Latest / The Front / Charlie Kirk murder rocks Gen Z’s political world

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Charlie Kirk murder rocks Gen Z’s political world · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Friday, September twelve, twenty twenty five. Dementia now kills
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  Speaker 1: one in ten Australians more than any other disease. That's
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  Speaker 1: the news in a new report from the Australian Institute
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  Speaker 1: of Health and Welfare showing dementia's overtaken coronary heart disease
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  Speaker 1: as our biggest killer. Chinese officials are fingerprinting citizens of
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  Speaker 1: the Solomon Islands and keeping tabs on their households. They
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  Speaker 1: say it's all about protection and conflict resolution, but local
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  Speaker 1: opponents say it's probably illegal and an infringement on the
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  Speaker 1: rights of citizens. That exclusive is live right now at
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  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dou It's the moment that will
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  Speaker 1: change Generation z's view of politics forever. The public assassination
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  Speaker 1: of thirty one year old Conservative warrior Charlie Kirk. He
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  Speaker 1: debated ideas with university students on a campus in Utah.
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  Speaker 1: Kirk was globally famous thanks to social media and is
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  Speaker 1: widely credited with swinging young men to Donald Trump at
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  Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election. Today, how political violence spread
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  Speaker 1: across the political spectrum, and why ordinary Americans are arming
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  Speaker 1: themselves in a new climate of fear and loathing. Wednesday,
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  Speaker 1: September ten was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Oran, Utah,
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  Speaker 1: and the hero of conservative America for the TikTok generation,
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  Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk, was sitting in the shade under an open
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  Speaker 1: sided tent.
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  Speaker 2: Thank Martha, bring the best lips that U thoughts.
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  Speaker 1: Far, challenging all comers to debate ideas with him.
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  Speaker 2: You don't agender Americans have been masshooters over the last
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  Speaker 2: eight years, too many.
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  Speaker 1: When he was shot dead.
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  Speaker 2: If you know how many mass here there have been
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  Speaker 2: in America over the last ten years, felt singer Nighttonic
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  Speaker 2: Game violence.
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  Speaker 1: The footage is nauseating. This handsome young man, a hugely
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  Speaker 1: significant figure in American life, slaughtered like so many political
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  Speaker 1: figures before him.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's a quite a dangerous moment for America.
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  Speaker 1: Claire Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent.
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  Speaker 3: We are seeing an era of populist political violence in America.
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  Speaker 3: It is a slippery slope that America is on at
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  Speaker 3: the moment when it comes to the way people react
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  Speaker 3: to political debate, the tense that was above. Charlie Kirk
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  Speaker 3: when he was shot had the words proved me wrong
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  Speaker 3: on it And that was his mandra He who go
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  Speaker 3: to university campuses. He'd get people to ask him questions,
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  Speaker 3: he'd debate them, he would throw his political arte is
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  Speaker 3: at the.
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  Speaker 2: But yes, so you do not hate the LGBT community
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  Speaker 2: and a turning point is not against LGBT. How could
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  Speaker 2: I hate that which I have a heart for? Thank you,
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  Speaker 2: and I might.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, no matter whether you agree or disagree
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  Speaker 3: with Charlie Cook, I think that's actually irrelevant. The fact
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  Speaker 3: is that he was promoting the marketplace of ideas. He
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  Speaker 3: was the prime rally of the youth vote to Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 2: What is Kamala Harris's greatest accomplishment? See that's that question.
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  Speaker 2: You can't okay, what is her greatest accomplishment?
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  Speaker 4: Oh?
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  Speaker 2: I wish I had this on the top of my head,
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  Speaker 2: but I don't. There are three things I want you
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  Speaker 2: to think about when voting for Trump.
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  Speaker 3: Home ownership, border war.
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  Speaker 2: Three objective things. Donald Trump will restore the American dream
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  Speaker 2: for your generation. How are you leaning this election?
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  Speaker 3: Well?
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  Speaker 1: After what you said, Trump, let's go on.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, Charlie Kirk had a resonance well beyond America.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I have a teenage son, Claire, and you know,
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  Speaker 3: he woke up this morning and all your friends it's
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  Speaker 3: all they were talking about, you know, and whether they
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  Speaker 3: support him or didn't support him, it was just big news.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, he is a big figure in the youth movement,
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  Speaker 3: not just in America, and so I think Trump's reaction
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  Speaker 3: is going to be very important.
