This was originally sent to MBMG clients and subscribers as a Special Update in Mid-September 2025
By Paul Gambles, MBMG Investment Advisory
“This is the end
My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end.” – The Doors, The End
Funerary incensed
One of the news items that has dominated this month has been the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk and the response that it has prompted, especially in Kirk’s native America.[1] Prior to Kirk’s death, MBMG had no particular knowledge of Kirk.[2] However, it has subsequently become increasingly difficult to remain unaware of Kirk and his elevation to the status of “icon” of contemporary conservatism and Christian nationalism.[3]
The shooting has been framed within broader political debates. Some Republicans have accused liberals of “inciting violence with rhetoric”, leading to counter allegations that Republicans were exploiting Kirk’s death for political gain, while gun control lobbyists have justifiably linked the killing to further discussions of gun legislation.
Examples of the adulation of Kirk include Donald Trump’s address to the nation from the White House on the day of the shooting (having previously used his social media channels to call for prayers for Kirk and the holding of vigils in Kirk’s honour at a number of US embassies, including Vienna, the city where Hitler first encountered racist polemic and rhetoric).[4]
Vigils were also held at significant sites in America, such as the JFK Arts Center [sic], while his memorial at a sports stadium in Arizona attracted a crowd of 200,000. It’s been announced that Kirk will posthumously receive an honorary degree from conservative institution, Hillsdale College. Trump posthumously awarded Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, while in Israel a traffic junction has been renamed in his honour (even though Iran’s national news agency and others have claimed that Kirk may have been assassinated by Mossad.)
Trump also ordered that the Stars and Stripes be flown at half-mast for 4 days at the White House, at public buildings and grounds, at military posts and naval stations, and on naval vessels as a mark of respect for Kirk (not all areas participated, especially in New York and New Jersey). Right wing campaigners sought revenge for Kirk’s killing and began to accuse Kirk’s opponents of celebrating or justifying Kirk’s death, seeking to have Kirk’s critics silenced and even dismissed from their employment.[5]
With emotions running high, the campaign quickly broadened to openly targeting statements that were critical of Kirk without celebrating his assassination, leading to The Washington Post firing columnist Karen Attiah for posts that lamented how “white America” was not ready to solve gun violence while citing Kirk’s denigration of the intelligence of prominent Black women such as Michelle Obama.[6]
The campaign was criticised for being “a conservative version of cancel culture” and the rise of the “woke right”.[7] We’d also note that it diminishes the humanity of Kirk – however objectionable many of his views may have been, ultimately, he was the son, brother, father or husband to his parents, siblings, children and bizarre wife. He was still a person.
Toxic shock
The reaction of Kirk’s political opponents was more nuanced. Democrat former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden echoed Trump’s call for prayers for Charlie Kirk.
Pentagon Colonel Scott Stephens was the highest ranking of several senior serving military officers suspended from duty for their comments about Kirk’s death.[8]
Fair’s Unfair
A county fair in Ohio shut down a Democrat Party booth for selling badges, specifically the examples shown below. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-he-dead-yet-trump-buttons-get-democratic-booth-kicked-from-fair-oh-cops-say/ar-AA1N17L)
Facing the risk of regulatory action from the US broadcast regulator and license issuer,[9] the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the Disney-owned TV and radio network, ABC[10] suspended its previously long-running late night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, because the show’s eponymous hero had dared to question the narrative that Kirk supporters, including Trump, had immediately propagated with no basis or evidence, that Kirk’s killer was a left-wing extremist and had also mocked Trump’s response in the following monologue:
At the time of writing Kimmel has now been unsuspended, but many franchises and local channels are not yet re-instating the show.
No publicity is bad publicity.
The role of the FCC prompted wider debate about free speech, in the aftermath of Trump’s suggestion that networks giving him “bad publicity” should be stripped of their licenses and in light of restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on reporting, including restrictions on coverage of the US military. [11]
This highlights what we see as a major socio-economic and political risk presently facing America. The history of American media ownership over the last 150 years has seen the emergence of media oligarchs (initially the likes of Pulitzer, Hearst and Scripps but subsequently Murdoch et al and latterly, the Zuckerbergs etc). This phenomenon has become even more pronounced in recent years:
It is mistakenly assumed that this phenomenon enables media barons to control the hearts and minds of America. We don’t believe this to be true. We believe that it allows the groups whose ultimate bidding these media companies perform (not necessarily the press barons) to control the hearts and minds of America. This is replicated across most ‘liberal’ western ‘democracies’, which promote the virtues of freedom of speech because they have been able (with a few speedbumps along the way – e.g. McCarthyism) to ensure that there has been no freedom of thought.
