The Current - After Charlie Kirk’s death will political rage boil over?

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

In the days since Charlie Kirk's fatal shooting, the political rage in the US  is HIGH. We examine how some are using Kirk’s death to push further division in the US and beyond - while others look to turn the temperature down. And we ask is Canada immune from this kind of political rhetoric?

Defining your freedom starts by redefining your farms management. The Sense Hub Dairy ecosystem offers a variety of features to empower you with more insights into your operation. It's time to farm with more freedom. Learn how with Sense Hub Dairy. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. You are inheriting a country where politics feels like race. rage. It feels like rage is the only option. But through those words, we have a reminder that

we can choose a different path. That's the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, and his plea for Americans following last week's fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. After a frantic manhunt, police in the United States have a suspect in custody, but the rhetoric and the potential for further division and violence continue. In a moment, we'll hear about the impact that Charlie Kirk's killing as having here in Canada, but we begin in the United States. Andrew Eger is the White House correspondent for the news and opinion site, the bulwark. Andrew, good morning. Hey, thank you for having me on.

Thanks for being here. What do we know at this point about the suspect and potential motivations? Yeah, so there's a lot that remains unclear here, but we are starting to get a bit of a picture. The suspect is in custody. It appears that he is not cooperating with law enforcement, so a lot of what we're getting is not straight from his own mouth. But what we have heard from reports of what certain family members have told law enforcement

is that he appears to have been, in some sense, on the political left, that he was unhappy with Charlie Kirk, you know, for various reasons related to that. And the other piece of reporting that we have, we seem to have with some certainty now is that he had a roommate or a partner of some kind who was seemingly transgender, who, you know, again, that's just sort of one more piece of the puzzle. This person is reportedly cooperating with law enforcement, was not, you know, aware of the attack or, you know, participated in the attack in any way. But that's just another kind of, again, piece of the puzzle of who this person was. The other, the other salient fact, and this is, this is loud and clear just from

his own, you know, sort of postings, is that he was very plainly, extremely online, right? I mean, a lot of the stuff that he wrote on his paraphernalia that he used to carry out the assassination was internet memes. He had clearly spent a lot of time, you know, playing video games on Discord. So, like, you see a lot of the sort of just sort of a universal solvent of sort of like the political nihilism of the internet in all of this as well. I want to go back to that, the extremely online piece in a moment, but the governor of Utah also shared some of that information saying that the information that he has is that this suspect. was, in his words, radicalized by the left, mentioned as well that information about a romantic partner who is transitioning from male to female. What sort of reaction in this moment is that news getting in your country? Well, I mean, every piece of new information about this shooter

is getting the kind of reaction that we unfortunately get kind of all the time, which is a very maximalist a very maximalist response that has a lot more to do with just the way that we all sort of process things on social media than anything else. There was obviously sort of a rush to assume a lot of certain

things about this shooter. You know, right in the wake of it happening. There was an initial suggestion that there were sort of transgender messages scrawled on some of this stuff that that ended up not being true. You know,

Charlie Kirk has, has himself, you know, spent a lot of time talking about transgender issues. He's, he's, you know, very anti-trans or was very anti-trans in certain respects. So that was sort of controversial. So there was, there was a lot of, of, you know, question about, you know, what parts of his political, political activism might have made somebody, you know, you know, riled up enough to do something like this. That's, I think that's, that's kind of like the baseline here. It's just that like every, every little fact, every little thing that has come out, you know, has, has, you know, been, been more fuel for the fire for certain people to suggest that this was not, you know, just, just sort of like a really unfortunate and tragic act of political violence, but sort of an outgrowth of sort of radical political ideology in this country. One of the interesting things about this is Spencer Cox, that governor, who shared that information also got a lot of attention. and you pointed this out yourself on social media

for talking about how people need to turn the heat down. He said we can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that's the problem with political violence. It metastasizes because we can always point the figure at the other side. At some point we have to find an off-ramp or else it's going to get much, much worse.

