MY CONSCIOUS MIND SPLITS OVER CHARLIE KIRK’S KILLING

The fatal shooting of far-right conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, has sparked a storm of reactions across the political spectrum.

His followers condemn the killing as an attack on free speech, while many of his opponents—though no admirers of his rhetoric—still argue that violence can never be the weapon to fight differences of opinion, no matter how toxic or extreme those opinions may be.

Yet, for others, the news brought a perverse sense of relief. To them, Kirk was not merely expressing conservative ideas; he was a factory of venom, churning out and spreading hatred against non-Whites, minorities, and immigrants. His brand of politics, tightly stitched to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, didn’t just divide—it targeted. It painted fellow human beings as threats and scapegoats.

And in that very MAGA dream, hundreds of migrants—students, farmhands, factory workers—are being rounded up like criminals, handcuffed, and deported. Some are even sold for political bragging rights, as in the chilling case of detainees being sent to El Salvador’s notorious prison system, a grotesque spectacle that turns human beings into bargaining chips.

So here lies the dilemma: I believe in nonviolence as a principle. Silencing someone with a bullet is not justice—it’s barbarism dressed as retribution.

But when voices like Kirk’s openly fuel racism, violence, and societal fractures, they too cultivate a climate of terrorism. Their words arm others with ideological bullets. And so my conscience wavers. Should a society merely tolerate such hate under the banner of free speech, or recognize that such “speech” becomes a weapon of mass division and societal destruction?

It’s a troubling paradox—condemning the gunman while recognizing that Kirk’s own verbal ammunition helped normalize hostility, fear, and brutality.

In the dilemma, I find my conscious mind split: holding fast to nonviolence, yet disturbed by how unchecked hatred breeds its own cycle of societal divisions and even bloodshed.

–Promod Puri

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