Until the arrival of Zionism, Muslims and Jews lived together in relative peace for centuries

The relative harmony between Jews and Muslims frayed not due to ancient hatreds but a form of European imperialism—namely Zionism.

 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

  

For decades, Israel and its Zionist allies in the West have invested millions in propaganda campaigns to portray Muslims and Jews as irreconcilable enemies for centuries to the Western public, even depicting Muslims in the West as an untrustworthy “fifth column.” This narrative has fuelled the targeting of innocent Muslims by police and security agencies, exacerbated Islamophobia well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and intensified crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activists—many of whom are Muslim—since Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023.

Yet history reveals a far more nuanced reality. For much of the past 1,500 years of Islam’s existence, relations between Jews and Muslims have been characterized by coexistence, respect, and shared prosperity, severely disrupted only by modern colonial interventions and the advent of Zionism. Drawing on centuries of documented harmony and history dismantles the myth of eternal enmity between the two faith communities. From the Prophet Muhammad’s foundational pact with Jewish tribes to the Ottoman Empire’s embrace of Sephardic refugees, and even into the 20th century when Palestinians extended hospitality to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, the record shows a pattern of refuge and collaboration.

Only with the rise of Zionism and the Nakba—the 1948 catastrophe that displaced over 750,000 Palestinians—did this equilibrium shatter, as some of those welcomed refugees returned the hospitality of Palestinians by dispossessing their hosts. By reclaiming this history we can demonstrate that it is the Zionist political agenda and not religious imperatives that have sown division between these two faith communities.

A Foundation of Coexistence: The Dawn of Islam

The story begins in 7th-century Arabia, where Islam emerged amid a mosaic of Jewish, Christian, and pagan communities. Contrary to later Zionist distortions, the Prophet Muhammad’s interactions with Jews were shaped by proximity and shared monotheistic roots, not inherent antagonism. The Constitution of Medina, drafted in 622 CE shortly after Muhammad’s arrival in the city, stands as one of the earliest examples of interfaith governance between Muslims and Jews. This charter explicitly included Jewish tribes in the ummah—the broader Muslim community—granting them autonomy in religious practice, legal affairs, and mutual defence against external threats.

It was a revolutionary document, establishing Jews as equal partners in a pluralistic society and setting a precedent for “dhimmi” status: protected non-Muslims who paid a poll tax in exchange for exemption from military service along with full communal rights.

As Islamic conquests unified the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond under the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates from the 7th to 9th centuries, Jewish communities—long marginalized under Christian Byzantine and Sassanid rule—found unprecedented stability. Unlike the recurrent pogroms and expulsions in Christian Europe, Muslim lands integrated Jews into the fabric of society. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, Jews served as administrators, scholars, and traders, contributing to the caliphates’ golden age. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad, an epicentre of translation and innovation during the Abbasid era (8th–13th centuries), saw Jewish and Muslim intellectuals collaborate to render Greek, Persian, and Indian texts into Arabic, preserving knowledge that would later be the foundation of the European Renaissance. Figures like Saadia Gaon, a 10th-century Jewish philosopher, thrived under Muslim patronage, blending Talmudic scholarship with Islamic theology.

This pluralism extended to daily life. Synagogues and mosques coexisted in urban quarters, and inter-communal dialogues enriched both faiths. The Quran itself acknowledges Jewish prophets like Moses and Abraham, urging respect for “People of the Book,” though it critiques specific theological disputes. While tensions arose from time to time—such as the 627 CE siege of the Banu Qurayza tribe amid tribal warfare—these were political, not religious conflicts, often resolved through negotiation rather than military campaigns.

The Golden Age in Al-Andalus

Nowhere was this harmony more luminous than in Al-Andalus, Muslim-ruled Spain from the 8th to 15th centuries. Under the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, Jews escaped the Visigothic persecutions that had plagued them in Christian Iberia, including forced baptisms and mass executions. Cordoba became a beacon of tolerance, its libraries rivaling Baghdad’s. Jewish viziers like Hasdai ibn Shaprut advised caliphs on diplomacy and medicine, while poets and philosophers crossed confessional lines.

The 10th-century “Golden Age” produced Maimonides (Musa ibn Maymun), the preeminent Jewish thinker, whose Guide for the Perplexed synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish law under Muslim intellectual influence. In Granada and Toledo, Muslims, Jews, and Christians advanced astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. Jewish scholars translated Arabic works into Hebrew, disseminating them across Europe. 

However, this era was not without friction. Occasional fatwas in some regions restricted Jewish dress or synagogue construction, echoing dhimmi hierarchies. Yet violence was rare compared to the Christian Crusades or Black Death massacres in Europe, where Jews were scapegoated and burned alive. Historian Bernard Lewis notes that, over 14 centuries, “there is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holocaust.” Muslim rulers positioned themselves as guardians of all minorities, rooted in Quranic calls for justice. 

Refuge from European Fury

As Christian Europe’s intolerance peaked—the 1492 Alhambra Decree expelling 200,000 Jews from Spain—Muslim realms offered sanctuary. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire derided Ferdinand and Isabella as fools for impoverishing Spain to enrich his domains, welcoming Sephardic Jewish refugees to Istanbul, Salonika, and Izmir. There, Jews revitalized trade and scholarship, and by the 16th century, they comprised a third of Salonika’s population, dubbing it “the mother of Israel in exile.” This pattern persisted during the 12th-century Crusades, when European Christians slaughtered Jews in the Rhineland and Jerusalem. While in Palestine Saladin (Salahuddin Ayyubi) recaptured the city in 1187 and invited Jews (who had been expelled from Jerusalem by Christian rulers) to return, ending centuries of exclusion under Roman and Byzantine rule.

In North Africa and the Levant, Jews under Muslim governance fared far better than in Christian lands. When the 628 CE Byzantine-Persian treaty included protections for Jews—later betrayed by Roman massacres—Muslim leaders like Caliph Umar reaffirmed safe passage. By the 19th century, as Ottoman reforms equalized rights, Jewish communities in Baghdad and Cairo flourished alongside Muslims, sharing markets and festivals.

