SimpleBlackTheory on Charlie Kirk's Assassination: Free Speech, Gun Laws, and Political Chaos

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SimpleBlackTheory on Charlie Kirk's Assassination: Free Speech, Gun Laws, and Political Chaos

The SimpleBlackTheory Podcast examine the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, shot during one of his "Prove Me Wrong" college events on September 10, 2025, while discussing gun violence, and trace the shockwaves that followed through media, politics, and social media. Neither host offers condolences for a man they believe spent years pushing hate speech against Black people, immigrants, trans people, and Muslims, while raising hard questions about free speech, where its limits should lie, and whether the First Amendment should protect rhetoric they argue directly enables violence. The conversation moves through the chaos that erupted online after the shooting, from Kash Patel releasing false suspect information to the rise of a doxxing website targeting Kirk's critics, to a bipartisan Congressional vote for a Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day.

Categories: Liberal Opinions
September 21, 2025

Should Anyone Condemn the Shooting?

The SimpleBlackTheory Podcast opens with a blunt question: do hosts Ohi and Maya Moss condemn Charlie Kirk's assassination? Their answer is deliberately complicated. Neither host is willing to offer straightforward condemnation for a man they believe spent years spreading hate speech against Black people, immigrants, trans people, and Muslims. As Ohi puts it, asking whether Black people should condemn Kirk's death is like asking whether Black people should mourn a white supremacist — the question itself is the problem.

Maya Moss adds that witnessing Kirk's events firsthand made the security failures impossible to ignore. For someone who had been running these events for over a decade while actively promoting what they describe as divisive rhetoric, the lack of proper preparation was striking.

Free Speech Versus Hate Speech

The hosts wrestle with where free speech ends and hate speech begins. Their working definition: hate speech is not just offensive speech — it is speech that pushes a false or distorted narrative about a group of people in order to criminalize or dehumanize them, and that activates others to act on that hatred. An example they give is rhetoric against immigrants that causes people to racially profile and attack anyone who looks like they might be foreign-born.

They conclude that while the First Amendment currently protects hate speech, the events surrounding Kirk's assassination expose the dangerous environment that unchecked extreme speech can produce. They acknowledge the risks of giving government the power to police speech — a slippery slope neither is comfortable with — but argue the status quo is equally dangerous.

September 10th: What Happened

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was hosting one of his "Prove Me Wrong" events at a college campus. The conversation at that moment was about gun violence — a student was asking Kirk about the proportion of mass shooters who were transgender. Kirk was shot moments later. The irony is not lost on Ohi and Maya: his final public words were what they describe as a racist dog whistle about Black people and gun violence, and it was a white man who pulled the trigger.

The shooter, a 22-year-old from Utah, was caught on Ring doorbell and Google Home camera footage limping through a neighborhood with a rifle concealed under his clothing — a weapon that belonged to his grandfather. Text messages later revealed he had been worrying about returning the gun before anyone noticed it was gone.

The Internet Erupts Into Chaos

Within moments of the shooting becoming public, social media split into what the hosts describe as an all-out war — each side racing to claim moral high ground and pin blame on the other, rather than focusing on justice or the human reality of the event. The hosts argue this actually dehumanizes the shooting itself, reducing it to a political football.

A viral moment came when a right-leaning account claimed Starbucks employees had written "loser" on a cup ordered under the name Charlie Kirk. Starbucks reviewed camera footage and confirmed no such thing happened — the individual had written it themselves at home and posted it online as provocation. The hosts hold this up as a textbook example of deliberate misinformation.

Kash Patel and the FBI's Failures

The hosts are sharply critical of FBI Director Kash Patel's handling of the investigation. They describe a pattern of releasing suspect information prematurely — two people were arrested, both released, with their personal details made public before investigators confirmed either was the right person. Given the charged atmosphere on the right, releasing the wrong names put those individuals in genuine danger.

The hosts also connect Patel to the broader Epstein investigation, pointing to a congressional hearing where Patel was questioned about his communications with Donald Trump regarding the Epstein case — conversations he denied, despite Trump's name appearing in the relevant documents.