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  Speaker 1: In that way. Is this the Martin Luther King moment
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  Speaker 1: for a new generation, for that TikTok generation where suddenly
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  Speaker 1: they see that their political figureheads are so vulnerable?
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  Speaker 3: That's right. In fact, I think for a lot of
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  Speaker 3: that teenagers today, they just haven't really seen this happen.
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  Speaker 3: I think it will shock a lot of younger people.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, again, younger people, let's just hope that
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  Speaker 3: they react appropriately and sensibly here and that we don't
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  Speaker 3: have sort of vigilantes running around in the US trying
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  Speaker 3: to avenge this, as some commentators have called for.
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  Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk was famously a supporter of the Second Amendment,
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  Speaker 1: the right to bear arms. He in fact said that
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  Speaker 1: some gun debts a year where the price Americans had
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  Speaker 1: to pay full freedom.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to
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  Speaker 2: have a cost of unfortunately some gun debts every single year,
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  Speaker 2: so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect
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  Speaker 2: our other God given rights. That is a prudent deal.
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  Speaker 2: It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in
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  Speaker 2: a complete alternate universe. So how do you reduce very
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  Speaker 2: simple people say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games?
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  Speaker 2: Because armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why.
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  Speaker 1: Now he's been shot dead. And of course his enemies
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  Speaker 1: are very quick to suggest that this is the chickens
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  Speaker 1: coming home to roost for him. How do you think
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  Speaker 1: this will fit into the conversation about gun control in
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  Speaker 1: the United States.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think it will change that conversation, Claire. There's
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  Speaker 3: been so many cycles of this. When I was the
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  Speaker 3: correspondent there, I went to Las Vegas when the government
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  Speaker 3: shot sixty people. At that point, there was a whole
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  Speaker 3: range of big mass shootings in schools, etc. Probably even
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  Speaker 3: more so than there are right now. We have this
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  Speaker 3: exact same cycle in America when a prominent person or
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  Speaker 3: a mass shooting happens, there's a lot of discussion about
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  Speaker 3: it for a very short time. Occasionally people talk about
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  Speaker 3: doing something, and then it just gets lost in the
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  Speaker 3: political process because the Democrats haven't got the numbers quite
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  Speaker 3: simply to push through strong gun control. It's an endless
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  Speaker 3: debate in America, but it really goes around in circles.
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  Speaker 1: America has a shocking history of political violence, the assassinations
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  Speaker 1: of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, of course,
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  Speaker 1: of Martin Luther King Junior. But is there something different
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  Speaker 1: about what's happening now, Ken, It's a.
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  Speaker 3: Very different American society, Claire. I mean, it's interesting because
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  Speaker 3: you think about the way this has happened in American history.
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  Speaker 3: You're right, there has been a lot of this stuff.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, in the nineteen sixty three example, we had
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  Speaker 3: both Kennedy's shot, Martin Luther King. We had two incredibly
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  Speaker 3: polarizing debates, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.
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  Speaker 3: So now that was a hugely turbulent time and people
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  Speaker 3: wondered at that point in time, where America could ever
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  Speaker 3: come out of that cycle of violence. Well, look, it
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  Speaker 3: did punctuated by other violence. But what we are seeing
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  Speaker 3: now is a slightly different manifestation of this violence, and
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  Speaker 3: I think quite a concerning one in the sense that
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  Speaker 3: America is as politically polarized now as it has been
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  Speaker 3: for generations. You have a whole series of things happening
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  Speaker 3: at once, which is contributed to this one is a
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  Speaker 3: complete loss of faith in institutions. When you go out
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  Speaker 3: to small towns in America, especially in sort of Trump
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  Speaker 3: regions Republican regions, there is a real distrust about the
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  Speaker 3: institutions and the leaders of their country. And that's because
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  Speaker 3: their lot has not improved very much at all. They
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  Speaker 3: see wealth is view very unequal in America. The rich
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  Speaker 3: are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. And of
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  Speaker 3: course that's the phenomenon that helped Trump get elected in
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  Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and again in the last election. Trump didn't
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  Speaker 3: create that. I mean, Trump is a polarizing president, but
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  Speaker 3: it's wrong to say that Trump has created that. He's
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  Speaker 3: perpetuated some of those trends. Certainly, Trump doesn't trust institutions.