A Shared Stand Against Fascism

This legacy of refuge extended into the 20th century, even as European antisemitism surged. During World War Two Muslims across Europe, Africa and the Middle-East risked everything to shield Jews from Nazi horrors. Iranian diplomat Abdol-Hossein Sardari, the “Iranian Schindler,” issued over 2,000 passports to Iranian Jews in occupied Paris, exploiting Nazi racial pseudoscience by claiming they were “Aryan” descendants of Cyrus the Great—who had freed Jews from Babylonian captivity in 539 BCE.

In Albania, a Muslim-majority nation under German occupation, the entire society conspired to hide Jews. By war’s end, Albania’s Jewish population had grown, the only Nazi-occupied country to achieve this. The Pilkus family in Albania sheltered Holocaust survivor Johanna Neumann, convincing neighbours she was a German relative. “They put their lives on the line to save us,” Neumann recalled. In Tunisia, Khaled Abdul Wahab hid two Jewish families in his farm’s stables, defying Gestapo raids. At Paris’s Great Mosque, Imam Kaddour Benghabrit forged Muslim certificates for Jews, while Turkish consul Selahattin Ulkumen ferried 50 Jews to safety on boats from Rhodes. Noor Inayat Khan, a British Muslim spy, transmitted vital intelligence from occupied France until her execution at Dachau. Even in Palestine, amid rising Zionist-Palestinian tensions, thousands volunteered against the Nazis. A 2019 study revealed 12,000 Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—served in British forces, fighting in North Africa and Europe. The Palestine Regiment saw Arabs and Jews shoulder-to-shoulder fighting against Hitler’s Nazi forces, a unity later fractured by the Nakba in 1948.

Palestinian Hospitality Betrayed

In Mandatory Palestine, this spirit manifested profoundly. As Nazi persecution escalated in Germany in the 1930s, over 60,000 German Jews fled to Palestine under the Haavara Agreement, despite British quotas limiting immigration to quell Arab unrest. Initial arrivals in the 1920s and early 1930s were often met with Palestinian hospitality. Oral histories and contemporary accounts document Palestinian families housing destitute Jewish refugees in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, sharing meals and aiding integration. Palestinian leader Musa Alami recounted villagers offering shelter to European Jews, viewing them as fellow Semites fleeing tyranny—before Zionist land purchases and exclusivist settlements soured relations between the two communities.

Tensions boiled during the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, sparked by fears of dispossession, but even then, individual acts of kindness persisted. Tragically, this generosity was repaid with expulsion. By 1948, Zionist terrorist groups like the Haganah and Irgun—bolstered by those once-welcomed refugees—destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages, expelling 750,000 in the Nakba. In places like Deir Yassin, Lydda and Ramle, families who had hosted Jews were driven out at gunpoint, their homes seized, and the inhabitants massacred. Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, documented how these operations, code named Plan Dalet, ethnically cleansed Arab populations to secure a Jewish majority on territory seized by the Zionists. The betrayal was stark. Palestinians, who had opened their doors amid global indifference, became refugees in their own land. 

Colonial Shadows: The Modern Fracture

The relative harmony between Jews and Muslims frayed not due to ancient hatreds but due to a form of European imperialism—namely Zionism. Born in 19th-century Europe, this Jewish supremacist ideology framed Palestine as a “land without a people” for a “people without a land,” conveniently ignoring its 1.2 million Muslim, Christian and Jewish inhabitants. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, a British colonial proposal, pledged a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine without the consent of its inhabitants, enabling mass immigration that tripled the Jewish population by 1947. Post-World War Two, as Britain withdrew its forces from Palestine, the United Nations’ Partition Plan allocated 56% of the territory for a Jewish state—despite Jews owning just 7% of the land, and accounting for only 33% of the population. The ensuing war cemented the Nakba, with Israeli policies of settlement expansion, exclusion, and blockade perpetuating Palestinian displacement.

The history of Jewish-Muslim relations is not a tale of a centuries long religious conflict as Zionists would like everyone to believe. It is rather a rich narrative marked by remarkable coexistence during very hostile eras of history. Only in the 20th century, with the colonization of historic Palestine, did tensions flare, fracturing ties between these communities in the Middle East.

The Zionist narrative of perpetual enmity between Jews and Muslims serves a political agenda, yet history offers a beacon of hope. From the inclusive pact of Medina to the flourishing Jewish communities in Al-Andalus and the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim lands, to the heroic acts of Muslims shielding Jews from Nazi persecution during World War II, these faith communities wove a tapestry of relative peace and mutual respect, unlike what Jews had experienced for centuries in Christian Europe. Ultimately this was all undone not by religion but by the political machinations of the Zionist movement. By drawing on this shared heritage, Muslims and Jews seeking peace in the Middle East can find inspiration to forge a harmonious future, and work towards an end to the decades-long conflict in historic Palestine that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives since 1948.
  
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

The betrayal of “Never Again”: Why the Gaza genocide is worse than the Holocaust

Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust exposes the hypocrisy of “never again” as Gaza’s horrors are largely ignored by those nations with the power to stop the sadistic brutality inflicted on Palestinians.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

For decades the refrain of “never again” has rung hollow at annual Holocaust commemorations, where Western nations—Germany, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and others—solemnly vow to prevent another genocide. Yet, as these ceremonies took place over the past two years, a catastrophe of staggering proportions has ravaged Gaza, surpassing the Holocaust, not in body count but in its brazen visibility, prolonged generational agony, perverse victim-perpetrator inversion, and the complicity of Israel’s Western allies. 

 https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/4/19/gaza-genocide-and-the-worlds-most-heinous-crime

The Holocaust, a meticulously hidden slaughter of 11 million people, including six million Jews, left an indelible scar on humanity’s conscience. Gaza’s genocide, however, unfolds in real time, live streamed for all to see, yet it has elicited apathy from the very powers that defeated the Nazis and swore to uphold justice and prevent atrocities like those that occurred in World War Two. This comparison does not diminish the Holocaust’s horror but exposes the selective moral outrage that normalizes Palestinian pain and suffering while elevating Jewish trauma above that all of other peoples that have experienced genocide. The horrors taking place in Gaza, fuelled by Western funding and impunity, indicts our era more profoundly than the 20th century’s darkest years ever could.

