The Murder of Charlie Kirk Was Not a George Floyd Moment

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

Just days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the left is working overtime to hide the truth and create fantasies about his death.

Specifically, leftists alleged that conservatives were going to “pounce” on the death to wage protests and boost radical agendas in the manner of what followed George Floyd’s death.

Here are some of the lies that such a ridiculous narrative entails.

One, Charlie Kirk is not conservatives’ George Floyd. There were no mass riots after his death of the sort that followed Floyd’s demise.

Floyd’s death was used by the left to justify five months of rioting, arson, murder, looting, and attacking police officers.

The postmortem respect for Kirk’s singular life was not characterized by $2 billion in property damage, the torching of a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic church, 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law-enforcement officers.

Instead, thousands of people peacefully joined his Turning Point USA organization and promised to redirect their lives toward peaceful political engagement.

Two, after Kirk’s death, no prominent Republican or conservative is encouraging ongoing mass (and often violent) protests in the manner of high-profile leftists like Kamala Harris.

She blurted out on national television in June 2020, “But they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day. Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up—and they should not. And we should not.”

No conservatives—like the spouse of Governor Tim Walz—declared of the 2020 arsons, “I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing. I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

Instead, Kirk’s supporters are calling on everyone to express their anger peacefully at the ballot box by registering to vote and showing up for the 2026 midterms.

Three, Charles Kirk was not George Floyd. He was a law-abiding, religiously devout, political organizer, happily married with two children. Kirk was a media figure and head of a huge 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose brand was calmly debating students who disagreed with him.

Floyd should not have died while in police custody. But Floyd’s comorbidities were many. When arrested, he was under the influence of fentanyl and methamphetamine, with a heart condition and recent Covid infection.

He was a career felon, with eight previous criminal convictions, who had in the past staged a violent home-invasion robbery and pointed a knife at the abdomen of one of the female occupants.

In contrast, when Kirk was killed, he was not on drugs. He was not resisting police officers. And he was not trying to pass counterfeit currency. Instead, he eschewed violence and tried to engage in polite dialogue with students of different views.

Four, Kirk was not, as alleged by the left, murdered by a right-wing shooter. His death was not an example of right-on-right violence. Just the opposite was true. The shooter, Tyler Robinson, was on record with his family expressing hatred for the conservative Kirk.

Robinson engraved his bullets with both Antifa-like “anti-fascist” messaging and transgender references. He lived with his transgender partner, who was a leftist. Robinson’s aim was to end Kirk’s peaceful conservative career because he hated his politics and popularity and feared his influence.

Five, the left used the death of Floyd to promote its hard-left and otherwise unpopular agenda—defunding the police, cashless bail, decriminalization of theft, and DEI mandates. It manipulated outrage, chaos, and months-long violence to ram through radical cultural and top-down legal changes that otherwise had little popular support.

Conservatives upset over Kirk’s murder will bolster Turning Point USA. They are determined through peaceful means to persuade more youth about the poverty and dangers of progressive thought.

Why is the left fabricating the circumstances surrounding and following Kirk’s murder?

In its signature projective style, the left is terrified that the right might follow its own example—by manipulating facts, ginning up street violence, and issuing non-negotiable demands to achieve its agenda.

But the chief difference between the Kirk assassination and the death of Floyd is that the post-Floyd agenda had no majority support and so had to be rammed through in hysterical times by implied threats of unending violence beyond five months of continued mayhem.

The post-Kirk agenda eschewed violence because it was both morally wrong and politically counterproductive—since most Americans naturally favored most of what Kirk championed.