Extremism Foreign and Domestic: A Reflection on 9/11 and Charlie Kirk
On September 10, 2025 Charlie Kirk was murdered by an assassin’s bullet. He was gunned down on a college campus doing what he was famous for: conducting civil discourse about difficult issues. Some people loved Mr. Kirk and others hated him. Like almost all our public figures these days, he was polarizing. That is, however, besides the point. People have a tendency to smugly justify the scorn they feel for others, but that scorn does not justify stealing a life. Murder is evil – yes, even when you disagree with the murder victim’s politics.
The Divine injunction against murder is enshrined in the Ten Commandments. The Bible further regulates and restricts killing even when it falls outside the category of murder. And in the American Declaration of Independence the Founding Fathers emphasised the core belief that the Creator granted human beings “certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These twin moral assumptions – that murder is against God’s law because each person has an unalienable right to life – constitute the bedrock upon which the American project, and any civilization worthy of the name, are built.
On the anniversary of September 11 and in the aftermath of a high profile political assassination, it is worth pausing to reflect on the threat of extremism and radicalism from abroad and at home.
On September 11, 2001 Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaida organization hijacked civilian airplanes and used them to murder 2,983 Americans. The attacks shocked our nation, bereaved thousands of families, and constituted the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. In an attempt to understand and respond to that atrocity, many Americans asked a simple question: “why?” Some argued that Bin Laden and his ideological bedfellows hated Western culture, our freedom, and our values. But we do not have to wonder. Bin Laden was quite explicit about his justifications for mass murder:
- According to many Islamists, including Bin Laden, the presence of non-Muslim American soldiers on Saudi territory polluted holy ground – despite being there at the invitation of the Saudi government. The very presence of non-Muslims was an inherent desecration that supposedly justified the murder of thousands of Americans.
- U.S. humanitarian operations in Somalia. In the early 1990s, Somalia descended into a brutal civil war involving rival war lords and extremist groups, famine ensued, militias stole aid, and hundreds of thousands of Somalis died of starvation. Osama Bin Laden murdered thousands of Americans because we fed people in a Muslim country and put a check on psychotic war lords.
- U.S. support for Israel and other Arab governments. 9/11 took place soon after the Palestinians rejected two peace offers that would have resulted in a Palestinian state. The problem, in other words, wasn’t Israeli policies but the presence of a sovereign non-Muslim state anywhere in the Middle East. Bin Laden’s problem with America’s Arab allies was that they weren’t sufficiently radical enough and stood in the way of an Islamist caliphate (empire). Bin Laden further framed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one front in a wider war that would not end in the Middle East. In other words, Bin Laden murdered thousands of Americans because one of our Middle Eastern allies wasn’t Muslim and our other Middle Eastern allies weren’t the right kind of Muslims.
- U.S sanctions against Iraq and an invented humanitarian crisis. The broad consensus today is that the alleged suffering caused by U.S. sanctions was a hoax perpetrated by the Iraqi government with the help of unwitting international organizations to whom the Iraqis fed fabricated data. Bin Laden murdered thousands of Americans because a Middle Eastern dictator – Saddam Hussein – lied about the impact of American sanctions.
- Finally, Bin Laden openly framed the 9/11 terror attack as part of a broader “jihad” against the West, an attempt to weaken America, and a cosmic battle between believers and non-believers.
In sum, 9/11 constituted a radical act of political murder, i.e. terrorism. Let’s spell that out. It was terrorism because it was an act of violence that targeted civilians in order to make a political statement or redress political grievances. It was murder because it took place outside the bounds of self-defense or just war. It was evil because human life is precious and killing another person outside the context of self-defense is therefore an affront to the natural order. It should be utterly unnecessary to state any of the above, yet such a dense cloud of moral confusion has settled on our society that it is indeed necessary. Far too many young people now sympathize with or even celebrate murderers and justify their crimes on political grounds. There have been some telling examples in recent memory.
The aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 invasion of Israel unleashed a wave of radicalism and pro-terror sympathy. The day after the terror attack – when Hamas terrorists were still operatoing inside Israeli communities – extremist on campus, radical activists, and the core of the Palestine movement were already hard at work protesting against Israel and supporting Hamas. But things did not end with the proliferation of Hamas and Hezbollah flags on university quads or the romanticization of fascistic religious extremists murdering young people and families in Israel. We witnessed a creeping radicalization in which young people across the United States came to identify with the Al Qaida terror group that murdered thousands U.S citizens and residents. The people who radicalized themselves against Israel radicalized themselves against America as well.
One manifestation of the radicalization was a vile and viral social media trend. Teens and young adults online began sharing videos of Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” – often accompanied by their own sympathetic commentary. According to many estimates, these videos garnered hundreds of millions of views. Identifying with and romanticizing politically motivated mass murderers was not isolated to Bin Laden’s fawning young American fans. Following the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York, a wave of young people praised the murder, expressed romantic interest in the perpetrator, or expressed support for the murderer’s worldview. According to an Emerson College poll of young voters, a whopping 41% openly stated their belief that the assasination was acceptable. And finally, in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assasination we have witnessed this disturbing trend yet again: social media users and some public figures have used the brutal murder as an opportunity to rail against the deceased victim, rationalize the crime, and in some cases even celebrate political violence. These are not isolated incidents. The phenomenon is repeating again and again. We are witnessing the radicalization of American youth in real time.
As we pass another 9/11 anniversary and take stock after another political assasination, we must face the fact that the threat of political violence is not merely a foreign affair. We must contend with radicalism and political violence here at home – from the radical Left and the radical Right. Those of us who care about both the United States and the State of Israel should not be surprised that a significant number of young people sympathize with Hamas. They sympathize with their own domestic terrorists as well.
Looking ahead, we desperately need moral clarity. We need moderates with backbones. Otherwise we may not be able to stand our ground as increasingly frequent waves of extremism come crashing down on us.
