On the tenth of September 2025, American right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot dead while exercising his free speech right at the University of Utah.

Since the moment Kirk’s death was announced by the prolific social media user and sometimes president of the United States, the entire conservative political and media apparatus declared war on the left. From the American president to Fox News has-beens like Putin lover Tucker Carlson, and black Santa Claus sworn enemy Megyn Kelly, passing by JD Vance, who once called the president he’s currently serving under Hitler, and Nancy Mace, who once told a prayer breakfast crowd that she’d skipped morning sex with her boyfriend to attend, launched a campaign to indict the entire political left and elevate Charlie Kirk to deity.

The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who’s been hailed as one of the more moderate republicans, admitted after the arrest of the alleged shooter – a twenty-two-year-old white cisgendered straight Utahn – that “I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn’t be one of us – that somebody drove from another state, somebody from another country.” It was framed by the mainstream media as a moment of self-reflection and not just proof that Reaganism is just Trumpism, but in more fitted suits and less carnival barking.

On the other hand, multiple reporters, commentators, academics, and government workers have been fired for remembering Charlie for exactly who he was, a gun-loving, racist, misogynistic, conspiracy theorist who built an empire out of sheer hatred spreading.

Charlie Kirk never hid who he was. Quite the contrary, he used every available opportunity and created others to share his despicable opinions on race, gender, religion, rape, guns, affirmative action, and mass shootings. And that was his right, afforded to him by the First Amendment, the very First Amendment Pam Bondi, the Ivanka doppelgänger heading the Department of Justice, has decided to redefine.

The most outrageous comment made following the murder of Charlie Kirk has got to be Glenn Beck’s comparing the right-wing activist to Dr Martin Luther King, demanding that Kirk be referred to as “a civil rights leader”. Just like MLK, Charlie had a dream. MLK dreamed of a better America, and Charlie dreamed of an America where his own ten-year-old daughter would give birth to a child conceived in rape. MLK believed that there was a power that could not be found in weapons, and Charlie accepted gun deaths as a fair price to pay to save the Second Amendment. Both men had a dream, but only one of those dreams didn’t double as a nightmare.

For those who loved Charlie, there shouldn’t be a reason why they wouldn’t want him to be remembered for who he was.

In his eulogy of Boddy Kennedy, Ted Kennedy famously said that his brother “need not be idolized, or remembered in death beyond what he was in life”. And to remember a man who “saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw a war and tried to stop it” simply for who he was is easy. There’s no raising to the level of a literal thirteenth disciple of Christ needed. Who he was is enough.

To remember Bobby for who he was is to remember a man who dreamed things that never were and said, “Why not?”. But to remember Charlie for who he was is to remember a man who dreamed of things that were before the Bill of Rights and said, “Why not again?”