Truth is Truth, Fascism is Fascism—and why there is “no version of Charlie Kirk” on the “left”—part one.
September 21, 2025
The following message is reposted from Bob Avakian Official at Substack.
This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number 136.
This is a question some have raised: Why is there “no version of Charlie Kirk” on the “left”? A short answer is that nobody should want to be any “version” of Charlie Kirk.
To be clear—and as we revcoms have made clear—the murder of Charlie Kirk was very wrong and should not in any way be justified, let alone cheered. In fact, this assassination has involved a lot of harm—including the way that the Trump/MAGA fascists have seized on this to even further ramp up attacks on their “enemies.”
At the same time, as we have also pointed out, it does real harm to try to whitewash Kirk into some kind of champion of free speech and principled exchange of views, as some Democratic Party politicians and liberal columnists have done. Kirk made his name organizing students to compile professor watch lists and get teachers fired for teaching classes that were “transgressing” their Christian fascist lunatic dogma. Many professors have reported not only being harassed and hounded, but having their lives threatened by the fanatical followers of Kirk and his “watch lists.”
Kirk devoted his adult life to promoting fascism. And he was a highly effective organizer for the American Hitler, Donald Trump.
Among other things, Kirk was a blatant racist, as crudely expressed in his attacks on Black people, immigrants and others, as well as a flagrant male supremacist, and an aggressive Dark Ages Christian fundamentalist (commonly referred to now as a “Christian nationalist”). He was a viciously anti-LGBT agitator—who praised what is said in the book of Leviticus in the Bible about same sex relations: that they are an “abomination.” Kirk called this “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” Well, what does Leviticus say must be the punishment for this “abomination”? Death. (And no, Stephen King, you should not have apologized for rightly denouncing Kirk for this! These awful passages from Leviticus are far from the only place in the Bible where terrible atrocities are advocated and insisted upon, as I demonstrate in the section, “The Bible, Taken Literally, Is a Horror,” in Part I of my book AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. Charlie Kirk was a Christian fundamentalist fascist who insisted on taking the Bible literally, as the absolute word of god which must be followed—which means advocating and insisting on all kinds of horrors. This fundamentalism is the “Christian” equivalent of Islamic fundamentalism, like the Taliban.)
The evidence of Kirk’s despicable, truly vile and vicious role in promoting fascism, is right there for all to see, including in the words that Kirk himself repeatedly insisted on spewing forth.
And it is not the case—as some who have too much in common with the fascists, like Bill Maher, have claimed—that “woke” excesses have played a significant part in provoking this fascism. Yes, there are real problems with “woke identity politics.” As I have made clear before, it is the case that, “A concentrated way to describe much that is wrong with ‘woke identity politics’ is this: It is an attempt to dictate what parts of reality can be talked about, and by whom—and an attempt to change the ‘labels’ on reality, instead of transforming the reality itself, to actually eliminate and uproot very real oppression.” But the answer to this is not to promote, or conciliate and collaborate with, fascism!—it is to take up a scientific approach to transforming reality to actually eliminate and uproot the very real oppression that “woke identity politics” seeks to oppose, but in some very wrong ways.
“Woke” excesses are not the reason, and cannot be used as an excuse, for Trump/MAGA fascism! This fascism, for which Charlie Kirk was a forceful advocate, is based on deep-seated hatred for anything that challenges the sexual and gender oppression, the white supremacy and the insistence on “the superiority of white/European civilization,” that has characterized this country, from the beginning and down to today. This hatred has been accompanied and reinforced by unhinged opposition to science and reason. All this “justified” on the basis of fanatical Christian fundamentalism.
As I emphasized in a 2017 speech: “There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw ‘America First’ jingoism and trumpeting of ‘the superiority of western civilization’ and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.”
In my next message, I will get into deeper reasons why there is not, cannot be—and should not be—any “left” version of Charlie Kirk.