The first and most chilling distinction lies in Gaza’s visibility, a transparency the Holocaust lacked. The Nazi extermination of Jews, Roma, Slavs, political enemies, etc. relied on secrecy where death camps like Auschwitz operated in the shadows, their atrocities uncovered only after Allied liberation at the end of World War Two. In Gaza, the violence is broadcast live. Smartphones and social media flood the world with high-definition images--emaciated children, entire neighbourhoods reduced to a post-apocalyptic hellscape, families obliterated in so-called “precision” airstrikes that kill hundreds of civilians at a time. Viral clips on platforms like TikTok show Israeli drones targeting starving Palestinians, often shared by the perpetrators themselves. Yet this exposure sparks no meaningful intervention by the nations that have the power to stop the slaughter.

A study by Israeli professor Yaakov Garb, published by Harvard’s Dataverse, reveals the scale of Israel’s genocide that is beyond comprehension. Since October 2023, at least 377,000 Palestinians in Gaza—half of them children—have been “disappeared” by Israel and are presumed dead. Garb’s cross-referencing of satellite imagery, IDF data, and displacement patterns exposes systematic erasure—a mobile killing machine operating under global scrutiny, undeterred by the world’s gaze. This dwarfs the numbers provided by the Gaza Health Ministry--approximately 70,000 direct deaths, mostly women and children, as of September 2025. A separate study by Australian professors Richard Hill and Gideon Polya estimates a staggering 680,000 deaths, including 380,000 children, factoring in indirect fatalities from starvation and disease. Where Nazis feared exposure, Israel exploits it, confident that the global community will fail to take action despite the scale of the atrocities.

This visibility underscores a second horror. Gaza’s violence is a slow, generational grind, unlike the Holocaust’s compressed brutality. The Nazi genocide, a frenzied slaughter within the six years of World War Two, ended with Germany’s defeat in 1945. Gaza’s torment, however, stretches back to the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist militias—led by figures like Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, David Ben-Gurion, and Chaim Weizmann—ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians through terror and mass murder to create a Jewish-majority state. This was no anomaly but a blueprint, perpetuated through decades of planning, settlement expansion, military checkpoints, and, since 2007, a suffocating blockade that turned Gaza into an open-air concentration camp for more than two million people. This is a prison where food, water, and medicine have been rationed to inflict maximum death and despair. Today, famine grips Gaza with children being the primary victims, as aid sites become kill zones where desperate crowds are gunned down by the Israeli army and private contractors, while waiting to collect food rations.

What has been done to Palestinians is a structural genocide, spanning generations—people killed and grandparents ethnically cleansed in 1948, parents imprisoned and tortured under occupation, children bombed in so-called safe zones. Unlike the Holocaust’s finite crescendo, Gaza has suffered a 78-year dirge, escalating relentlessly, erasing a people through attrition. Amnesty International’s reports since October 2023 document deliberate intent—Israeli airstrikes on Gaza hospitals, blocked aid, and inflammatory genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders vowing to “erase” Gaza and its people, all normalized as a necessary to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens. Its banality, and prolonged, bureaucratic cruelty makes Israeli crimes all the more insidious.

Equally perverse is the third distinction, where Israeli leaders, claiming Holocaust victimhood, invert the narrative to justify their actions. Israel, born from the ashes of Nazi genocide, has weaponized that trauma, casting Palestinians as modern-day Nazis to excuse brutal settler-colonialism, apartheid, and Gaza’s siege. “Never again” has morphed into “never again to us” and “to hell with Palestinian suffering,” sanctifying policies that Israeli scholars like Raz Segal, Omer Bartov, and Amos Goldberg label as settler-colonial genocide.

A March 2025 Ha’aretz poll, conducted with Penn State University, also reveals a chilling consensus—82% of Jewish Israelis support expelling all Palestinians from Gaza, and 47%—nearly half—endorse killing every Palestinian, including children, with the views strongest among younger generations. This aligns with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocations of the biblical Amalek story, urging the destruction of Israel’s Palestinian enemies “from child to elder”.

Zionism’s pre-World War Two roots, articulated by Ben-Gurion’s call to “expel Arabs and take their places,” reveal an ethnic-cleansing ethos embedded in the foundations of Israeli society cloaked in Holocaust victimhood. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism exacerbates this, labelling criticism of Israel’s occupation as “antisemitic” while ignoring the denial of Palestinian self-determination through more than 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers on stolen land. This inversion—painting Palestinian victims as villains—fuels a genocide that surpasses the perversity of other genocides that have occurred in the 20th century.

A fourth dimension of horror is the global complicity that was absent in the Holocaust. The Nazis faced local resistance, supported by the Allies, which ultimately contributed to their defeat. By contrast, Israel’s military has been bankrolled by the West for decades. Since October 2023, the US alone has provided $17.9 billion in military aid, on top of the $3.3 billion it gives Israel annually. European allies like Germany, the UK, France and Canada have contributed further, while the US protects Israel at the UN with vetoes on resolutions that could hold the apartheid nation accountable and end the carnage.

However, the Western alliance, there is one nation above all others that has put its words in defence of Palestinians into action. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) presents considerable evidence in its accusations of Israel's genocidal intent, citing mass killings, deliberate harm, and conditions designed to destroy Palestinians, backed by official Israeli statements. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem corroborate this, labelling Gaza’s siege a crime against humanity and genocide.

Finally, the world’s inaction indicts the West more deeply than the Holocaust’s bystanders. No fog of war obscures Gaza’s death toll—more than 70,000 identified deaths, and potentially 680,000 if the recent Australian study is to be accepted. Satellite imagery, NGO reports, ICJ rulings, a UN investigation, reports by assassinated Palestinian journalists, videos and posts by Gazans, data from the Israeli military, and Israeli soldiers’ own social media posts lay bare the truth. And yet the nations with the power to halt the bloodshed still fail to act.