Party Partay
The 2-party system is an extension of this – by distracting the population with Potemkin democracy, western neoliberal societies have been able to ensure that all criticism is contained within the system – i.e. Republicans blame Democrats and vice versa, even though the differences between them, on the broadest scale are negligible – enabling the system itself to avoid scrutiny or criticism, however broken the system may be.
The Overton Window is essentially the range of broadly acceptable political topics and possibilities. When added to the unacceptable possibilities, this creates the entire range of political possibilities. In a neoliberal two party state, the very centre ground of the Overton Window represents the safe space at the heart of the manufactured political consensus. The two-party state relies on the conflict between all participants in the system being largely, if not exclusively, concentrated on manufactured tension between the parties (in this example Dems and Repubs) to prevent any challenges to the system itself, as almost all political energy is expended on this very narrow conflict, preventing the broader system being subjected to scrutiny or criticism.
Risky Business
In Trump’s America, there are now two major challenges to this long-established organisational structure.
The first is that the process of manufacturing conflict between the two parties is evidently in danger of spinning out of control. Kirk’s death is far from an outlier. During last year’s election campaign, Trump was the target of two assassination attempts, having previously been the target of various attempts in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in New York last year while walking to a conference. Democratic lawmakers were attacked in Minnesota. All these incidents highlight the extent to which confected factionalism has spiralled out of control, “the growing divide in American politics may perhaps be at its worst point in decades….Dr. Adam Meyers of the Political Science Department at Providence College noted a trend of tribalism in American politics: ‘it’s not just that we disagree with each other more, but we increasingly view our political groups as our identity groups and our political opponents as threatening our identity.’”[12]
Interestingly, in the days after Kirk’s death, Americans were equally divided in terms of a favourable or an unfavourable opinion of him, but intensely held in both directions. It seems to us that the extremity of the level of conflict poses a risk of unpredictable, unintended systemic consequences that might most typically manifest in changes to America’s established socio-political framework. These could, in turn, result in significant capital market and economic consequences. In the worst case, which is less likely but ultimately not inconceivable, civil war and even international conflict could ensue.
Idiot-syncratic Risk
The second challenge is that Trump’s approach is so strikingly different to the status quo and betrays a lack of understanding of how the American system actually works. The system is therefore not only under threat from the confected partisan conflict spinning out of control of its own accord, but also from the added risk of leaving the ship of state in the hands of a drunken, utter novice sailor.
This dangerous confluence of socio-economic and political challenges poses an unquantifiable market risk at the worst possible time.
Last Word
We’ll leave this to Charlie Kirk (with some slight modification)-
Many people believe that Charlie Kirk was a scumbag….does that mean that he deserved to die?[13] Of course not. Those are two totally different things.[14]
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[1] On 10th September, while on stage at a TPUSA rally at Utah Valley Charles J Kirk was fatally shot in the neck, in front of an audience of about 3,000 people. As far as we can ascertain, Kirk is believed to be no relation to the fictional Captain of the Starship Enterprise, James T Kirk, in Star Trek. Immediately before being shot, Kirk was debating mass shootings, which Kirk appeared to equate primarily with gang violence. The New York Times has noted that this was “a grim coincidence that has fed into online conspiracies and speculation”. Kirk has been described as an “American right-wing political activist, entrepreneur, and media personality”. Kirk dropped out of university aged 18 to co-found Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012. His controversial writings and talk radio appearances led to Kirk becoming a prominent voice in the pro-Trump MAGA faction of the Republican Party. TPUSA’s polemical activism, including mass college rallies but also the maintenance of a McCarthyite ‘watchlist’ denouncing so-called ‘progressive’ academics has been seen as fostering interest in and support for political conservatism and right-wing extremism among American youth.
[2] In fact the only prior interaction between ourselves and Kirk that we can trace is that we had blocked Kirk’s social media outpouring because of what we deemed to be the unacceptable nature of some of the views that he espoused. Examples of Kirk’s comments include:
“If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified….if I’m dealing with a moronic black woman in customer service, is she there because of her excellence or because of affirmative action…I wouldn’t want a black lesbian to remove my appendix….the war on white people continues….there’s no such thing as white privilege or racism…the country made a mistake when it passed its civil rights act….reject feminism, women need to get married younger so they can start having kids…Democrat women want to die alone, without children….the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates….we’re dealing with maggots, vermin and swine here… birth control is worse than the Holocaust [and it] really screws up women’s brains ….women are lying about being raped….you should submit to your husbands….Joe Biden should be given the death penalty for crimes against America [that’s why] I keep saying ‘buy weapons’…..[judicial executions] should be public, should be quick and should be televised [from age 12]…..watching an execution would make my day better…native born Americans should buy weapons and have a lot of guns at your disposal….never leave your home without a weapon…it’s worth to have gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment….we have more guns at TPUSA HQ than you could imagine.”
