Our country was shaken just a few short weeks ago by the brutal assassination of conservative icon and debater Charlie Kirk. Despite many trying to point fingers at the right and blame them for their own role model being shot, I will firmly say that the fault is purely on the left.
For the past few weeks, left-leaning individuals on campus and abroad have tried to tell me only the fringe members of their beliefs push violent rhetoric. That is false.
For years, Democrat lawmakers and influencers have used language calling Trump, Republicans and their followers fascists and used dangerous rhetoric.
In September, left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who previously collaborated with Reps. Ilhan Ohmar and AOC, encouraged open violence against landlords and “gutting” of leftist opponents.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, in a public protest in February, said, “We are going to be in your face. We are going to be on your a–.” The representative also called for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to be “knocked over the head.”
Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, in a public protest in February, called for her followers to shut down Washington, D.C. and said that they were “at war.”
When speaking about actions by Elon Musk, Rep. Robert Garcia of California declared in a CNN interview from February that what the American public wants is “for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight.”
In October of last year, Minnesota governor and 2025 vice presidential nominee Tim Walz repeated a statement from Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which said, “No one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump, and he is a fascist to his core,” and Walz joked last month about hoping for Trump’s death.
Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also said she believed Donald Trump was a fascist in a 2024 interview.
President Joe Biden declared in a nationwide address in September of 2023 that Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an “extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said in September 2022 that a Republican abortion bill was “literally a call to arms.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continually says Trump’s ideology is ‘fascist’ and calls him a white supremecist, most notably in a tweet following a 2020 presidential debate.
Rep. Maxine Walters of California, in a protest in 2018, called for Californians to create a crowd and “push back” against any Republican cabinet member or admin members whom her supporters saw in public.
These are not fringe members of the left side of politics. These are elected officials and commentators with major platforms, some of which are at the highest level, alienating and dehumanizing half of the population of the U.S.
The response by the left’s population has been even worse, with many across the country celebrating the death, or touting Tyler Robinson — Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin — as a hero.
When elected officials repeat dehumanizing statements and try to perceive a large portion of the population, people on the right, as evil, fascists and Nazis, then it should not come as a surprise when someone thinks it’s justified to murder one of the prominent members of that population.
And when a critical mass of the left celebrates this, it encourages others to do the same or similar acts.
Some might argue that the same applies to the right, but there is a difference between not mourning the death of someone, such as Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and openly celebrating the death of a political influencer. The right may not have mourned the Hortmans, but they did not celebrate the death. In fact, leftists showed up and terrorized vigils and destroyed protests for Charlie Kirk across the country, while the right tried to pray and mourn.
Even this week, Jay Jones, Democrat attorney general candidate for Virginia, was revealed to have made comments in a private conversation in August 2022 hoping for the death of former GOP leader Todd Gilbert and his children. What does the left do?
Instead of condemning the action, withdrawing support or stepping away, the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee reaffirmed its support of Jones, calling the comments a “past mistake” and trying to brush it aside, even as other notable Democrat lawmakers in Virginia condemned the action. It is also notable that Jones, according to the same article, had not lost a single endorsement, including that of the current front runner for governor, Abigail Spanberger, since the information came to light.
Members of the left encourage violence and justify it by blaming the right for its own murder, celebrating the murderer at the same time. There is no more feigned ignorance. The left must change and universally condemn violence and the rhetoric that leads to it, or it must accept that it is the face of violence in the United States.
Trenton Buffenbarger is chairman of the UA Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student organization.
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