The Charlie Kirk Murders Website

One of the most alarming developments the hosts discuss is the creation of a website called "Charlie Kirk Murders" — a platform designed to identify and dox anyone posting critical content about Kirk online, even accounts with minimal traction. The site collected over 20,000 submissions with the stated goal of getting those people fired from their jobs. It has since rebranded as a data collection company.

The hosts point out the obvious contradiction: Charlie Kirk was ostensibly killed for exercising his First Amendment rights. The immediate response from his supporters was to suppress the First Amendment rights of anyone who disagreed with him.

A Remembrance Day That Shouldn't Exist

Congress passed a bipartisan Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day — scheduled on the same date as George Floyd's birthday. The hosts are incensed. Charlie Kirk was not a government employee, not an elected official, and not a public servant. He was a political commentator for one ideological faction. They note that the teachings of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. faced years of institutional resistance before being accepted in schools, while Kirk received a commemorative Congressional day within weeks of his death.

They also draw attention to what they see as a deliberate omission in media coverage — major news outlets are calling Kirk "controversial" but not airing footage from his Prove Me Wrong events showing what he actually said.

Defining the True Far-Left

The hosts push back on the assumption that calling yourself a communist automatically makes you far-left. Their position: being far-left means fully opposing transphobia, homophobia, racism, and Islamophobia — and actively practicing those values, not just reciting them. Someone can call themselves a communist and still hold deeply bigoted views, which in their framework puts that person closer to the right than to any genuine far-left position.

They identify specific markers of a far-left worldview:

  • Abolition of the prison system
  • Abolition of the police system
  • Full support for trans people's right to self-determination
  • Active rejection of racism, Islamophobia, and homophobia in all forms

The hosts are explicit that they want to push more far-left rhetoric and be considered far-left individuals themselves, arguing that being truly far-left requires constant practice and self-awareness, not just political branding.

Gun Laws, Mental Health, and Utah

The hosts return repeatedly to what they see as the real underlying issues: gun access and mental health. Over 77% of mass shootings involve legally obtained firearms. The 22-year-old shooter learned to handle a weapon not through military training but because Utah's permissive gun laws allowed children to handle firearms from a young age. He was able to fire accurately from approximately 200 to 400 feet in an outdoor, uncontrolled environment — evidence of real familiarity with the weapon.

The hosts also point out the deep irony that Charlie Kirk — a man who publicly stated he was "okay with a few gun deaths" to preserve Second Amendment rights — became the most prominent symbol of exactly that cost.

The Shooter's Background and the Blame Game

The discovery that the shooter's roommate was transgender became a flashpoint, with many on the right using it to frame the assassination as a left-wing or LGBTQ-motivated act. The hosts reject this entirely. The roommate cooperated fully with police and had no knowledge of the shooter's plans. The hosts argue that while some are trying to pin the radicalization on left-wing rhetoric, it was right-wing rhetoric — specifically Kirk's own words — that drove the shooter to desperation. His text messages confirm he was consumed by what Kirk was saying and felt compelled to stop it spreading further.

Florida, DeSantis, and Prosecuting Critics

Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened prosecution for anyone posting negative content about Charlie Kirk online. Governor Ron DeSantis moved to suspend Florida teachers found to have liked or commented critically about Kirk on social media. Three teachers are pending suspension. The hosts frame this as the exact speech suppression that Kirk's supporters claimed to oppose — an immediate and direct reversal of the free speech principles Kirk himself promoted throughout his career.

Casings, Memes, and the Online Pipeline

The casings found at the scene contained meme references — video game culture symbols heavily associated with alt-right internet spaces. The hosts note these references muddied the question of the shooter's ideological alignment, as they straddle left and right online culture. They argue that the shooter's radicalization path ran through internet culture more than any clean left-right division — and that mental health and online pipeline issues remain the core problem that neither side wants to address honestly.

The hosts close on what they describe as a poetic, almost mythological quality to the entire story: a man who built his career on speech was shot at the moment he was speaking, by a weapon connected to the gun rights he championed, in an event about the very gun violence he dismissed.

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