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An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
—Winston Churchill
The Murder of Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk has been murdered on a university campus.
On September 10, 2025, during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, the 41-year-old activist, husband, and father of two was gunned down. The accused, Tyler James Robinson, 22, is charged with aggravated murder and related counts; Utah prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty. Court filings cite texts and statements suggesting political animus, particularly anger over Kirk’s outspoken rejection of transgender ideology. Officials have not issued a final, singular motive.
But let us not pretend this occurred in a void. The soil was fertilised long before the shot was fired. The American climate of politics—indeed the Western climate—has shifted from disagreement, to censorship, to mob intimidation, and now to the bullet. You do not kill a man for his beliefs, yet here we are.
This was not simply a murder; for many, it feels like America’s Salman Rushdie moment—an attack on reason itself. Kirk’s own organisation was called Turning Point. His assassination marks a darker one.
And yet, at his funeral, Erika Kirk stood in front of more than 100,000 mourners and said: “I forgive him. That man. That young man. I forgive him because that is what Christ did, and what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate; the answer is always love.” Even in the face of barbarism, she spoke words that are harder, not softer, than rage: mercy.
Universities and the Culture of Permission
The fact that Kirk was murdered on campus is not incidental. It is emblematic.
Universities once incubated disputation; now they incubate fanaticism. I do not claim Kirk was killed for his views on Israel—though he was a proud defender of that nation’s right to exist—but I do claim this: the culture that produced his assassin is the same one that cheers Hamas rallies, treats violent slogans as academic fashion, and calls for “Intifada” not as metaphor but as marching order.
They roar rather than argue, gag rather than answer, exile rather than engage. It begins with deplatforming; it ends with blood.
And still Erika said: “After Charlie’s assassination, we didn’t see violence. We didn’t see rioting. We didn’t see a revolution. Instead, we saw revival.” That single word—revival—rebukes both the nihilists who cheer for destruction and the cowards who appease them.
The Rot in Academia
I know something of this myself. At the University of Guelph–Humber, I was suspended, gagged, and ultimately dismissed for calling Hamas what it is: Nazi. One reply to a stranger in Pakistan—condemning calls for Israel’s eradication—was enough to ruin a 15-year career.
Meanwhile, a colleague who glorifies Hamas, who pours out thousands of anti-Semitic posts, who breathes threats like oxygen—he was shielded and coddled by the administration. He remains a darling of the faculty lounge. He must be smiling today.
When institutions brand dissenters as Nazis while protecting those who exalt terror, they are not neutral. They are feeding the crocodile.
My daughter phoned me after Kirk’s death. She fears, not irrationally, that her father could be next. This fear is not paranoia; it was planted in her by administrators who knew exactly what they were doing when they smeared me as a threat and sheltered a man who boasted of his own.
That is feeding the crocodile.
Voice Beyond Death: Erika’s Mission
At the funeral, Erika Kirk revealed something else: “I am honoured to be the new CEO of Turning Point USA. His passion was my passion, and now his mission is my mission.” She turned mourning into commission. Where mobs hoped to silence a man, his widow pledged to amplify him.
That is what courage looks like: refusing to cede the ground of truth, even as the body of your husband lies in state.
Blood Libel in Digital Form
In the wake of Kirk’s murder, I received messages repeating updated blood libels—accusing Jews of murdering children, celebrating Kirk’s death as “justice.” It is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion reborn as memes. This is the sewer from which assassins drink.
Canadian Campuses, Same Poison
Our Canadian universities are no better. McGill tolerated a “liberated zone” encampment. Toronto let pro-Hamas mobs dominate the convocation. Guelph–Humber permitted Palestinian flags on the convocation stage, tolerated chants of “F*** Zionists” in its halls. Administrators smirked as if it were a theatre.
But this is not theatre. This is the incubation of violence. This is appeasement dressed as neutrality. This is feeding the crocodile.
Let Us Speak Plainly
The violence is not chiefly coming from mythical right-wing phantoms; it comes from the radical left and its Islamist allies. If that bruises feelings, so be it. Reality owes nothing to delicate sensibilities.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination was not conjured out of anywhere. It sprouted from a culture cultivated by cowardly elites, nourished by appeasement, excused by academics, amplified by media, and sanctified by politicians who fear losing tuition dollars or swing-state votes more than they fear losing civilisation itself.
And yet, in the midst of all this, Erika saw not merely death but mercy. She said that when she viewed Charlie’s body, she saw “the faintest smile” on his lips—a sign, to her, that he had not suffered, that God had been merciful. That vision, too, is part of the legacy: rage at the culture that enables murder, but also witness to the mercy that transcends it.
A Call to Action
We must stop feeding the crocodile. Universities must expel professors who glorify terror. Laws against mob intimidation must be enforced. Citizens must demand reason, liberty, and equality before the law—not the post-national mush that masquerades as virtue while excusing barbarism.
The coward’s refuge will always be to scream “racist,” “Islamophobe,” or whichever epithet is in vogue. But we cannot allow words to be used as chains. Charlie had a spine. They killed him for it.
Goodbye, Charlie. In our grief, we will remember you; in our memory, you will live. As the Russians say, “A man is alive so long as he is remembered.”
And we will remember.
So sad! I agree 100%. You cannot appease fanatics. Absolute cowards the hypocrites in charge that sold their souls and allowed the Trojan horse and awful ideology to take over western civilization.
I am so glad I don't live in Canada and did not raise my daughters in Canada. The antisemitism I faced in the 1970s was enough to get me to move home to Israel 50 years ago. I never imagined it could get as bad as it is today.