THE CONSEQUENCES OF PROGESSIVE IDEOLOGY

When progressives redefine speech as violence, murder becomes their response

Charlie Kirk's assassination represents the inevitable outcome of an ideology that transformed self-hatred into a moral principle and debate into destruction.

 

by Erel Segal  

 

Israel Hayom

Sep 19, 2025

 

 

 

Charlie Kirk's assassination was not a historical accident. It was the inevitable result of progressivism, which has turned self-hatred into a moral principle. An inevitable chapter in progressive madness. The assassin is a product of an ideology that has long ceased to argue and now seeks destruction.

During the 2020 elections, an article appeared on the cover of The New York Times under the headline: "The Problem with Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation." The logic was simple: free speech is dangerous, and therefore, it must be regulated. We need censorship, authorized voices, commissars of truth. The public, if left alone without protection, will be deceived all too easily. The newspaper proposed to protect us from ourselves.

Charlie Kirk's assassination must be read in this context. When speech is defined as violence, violence becomes the natural response to speech. The intellectual climate of 2020 progressivism, where censorship, boycotts, and silencing became a moral duty, created the social climate of 2025, where murder became a moral gesture. What was once an editorial became a sniper's bullet.

 

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk 

 

Western liberalism promised tolerance. This is its essence. Progressivism rapes liberalism and bears false witness to its name. In practice, it created an atmosphere where eliminating opinions is not a metaphor, but a daily fantasy on Twitter. The left, drunk on false moral superiority, has reached the point where murder has become an argument.

Not that this is new. Since Robespierre, leftist radicalism inevitably leads to violence. The left covers itself with false talk about compassion, about human rights, about freedom, about democracy. From its perspective, its moral superiority is unassailable; however, under the hood lies an ideological vacuum and a violent logic. First, they mock the opponent and declare him a failure on the verge of retardation. Then they turn him pathological and diagnose him as suffering from some kind of mental illness.

Kirk was not a complex intellectual. He was something more dangerous in the eyes of his opponents, who saw him as an enemy: Kirk made accessible ideas that opposed the West's self-hatred. He spoke about family, nation, religion, heritage - words that to the progressive consciousness sound like the devil's family. The Western left, the woke, the progressives, while intoxicated with a sense of righteousness, created an atmosphere where violence against opponents is not only tolerated but even admired.

In Western universities, they speak of progress, wisdom, dialogue - but these are empty words. Because there is no dialogue in universities and among the left, a culture of purification prevails. This is the entropic paradox of progressivism. To protect diversity, it destroys difference. To promote tolerance, it sanctifies intolerance.

This is progressivism. A religion of purity without transcendence, a cult of moral superiority that ultimately, inevitably, leads to violence.

Charlie Kirk believed the West could still be saved through affirming its identity. To reconnect to the mothership. The progressive consciousness, for which identity is the ultimate crime, could not allow it.

"The College Scam" is the last book Charlie Kirk published in his lifetime. In a nutshell: universities in America are not temples of knowledge, but rather debt and false consciousness production machines. The myth is sticky, the parties are good, the football games impressive - but the degrees are worth garbage.

Worse, the academic world has become a consciousness-shaping machine for progressivism. An endless production line of hollow leftist progressives. They did this with foreign money financing, mainly Qatar and China.

Kirk chose to stand against them. He sat facing students and professors, did not raise his voice, did not disqualify, and did not hate. Socratic dialogue par excellence. And that was exactly the danger: truth, when spoken quietly, without hatred, with facts, becomes unbearable.

The left's official response to the murder was predictable. Leaders of the progressive camp, former presidents, former candidates, establishment voices, condemned the murder. This was the super-ego of progressivism. But on social networks the id erupted. Anonymous and non-anonymous users mocked the widow's hair, laughed at the corpse, turned mourning into a joke. Tens of thousands cheered with likes.

In Israel it was particularly wretched. Channel 12 continues to believe the world revolves around them. They had never heard of Charlie Kirk. Danny Kushmaro smiled with contempt. That's the level, that's what they're capable of giving. Kirk was among two or three figures who influenced President Donald Trump to the greatest extent. He shaped the tone of the election campaign. He embodied an ideological style. Not recognizing his work and disparaging the Israeli right that mourned his death is provincial ignorance disguised as sophistication.

Kirk died as a martyr of free speech. He did not die for money, not for power, but for the very act of speaking in public. The ideological right, despite all the other things it hates, cannot tolerate violence against free speech. Because the moment speech is eliminated - nothing remains.

After the murder came the numbers. According to The New York Post, 37,000 applications were received to open new branches of Turning Point USA, Kirk's life's work. In colleges, in high schools, in community churches. Before the bullet there were only 900 branches in universities, and 1,200 in schools. Now this number is expected to soar. Even if only a third of the applications are approved - this is unprecedented expansion.

And more than a third will be approved. Charlie Kirk had already created one of the largest conservative grassroots organizations in the world. His death as a martyr is expected to amplify it even more. In religion, the death of saints begets saints - in politics it begets movements. Applications are now also coming from Europe. The contagion is global.

The progressive left responds differently. It invests its energy in insults on Twitter, in defacing monuments, in destroying posters. It celebrates its hatred in digital rituals, without influence, without continuity. The contrast tells it all. On one side - building institutions, flourishing, hope. On the other side - a performance of destruction and identification with Hamas rapists.

In this contrast I see the light. Death did not silence, it amplified. It turned one man's voice into the architecture of a movement, which will outlast him. The bullet was supposed to end the story - instead it opened a new chapter.