Charlie Kirk’s death must be a wake-up call; free speech is a vital safety valve – Jonathan Ayling

THE FACTS

• Charlie Kirk, a major ally of US President Donald Trump, was shot dead today while appearing at an event at Utah Valley University.
• Kirk had been influential in helping increase support for Trump among younger voters.
• Authorities are still searching for the person responsible for the shooting.

The news today of the killing of Charlie Kirk, the prominent American conservative commentator, at a university in Utah has left me disturbed.

It highlights a chilling point: in both the United States and New Zealand, advocating for free expression is not simply an intellectual exercise. It is a defence of the very foundation of a free society.

Kirk was polarising. No doubt. But to focus only on the substance of his positions is to miss the larger point. His assassination is not just about a man or a movement. It is about whether we are still committed to the principle that disagreements are settled by words, not violence.

His death should be a wake-up call.

In 2022, Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage for the “crime” of writing a novel decades earlier. That attack, like Kirk’s death, shows the stakes of the debate over free speech.

When we fail to protect the right to speak and to hear, we risk replacing persuasion with coercion. Ideas should clash in open debate, not in physical assaults. Rushdie’s stabbing was a brutal reminder that words and art can provoke fury. But our response must never be to curtail freedom.

For the reality is clear: free speech is the safety valve of a free society. It lets grievances be aired, arguments tested and bad ideas exposed. If you shut it down, pressure builds, ultimately bursting in fatal ways.

This doesn’t mean all ideas are equal. Not every idea deserves respect. But free speech gives us the power to identify bad ideas. Free speech does two vital things. It helps us discover truth in unexpected places. And it reveals the fool, the dangerous and the deluded for what they are.

It’s better to learn this by listening to them speak than having to face their aggression.

Lessons from Victoria University

I was reminded of this last year when I was invited to speak on a prominent panel at Victoria University to discuss free expression on campus. Over weeks, the event built into something of a scandal. I defended the right of students to hear and express ideas, even those some students claimed made them feel “unsafe”. The debate was heated with my opponents arguing the university should shield students from offensive or unsettling viewpoints.

But the irony is stark. When we suppress speech in the name of safety, it is real, physical safety that is eroded. The Victoria University panel revealed a dangerous fallacy: that safety lies in insulation from ideas.

In fact, safety lies in our ability to test, contest and disprove ideas through argument. To insulate students, or citizens, from speech is to leave them unprepared to face the world as it is, where disagreements do not vanish just because we ban their expression.

The real danger

It is not those who argue for free speech who make society unsafe. The real danger comes from those who treat ideas as threats to be extinguished. If every disagreement is cast as harm, then the temptation to silence or even physically attack those with whom we disagree becomes irresistible.

Kirk’s death is a terrible example of what happens when rhetoric about “harmful speech” bleeds into action. I’m not suggesting we censor those ideas; that would be falling into the same trap. I’m using my voice to say we need to pick a different path, because we can see where this one leads.

Charlie Kirk, a right-wing youth activist and influencer, was shot dead while speaking at an event at a university in the United States.

Free speech itself does not create danger. It may tell us where danger already exists, but ignoring that is folly. At its best, free speech stands to channel this conflict into dialogue rather than violence. To weaken the right to free speech is to tamper with the safety valve. History shows us what happens when societies do that. Pressure finds another outlet, and it is often brutal.

This all struck close to home last year when my wife and I took our two children for a walk through our neighbourhood. Across the road from our house, on a busy high street, someone had spray-painted graffiti calling me a fascist for defending free speech. With my children beside me, it was confronting.

And yet, I would never want to stop the person responsible from expressing their opposition to me, though I condemn the vandalism. Their outburst tells me something important about the moment we are in, and it is better to know it than to suppress it.

Preserving the foundations

Kirk’s killing must be our wake-up call. Open threats of violence are becoming more common on the basis of disagreement, even in New Zealand. If we are to avoid more violence, we must insist again that in the face of difference, we resort to reason, not force. We must uphold the belief that individuals are entitled to think and speak for themselves.

Are we prepared to preserve the right to free speech, even when it is messy, controversial, or unsettling? Or will we continue to allow a climate where speech is feared as violence, and violence becomes the answer to speech?

History shows us the consequences. Where words are silenced, brutality follows. Where debate is crushed, violence takes its place. If we are to avoid paying the ultimate price in physical safety, we must reaffirm, loudly and unequivocally, that words are not violence. They are the safety valve that protects us from it.

Jonathan Ayling is the former chief executive of the Free Speech Union New Zealand and is a civil liberties advocate.