The governor of Utah confirmed on Friday that Robinson had confessed to a family friend – or “indicated to him that he had committed the murder” – and that this person had subsequently contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office on Thursday.

He is currently charged with aggravated murder, the felony of using a firearm resulting in serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice.

Rising star

Kirk's career began in 2012, when he was the sole speaker at a speech at Benedictine University in Arizona, earning the applause of the audience. After his speech, Kirk, who was only 18 at the time, was approached by retired advertising mogul Bill Montgomery, who urged him to “drop out of college” and start an organization that promotes conservative values in schools—which are generally liberal in the US.

After receiving some support from a few Republican donors, they founded the organization Turning Point USA. The name refers to one of the most frequently used phrases: “America is approaching a turning point.”

However, the real turning point came only now. Throughout his career, Kirk debated with opponents, presented himself as a moderate conservative, and always strove to communicate correctly. After heated exchanges, he reached out to many.

His videos—along with those of activists and commentators such as Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh—became widely known, especially among young Americans who wanted to vent their disappointment that re-elected President Barack Obama had indirectly called them racists.

While he ran on a platform of peace in 2008, in 2012 he played the “racial justice” card, in which whites are perceived as “carriers of an innate evil” or a kind of “original sin.” It was precisely in this social climate that short videos on the theme of “Own the Libs” (take down the liberals) emerged, in which Kirk played a leading role.

This enormous shift in opinion within a generation undoubtedly supported Obama's successor, Donald Trump, whom the conservative scene in particular perceived as their representative. In Europe, the migrant crisis also contributed to this, which was one of the reasons for the success of Brexit—the United Kingdom's exit from the EU.

Since the beginning of the 2010s, something that could be simplistically described as the “populist right” has been strengthening its position within the collective West. Opponents automatically labeled them “fascists,” and violent rhetoric increased.

Where diplomacy ends

The world-famous Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz said and wrote that war is the continuation of diplomacy by more brutal means. This principle applies at every social level—between states, war begins when negotiations fail (Ukraine); between ideological groups, civil war breaks out after the failure of parliamentary talks, for example; and between men, a barroom discussion escalates into a brawl.

An important effect of social networks is social isolation, in which the screen acts as a protective shell. This is because people are much braver in their anonymous profiles than in public, a phenomenon that experts have written entire libraries about.

This is also the reason why violence has become so abstract—very few people who argue about politics on social networks have actually been physically assaulted in real life. We only see violence; we follow it on Instagram, Telegram, and various other platforms. The protective shield protects us from its effects.

However, the American focus on race as a political category and the European “we can do it” attitude create a breeding ground for real violence. Countries such as Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom acknowledge the increased proportion of Arab, Turkish, or Pakistani migrants in crime statistics, although they attribute this to “insufficient integration.”

In the US, too, this resurgent wave of populists has focused on crime among the black population. According to available police statistics, blacks commit more than half of all violent crimes—even though they make up at most 13 percent of the US population.

Local judges and prosecutors are also more lenient toward perpetrators in this context, as evidenced by the recent case of the murder of a Ukrainian refugee on a train in Charlotte. Iryna Zarucká was stabbed in the neck by Decarlos Brown Jr., an untreated schizophrenic with 16 prior convictions. However, he was released without bail each time, which the rising populists consider extremely unfair.

In 2016, Donald Trump won for the first time. His eccentric and unpredictable personality divided society even more deeply, with the mainstream media portraying him as a “fascist” or “threat to our democracy” and Obama's people even attributing to him a fabricated affair with ties to Russia.

As people uprooted by modernity increasingly identified with their political beliefs, something that is referred to in psychology or political science as “political animus” came to the fore.

People possessed by this animus view their political opponents as members of a different tribe and apply “in-group vs. out-group” perception to them [in other words, us vs. them]. To a possessed Trump voter, every Democrat is a “libtard,” while to a Democrat, every MAGA Republican voter is a “fascist.”

