ArcaMax

PARIS — Charlie Kirk’s work and mission will live on, said the late conservative influencer’s wife, Erika, reading from a script three days after her husband was assassinated on stage at a campus event in Utah. “They” have no idea what they’ve unleashed, she warned. And who might “they” be?

At the time of her speech, we knew little about the perpetrator’s motives, and still don’t know nearly enough. A 22-year-old onetime top student from Utah who grew up in a staunch Republican family, steeped in gun and internet culture.

That’s it, really. No evidence has emerged of any kind of organized hit job. But “they” will pay, the script decrees.

“They murdered our boss. Our mentor. Our inspiration. Our friend. We will not forgive. We will not forget,” Kirk’s organization, Turning Point, wrote on social media.

The danger now is that the identity of “they” will become whomever or whatever the narrative decides it will be. And that, in turn, risks being shaped by the same hidden interests that have long perverted American politics and discourse — those shadowy figures who prefer influence without fingerprints and power without accountability.

Regardless of accused Tyler Robinson’s political views, there’s no shortage of Americans who hold similar beliefs without it translating into a gruesome act of violence. The whole idea of having punishment baked into the law — like Utah’s death penalty — is to deter any even remotely rational person from committing unilateral executions over differences of viewpoint. What the law cannot always do is preemptively intercept the rare irrational actor who isn’t sufficiently deterred.

The price of attempting to do so would be fascism. Just look at all the calls emerging already to censor online freedom, or even to punish people whose reaction to Kirk’s death is deemed unacceptable

But that’s the turn some risk taking in a knee-jerk reaction, carried by emotion, which is notoriously a poor policy adviser.

Take the words of FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, who reacted to Kirk’s demise with militant warrior rhetoric. “I’ll see you in Valhalla,” he said of Kirk in his address to the nation, referencing the mythological hall of slain Norse warriors.

Strange remarks coming from a man not starring in a Marvel film, whose main challenge is leading a battalion of desk jockeys against a mountain of government paperwork. It’s also oddly specific to wish Valhalla on Kirk when it’s full of Valkyrie women warriors who likely wouldn’t take well to his tradwife lecturing — particularly since the Christianity that Kirk revered rebranded them as satanic witches. Why not wish him well in Heaven, where he would only have to contend with women like Joan of Arc?

“What’s a tradwife?” Joan asks Charlie, as he tries his spiel on her and shows her his “Change My Mind” signboard. “That’s SAINT Joan, to you, son!” Then Charlie tries to convince her to drop out of college in favor of an “MRS degree.”

Admittedly, most won’t look this deep into this kind of militant rhetoric currently being spewed by actors on all sides. They won’t pause to notice the irony or incongruences. Instead, they’ll be mindlessly galvanized by it. Even those who take pride in being driven by facts over feelings are not immune — at least, not when political expedience calls.

One of the first out of the gate on this front was U.S. President Donald Trump. Appearing on Fox News in the wake of the Kirk assassination, he said that he was going to look into left-wing dark money, led by American globalist financier, George Soros.

A fine idea! And while you’re at it, how about investigating the equivalent on the right — the networks that used Charlie Kirk as a front for their interests?

Turning Point USA’s government filings list foundations of wealthy individuals, many of the same who have controlled the agenda on the right for at least the past three decades.

Some of whom, like Charlie, have demanded that America lead wars in the Middle East for Israel all while enabling a fundamentalist Taliban-style radicalization at home that risked sparking an equal but opposite backlash. I should know. I once served as a director for one such Washington think tank, which also benefited from their generosity. I left as the result of refusing an ultimatum to parrot their anti-choice extremism on national television.

TPUSA’s official filings suggest that their interests range from promoting everything from a vision of America under strict social conservatism to free markets and limited government. All of these are distinct issues, yet together they explain why Kirk hit every note — sometimes grotesquely, as in advocating against women having choice in certain health care decisions, or in their life path, particularly if it didn’t have a man at its center.

Kirk was their creation, and their project will persist, drowning out truly independent conservative voices through their fiscal racket. They’re nothing more than the yin to Soros’ yang. If American politics is ever to return to the people, their influence must be defused with equal rigor. Why are these charities even given a free pass to engage in partisan politics anyway, when it’s supposed to be illegal?

At the moment, this deeper, structural issue takes a backseat to a familiar blame game – right against left, or right against further right – all while wealthy string-pullers on all sides don’t even need to get their hands dirty. That job is reserved for the Charlie Kirks. And “they” will always find a way to overcome even the devastating impact of an assassin’s bullet.