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  Speaker 3: You can tell that by the people he's putting in
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  Speaker 3: charge of the Health Department, the FBI, etc. To put
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  Speaker 3: his own people in But the manifestation of this polarization
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  Speaker 3: in America comes from the haves and the have nots.
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  Speaker 3: And what that's done is that when it comes to
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  Speaker 3: political debate, people are very intolerant of other people having
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  Speaker 3: a different view. The left considers the right the Charlie
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  Speaker 3: Kirk views of America to be a great danger to
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  Speaker 3: American democracy, and the right considers the left the Democrat views, which,
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  Speaker 3: of course, the powerhouse of Democrats is the inner city
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  Speaker 3: elites these days, and they consider them to be a
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  Speaker 3: real threat to the future of America and the American dream.
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  Speaker 3: So people interpret different political opinions through a rather apocalyptic
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  Speaker 3: lens in the way they didn't before, and I think
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  Speaker 3: that does fuel the risk of this actually manifesting itself
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  Speaker 3: into violence.
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  Speaker 1: Always when there's one of these shootings, there's a very
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  Speaker 1: quick look at the possible motivations of the person involved.
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  Speaker 1: When there was a shooting of Donald Trump in July
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, he was shot in the ear famously
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  Speaker 1: at a rally in Pennsylvania, it was difficult to tell
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  Speaker 1: the political persuasion of that shooter. Thomas Crooks, who was
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  Speaker 1: shot dead by the Secret servers ready he was a
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  Speaker 1: registered Republican, but he'd also donated to the Democrats. Similarly,
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  Speaker 1: Ryan Ruth, who was detained allegedly with a high powered
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  Speaker 1: rifle outside Donald Trump's golf club in September twenty twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, his trial was just about to get underway.
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  Speaker 1: It's similarly unclear what if any political motivation he actually had.
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  Speaker 1: He seems to be a disillusioned Trump supporter who had
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  Speaker 1: also indicated some sort of democratic support. Is there a
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  Speaker 1: way to frame the left versus the right in terms
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  Speaker 1: of who is actually carrying out political violence?
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  Speaker 3: Look, it's very difficult because the truth is that most
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  Speaker 3: of the people who carry out these acts are mentally unstable.
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  Speaker 3: A lot of them have fallen into being manipulated by
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  Speaker 3: the dark recesses of the internet, conspiracy theories. You know,
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  Speaker 3: these are not normal people who put out guns and
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  Speaker 3: try to kill leaders. But you're absolutely right, there is
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  Speaker 3: no ideology in America owns this violence. It's perpetrated on
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  Speaker 3: both sides. We had the two assassinations attempts against Donald Trump,
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  Speaker 3: and while we don't know the motivations actually of those
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  Speaker 3: those shooters or would be shooters, clearly they were hostile
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  Speaker 3: towards the president. We also had earlier this year the
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  Speaker 3: assassination of a Democrat congress woman from Minnesota, and we
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  Speaker 3: had a violent us AN attack on the governor's residence
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  Speaker 3: in Philadelphia of Josh Shapiro, again a Democrat. So it's
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  Speaker 3: all spectrums of the political divide that are carrying out
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  Speaker 3: this violence. So I think we need to look well
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  Speaker 3: beyond the ideology. And I think one of the problems
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  Speaker 3: perhaps in the next couple of days, in the debate
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  Speaker 3: in America Claire with Charlie Kirk's death, is that, you know,
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  Speaker 3: you've already got a couple of conservative commentators saying that
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  Speaker 3: we must avenge this, this is war. I mean, the
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  Speaker 3: real danger here is copycat killings. Someone who's a bit unstable,
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  Speaker 3: who considers there should be a vengeance retaliation for his death.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, that would be a disaster. And that's one
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  Speaker 3: of the problems with these this sort of violence is
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  Speaker 3: it does perpetrate potentially copycat killings. But it's certainly I
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  Speaker 3: think the ideology of it is actually just not nearly
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  Speaker 3: as important as the concept of people being willing to
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  Speaker 3: cross that threshold and commit political acts of viole regardless
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  Speaker 3: of what the ideology of the victim.
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  Speaker 1: Is coming up the ordinary Americans who no longer feel safe.
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  Speaker 1: It feels too dangerous to be in public life in
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  Speaker 1: America now unless you have a full secret service detail.
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  Speaker 1: Does that limit the pool of people who are willing
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  Speaker 1: to put their hands up to stand for public office.