This partially stems from a moral hierarchy rooted in Western guilt when it refused to help Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, and its helplessness in preventing the Holocaust, which has elevated Jewish suffering above others. However, consider history’s other overlooked atrocities: King Leopold II's depravities in the Belgian Congo  (1885-1908) which killed over 10 million Africans, with mutilations as punishment for failing to achieve quotas of extracted resources; Stalin’s Holodomor (1932-33) which starved 5-7 million Ukrainians; Churchill’s policies in colonial India fuelled Bengal’s 1943 famine, that killed 3 million Bengalis, whom he derided as “breeding like rabbits”; and the Khmer Rouge erased roughly 2 million Cambodians—25% of the population—in the 1970s. These horrors, affecting non-Western and non-white people, rarely merit annual memorials as does the Holocaust, and Gaza fits this pattern. Palestinians, a Semitic (and predominantly Muslim) people, suffer while unfounded claims of “antisemitism” silences critics and shields Israel, conflating critique of the nation with Jew-hatred.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, a colonial promise by the British, prioritized a Jewish homeland over indigenous Palestinian rights, a precedent cemented by post-World War Two Western guilt despite increasing Zionist violence against non-Jews in historic Palestine. Stifling criticism of Zionism, once called racism by UN Resolution 3379 before its repeal under American pressure, has allowed Israel to inflict violence in historic Palestine with impunity for almost eight decades. The Jerusalem Declaration, endorsed by 350 scholars, urges a redefinition of antisemitism to include Palestinians as Semites, separating anti-Zionism from anti-Jewish hatred to foster equality.

Gaza’s genocide, defined by intent and outcome, not mere numbers, matches the Holocaust’s evil in its deliberate erasure of Palestinians, and surpasses it in some ways. The Ha’aretz poll’s revelation—47% of Jewish Israelis backing total extermination of Palestinians in Gaza—mirrors the Nazi eras dehumanization of Jews. Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust exposes the hypocrisy of “never again” as Gaza’s horrors are largely ignored by those nations with the power to stop the sadistic brutality inflicted by Israel. 

What is happening on the ground in Gaza demands action, not meaningless platitudes by Western leaders who cry crocodile tears for Palestinian suffering. The emaciated children on our screens plead for a universal “never again” that honours their humanity as fiercely as any other. Failing them renders the West as complicit in Israeli crimes as those who did nothing while cattle cars filled with concentration camp prisoners rolled into Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi death camps.

An evil we hoped to never see again is taking place in Gaza as we breathe. It is a clear illustration of what Israeli philosopher Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil.” This genocide, live-streamed yet in many ways ignored by the powerful of the world, embodies Arendt’s warning, sustained by Western nations that arms the perpetrator and do nothing to stop it, while reciting hollow vows. Only by dismantling the moral hierarchy that privileges one people’s suffering over another can we ensure “never again” becomes a promise kept for all, including Palestinians who have endured the longest and most brutal occupation in modern history, and are now being subjected to the most heinous crimes imaginable under human law.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Why did MPs give a standing ovation to racist Charlie Kirk in the House of Commons?

Death doesn’t make one a hero if they lived a life promoting hate and Canada’s MPs must understand this, and apologize their lack of judgment.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

In the halls of Canada’s House of Commons, where the nation's leaders are supposed to embody values that represent Canada—inclusivity, equality, and common decency—something profoundly disturbing unfolded on September 15, 2025. On that day Conservative Member of Parliament Rachel Thomas rose during the Member's Statements segment to deliver a tribute to recently assassinated American right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk. Thomas described Kirk as an "advocate for freedom," urging her colleagues to "join our hearts with Charlie’s family" and stand against political violence while championing "faith, family, and freedom."

What followed was a standing ovation—not just from the Conservatives, but from Liberal MPs as well. This wasn't a mere moment of bipartisan unity against violence. It was a collective endorsement of a man whose life was defined by the propagation of fascist, racist, bigoted, and misogynistic ideologies. Kirk was the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), an organization that promoted a far right agenda, and he was no hero of free speech. He was a purveyor of hate who built a multi million-dollar empire by stoking division, aligning with white supremacists, and cheering on the authoritarian agenda of Donald Trump. 

The Conservatives' affinity and applause for Kirk might be expected, given their party's recent history of cozying up to far-right extremists—from supporting Canadians who spoke positively about the January 6 insurrection in Washington DC to embracing conspiracy theorists. But why on earth would the Liberals, the self-proclaimed guardians of progressive values in Canada, join in? What was Mark Carney thinking? Did they not know the hate fuelled history of Charlie Kirk?

This incident reveals a dangerous erosion of judgment, where the Liberals appear to have lost their common sense in how to deal with racists and bigots. To understand the outrage in response to the standing ovation, one must first grasp who Charlie Kirk really was. Far from the sanitized portrait painted by Thomas and his Republican fans in the US, Kirk was a loathsome human being whose words incited harm and division. His assassination on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, was without doubt a tragic act of political violence and a capital crime that no one should condone. Yet, as one critic aptly put it, "the murder of Charlie Kirk doesn't make him a hero in death when he contributed to so much evil with his words in life." Kirk's legacy is one of toxicity, and honouring him in Canada's Parliament only serves to normalize the very hate he peddled.

Kirk's hateful messaging was relentless and multifaceted, often cloaked in the guise of conservatism but veering deep into white supremacist territory. He repeatedly espoused the "Great Replacement" theory, a conspiracy narrative popular among far-right extremists that claims non-white immigrants are deliberately displacing white populations. On the Charlie Kirk Show on March 1, 2024, he said, “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day at our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”

In August 2025, during one of his podcasts, Kirk commenting on immigration, declared that, "America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that." This wasn't abstract policy talk. It was a dog whistle to racists, implying that America's "greatness" depended on racial homogeneity dominated by people who are white.

He went further on Indian immigrants, stating on his podcast, "America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already." Such rhetoric directly fuelled hate against South Asians, echoing the historic scapegoating of Jews, which led to violence against that community in the past and South Asian communities now.

Not surprisingly Kirk's racism also extended to Black Americans, whom he demeaned in profoundly offensive ways. He claimed that Black people were "better" in the 1940s—before the Civil Rights Act—because they "committed less crimes," conveniently ignoring the era's rampant racism, segregation, lynchings, and systemic oppression. This wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was a deliberate interpretation of American history to undermine the civil rights gains that Black Americans had fought and died for. In fact, Kirk openly called the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act "a huge mistake."

Speaking at TPUSA’s Americafest in December 2023, he said, "I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it. We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s." He even labelled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as "awful" and "not a good person." These statements weren't fringe opinions, they were broadcast to millions through his podcast, social media, and TPUSA events, directly challenging the foundational principles of equality that Canada and the US claim to uphold. 

