warning against becoming infatuated with terror… Terror can never be a regular military operation; at best it can only serve as one of the methods employed in a decisive assault.”*⁵
“The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations … such methods divert our best forces from agitation and organization, destroy contact with the masses, and spread distorted ideas of the tasks of our struggle.”*⁶
For Lenin, terrorism was not simply “ineffective.” It actively harmed the movement: provoking repression, confusing the masses, and excusing passivity by suggesting change could be achieved through conspiratorial acts.
From his side, Ernesto Che Guevara also warned against this kind of assassinations: “Terrorism is generally ineffective; the killing of an individual who is replaceable within the repressive apparatus only results in greater repression and the loss of valuable lives for the revolution.”*⁷ Thus even within armed struggle, terrorism was seen as strategically destructive.
Every assassination of a political figure gives the ruling class a pretext to expand surveillance, militarize the police, and clamp down on dissent. It creates the perfect narrative: that “extremists” threaten democracy, and therefore the state must protect society by curbing freedoms. In this sense, individual terror does not frighten the bourgeoisie — it serves it.
As Lenin concluded: “To substitute terrorism for the class struggle of the masses means to play into the hands of reactionaries.”*⁸
Charlie Kirk’s ideology was deeply reactionary, a force mobilized against the working class and oppressed. His death at the hands of an assassin does not alter that character — nor does it advance the cause of socialism. On the contrary, it strengthens the bourgeoisie, who will use it to legitimize repression and silence dissent.
Communists answer both Kirk’s reactionary politics and his assassination with the same principle: only the organized, conscious struggle of the working class can break the power of capital. The bullet of the lone gunman is no substitute for the revolutionary might of millions.
Notes:
1. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Q3.
2. Friedrich Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, MECW vol. 26.
3. Karl Marx, Inaugural Address of the First International (1864), MECW vol. 20.
4. Friedrich Engels, Letter to Bebel (1875), MECW vol. 45.
5. V.I. Lenin, Where to Begin? (1901), LCW vol. 5.
6. V.I. Lenin, Resolution on Terrorism (1903), LCW vol. 6.
7. Ernesto Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (1960).
8. V.I. Lenin, Social-Democracy and Terrorism (1902), LCW vol. 8,
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
