Leo Kearse Unpacks George Abaraonye's Reaction to Charlie Kirk Assassination and Oxford Union Controversy
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Leo Kearse Unpacks George Abaraonye's Reaction to Charlie Kirk Assassination and Oxford Union Controversy
Leo Kearse examines the fallout surrounding Oxford Union president-elect George Abaraonye, who celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination on social media before being voted out of office. Kearse explores Abaraonye's delayed apology, his academic credentials, and the broader implications for British institutions. The discussion extends to Oxford Union's election of its first Palestinian president and touches on cultural shifts in British academia, the nature of tolerance versus intolerance, and the weaponization of identity politics within elite educational institutions.
George Abaraonye, the president-elect of Oxford Union, found himself at the center of a firestorm after Charlie Kirk's assassination. Abaraonye posted "Charlie Kirk got shot. Let's effing go" in a massive group chat, then doubled down by posting "Charlie Kirk got shot, lol" on Instagram shortly after the tragedy occurred. This wasn't a private moment of poor judgment in a close-knit group where confidentiality could be expected. This was a mass group chat with people he didn't even know, and a public Instagram post that revealed his true sentiments.
The incident becomes particularly disturbing when considering the details of Kirk's death. Kirk was shot in front of his family in a truly horrific assassination. One especially heartbreaking detail describes how one of Kirk's young children, a toddler, heard the gunshot and became scared. The child instinctively ran to their father for comfort, only to find him already dead. This level of tragedy makes Abaraonye's celebratory response all the more shocking.
Refusing to Step Down
Rather than quietly resigning after the backlash, Abaraonye clung to power with determination. He didn't resign voluntarily but instead called a no-confidence vote in himself, hoping to survive the controversy. He held on like certain leaders who refuse to leave office willingly, having to be dragged away from their positions. Only after losing that vote was he finally treated as having resigned, though technically he never did resign at all. The comparison has been made to situations where international organizations have even established financial incentives to encourage peaceful transitions of power, with one fund reportedly offering $25 million to leaders who willingly leave office when voted out.
What makes the situation even more problematic is that Abaraonye had actually debated Charlie Kirk earlier in the year. He had personal interaction with Kirk, making his celebration of Kirk's death all the more callous and personal.
The Apology That Wasn't
When Abaraonye finally issued an apology, it came across as deflecting and self-centered. In his statement, he emphasized that while there was fair criticism of his actions, he also wanted to call out what he described as racist and classist vitriol directed at him because he's a black person and a student at Oxford. He claimed to have received threats of violence against himself and his family, characterizing it as a difficult time not just for him but for broader communities around him.
Abaraonye stated that he hoped everyone could take away a lesson in how we talk about politics online, advocating for moving away from incitement and inflammatory political discourse toward more empathy and collaborative conversation. The irony is thick. This is the same person who glorified someone's assassination, someone from his own side of the political spectrum no less. He's calling for empathy and kindness while he was the one who celebrated when Charlie Kirk was killed.
When the shooting first happened, Abaraonye later claimed he didn't understand the severity of the situation and reacted without doing research or taking nuance into account. But what nuance does one need when learning that a young father who debates people and engages in civil discourse has been shot dead? There's no nuance to research. It's genuinely horrible, and the argument can be made that he did understand the severity perfectly well. He just thought it was funny and liked it.
The Academic Credentials Question
Abaraonye is supposed to represent the best and brightest at what many consider the world's finest university. Yet he secured admission to Oxford with A-level results of ABB. In the current system with A-star grades, this is equivalent to a B and two Cs in the old grading system. These are notably modest results for Oxford admission standards. The suggestion has been made that diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations played a role in his acceptance, allowing him access to opportunities that might not have been available based purely on academic merit.
As a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) undergraduate at Oxford, Abaraonye represents the type of student increasingly common at elite institutions, where ideological alignment often seems more important than traditional academic excellence. The economics being taught at such institutions increasingly focuses on ideologies like Marxism, with arguments that it simply hasn't been tried properly yet, or the narrative that Britain's wealth comes entirely from stealing African resources, ignoring the technology, infrastructure, railways, sanitation, and governance systems that the British Empire spread throughout the world.
The Real Value of Empire and Division of Labor
The value in resources isn't in the raw materials themselves but in what you create with them. Someone once attempted to build a toaster completely from scratch, sourcing ore and smelting it themselves. The toaster, which now sits in the Science Museum in London, required enormous effort to produce something you can buy for about ten pounds. This illustrates why the division of labor, another British contribution to civilization, is so important. Everyone can focus on their special thing, creating exponentially more value than working in isolation.
When we took resources from various countries during the Empire, yes, we took metal and other materials. We also bought people, sold to us by others. But the real value came from what we built with those resources and the systems we established. The technology, the bureaucracy required to run governments, the infrastructure that improved living conditions and economic prospects around the world. Britain excels at creating bureaucracy, sometimes to the detriment of other things we try to create, but this administrative capacity was genuinely valuable when exported.