His bigotry didn't stop at race. Kirk was a virulent misogynist who opposed women's autonomy in the harshest terms. Responding to a hypothetical question about a 10-year-old rape victim and abortion, he infamously responded by insisting, "The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered . . . Wouldn't it be a better story to say something evil happened and we do something good in the face of evil?" This callous dismissal of trauma reduced women to mere vessels for his ideological agenda, ignoring the devastating impacts on survivors of sexual violence. Kirk's TPUSA actively discouraged women from pursuing education or careers, promoting instead their "natural" role as wives and mothers—a regressive, patriarchal view that aligns with fascist notions of gender hierarchy. In a society already grappling with gender-based violence, Kirk's words normalized misogyny, making it harder for women to demand equality. 

He also rejected empathy outright. In a 2022 episode of his podcast, he declared, “I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.” He argued that true empathy—feeling others' pain—weakens resolve against political foes. This rejection of basic human connection was no slip up. It permeated his worldview and the politics he promoted. 

Members of the LGBTQ+ community were also painted with a target by Kirk through his homophobic and transphobic messaging. He spread baseless propaganda about transgender people, claiming an "epidemic of trans shooters" in the wake of events like the 2023 Nashville school shooting. Kirk opposed same-sex marriage and transgender rights, praising Trump's revocation of policies allowing trans people to serve openly in the military. His rhetoric framed LGBTQ+ individuals as threats to "Judeo-Christian civilization," a phrase he frequently used to justify discrimination. 

At TPUSA events, speakers and attendees often spewed homophobic and transphobic slurs, with Kirk providing the platform. This wasn't harmless debate. It contributed to a climate where LGBTQ+ youth face higher rates of suicide and violence, all while Kirk benefited financially from the fear he sowed.

Kirk's fascist leanings were evident in his admiration for Trump’s authoritarianism and his associations with white supremacists. As a key ally of the president, he played a "critical role" in mobilizing young voters for the 2024 election through his "You're Being Brainwashed" campus tour, which garnered millions of views on social media. He was deeply involved in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term that advocates dismantling democratic institutions, imposing Christian nationalism, and expanding executive power—all hallmarks of fascism, and echoing actions taken by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Kirk endorsed Trump's dehumanizing language, calling Democrats "everything that God hates" and blaming Jews for funding "anti-whiteness" and "Cultural Marxism." He even claimed, "Jews control . . . the colleges, the nonprofits, the movies, Hollywood, all of it," a classic antisemitic narrative. Additionally, TPUSA events attracted neo-Nazis and far-right extremists, including members of the Rise Above Movement and Blood Tribe. Kirk also platformed conspiracy theorists and alt-right figures on his platforms, creating a "vast platform for extremists." Even after a public backlash, he refused to fully disavow them, once tweeting, "Whiteness is great," in a nod to white nationalists.

Islamophobia was another hateful ideology that Kirk seemed to promote with gusto, as he repeatedly demonized Muslims, inciting fear among Muslim Americans. In a June 2025 podcast, and on social media he claimed, “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization,” asserting that Muslim immigrants threaten American values. At a TPUSA event in 2023, he falsely linked Islam to terrorism, stating, “You can’t ignore the data—most terrorist attacks come from radical Islam.” In a social media post days before he was assassinated he said, “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” These remarks fuelled anti-Muslim hate and echoed far-right narratives that painted all Muslims as inherently dangerous.

And while extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys viewed Kirk as an enemy for not being sufficiently racist, they have exploited his death to call for "civil war" in response to his murder. Kirk's organization made it a practice of sowing fear of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, Jews, racial justice advocates, etc. as threats to "white Christian America," directly aligning with the narratives of white supremacist ideology.

Perhaps most galling for Canadians was Kirk's hostility towards this country. He praised Trump's stated desire to annex Canada, cheering the idea of absorbing our country into the US as a way to “help” us escape the direction that the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was taking this country. In one viral clip, Kirk mocked Canadian life, saying, "I would deport Justin Trudeau. That guy sucks," and suggested annexation would save Canadians from socialism. This wasn't humourous banter or kidding around. This was a clear threat to Canadian sovereignty, and yet MPs gave Kirk a standing ovation anyway.

The Conservatives’ embrace of Charlie Kirk and his ideology aligns with their troubling pattern of tolerating far-right extremism, from downplaying the antisemitic and Islamophobic elements of the “Freedom Convoy” to platforming controversial figures. Pierre Poilievre calling Kirk a “martyr for simply expressing his views” is unsurprising given this, despite Kirk’s hateful and dangerous rhetoric.

Yet, the Liberals’ decision to join the standing ovation for Kirk, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has positioned his party as a bulwark against Trumpism, is shocking. By applauding him they signalled that honouring purveyors of hate is now a bipartisan matter, implying racists deserve praise in death despite the harm they did in life. As journalist Rachel Gilmore aptly stated, “You can oppose political violence without doing all this.”

Condemning political violence is essential, but using Kirk as a symbol of this message is a grave misstep. He energized hateful elements in society, incited division, and profited from it to the tune of millions of dollars. So why should he be honoured in any way, let alone in Canada’s House of Commons. If the Conservatives and Liberals wanted an example of an incident that they could use to highlight political violence in Canada then all they had to do was look to the École Polytechnique massacre or the convoy protests in 2022, where Ottawa residents were subjected to violence, and the Alberta border blockade, which occurred at the same time, where a plan to violently attack the RCMP was foiled. Both of those events offered stark lessons.

By honouring Kirk MPs have emboldened Canadian far-right groups to target critics. The Liberals’ failure to reject Kirk’s legacy suggests a dangerous willingness to appease extremist elements, which could result in political violence in Canada. 

Reverend Howard-John Wesley, a Baptist minister at a church in Virginia captured Kirk’s life best in his viral sermon when he said, “Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. But I'm overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honour and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land." 

