Within hours of Charlie Kirk being shot dead at a college event in Utah, he had been turned into a far-right martyr in the US’s raging culture war. Many prominent rightwing voices and influencers quickly characterized his murder, in no uncertain terms, as an act of war from the left – and have vowed to respond in kind.
“We have to have steely resolve,” said the conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on his show War Room. “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”
