"This week, the Associated Press said Charlie Kirk was “assassinated” Wednesday on a college campus in Utah, where he was evidently shot through the neck. That characterization, however, is not neutral. It conveys the president’s preferred view of his death, as an example of America becoming a “killing field” that requires the remedies of a strongman, like murdering the homeless, per Trump's fave TV show. But Kirk was not assassinated. He was murdered. Yes, he was a prominent figure. Yes, he was very important to the Republican Party. But he wasn't running for high office, he wasn't leading a mass movement and he was not democratically elected. If anything, he had a high perch, because billionaires gave it to him. Melissa Hortman was assassinated, however. She was a Democratic legislator and the former speaker of the state House who led the enactment of sweeping progressive reforms in Minnesota. In June, she was assassinated by an anti-vaccine terrorist named Vance Boelter. Boelter killed three others, including Hortman’s husband. But he was not assassinated. Neither were the other two, though two of the three were also lawmakers. They were murdered. Hortman was a former speaker. For that reason, her murder rises to the level of assassination. This is not just semantics. By elevating Kirk's murder to the level of an assassination, he's turned into a moral figure who appears to transcend politics, such that we are forced to either praise him – or at least say nice things about him – or remain silent for fear of being seen as endorsing political violence. That is, of course, one of the goals of authoritarian politics – to censor, silence and suppress the opposition by any means. Kirk was key to that. He presented himself and his organization as champions of free speech on college campuses while also keeping lists, complete with pictures, of professors and students who said and wrote things he didn't like in order to encourage people to monitor and harass them."