A 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged in connection with the fatal shooting of conservative US activist Charlie Kirk in Utah on 10 September. The alleged motives remain unclear, but the incident has been seized upon by far-right leaders across Europe to attack the left and portray Kirk as a martyr.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said: 'We must stop the hate-mongering left!' Santiago Abascal of Spain's Vox went further: 'Censorship isn’t enough for them – so they resort to murder.' Jordan Bardella of France's National Rally claimed 'the dehumanising rhetoric of the left and its intolerance … fuels political violence'. Germany's AfD leader Alice Weidel said Kirk had been shot by 'a fanatic who hates our way of life'.
Experts say the far right is constructing a narrative of persecution to legitimise their positions and damage the left. Historian Pierre-Marie Delpu told Le Monde: 'Martyrdom is a social operation to transform a morally and socially unacceptable act of violence into a narrative. Here, the far right is constructing a plot and a persecution, with one executioner: the left.'
In the European Parliament, the ultranationalist Europe of Sovereign Nations group nominated Kirk for the Sakharov prize. At a Vox rally in Madrid, a video tribute to Kirk drew cheers, and Abascal told 8,500 people that the left 'do not kill us for being fascists – they call us fascists in order to kill us'. In London, Tommy Robinson's 'unite the kingdom' protest held a minute's silence for Kirk.
The far right's exploitation of the killing comes as populist and far-right parties are in government or surging in several European countries, including Italy, Hungary, France, and Spain. Hardline policies on immigration, Islam, and EU integration are becoming normalised as mainstream parties adopt them to maintain vote shares.