Death doesn’t make one a hero if they lived a life promoting hate and Canada’s MPs must understand this and apologize for their lack of judgment. Canadians deserve leaders who unequivocally reject such figures, not ones who betray our values of pluralism and diversity by applauding them. Members of Parliament, especially Liberals, must reflect deeply on their recent actions to avoid eroding our democracy further by honouring the wrong person to make the right point.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Right wing rage about Charlie Kirk’s murder is revealing America’s fascist tilt

Kirk’s allies have issued a chilling ultimatum, “mourn him properly or else”.  For many in the US and beyond this looks like the death of free speech in the US in all but name

  
By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

As Canadians observing the turmoil unfolding in the United States, the assassination of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025 at Utah Valley University feels like a chilling milestone in the descent towards fascism we are witnessing in the United States.  It is a trajectory that evokes the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and Canada stands as Austria, culturally and economically intertwined with the US, vulnerable to being subsumed by the same authoritarian ideology, if not annexed as the 51st state, an idea that Donald Trump has often floated since his return to the presidency.

 

Kirk, a 31-year-old father of two and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot by a sniper during a public speech. The alleged assassin was raised in a Republican family who supported Trump in the last election, and convinced him to turn himself in once they recognized him in security images shown on the news. Kirk’s murder should have prompted national soul-searching about the scourge of political violence in the US in recent years. Instead, it has unleashed a ferocious wave of retribution by Republicans and members of the MAGA movement, against those deemed insufficiently mournful or openly critical of Kirk and his dangerous political messaging, which targeted Democrats, progressives, immigrants, refugees, Palestinians, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ2 community and others who were seen to be enemies of the far-right vision of American society that Kirk promoted.

The campaign of firings, doxxing, death threats, and calls for deportation targeting those who have been critical of Kirk or posted negative comments on social media, signals that free speech, a cornerstone of democracy, is being shredded in America. The flood of threatening and harassing social media posts hasn’t left politician untouched. There is growing concern about the security of public officials and their families, as the flood of threats on social media targets those in government.

More alarmingly, this authoritarian tide is finding a receptive audience in parts of the political right-wing in Canada, and is energizing Canada’s far-right voices, threatening to pull our nation into the same abyss, with admirers of Kirk saying Canadian critics should also be fired from their jobs or ostracized. As we watch from north of the border, the US’s drift toward fascism and its ripple effects in Canada demand urgent reflection, resistance and action.

The scale of the US backlash is staggering and deeply troubling. There have been media reports of many dozens of individuals across the United States being fired or suspended from their jobs for public comments or social media posts about Kirk’s assassination, even when those comments neither incited nor threatened violence. The victims span a wide range of professions and include journalists, teachers, firefighters, elected officials, a Secret Service employee, a junior strategist at Nasdaq, and a public relations worker for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. In states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio, and South Carolina, school employees face investigations or outright termination for their online remarks.

Dowd, a Republican contributor at MSNBC and chief strategist for George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, was dismissed for saying that Kirk’s own radical rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him. “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said, adding, “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”  

In addition, several military personnel were relieved of duty for similar posts, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth telling Pentagon officials to search for negative social media posts about Kirk by serving members of the military, and those that are found to have transgressed be sanctioned. Even quoting Kirk’s own words—such as his claim that “some gun deaths every single year” were a “prudent deal” for preserving the constitutional right to bear arms, have been deemed unacceptable by Kirk’s legion of followers. 

Observing from Canada, this looks like a systematic purge, where dissent is punished with economic devastation, or social ostracization, a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook. The campaign extends far beyond employment. Far-right figures and groups, such as Chaya Raichik’s “Libs of TikTok” account, have taken to platforms like X to collate and expose “objectionable” commentary, triggering torrents of online abuse, doxxing, and death threats. An anonymous website, “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” has published personal details of critics, inciting further harassment. Prominent US conservatives have also amplified these efforts with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) demanding the firing of a Middle Tennessee State University employee who expressed “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk, while Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) has vowed to use congressional authority to ban critics from social media for life.

This campaign of threats and doxxing has also targeted Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore, whose innocuous comment about Kirk has resulted in her receiving death threats. She wrote on X that she was “terrified to think of how far-right fans of Kirk, aching for more violence, could very well turn this into an even more radicalizing moment. Will they now believe their fears have been proven right and feel they have a right to ‘retaliate,’ regardless of who actually was behind the initial shooting?” 

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer swiftly reposted Gilmore’s comments, saying she was “twisted” and had “so much hate in her.” Other Canadian Conservatives also weighed in or reposted Scheer’s comment, resulting in Gilmore being on the top of a list on a website listing those who hate Kirk.

Other proposals that have been floated by Republicans include deporting foreign-born critics, suing them into financial ruin, or revoking their business and driver’s licenses, while education departments in Florida and Oklahoma are investigating teachers for similar comments. None of these individuals advocated violence. Their only “crime” was failing to mourn Kirk in the manner demanded by his supporters.  

This orchestrated suppression mirrors the tactics of fascist regimes, where dissent on any issue that is favoured by those in power is crushed through economic coercion, social ostracism, state-backed intimidation or worse. As Reuters reported, Kirk’s allies have issued a chilling ultimatum, “mourn him properly or else”. For many in the US and beyond this looks like the death of free speech in all but name. The US Supreme Court has long protected even offensive speech, such as expressions of regret over the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, yet today, even mild criticism of Kirk—such as highlighting his history of inflammatory rhetoric—is resulting in professional and personal destruction. Platforms like X amplify doxxing campaigns without restraint, and employers of those who post messages on social media that some deem offensive, fearing right-wing backlash, swiftly capitulate. This erosion of free expression is not just an American problem, it’s a warning for Canada, where similar dynamics are taking root.

The hypocrisy of this response is particularly galling when viewed through Kirk’s own record. He consistently mocked acts of political violence against Democrats, using them to inflame the MAGA base with little empathy for the victims of that violence. In June 2025, when Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband Mark were assassinated, alongside an attempt on state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and his wife, Kirk linked the attacks to Gov. Tim Walz (D), implying his leftist policies invited the violence rather than condemning it outright. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) similarly mocked the killings online before deleting his posts, only to later eulogize Kirk as a “patriot”.

Kirk derided the April 2025 arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) mansion, where Shapiro and his family narrowly escaped a firebomb during Passover, framing it as deserved retribution for Democratic “extremism”. Additionally, after the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Kirk spread conspiracy theories and called for “patriots” to bailout the assailant. These incidents were politicized to rally his supporters, yet his followers now demand universal reverence for him, punishing any deviation.

