People visit the makeshift memorial for Charlie Kirk outside the headquarters of Turning Point USA on Thursday.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The plaintive strains of a country music song swell across the Phoenix street where mourners have laid flowers, signs and American flags outside the headquarters for Turning Point USA, days before the memorial service on Sunday for the conservative political group’s assassinated co-founder Charlie Kirk.
“America is weepin’ like a mourning dove, when a voice falls silent that was speakin’ love,” the singer, Daryl Johnson croons, through speakers playing outside.
Those on the sidewalk stand hushed. A man supports a large wooden cross on his shoulders, wearing the same design of FREEDOM shirt Mr. Kirk was wearing when he was gunned down in Utah on Sept. 10. People who have come from across the country gaze at messages left in chalk and ink.
“You defended faith and now it’s our turn.”
“May we all rise up #inthenameofcharlie.”
The song takes a turn.
“They call us evil, point at our cross. Then pull that trigger and reckon no cost. If it were theirs, there’d be sirens and flames. But we’re prayin’ for truth while we whisper his name.”
Across the U.S., grief over Mr. Kirk’s death has been laced with fury. “An eye for an eye right now,” Enrique Tarrio, one of the Proud Boy leaders, told The Atlantic this week. “Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, who leads National Network, a far-right group, wrote on Telegram. For some, the possibility of a new civil war no longer feels remote.
But on the ground where Mr. Kirk once strode, there is also stubborn hope that peace can, somehow, still prevail.
“We’re sad, heartbroken. But we’re hopeful of what’s ahead,” said David Rose, a pastor aligned with the faith arm of Turning Point who met with Mr. Kirk monthly. He has come to the organization’s headquarters daily since Mr. Kirk’s death.
Mr. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking at an event in Utah.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Mr. Rose has heard the calls for revenge ‐ for vengeance. He wants no part of it.
“All the TPUSA Faith pastors have been very clear: please do not use violence and connect Charlie Kirk’s name to it,” he said. “That’s not who he was. He would not support that. He was against political violence. The way to get revenge is to knock doors, to vote, to pray for people, to love your neighbour, to walk out your faith.”
LeAnn Kiefer drove to Phoenix from California this week, a nine-hour drive in a motorhome from Pismo Beach. Ms. Kiefer recalled going to hear Mr. Kirk speak shortly after getting a divorce. ”It was the first thing I got to do on my own,” she said. “Charlie teaches that you can accomplish anything you want. And I wanted to change my chapter in my book,” she said.
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His death has brought her profound sadness. “I haven’t stopped crying,” she said. It has brought anger, too. ”I’m furious,” she said. “But we’re going to show it in a different way. We’re not going to burn anything.”
She travelled to Phoenix together with Justin Ennes, who is wearing a black “COME AND TAKE IT” T-shirt emblazoned with an assault rifle and boxes of ammunition. He holds no sympathy for Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of shooting Mr. Kirk.
”I’d love to see the guy pulled apart in public, piece by piece,” Mr. Ennes said. He drapes his arm over Ms. Kiefer’s shoulder as they walk to the memorial.
“But that doesn’t do any good. It creates more,” he said. “The best revenge is showing them we’re better.“
A public memorial service for Mr. Kirk is planned for Sunday at the State Farm Stadium in Phoenix.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Elsewhere, though, rage continues to course through a country that has heard its attorney-general promise this week to ”go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” and its vice-president declare: ”if you’re celebrating the death of a young father, you ought to pay some consequences for it.“
The killing of Mr. Kirk risks provoking supporters who see the assassination as a threatening act by political opponents, says Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at Ohio State University whose book Outraged examines the reasons behind political fighting.
When a narrative develops that “the other side is really into violence, then people think, ‘it’s a race to the bottom now — and we need to be violent before they are.’ Like a preemptive strike,” he said.
“People’s willingness to use violence and ignore the rules of democracy is really driven by the perception that the other side is willing to use violence.”
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Indeed, angst has been inescapable since Mr. Kirk’s death, said Brad Colburn, a Denver real estate agent.
“I’m angry at where the country has gotten to. How much division there is and how much hate there is,” he said Friday. He had come to the Turning Point headquarters while on vacation in Arizona.
Mr. Kirk was shot dead while speaking at a college campus, at an event where he welcomed dissenting views. It’s been hard to escape a fear that “we can no longer express our opinions without violence and the thought or the threat of being killed,” Mr. Colburn said.
He recently deleted Instagram from his phone, in hopes of pulling himself away from algorithms that amplify divisions.
”I think the majority of us really, truly believe in the middle ground,“ he said. ”But you can’t anymore, right? It kind of feels like you have to be either extremist right or extremist left ‐ and that middle ground is not available anymore.”