Exploring how violence becomes a tool of influence, distraction, and control in America.
Another American voice has been silenced. On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk conservative activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. Just last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania reminded us: in America, no one is safe. Not presidents. Not activists. Not everyday people.
This all lands the day before we mark another September 11. Different decades, different motives, same truth: violence in America is never just about the individual it’s about the system that profits from the chaos.
I did not agree with Charlie Kirk. I didn’t admire his views, and I didn’t like the role he played in politics. But he didn’t deserve to die. His murder proves a point he built his career on that speech in this country can get you killed.
The question isn’t just why did this happen? The deeper question is: who benefits when it does?
Violence as a Business Model
Political violence is nothing new. From assassinations and terrorist attacks to gang shootings in our own neighborhoods, lives are constantly being taken.
But the way these acts are packaged and sold to us is what keeps America divided.
🚩 Gang violence gets criminalized and tied to stereotypes.
🚩 Terrorism becomes a tool for fear and endless wars.
🚩 Political assassinations get turned into 24-hour spectacles, fueling propaganda and polarization.
Different categories, same result: another life lost, another headline, another excuse for the system to tighten its grip.
“Spectacle feeds the system. Every act of violence framed as political only strengthens the apparatus it claims to oppose.” Inspired by Shahid King Bolsen
Charlie Kirk’s murder wasn’t an attack on the system it was a gift to the system. The killer didn’t help Muslims, minorities, immigrants, or women. The act didn’t bring justice or revolution. It simply created more spectacle. Both Kirk and his killer became pawns in the same game.
Strategic Indifference
I don’t mourn Charlie Kirk, but I don’t celebrate his death either. That’s strategic indifference.
To celebrate injustice makes you part of the same mob that has fueled America’s darkest history the genocide of Indigenous people, the wars in Iraq and Cambodia, the oppression in Gaza. To mourn selectively, only when it suits politics, is to play the system’s game of selective compassion.
Kirk was shaped by a system that failed him. His killer was shaped by the same system. One became a vessel for a polarizing ideology, the other for misplaced rage. Both ended up serving the machinery of chaos.
When Black Voices Are Silenced
We also can’t forget that Charlie Kirk is not the first activist in America to be silenced and certainly not the most vulnerable. For generations, Black leaders have been targeted, murdered, or discredited for daring to speak truth to power.
📍 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated in 1968 for pushing beyond civil rights into economic justice and anti-war resistance.
📍 Malcolm X, gunned down in 1965 after years of surveillance and infiltration.
📍 Fred Hampton, young Black Panther leader, killed in his sleep by Chicago police in 1969.
📍 Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963 for his work with the NAACP.
These were not random acts they were strategic eliminations of voices threatening America’s systems of control. Their deaths were often framed as inevitable, criminal, or simply forgotten.
This contrast matters. It shows how selective the system is in deciding whose lives warrant national mourning and whose are erased. Political violence has always been racialized. The machinery that profits off of spectacle also erases voices it fears most especially Black voices that unite, resist, and expose.
Freedom of speech in America: freedom for who?
History shows that for Black activists, that freedom has always come with a target on the back.
The Real Danger :
Freedom of speech in America is not what we think it is. On paper, it’s the First Amendment. In reality, it’s fragile and conditional. Speak too boldly, and you risk your life. Challenge the wrong narrative, and your voice might be silenced not with debate, but with a gun.
But the real danger isn’t just the violence itself. It’s what happens after. Every act of political violence becomes another tool of influence, another way to control public opinion, another excuse to divide people.
You don’t need a bullet to destroy a movement you only need manipulated minds. And right now, America is full of them.
Final Thought
America has turned violence into a business model. It feeds on our fear, thrives on division, and keeps us distracted with spectacle.
The question is not who was shot today? The question is how will the system use it tomorrow?
Until we stop feeding into this cycle until we refuse to let the spectacle dictate our emotions and alliances we’ll remain trapped in a machine that was never built to protect us, only to profit off of us.
And in that machine, no one Black, Brown, White, young, old, conservative, liberal is truly safe.
Journal Prompt: Your Voice in a Spectacle-Driven World
Take a moment to reflect:
1. When have you felt silenced, or seen someone else silenced? How did it affect you?
2. How does violence in society shape the way people speak or stay quiet?
3. What truths do you want to express, even if they make others uncomfortable?
4. How could practicing strategic indifference help you navigate injustice without feeding the cycle of fear and spectacle?
Write freely. No one is judging. Just your thoughts, your reflection, your truth.
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