This double standard underscores the fragility of democratic norms. Kirk’s words fuelled division, yet his death is being used by his supporters to enforce ideological conformity. Ezra Klein, a liberal US commentator, once praised Kirk as “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion,” envying his ability to build through argument rather than force. But Kirk’s legacy, as seen by many in the US and Canada, is one of polarization. If he truly believed in persuasion, his followers have either abandoned it or never believed in it, opting instead for threats and punishment. Alternatively, if Kirk was indeed a master persuader, he convinced his audience that dissent is tantamount to treason—a hallmark of fascist ideology. Either way, the result is a society where disagreement invites peril, and Canada is not immune to this contagion.

This authoritarian drift in the US is energizing Canada’s far-right, much as Nazi Germany’s ideology spread to Austria before the 1938 Anschluss. Groups like Canada Proud, already influenced by US-style populism, are seizing on Kirk’s death to advance their cause in this country. Social media posts from Canadian far-right accounts mirror US calls for doxxing, targeting academics, journalists, and even public servants who’ve commented on Kirk’s death.

The 2022 Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa demonstrated how US rhetoric can fuel Canadian extremism. Kirk’s assassination has amplified this cross-border influence, as Canadian far-right influencers have also been calling for American-style purges. If the US is Nazi Germany, Canada is Austria—geographically and culturally close, economically dependent, and at risk of ideological if not political annexation.

America’s slide toward fascism, marked by loyalty tests, purges, and now the weaponization of grief, threatens to normalize similar tactics in Canada. Our far-right, emboldened by American examples, is already testing these waters, targeting dissenters with online harassment and calls for professional consequences. The Canadian government’s 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act to quell the convoy protests was a flashpoint in this country, but Kirk’s death could ignite another, with far-right groups framing it as proof of a “leftist conspiracy.”

This cross-border contagion risks undermining Canada’s democratic institutions, and its pluralistic traditions, much as Austria’s sovereignty crumbled under Nazi pressure, with the trajectory in the US a warning to this nation. President Trump, having survived two assassination attempts in 2024, has blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s death, ignoring the bipartisan nature of political violence and stoking the desire for vengeance. Lawmakers are cancelling events, bolstering security, and even carrying firearms as threat have escalated over the past few years.

This is not a dictatorship (yet), but what we are seeing is a prelude—a nation where speech is policed, critics’ lives are ruined, and unity is demanded at gunpoint. Canada must heed this lesson. Our far-right is watching, learning, and mobilizing. If we fail to act, we risk following the US into an authoritarian abyss.

To halt this descent, those who believe in democracy and pluralism must recommit to free speech as a universal right, not a privilege for the ideologically pure. Kirk’s death should prompt reflection on political violence, not score-settling. In Canada, we must strengthen democratic norms, reject far-right calls for censorship, and protect those targeted for their views.

The US needs to confront its own hypocrisy, where Kirk’s mockery of political violence against Democrats was tolerated, but criticism of him is not. If America continues down this path, and Canada’s far-right gains traction the way it has south of the border, we risk becoming satellites of an authoritarian nightmare, much like Austria under the Nazi shadow. The time to resist is now—before the border between democracy and fascism blurs beyond recognition.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Charlie Kirk's assassination: A tragic crime, but a predictable result of toxic political rhetoric

Kirk was a key voice in America’s toxic political ecosystem.  Far from being a bold and courageous figure he was a divisive force whose rhetoric often veered into fascist territory,

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

In the early afternoon of September 10, 2025, during the kickoff of a speaking event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in the neck by a sniper from a nearby rooftop.  The 31-year-old Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a prominent voice in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, collapsed in front of a crowd of about 3,000 attendees, dying shortly after from his wounds. 

The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested two days later after a manhunt involving the FBI, which offered a $100,000 reward for tips leading to his capture.  Robinson, described by family members as increasingly political and vocal about Kirk's “hate,” left bullet casings engraved with messages like “Hey, fascist! Catch!”  Authorities have labeled it a targeted political assassination, the latest in a string of violent incidents plaguing American politics.

This murder is unequivocally a crime and the perpetrator needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, because political violence has no place in a democracy.  The crime has been roundly condemned by American politicians of all political persuasions and has resulted in people asking how American politics arrived at this point.  Robinson's actions, whatever his grievances, cross an unforgivable and very dangerous line, because assassination of political voices silences discourse and endangers everyone, regardless of ideology.

Kirk leaves behind a wife and two young children, who deserve our condolences and sympathy for the tragedy that has engulfed their lives.  Yet, as we condemn this criminal act—and we must—it's impossible to ignore the broader context.  Given his very controversial political statements and, at times, implicit support for political violence, Kirk's death at the hands of an assassination is not entirely surprising.  It is a grim symptom of the poisonous tone that has infected US politics under Donald Trump's influence, where vilifying opponents and stoking rage in one's base has normalized threats and, increasingly, actual violence.

Trump's rhetoric has long blurred the line between heated debate and calls for harm.  From his 2015 campaign rallies, where he encouraged supporters to “knock the crap out of” hecklers, to his 2020 tweet during George Floyd protests—”when the looting starts, the shooting starts”—Trump has repeatedly used dangerous language that experts describe as inciting aggression and violence.  In a 2023 Veterans Day speech, he vowed to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” portraying political opponents as subhuman enemies to be eradicated.  Such dehumanizing words don't exist in a vacuum.  They embolden extremists and lead to tragedy.

A 2023 analysis by extremism researchers found that Trump's inflammatory speech correlated with a spike in threats against public officials, with over 150 politically motivated attacks in the first half of 2025 alone.  When leaders like Trump legitimize violence—praising January 6 rioters as “patriots” or suggesting protesters be shot—it's no shock that someone like Robinson, radicalized by the very hate Kirk amplified, takes it to its deadly conclusion.

Kirk himself was a key voice in this toxic ecosystem.  Far from the bold and courageous figure eulogized by Trump and allies like Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who called him a “lion-hearted friend of Israel” fighting for “Judeo-Christian civilization”—Kirk was a divisive force whose rhetoric often veered into fascist territory, targeting vulnerable groups and stoking fear.  He built Turning Point USA into a machine for mobilizing young conservatives to support Trump, but it was fueled by hate speech that demonized immigrants, progressives, and left-wing voices.

