Charlie Kirk’s Murder Has Left British Young People in Stunned Sadness

Yesterday I wrote that on British college campuses there would be two reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death: happiness and sadness and one would be louder than the other. I am relieved to report that, early mood music from the young people I have spoken to, suggests that stunned sadness pre-dominated. And it seems to be the video, rather than the mere fact of his assassination, that fashioned this response.

I spent yesterday talking to 17 and 18 year-olds and they were universally saddened and disgusted. My son told me yesterday morning that some of the girls had put up posts with the hashtag ‘Charlie Kirk #karma’. He was not looking forward to attending college and defending the legacy of Charlie Kirk. However, by mid-morning the #karma posts had been taken down.

“It was the video. No-one could watch it and not be shocked and upset,” he explained. He attends one of Britain’s largest sixth form colleges, which I hope is representative of the wider student cohort. “It was a really strange day,” he explained on returning for dinner last night. “Everyone was talking about it, about how sad it was, about his young children. There was no gloating. Those people who initially seemed pleased, changed their minds once they saw the video. No-one could celebrate that. It was bad.”

For those who haven’t seen the video, do. It shows a strong man sitting, talking to enthusiastic college students. He flinches backwards and blood falls out of his necks; pints of it geezers out in seconds.

One 18 year-old I spoke to had tears in his eyes. “My parents always made us watch the general elections and I never understood the jeopardy. I didn’t know the MPs involved. Charlie Kirk felt like one of us. I felt like I knew him.”

Another girl said: “There’s this video going around too of his daughter in a studio, there’s a loud noise and she’s frightened and she runs over to her Daddy and he gives her a big hug. It’s so sad that her Dad is now dead.”

A boy about to set off for university at the weekend told me. “The video was just so real. I watched it about 20 times. No-one deserves that.”

Much has been made of the fact that we now live in a post-literate society. It is a shift that must be taken seriously. We may all lament the fact that students no longer have the sustained concentration to read long books, but we must acknowledge the raw power of the visual. Those who painted those writhing bodies in hell in Florence’s Duomo understood the ability of imagery to terrify and chasten.

We also live in a society that is sanitised from the bodily brutality of death, and thankfully war. Depraved aspects of life are cleaned up with neat language (CSE instead of paedophilia) and thankfully most of us won’t have to mop up pints of blood from a young man murdered. But in being cordoned off from the reality of death or murder, we forget what is actually at stake.

Arguments against resorting to visual imagery in political debate appear sensible: we mustn’t whip up sentiment, we mustn’t rely on emotion to make judgements, violent images will encourage violence. But what if the opposite is true? What if violence and raw imagery and videos shock and chasten a population?

If video footage of Sir David Amess’s murder was widely broadcast, would MPs have reacted as they did? If the population sees, on repeat, footage of doctors injecting the elderly and we watch them die, jittering, retching and soiling themselves, would ‘Assisted Dying’ have got through the House of Commons? If reels were seen by millions of the biological reality of late term abortion, would it have been decriminalised?

Sometimes videos are so shocking that everyone, no matter what political colour are stunned into grief and mourning. Rather than rely on pure reason, careful logical and long form articles to persuade, perhaps politicians and campaigners will find themselves reverting to this more visceral, and effective, form of argument.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.