Mainstream WeeklyIt is not widely known that more than 1,000 students of the Utah Valley University in the US signed a petition weeks earlier to have the Charlie Kirk event cancelled on the campus due to the hateful and divisive rhetoric he routinely unleashed, dividing human beings into superior and inferior race.
Unfortunately, the request was not heeded. Had it been, it is possible the 31-year-old white supremacist may not have been shot dead while speaking with his usual cocky arrogance to students on September 10.
A college dropout who pretended to be a know-all, Kirk had become too powerful and too close to President Donald Trump that most universities in these troubled and polarised times would think twice before declining any of his programmes.
In the process, a man who enriched himself by promoting gun culture despite the unending number of shootings across the US and publicly spewed hatred against Blacks, immigrants and non-Christians without a tinge of remorse died by a single fatal gunshot.
Indeed, Kirk, who played a huge role in popularizing Trump particularly among the young with his Turning Point USA campaign, could be best summed up in two, perhaps three, words: unabashed white supremacist.
This is why he idolized Trump, and why the US president loved him. Of course, both were whites.
Unlike politicians who at times pretend to be not what they really are, Kirk was brutally honest about his views. The fact is he unleashed hate and contempt and justified violence. His main objective was to shatter the core values of a shared American identity. The more he succeeded, in college campuses and beyond, the more Trump gained politically.
Kirk of course did not ask anyone to go and bash up anyone. He was too sophisticated for that. But the college dropout spread a toxic worldview which justified the gun culture and never condemned the senseless killings in schools that have become a routine in the US