Abaraonye's Planned Debate on British Flags
Before his downfall, George Abaraonye was set to hold a debate titled "This house believes that flying the flag betrays great British values." The premise itself reveals the ideological capture of institutions like Oxford. How can flying the British flag betray British values? The question only makes sense if you've been taught that Britain's values are primarily about tolerance and kindness above all else.
But tolerance isn't automatically virtuous. It depends entirely on what you're tolerating. Should we tolerate grooming gangs? Should we pat ourselves on the back for tolerating men urinating in flower beds or the harassment of women? The answer is obviously no. What made Britain great wasn't tolerance of uncivil behavior but intolerance of it. Being intolerant of bad behavior, maintaining standards, enforcing civility—these were the values that built a functional society.
Abaraonye was essentially doing his job as what some might call a diversity hire: working to destroy another British institution. These institutions are being taken over and destroyed by those who have completed their long march through the institutions, systematically capturing and transforming every major educational and cultural establishment in the country.
Oxford Union's First Palestinian President
Following the Abaraonye controversy, Oxford Union elected its first Palestinian president, Arwa Hanin El Yares, who is also the first Arab woman and first Algerian to hold the position. Interestingly, she was born in London to Algerian parents and grew up in the UAE, yet somehow identifies as Palestinian. This illustrates how Palestinian identity has become as much a political category as an ethnic or national one.
The election feels performative, similar to how certain countries win the Eurovision Song Contest after experiencing tragedies or conflicts. If something catastrophic happens to a country, you can almost guarantee that country will win Eurovision the following year as Europe's way of showing support. It's the same dynamic at play with Oxford Union electing a Palestinian president amid ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts.
The students voting for this president are predominantly posh white kids, along with posh black, Asian, and Chinese students who made it to Oxford through various means. Even students whose parents are solicitors and doctors report being looked down upon as scumbags at Oxford, where the wealth threshold for social acceptance is extraordinarily high. These privileged students engage in performative politics, signaling their progressive values while living lives of extraordinary comfort and opportunity.
The Stochastic Terrorism Hypocrisy
For years, people like Abaraonye and his ideological allies have argued that words have consequences. They've promoted the concept of stochastic terrorism, the idea that criticizing or questioning gender ideology, for example, raises the risk of horrible things happening to transgender people. According to this theory, when you say something that demeans or makes fun of a transgender person, you're increasing the risk of violence against them somewhere in the world, even if you don't directly cause it.
This is largely nonsense. You can't map causation like that. But even if we accept the premise for argument's sake, look at the hypocrisy. Charlie Kirk was dehumanized to a far more extreme level than jokes about transgender people. People openly called for him to be shot before he was actually shot. If inflammatory rhetoric really does lead to violence through this stochastic process, then those who demonized Kirk bear some responsibility. Yet these same people show no self-awareness about their own behavior and the climate they created.
Looking Forward: Robot Armies and Global Competition
The discussion extends beyond Oxford politics to larger geopolitical concerns. The war in Ukraine demonstrates the nightmarish future of warfare, with drones searching through ruined houses, pursuing soldiers with nowhere to hide. Villages are reduced to rubble, and the technology deployed is genuinely like something from Black Mirror. Soon robots will replace humans on the battlefield entirely.
When that happens, China will have a significant advantage. Isaac Asimov proposed laws of robotics, with the first being that robots shall not harm humans. But that's not happening in reality. The first order military robots will receive is to harm humans. Once China builds its robot army, the calculus of warfare completely changes. They can lose 10,000 robots without any grieving mothers, no domestic political cost whatsoever. They'll go through opposing forces with the same efficiency that Chinese manufacturers have demonstrated in dominating export markets.
The West has taken its eye off the ball, focusing on making kids into gender-questioning communists while potential adversaries prepare for a very different future. Rather than governments investing in robotics, which they do poorly, governments should step back, reduce taxation, and allow private citizens and companies to invest money far more wisely than government bureaucrats ever could. The government spends money like an aunt who hates you buying a Christmas present, with no knowledge of what's actually needed and no accountability for waste.
The Final Word
The George Abaraonye controversy encapsulates so much of what's wrong with elite institutions today. Modest academic credentials combined with fashionable identity characteristics open doors that lead to positions of influence. Once there, these individuals push ideological agendas that undermine the very institutions and nations that elevated them. When called out for inexcusable behavior like celebrating an assassination, they deflect by claiming victimhood and calling for empathy they never extended to others.
Oxford Union and similar institutions have been captured by an ideology that privileges performance of progressive values over genuine merit, wisdom, or character. The long march through the institutions is complete, and the consequences are playing out in real time. Whether it's debates about flying national flags, celebrating political violence, or elevating representatives based on identity rather than accomplishment, the pattern is clear and deeply troubling for the future of British civic life.
