He was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Freedom’. A one-word rallying cry emblazoned in black across his chest. It was his core belief: that liberty, especially the liberty to speak, is preferable to tyranny. Then, following the crack of gunfire, that word was stained red with blood. We’ve heard of blood being spilt for freedom: here it was for real. Not a metaphor, not an analogy: the literal drenching of liberty with the blood of a young man who devoted his life to fighting for it.

This is America’s Charlie Hebdo moment. Violence wielded against ideas, a man punished for his ‘blasphemies’, gunfire cutting down discussion

The killing of Charlie Kirk has horrified the world. It is, in President Trump’s words, a ‘dark moment for America’. It was first and foremost an act of wilful cruelty.

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