When Charlie Kirk was assassinated this month, it marked not the beginning of political violence in America, but the culmination of a movement that started decades ago. The roots of this crisis trace back to the classrooms of our universities, where speech was redefined, dissent demonized, and violence reframed as justice.

In the early 2000s, professors began teaching that “microaggressions” were not just rude or offensive, they were violence. This was much more than semantics; it reshaped how a generation of students understood speech. If words were violence, then violent responses to speech could be rationalized as self-defense.

By the mid-2010s, this ideology left the lecture halls and spread across campuses. […] Students labeled opposing ideas as “harmful.” The implication was clear: Disagreement with left-wing ideas constitutes oppression and oppression justifies retaliation.

Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was an accelerant, causing these ideas to bleed into national politics. […]

By the early 2020s, the definition of the word “threat” had expanded, ridiculously. Anyone challenging progressive cultural dogma, especially on gender, became fair game. Misgendering was called violence. Questioning medical procedures for minors was violence. Barring biological males from women’s sports was violence. By this warped logic, physical aggression became “self-defense.” That’s why college athletes like Riley Gaines were mobbed and parents at school board meetings were labeled “domestic terrorists.”

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On Sept. 10, 2025, this logic culminated in the murder of Charlie Kirk […] His only crime was speaking his mind. This was not an isolated act. It was the predictable outcome of a 25-year campaign to redefine words as violence, normalize riots as resistance, and excuse assassination as politics by other means.