Kirk's involvement in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a second Trump term, underscored his authoritarian leanings.  The plan advocates consolidating executive power, dismantling federal agencies meant to protect Americans, and enacting Christian nationalist policies like criminalizing abortion and birth control—hallmarks of illiberal governance that critics label fascist.  Kirk not only endorsed the plan, but also used his platform to promote its goals, urging followers to “fight” against a supposed “deep state” and “woke” threats to America.

Consider Kirk's own words, which reveal his disdain for empathy and humanity that borders on the sociopathic.  In a 2022 episode of his podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” he declared, “I can't stand the word empathy, actually.  I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.”  He argued that true empathy—feeling others' pain—weakens resolve against political foes.  This rejection of basic human connection was no slip up.  It permeated his worldview and the politics he promoted.

Kirk also frequently invoked the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a racist white nationalist trope alleging that immigrants are deliberately supplanting white Americans.  In a 2023 Turning Point USA event, he ranted, “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever.  We should be unafraid to do that.” 

He targeted Indians specifically, claiming in a podcast, “America does not need more visas for people from India.  Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India.  Enough already.”  Such statements weren't abstract.  They fueled real-world harm, echoing the manifestos of mass shooters like the 2019 El Paso gunman who cited similar anti-immigrant fears.

Kirk's attacks on progressive and left-wing voices were equally vicious, often laced with fascist messaging of cultural purity and suppression.  He accused the Democratic Party of supporting “everything that God hates,” urging pastors to deliver sermons framing Democrats as divine enemies.  In discussions of race, he claimed Black Americans were “better” in the 1940s—before civil rights—because they “committed less crimes,” ignoring the era's rampant segregation and lynchings of Black people. 

On gender and LGBTQ+ issues, Kirk was unrelenting, dismissing transgender rights and feminism as societal poisons.  He once stated, in response to a question about what he would do if a 10-year-old was raped, that the girl should carry the pregnancy to term, saying, “The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered . . . Wouldn't it be a better story to say something evil happened and we do something good in the face of evil?”  These weren't fringe opinions.  They were broadcast to millions where they radicalized youth and normalized hate.

His stance on Israel further highlighted his selective sympathy, blending fervent support with genocidal undertones.  Kirk was a vocal defender of Israel's actions in Gaza, denying reports of famine and starvation as “pure visual warfare” by Hamas, despite UN documentation of over tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths.  He visited Israel multiple times, interviewed Netanyahu, and positioned himself as a bulwark against “anti-Semitism,” yet his rhetoric often veered into anti-Semitic territory.  In 2023, he claimed “Jews control... the colleges, the nonprofits, the movies, Hollywood, all of it,” and blamed “Jewish donors” for funding “anti-whiteness” and “Cultural Marxism.”  This wasn't pro-Israel advocacy but instead a fascist fusion of Christian nationalism and conspiracy theories, where support for one nation's violence justified hatred toward others.

The hypocrisy in reactions to Kirk's death versus similar violence against Democrats is stark.  When Minnesota Democratic Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated in their Brooklyn Park home on June 14, 2025—along with an attempt on Senator John Hoffman and his wife—the MAGA base, including Kirk, revelled in it.  Kirk himself used the incident to rail against “radical left” policies and boost his following, much like he did after the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Kirk called for a “patriot” to bail out the attacker, David DePape, saying, “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.”  Right-wing influencers, echoing Kirk, mocked Pelosi's injuries and blamed “San Francisco elites.”

Contrast that with the outpouring for Kirk.  Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff, awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, and blamed the “radical left” without evidence.  Netanyahu mourned him as a “warrior for truth,” ignoring Kirk's own anti-Jewish bigotries.  This double standard—glee for left-wing victims, praise and martyrdom for right-wing ones—exposes how Trump's era has weaponized tragedy to deepen social and political divides.

Kirk's murder must be condemned universally, as should all political violence.  The Hortman assassination, the Pelosi attack, the arson at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's residence in April 2025—these are all abhorrent, and the perpetrators deserve significant prison time for their crimes. 

But violence solves nothing, and it begets more violence, turning political disagreements into blood feuds.  If we accept assassination as a response to ugly political voices we oppose, as some online reactions to Kirk's death suggest, we'll soon see targets on all sides—progressives, conservatives, moderates alike.  Tens of millions may breathe a sigh of relief at the silencing of Kirk's brand of hate, but that's a dangerous path. 

As former Congressional Representative Gabby Giffords, a survivor of political gun violence, said after the shooting, “Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence."  Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, targeted in a right-wing kidnapping plot, echoed this, saying, “We should all come together to stand up against any and all forms of political violence."  Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro added, “The attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.”   These voices, all from the Democratic Party, are voices that advocate empathy— the very quality Kirk scorned—noting that it is essential for healing.

To pretend Kirk was a benevolent commentator is disingenuous.  He was a vile architect of division and hate, whose fascist-leaning rhetoric tore at America's fabric.  His support for Project 2025's authoritarian blueprint, his dehumanization of immigrants as “invaders,” his denial of empathy as “damage”—these weren't bold truths.  They were a cancer that should be excised from America’s body politic.  And all of this thrives under Trump's political umbrella, where rage is currency and opponents should be seen “vermin” to be eradicated. 

Kirk didn't deserve to die the way he did, but his legacy demands a reckoning with truth.  The political culture he spoke to, one dominated by far-right wing elements, Republicans, and the MAGA cult, must use this tragedy to tone down political hate and division.  Whether they will or not remains to be seen.  But given how they thrive on political rage it is unlikely.

What is clear is that Trump's incitement— from shooting looters to rooting out the enemy within—has legitimized political violence in the US, leading directly to tragedies like this.  If he and his followers choose to reject prudence and an elimination of extreme political rhetoric, things will only escalate.  More assassinations, more martyrs, more division. 

The American people deserve better—dialogue over death, unity over us-versus-them.  Only by rejecting the fascist ideologies embodied in Kirk’s messaging can the next assassination of a political voice—on the left or the right—be prevented.  Whether those pushing extreme political ideologies come to realize that they are as much to blame for Kirk’s assassination as are their opponents on the far left is something we are all waiting to find out.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.