How prominent is that sort of messaging from Republicans right now? First of all, I think that was an unbelievable. useful and helpful and and just really important message from from spencer cox i mean it's one thing for for democrats in this moment to put forward sentiments about the need to denounce all political violence um that's and and that has has no place in this country that's helpful stuff but the reality is that charlie kirk was a very prominent guy of the right right so it's it's you know it's harder for republicans in this moment to to to make those sorts of statements it's more visceral for them. It's more, you know, it requires more charity for them to do that on just

sort of like a personal level. And for Spencer Cox to go out and do that was, was unbelievably important, unbelievably, you know, healing in a lot of ways. That said, his sentiment is not universally felt by any stretch. There's been a lot of sort of maga eye rolling online about him putting forward these sentiments right now. It does not at all match sort of the messaging that we are getting out of the White House, particularly from, you know, Donald Trump's policy Uru, Stephen Miller, who has been on a real tear, you know, the last few days laying blame for this killing on not just the killer, not just, you know, anyone who might have known about the killing ahead of time, but on sort of the entire sweep of the political left in this country.

And as well as just sort of commentary sort of rolling your eyes, ah, there goes to Spencer Cox, you know, moderate Republican, you know, doing moderate Republican things at this moment that that what is really is really called for is this much more muscular response. hearing a lot of that from from various people in the MAGA firmament as well. What role do Democrats and players on the left have in doing the same and trying to lower the temperature in this moment, do you think? Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of prominent Democrats are doing what they can, right? I mean, we have seen a lot of these statements that are, like I mentioned a minute ago,

that are calling for a complete end to political violence, a complete repudiation of anything, you know, resembling that. Like, you know, you're no, you're in no coalition with me if you are resorted. that political violence has been the message from a lot of elite Democrats at this moment. And that is important. Like, don't get me wrong. You have to have that. We would be in a much worse place if we didn't have that. But at the same time, you know, it is sort of a secondary thing, right? Because, like I said before, it is it is Republicans who have been most sort of, like, psychologically wounded by this thing for obvious reasons because of who Charlie Kirk was. And,

and again, it's, it's, they are the ones who have sort of the, the heavier cross to bear here in terms of, in terms of mustering that same sort of message, which they've been, like I mentioned, doing with unfortunately mixed results. You co-wrote a piece in which you said, one of the lines was among the reasons we, Americans, have gone insane, is social media. You talked about the fact that this suspect was apparently very online in many of the things that he has said, drawn from memes that had been shared and what have you, and we have seen the role of social media amplify, exacerbate the tensions and the polarization. How do you see the role of social media when it comes to the larger conversation

around political violence in your country? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we talked a little bit about how social media and the internet might have played into the killer's own mind. But I think it's also really important to talk about how it affects all of us in the wake of a tragedy like this, because you would hope that in the wake of sort of unspeakable violence and just a real tragedy like this taking place, you would hope for a discourse to take place that allows people to kind of transcend the normal partisan divisions to be able to really

heal from in the wake of a horrible wound like this. And what we have seen over and over again and this time as much as any is that instead what tends to happen, especially if you're on social media is that, you know, social media is great at surfacing those opinions that are going to make you yourself, in your own feed, feel most disjointed, feel most angry, feel most upset, feel most, you know, put out. And so if you're on the political left right now, you're probably being fed a lot of stuff in your algorithm that's like the most militarized versions of some of these responses of Republicans basically calling for sort of out and out. political or real civil war against Democrats. If you're on the political right right now,

you have probably seen a lot of stuff in the last few days of just really callous and horrible sort of personal responses to Charlie Kirk's death in terms of people saying, you know, we don't, you know, forget this guy, we don't need to have any kind of empathy for this guy. This guy sucked. And like these, there is a, it's a real, real impediment to any kind of like setting aside of differences of the kind that you really need after a moment like this in order to keep violence from further spiraling out of control. And it's, it is exacerbated again by just sort of like the, the algorithmic, you know, most explosive messages go furthest nature of social media. How worried are you about that, about this gets tossed around, but how worried are you

that violence, in your words, could further spiral out of control? Well, I don't know how you wouldn't be worried, right? I mean, it's, it's, uh, one thing that we have, have shown a really unfortunate inability to do in America recently is de-escalate, de-escalate anything. I mean, like the, there's this sort of sense that, that, um, that is unfortunately far too widespread that, that forgiving your political enemies or, or, or trying to be the bigger person or turn the other cheek or anything, anything that might resemble any of that is sort of a unilateral disarmament in this sort of all-out political war that we're all fighting, and that's on both sides. You know, like, it's, it's, it's, it's just this shared sense that