Currently, however, more and more otherwise normal, healthy, and sane people are possessed by this animus [from Latin: spirit, principle]. Perhaps it would be appropriate at this time to turn to someone with expertise in this area—for example, an exorcist....

and the war begins

However, the actual hostility between political groups in the US goes back further than just the beginning of this millennium. Even before the Republican primaries in 1992, one of the presidential candidates, Patrick Buchanan, warned of a “culture war.”

In his view, the aim was to occupy institutions that decided whether there would be “abortion on demand,” pornography, or homosexual “marriage” in America. In Charlie Kirk's day, the main issue was defending freedom of speech and American identity in the face of unlimited immigration—which, according to the New York Times, even weakens community cohesion and prevents problems from being solved through elections.

For Kirk, who was from Scottsdale, Arizona, a rosary vigil was held in several cities on the day of his death. At the chapel in Boise, Idaho, the funeral service was disrupted by provocateurs from the extremist Black Lives Matter movement, whose leader, Terry Wilson III, repeatedly shouted “F*** Charlie Kirk.”

Democrats in Congress also disrupted the minute of silence proposed by House Majority Leader Mike Johnson. A minute of silence was also called for in the European Parliament, but it was also disrupted by Brussels leftists. The spiral of hateful radicalization thus seems unstoppable.

The end of moderates in the US

It's fair to say that Charlie Kirk was probably the last moderate conservative in the United States. If his opponents are willing to shoot him down for a “broad discussion in the experimental stage,” it's a signal to his former supporters that this discussion is no longer possible.

Perhaps this marks a return to a natural state in which small tribes exterminated each other down to the last individual—as chimpanzees do, which plunged researcher Jane Goodall into a depression that lasted several years.

During her research in the 1960s, she observed a chimpanzee “tribe” that split into two groups led by two alpha males. The two new tribes began to exterminate each other, killing the young and eating each other's faces. However, this did not happen because of an expected “shortage of resources,” but because higher primates are simply predisposed to do so – a stranger is automatically an enemy.

So, the real human development is that we have evolved from the total extermination of entire families to a war with rules, in which mainly knights fought, and from there we have moved closer and closer to diplomacy and long-term peace treaties or good neighborliness agreements.

However, the ongoing social shock caused by endless polarization and mutual demonization is forcing the human spirit to revert to its former “natural” state. What began as a culture war—waged with arguments and the occupation of positions in government—is gradually leaving its cloudy, abstract sphere and descending to earth, among the people.

That is why American conservatives are also turning away from their previous favorites, who are grouped around media outlets such as the Daily Wire, National Review, and others. Especially in the X network, right-wing radicalization is escalating to the point of open Holocaust denial.

Charlie Kirk was one of those who tried to keep the social debate in a kind of reasonable center, but his death has literally stirred up a huge number of people whom he himself raised. And although he probably would not have wanted this himself, it is the natural effect of the assassination of a “general in the culture war.”

It is currently unclear who will replace the young man who, according to all his colleagues, was well on his way to the presidency. It is also possible that Turning Point will disappear from the public sphere or transform into an organization with a completely different focus.

What is clear, however, is that anyone who at least partially takes Kirk's place will be tougher and more determined, and will be even less likely to mince words. Unfortunately, this could also happen to his son – if he grows up in the social consciousness that his political opponents killed his father.

The coffin containing Charles Kirk's body was transported on September 12 by the government plane Air Force Two, and Vice President JD Vance, who had traveled to Utah for the occasion, also carried it. The funeral service was held at Dream City Church on the same day.

Will we end up in a civil war?

David Betz, professor of military strategy at King's College London, warned as early as the summer of 2023 that the societies of the collective West meet most of the conditions for the outbreak of civil war. A political assassination could thus be a trigger, similar to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand d'Este at the beginning of World War I.

“When people stop talking, violence ensues, and then civil war begins,” is Kirkos' warning. Today, however, everyone is talking about civil war. Some are warning against it, others are preparing for it.

Yet hardly anyone today can imagine street battles between MAGA extremists and Antifa/BLM militants. Not to mention that Slovakia is also on the edge of the American empire, and what starts there will reach us within five years.

The general of the culture war, Charlie Kirk, has fallen. Let's not bury his tactics with him.