Ani O'Brien: When the Left decides violence is justified

Charlie Kirk’s assassination could have been a moment of unified horror bringing together anyone who values democracy, free speech, or civil society. That it was not is cause for great alarm and demonstrates that society-wide political animosity is at dangerous levels. Kirk was not killed in an accident. He was hunted, targeted, and gunned down in front of an audience because of his political views. His killer didn’t just dislike what Kirk said, he believed Kirk’s very existence was intolerable and he was justified in eliminating him. This is the culmination of years of rhetoric from the left that frames conservatives not as political opponents but as evil incarnate, “hatemongers” whose words are literal violence. Once you have convinced people that speech is violence, it is only a small step to convince them that real violence is simply “self-defence.”

Kirk’s assassination was the first of its kind since the spate of political murders of the 1960s, but it was also not an isolated event. We have seen similar patterns in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and when Luigi Mangione, a well-educated young man radicalised by leftist ideology, murdered UnitedHealthcare’s former CEO Brian Thompson.

As in the aftermath of the attempt on Trump’s life and the murder of Thompson, the shock of Kirk’s assassination came not just from the crime itself but also the way much of the left has responded to it. Instead of mourning, showing basic human decency, or simply shutting the hell up, many online activists and commentators celebrated his death. Social media was filled with sneering remarks about how “one less fascist” was in the world, or how “hate lost.”

This is what happens when you spend years lying about someone, twisting words, ripping quotes out of context, and painting them as a monster. Kirk spent his career debating, writing, and rallying young conservatives. But the left caricatured him as a bigot so dangerous that his murder could be treated as a kind of social justice. It’s depraved, and it reveals a sickness running through progressive culture.

Once political opponents are demonised as existential threats, once their speech is declared “harm,” violence becomes easier to justify. For years, leftist activists and media commentators have painted Trump, Kirk, and others as not simply wrong, but as fascists, Nazis, or genocidal threats to minorities. It’s language designed not to persuade but to dehumanise. And when you dehumanise, you legitimise violence.

Adding insult to injury, major media outlets and left-wing influencers have tried to spin the assassin as a far-right extremist. This is despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The suspect’s own family members told reporters he was a far-left radical, consumed by progressive ideology and convinced he was striking back against “hate.” He reportedly engraved his bullets with far-left slogans, making his motive pretty unambiguous. Investigators say he was in a relationship with a trans-identified male and heavily involved in online networks of militant trans activists. His text messages are said to describe Kirk as a “dangerous bigot” whose speech justified violent reprisal. None of this fits the media’s preferred narrative, so they simply manufactured the lie that he was somehow far-right.

“While his motive remains unclear, the killing has sparked conversations about the widening gap between left and right politics.” NZ Herald

This is a familiar playbook. When the facts don’t suit them, the left and their media allies distort the story until it does. They need the killer to be right-wing because the alternative, that one of their own acted on their rhetoric, is too damaging. So they invent, omit, and obscure, counting on the public’s short memory and the noise of the news cycle to bury the truth. But the truth is clear: Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a man radicalised by leftist ideology, nurtured in extremist subcultures, and driven by a worldview that declared words to be violence and conservatives to be enemies of humanity. Pretending otherwise is not just dishonest. It is dangerous, because it ensures we don’t confront the real source of the threat.

President Trump is determined not to allow this left wing extremism to continue to be justified and legitimised and has moved to classify Antifa as a terrorist organisation. Antifa is not a harmless protest movement. It is a network of violent extremists who have burned cities, attacked police, assaulted journalists, and targeted conservatives. They have inflicted domestic terror across the country, smashing businesses, torching precincts, and physically silencing anyone who disagrees with them. Their actions are not “anti-fascist” in any meaningful sense. They are anti-democratic and anti-civilisation, replacing debate and the rule of law with intimidation and mob rule.

A particularly troubling aspect is the overlap between Antifa’s ranks and the radical trans activist movement. Many Antifa cells openly recruit in spaces linked to militant trans activism and arrest records reveal the extent to which transgenderism is a core part of their activism. The ideological connection is obvious: activists are repeatedly told that “words are violence,” that they are “under attack,” and that their opponents are “trying to erase them.” This framing does not encourage debate or reform. It fosters a siege mentality where violence is justified as self-defence, even pre-emptively. We have seen heavily armed trans-aligned groups marching under banners declaring themselves at “war.” This is not the language of peaceful activism. It is the language of insurgency.

The consequences are playing out in blood. The United States has already suffered mass shootings linked to trans individuals steeped in this rhetoric of persecution and vengeance. When you convince unstable people that they are soldiers in a holy war, you should not be surprised when they pick up actual weapons. Yet instead of challenging this narrative, much of the left has nurtured it, insisting that conservatives who merely speak are committing “violence,” while excusing actual violence as righteous resistance.

For years, the media and political establishment have been obsessed with the so-called threat of the “far right.” Every security briefing, every intelligence report, every sensational headline seems to hammer home the narrative that right-wing extremism is the greatest danger facing Western democracies. Yet time and again, the actual violence we witness is coming from the left. Cities burned during Antifa’s rampages. Conservative speakers assaulted on college campuses. A former President shot at. A leading conservative thinker assassinated. A Fortune 500 CEO murdered. These are the fruit of left-wing radicalisation.

Despite this, government agencies and security services pour their resources into monitoring and hyping the “far right.” They compile endless reports about online chatter, flag grandmothers at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists, and treat traditional conservative dissent as a precursor to extremism. All of this while left-wing militants openly organise, recruit, and threaten violence in broad daylight, often with the tacit approval of establishment voices. When the FBI and DHS brief Congress, they rarely dwell on Antifa, eco-terrorists, or trans militias. The spotlight is fixed squarely on the right, no matter how sparse the evidence.

The question practically asks itself: why? Why are conservatives framed as the dangerous ones while left-wing violence gets brushed aside or excused as “activism”? Part of the answer is ideological bias. The institutions of media, academia, and bureaucracy lean left, and so their blind spots reflect their own sympathies. But part of it is more sinister. If the left can keep the public terrified of a phantom far-right bogeyman, they can justify censorship, surveillance, and repression aimed squarely at their political rivals. It is a strategic choice: ignore the violence of your own side, inflate the threat of the other, and in the process, delegitimise your opposition altogether.

This is the danger we face: a movement on the left that no longer sees political opponents as fellow citizens, but as enemies who must be silenced, punished, or eliminated. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is not a tragic anomaly. It is the logical endpoint of a culture that glorifies Antifa, indulges trans militancy, and treats conservatives as legitimate targets. Unless we confront this extremism head-on, the violence will not stop. It will escalate.

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.