things are so controversial and the, the political conflict is so all-encompassing right now that, that you can't, you can't do anything except treat, uh, treat people on the other side like the enemy. Um, and obviously, it appears that that, that one outgrowth of that was this horrible shooting, was, was what happened here in the first place that, that sparked all this conversation that killed Charlie Kirk, left his wife, widowed, left his kids without a father. And it is also a real impediment, again, to our ability to do anything that brings us closer together as a nation. And that just unfortunately creates, you know, God forbid, a recipe for more violence here. I have to let you go. But one of the things that you said in that piece that you

co-wrote is that it feels like you're living in a deeply sick nation. What does that feel like? Well, I can't tell you it feels good. I don't know what being Canadian. is uh is is is like these days um it's it's it's hard i mean it's i've spent my whole career you know i've been in politics for 10 years it's all been in sort of the social media era people talk about some like vanished you know better past obviously we've had we've had big problems all along in america i don't want to diminish those at all but but in terms of just the the the just visceral hatred for for neighbor against neighbor that that you you feel especially online and maybe some of that's just a project online maybe it's not actually as bad as it feels online

right now, but more and more and more of us are spending more of our time there, more and more and more of our lives on there. And in that sense, it sort of becomes the real world. So, you know, praying that it can get better, we can find some way to heal. It's good to speak with you, Andrew. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Andrew Egger is the White House correspondent for the news and opinion site, the bulwark. Defining your freedom starts by redefining your farms management. The Sense Hub Dairy ecosystem offers a variety of features. to empower you with more insights into your operation.

It's time to farm with more freedom. Learn how with Sense Hubdary. Every writer has a beginning. For Arundati Roy, it was her mother. In Mother Mary comes to me, the Booker Prize-winning author of the God of Small Things offers an intimate and inspiring account of how she became the person and writer she is,

shaped by her complex relationship to the mother she describes as, My Shelter and My Storm. This is not just a memoir. It is a love story. a reckoning and a journey into the making of one of the world's most celebrated voices. Mother Mary comes to me by Arundati Roy. Available now wherever books are sold. This ad is brought to you by Simon & Schuster Canada.

Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! This weekend, Charlie Kirk's name was chanted on the streets of London. Thousands of people marched in the United Kingdom's largest far-right rally in decades. The city of Toronto also saw anti-immigration protests this weekend with organizers calling to, quote, stop mass immigration, start mass deportations, remigration is necessary, things in line with some of the beliefs of Charlie Kirk. Justin Ling is a Canadian journalist who's been covering Kirk's influence in Canada and the reaction to his killing. He's also the author of the new book, The 51st State Votes Canada versus Donald Trump.

Justin, good morning to you. Hey, good morning. How are we seeing reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder? or play out here in Canada? We're seeing a bit of it. I mean, Charlie Kirk was a guy for the online rights, and the online right really knows no borders. And I think it's unsurprising that you'll see the reverberations

of what's happening in the U.S., both in Canada, the UK, Europe, and kind of everywhere else. Charlie Kirk was, you know, properly an American product, right? Right. You know, he, unlike some other figures in this movement, I don't think was quite as interested in building a global movement, but what he did do and kind of what his real bread and butter was and really what made him unique and special and so important in Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement was his figuring out of how to sort of nationalize and really internationalize the online campus wars, right? you know, this is really what he figured out, like going back to 2012, 2013, what he figured out was that there were these culture wars playing out on university campuses and that they sort of reflected broader tensions in society, not always kind of accurately, but they certainly reflected anxieties about the fast pace of gender theory, of, you know, LGBTQ rights, of a whole bunch of other kind of kind of, social liberalizations, and he realized that he could play up those divisions on a national level and that people would find it pretty interesting. Young people especially, right?

Yeah, I mean, at first, there really was not young people who were most interested by this. I mean, these fights were relatively small. It was, frankly, millionaire donors of the Republican Party who were looking to find a way to kind of tap into youth to try and win over. and sort of activate these young conservative activists. And Charlie Kirk was given millions of dollars early in his career to sort of create this system. And he did so to a huge success.