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  Speaker 3: Look, you wonder whether that would be a factor. And
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  Speaker 3: it's not just politicians, Claire, I mean this sort of
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  Speaker 3: form of political violence, if you like, manifests itself in
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  Speaker 3: other ways. We saw the head of United Healthcare, huge
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  Speaker 3: health company in America, of course, being gunned down on
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  Speaker 3: the streets, and insurance company by a guy who didn't
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  Speaker 3: like the company's insurance policies. You know, We've seen two
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  Speaker 3: Jewish employees at the Israeli Embassy in Washington gunned down
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  Speaker 3: over the Gaza war. We're seeing violence manifests itself, and
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  Speaker 3: you might not call it direct political violence, but he
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  Speaker 3: is the same concept. And I think that is a
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  Speaker 3: disturbing trend.
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  Speaker 4: It's a long past time for all Americans and the
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  Speaker 4: media to confront the fact that violence and murder are
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  Speaker 4: the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree
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  Speaker 4: in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years,
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  Speaker 4: those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like
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  Speaker 4: Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
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  Speaker 4: This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism
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  Speaker 4: that we're seeing in our country today, and it must
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  Speaker 4: stop right now.
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  Speaker 1: You've raised children in the United States, cam in ordinary life,
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  Speaker 1: day to day life, even in places like Washington, DC.
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  Speaker 1: You know, does it feel scary to to have children
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  Speaker 1: at school, to have people going out to football games,
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  Speaker 1: to be yourself out on the streets? Does it feel
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  Speaker 1: that dangerous in the United States.
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  Speaker 3: Look, my honest answer is no, in the sense I
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  Speaker 3: just sort of tried to put it to one side.
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  Speaker 3: But look, there was a part of me. My child
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  Speaker 3: was in elementary school, which is our primary school, and
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  Speaker 3: he spent his ninth birthday reciting the lockdown drills he
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  Speaker 3: had in his classroom that day. And so these things
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  Speaker 3: definitely pray on you when you live in America. But
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  Speaker 3: generally speaking, it's a fantastic place to live. It is
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  Speaker 3: just a society that is suffering, I think from the
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  Speaker 3: crumbling of the civic and social guard rails. That once
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  Speaker 3: stopped people from sliding from political dissent and political opinion
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  Speaker 3: into the potential for violence, especially over the last five
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  Speaker 3: or six years. But it's really been happening slowly. I
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  Speaker 3: think over a generation.
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  Speaker 1: Every time there's a public place shooting in the United States,
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  Speaker 1: we hear hopeful talk that this might be the moment
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  Speaker 1: that creates some momentum for gun reform. That happened when
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  Speaker 1: kindergarteners were murdered at Sandy Hook when President Obama was
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  Speaker 1: in office. It's been repeated again and again, and yet
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  Speaker 1: nothing ever happens. Is there ever a moment when things
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  Speaker 1: are going to change and could this be it?
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  Speaker 3: I don't think so, because the Americans just see it
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  Speaker 3: very differently. People do believe in the Second Amendment. There
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  Speaker 3: are so many guns out there you could never have
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  Speaker 3: a buy back. I mean, America is not the sort
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  Speaker 3: of country that would ever tolerate a buy it back
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  Speaker 3: on both sides of politics. The best you can ever
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  Speaker 3: get in America as far as gun control goes, is
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  Speaker 3: a renewed debate over assault weapons, over AR fifteen's and
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  Speaker 3: those sort of weapons that shoot so many bullets you
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  Speaker 3: can have mass killings in just a couple of minutes.
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  Speaker 3: Even then, Bill Clinton introduced legislation to ban them, but
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  Speaker 3: that was a sunset clause and that's never come back again.
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  Speaker 3: And this increasing distrust of institutions that we're seeing at
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  Speaker 3: the moment in the States is only going to lend
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  Speaker 3: itself to people wanting to buy guns. Even well. I
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  Speaker 3: know a friend of mine in Washington is died in
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  Speaker 3: the Wall Democrat and he has bought a gun. I said,
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  Speaker 3: why was that. I was over there a few a
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  Speaker 3: few weeks ago, and he said, because I just don't
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  Speaker 3: I just don't feel safe anymore.
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  Speaker 1: Cameron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. This story
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  Speaker 1: is moving fast and you can keep up with the
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