September 11th will forever be a sombre date across the United States but, as Thursday’s commemorations reflected on that terrible event from the distance of 24 years, an intense manhunt continued for the killer of the prominent Trump loyalist and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The 31-year-old was shot to death at a public event on Wednesday. Not for the first time, the US seemed caught between a harrowing past and a fretful future.
The horrifying assassination of the Chicago-born self-styled Christian conservative and provocateur of the liberal agenda occurred as he spoke to a college gathering of 3,000 people in Utah. The shock and condemnation swirls with vengeful discourse and concern over how political leaders navigate the poisonous ideological atmosphere in the months and years ahead.
Because Kirk was the star of the organised “American Comeback” tour in the open-air arena at Utah Valley University, hundreds of camera phones were trained on him and captured the gruesome seconds when a single bullet fired from a high-powered rifle ended his life. In a terrible irony, Kirk, who was a steadfast advocate for the Second Amendment right to bear arms, had just been asked a question about just that subject.
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“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” came the question from the crowd.
Kirk, picking up the microphone responded, “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
And then the shot rang out. No arrest has been made, but on Thursday the FBI released grainy still footage of a “person of interest”, a young man of college age wearing baseball cap, sunglasses and a black long-sleeve T-shirt with an indistinct print on the front.
The manhunt draws obvious parallels with the search last November for Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in that year.
In a coldly furious speech delivered in the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, US president Donald Trump alluded to that killing, along with the assassination attempt on his own life in Butler, Pennsylvania last July. He placed the blame for Kirk’s death on the rhetoric and actions of those ideologically opposed to Kirk’s deeply conservative and western-oriented vision of America.
Charlie Kirk: Assassination of conservative activist leaves America in turmoil
“This is a dark moment for America. Charlie Kirk travelled the nation joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good faith debate. On campuses nationwide he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humour and grace,” Trump said.
“It is long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are a consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
“For years those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we are seeing in our country today and it must stop right now.”
To American conservatives and Trump’s Maga movement, Kirk, who was married with two young children, was a folk hero. Now, he becomes a martyr of that cause.
Many millions of other Americans found his political views troubling and even reprehensible. But in the crowded world of podcasting and influencing, Kirk’s distinguishing trait was his willingness and appetite to meet adversaries and to debate and engage with them civilly. That openness cost him his life.
“It happened on college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct,” observed George W Bush, the US president on the day of 9/11, in paying tribute to Kirk. “Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square. Members of other political parties are not our enemies: they are our fellow citizens.”
But that simple truth has become lost even as the US remembered the day when it was fiercely united in its mourning and voice.