What are you noticing? We were just talking about how this is playing out in the days following in the United States politically. What are you noticing about how political leaders there are responding to this? So there has been this sort of schizophrenia about how leaders have responsible. responded over the last, you know, nearly a week now. There has been that kind of, I think, really good-natured and understandable and kind of encouraging language to say, you know,

the high-pressure rhetoric needs to come down. The temperature has to come down. We need to get together and denounce political violence and recognize that speech can never justify violence. And that's what you want to hear, right? that has been wildly undercut by those exact same people coming out and saying we need to figure out a way to shut down the left. This is entirely a product of the left. This is a product of woke university professors and that this is a crackdown that needs to happen if we're ever going to kind of be safe and have free speech. I mean, you know, Andrew mentioned Stephen Miller, the president's advisor who was on TV just this weekend saying that Charlie Kirk have been texting him in the hours before his death saying that they need to dismantle and take

on the radical left organizations in this country that are quote unquote fomenting violence. You're hearing this idea that this killing is going to be justification for an organized state level response to go after those deemed responsible. And in many of the instances where you see these senior figures blaming the left for his murder, these are not instances of actually encouraging violence. They're not instances of actually rationalizing this violence. You have a handful of examples of that, but they're pretty marginal. By and large, the left, the Democratic Party, media, journalists, whatever, have all denounced this as unacceptable violence. But what you're seeing is an attempt to

basically smudge those lines and say that the left is responsible, even when they're clearly not, even when we don't even know the actual motivation of the shooter. So it's a really worrying trend. You've even seen the president post a video, I think just Saturday night, that basically raised the idea of legislation that would regulate journalistic speech in some sort of Potemkin attempt to stop, you know, this violent language. In effect, we know that historically, this always leads to just censorship and the imposition of a single ideological view onto the media. So we should be really worried. I mean, the rhetoric coming out over the last 72 hours has pointed the Republican Party towards a very dark response to this murder.

What about here in Canada? What are you seeing from politicians, media influencers, activists in this country, to use this moment to push their agenda in line with Charlie Kirk's? You're going to see that activist response that is going to try and mirror what's happening in the U.S. You've already seen it in some protests in Toronto and elsewhere just this weekend. they've been marginal and I think the figures who are most trying to exploit this are also pretty marginal I think like with all things you know America watching them go down the wrong path is a really often useful way for us to to sort of reflexively stay on the right path I mean you've seen you heard an interview on the house here on CBC with Pierre Pollyam who you know

I actually I think gave a really clear eyed answer about the, you know, that tracks on that idea that we need to take down the temperature. Talking about the threats that his family has faced and what have you. Exactly, which, you know, the right language, without then also going to this finger-pointing, blaming the left nonsense. Pauli, have even very responsibly said, I'm not going to speculate about the motive of this attacker. So I actually thought that was really encouraging. And I think you're likely to see that continue.

I think as we watch probably with some anxiety and some revulsion, about how this assassination is being weaponized south of the border. I think it really gives us a clear kind of opportunity to reject that and to stick to the side of recognizing that this kind of violence and the exploitation of it is wrong, especially when we have seen in this country repeated instances of ideological violence, you know, attempted murder of the prime minister just a few years ago, also attacks and threats against our politicians of all political stripe.

I do think Canada does have a bit of more of a clear-eyed, less polarized view of how to respond to this ideological and political violence. Just in the last couple of minutes that we have, how worried are you about the role of social media in stirring up, not just here in Canada, but more broadly, stirring up the already heightened emotions and the sense of polarization that people have. That this, I mean, social media is built in many ways for this. It rewards the extremes. Yeah, and that's exactly it. I mean, deeply, deeply, deeply worried, right? Regardless of why this guy committed this murder, this assassination, he did it after spending clearly way too much time online.

I mean, he's inscribing memes onto the shell casings, right? You know, he is clearly so steeped in this online world, in this online rhetoric, but not just, you know, the normal kind of Twitter, Facebook, social media, clearly communities where violence is normalized, where extremist politics are the norm, that should tell you all you kind of need to know. And he's not the only one, of course, the murders of lawmakers in Minnesota just a few months ago, similarly, you know, an attempt on the president's life in the summer, similar. circumstance. The ideology is in some cases almost irrelevant. The commonality between a lot of these attacks are people who spend way too much time online and for whom life has become distorted and meaningless. They have fallen into a sort of nihilism about humanity, about democracy, about our society, and they think that violence is really the only avenue to change things and to make themselves important. That is such a dangerous trend. And it's one that's being

enabled by our social media companies who have totally abrogated their responsibility to stop this. And in some cases, in the case of Elon Musk, are actively encouraging it. The fact that any politician in Canada, any journalist in Canada, frankly, is still using Twitter, is beyond me. And I think it's morally offensive, especially in the context that we're currently looking at. Justin, good to talk to you as always. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Justin Ling is a Canadian journalist. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.