Sky News Australia: ‘We’re Going to Face More of It’: Kirk Assassination Sparks Political Violence Discussion

Lawyer Robert Barnes reflects on the life of Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk and how his assassination is sparking discussion on political violence.

“I followed Charlie throughout his entire career … started out as sort of a normie conservative,” Mr Barnes told Sky News host James Morrow. “He was very accessible, he would do favours for friends … he’d do it for free all the time.”

III. Closing Argument: The Political Permission Slip for the Criminally Insane (Robert Barnes)

• Bloody Kansas. The turn of the century, a time when anarchy equated violence. The KKK’s notorious role post Civil War, then again at the turn of the century, returning to haunt America in the 1920s before being exposed, and then returning to harass civil rights petitioners in the 1950s and 1960s. And now today, when members of the woke left celebrate and cheer the assassination of Charlie Kirk. All founded on the acts of the criminally insane, but flourished when given a political permission slip by institutional actors within the broader culture and community.
• Any study of the history of such violence outbreaks will find the true cause of criminal depravity in the broken minds and stolen souls of the evil-occupied, mentally ill, minds long since divorced from reality as much as their souls divorce from humanity. But their fevered dreams of sick, twisted violent fantasies need a political permission slip from powerful actors in the broader community to convert such dark fantasies into a terrible reality for the rest of the culture.
• Consider the Klan. Their rise and fall didn’t come and go with a rise and decline of criminally ill minds and corroded souls in the broader society; those individuals just didn’t find the freedom in the broader culture to act out their sick fantasies or get directed to express them in violent exhibition during the declining eras of Klan violence, that rose and receded with the political permission slips afforded them, the political protection extended them, and the political patronage provided them. The Klan rose and fell directly proportional to the degree of cultural applause and institutional support they received. There’s a reason so many Islamic terrorists recruit from prisons rather than mosques.  The criminal rap sheet of Klansman, Antifa, communist and fascists alike express in explosions of politicized violence in the last century plus only when blessed by the political high priests of their common culture.
• To deter, we need to remember the Amish learned custom of shunning. The Bann, as they call it, excludes from the community life those who commit the most serious of moral offenses against the Ordnung, the Amish community rules. This conforms to the known utility, when used appropriately, of shunning. Shunning shames the bad actor for their actions, triggers empathy for those victimized by the person being shamed, and motivates correction and better empathy in the broader public. it puts a price on those trying to give political permission slips to the criminally insane to make them as guilty of solicitation, invitation, and accomplices to their moral horrors they politically permit.
• We need such shunning of all those who reward, welcome, embrace, encourage, promote or defend the political permission slip given psychopaths to engage in politicized violence against disfavored dissidents. Shame can enable humility, expand empathy, and heal the community from the pain inflicted by its bad actors, just as it can tie the community together to promote and protect the best of its virtues and values.
• Time to shame again, to restore the better angels of our nature in our civilized society. Debate, discussion, dialogue in civil and civic engagement without resort to violence remains a calling card of Dr. King, Gandhi and Charlie Kirk alike, and we recognize, respect, and reward their legacy by continuing that fine American tradition, trusting in the quality of arguments and the sincerity of the advocate not the tools of violence, as violence remains the worst form of censorship that exists. Saying no to politicized violence says no to censorship, and says yes to the legacy and life of Charlie Kirk, and those whose founding steps he followed.

9:40 am on September 12, 2025

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