The killing of Charlie Kirk has been used in Europe to strengthen and legitimise the far-right and criminalise left-wing opposition, including encouraging violent attacks. This revolting campaign is spearheaded by Europe’s far-right groups but is being facilitated by political tendencies and the media across the political spectrum.
It was launched in the European Parliament, where representatives of the far-right bloc the European Conservatives and Reformists demanded a minute’s silence, protesting loudly when this was denied on procedural grounds. The Europe of Sovereign Nations bloc, led by the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has reportedly nominated Kirk for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.
Leaders of Europe’s main far-right parties queued up to join in portraying the white supremacist, antisemite Kirk as an exemplar of free speech and democratic ideals, whose death was the result of a far-left campaign to denigrate nationalists and patriots all over the world as fascists and therefore supposedly inviting violence against them.
The AfD’s Alice Weidel declared him “a fighter for freedom of speech”, shot “by a fanatic who hates our way of life”.
Jordan Bardella of France’s National Rally denounced the “dehumanising rhetoric of the left and its intolerance” which “fuels political violence.” He added, “No one can ignore this poison that is eating away at our democratic societies.”
Giorgia Meloni, Italian Prime Minister and head of the Brothers of Italy, solidarised herself with the “American conservative community” and deplored “A heinous murder, a deep wound for democracy and for those who believe in freedom.”
Geert Wilders of the Netherlands’ Freedom Party reposted a statement of Kirk’s describing Islam as “the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”.
In Britain, former prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party Boris Johnson said Kirk, who argued that Jews were engineering the mass replacement of whites, was “killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. The world has a shining new martyr to free speech.”
Nigel Farage, head of the Reform UK party leading the polls in Britain, posted a video eulogy and authored an opinion piece in the Daily Mail headlined, “The Left tried to silence my friend Charlie Kirk with wild slanders. Did they create the febrile atmosphere where someone thought it was legitimate to stop him talking for good?”
The intended outcome of Kirk’s beatification is on full display in the UK, where it coincides with a planned “Unite the Kingdom” march in London this weekend led by fascist provocateur Tommy Robinson. It follows a months-long effort in the press and the Houses of Parliament to elevate Britain’s far-right by championing anti-migrant protests outside asylum seeker accommodation and a campaign to hang St George’s and Union Jack flags along streets.
Robinson declared that his protest would be dedicated to the new fascist martyr Charlie Kirk. He claimed that after what had happened, “I’ve got a target on me”.
Last year, the World Socialist Web Site described the ruling class’s “semantic inversion” of the word “antisemite” to mean anyone opposed to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. That was the product of years of lies, witch-hunts, right-wing provocations and frame-up and codified in guidance like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism foisted on universities and public bodies.
The same forces involved in this earlier campaign are now working to have “antifascist” defined as violent, intolerant extremist, and identifying someone as a fascist as “hate speech” directed against democratic exemplars of “free speech”.
A new round of witch-hunts has already begun against anyone raising the fact of Kirk’s fascist politics. Author Nels Abbey has been denounced for drawing the connection with a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.
None of this would be possible without the collusion of social democratic and “liberal” publications and politicians.
In France, Le Monde published a solemn, heartfelt narration of the grief suffered by the MAGA movement and Donald Trump personally. Their “almost familial closeness partly explains the reaction of the president himself, who is not known for his displays of affection. On Thursday, with a hoarse, drawling voice, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Pentagon on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Visibly moved, he paid tribute to the ‘American heroes’ who, on that now distant day, rushed to save the wounded in the collapsing buildings.
“It was impossible,” claimed the paper’s Piotr Smolar, “not to see the incredible overlap between these events and the assassination of Charlie Kirk”.
In Britain, the Guardian’s editors published a sermon against “division”, preaching softly, “In this perilous moment, the response to such hateful crimes should be to coalesce to stress non-violence and civic tolerance.”
Speaking for European social democracy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer leapt online to share that, “My thoughts this evening are with the loved ones of Charlie Kirk. It is heartbreaking that a young family has been robbed of a father and a husband. We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear—there can be no justification for political violence.”
The government of this champion of free and open debate has arrested well over 1,000 people in the last months for peaceful protests against genocide in Parliament Square and the proscription of Palestine Action under terrorism laws. Starmer’s repressive agenda is shared by all those supposedly weeping for democracy after Kirk’s death.
Workers and young people will see through this sham concern for free speech to the real ideological affinity between Kirk and his mourners which stands behind it.
The grotesque outpouring of sympathy in Europe will only widen the gulf between the ruling class and most of the population who are repulsed by Kirk’s ideas. They will feel a cold fury that Starmer and company have shed more tears for Kirk than they have for the millions of Palestinians being bombed, starved and shot out of existence.