[3] https://www.thecowl.com/conservative-icon-charlie-kirk-assassinated-at-campus-event/ and https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/news/charlie-kirk-from-secular-activist-to-christian-nationalist-icon/
[4] The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany – W L Shirer
[5] Vice President Vance called on the general public to inform on anyone who said “distasteful things” about Kirk’s assassination – “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and hell, call their employer.” Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have launched investigations of teachers accused of inappropriate statements after last week’s assassination. The U.S. military has invited members of the public to report those who “celebrate or mock” the killing and said some troops have already been removed for their comments. (https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-speech-republicans-firings-government-vance-e65a4939b80e4f4822db188e978d8812) A website called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” (whose domain was registered anonymously and which claimed not to be a doxxing site, when that’s exactly what it appeared to be) “received nearly 30,000 submissions” to be converted into a searchable database, filterable by location and profession, before it was taken down. The vast majority of the 30,000 named/shamed individuals neither referred to themselves as activists, nor called for violence. MAGA Senator Laura Loomer posted : “I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death.” https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/13/business/charlie-kirk-death-fired-comments
[6] Press freedom group, PEN America, warned that Attiah’s firing “risks creating a chilling effect.”
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/charlie-kirk-free-speech-republicans.html
[8] Stephens’ most cited post was “The death of Charlie Kirk in Utah was tragic. However, we can take comfort in the fact that Charlie was doing what he loved best — spreading hate, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia on college campuses.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pentagon-suspends-army-colonel-celebrating-174003712.html
[9] The FCC was created in 1934, tasked with authorising broadcast frequencies (radio and subsequently TV). Currently it regulates local TV and radio franchises, but doesn’t generally regulate cable, satellite or online content and doesn’t directly oversee the national networks (e.g. NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox etc) which provide news, sport and other programming to local outlets, but sets rules for disclosing sponsors, emergency broadcasts, and content regarding obscenity and decency. The FCC is run by five commissioners, including a chairman, with no more than three commissioner from the same political party. They are nominated by the president, subject to confirmation by the Senate.. The current chairman is Brendan Carr. A Republican commissioner since Trump’s first term Carr was promoted to the chair earlier this year. Carr led public calls for action against Kimmel, threatening “remedies” – “We can do this the easy way or the hard way….These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Within hours of Carr’s threats, dozens of local stations across the country announced that they would stop airing Kimmel’s programme and ABC confirmed that Kimmel’s program would be suspended indefinitely. Commissioner Gomez, a Democrat, issued a dissenting statement criticising the Trump administration pressure, which accused ABC of “cowardly corporate capitulation”, adding “We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control. This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87yel3wgqgo It’s widely recognised that Trump may have been using the furore surrounding Kirk’s death to settle old scores with long-time critics – https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2025-09-22/canceling-jimmy-kimmel-live-less-about-charlie-kirk-more-about-trump-revenge
[10] The transcript reads as follows: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
He then commented on a viral clip of Trump speaking to reporters outside the White House, mocking his “grieving” as the president was reportedly close friends with Kirk.
“In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”
A clip of the President was then shown where, when asked by a reporter how he was holding up following the passing of Kirk, he replied, “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.”
Kimmel observed: “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. There’s something wrong with him, there really is. Who thinks like that? This is how a four-year-old mourns the death of a goldfish.” (https://www.aol.com/articles/full-transcript-jimmy-kimmel-said-121448035.html)
[11] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/news-outlets-criticize-pentagons-new-restrictions-media-coverage-2025-09-21/
[12] https://www.thecowl.com/conservative-icon-charlie-kirk-assassinated-at-campus-event/
[13] There has been very little meaningful discussion of whether Charlie Kirk’s death can be in any way, justified. It’s now nearly 80 years since Jean-Paul Sartre explored the potential for justifying killing another human being in his play Les mains sales. Many of the points examined by Sartre (whether killing can be justified on a quantitative basis by reference to the number of lives potentially saved by such an action, by whether the world and society are better as a result and the inability to make objective determinations) remain just as relevant today, especially the issue of both humanising and dehumanising of political allies and opponents. The English translation is here: https://archive.org/details/lesmainssales0000unse_o7f2 and the original here: https://ia801508.us.archive.org/13/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.503831/2015.503831.Les-Mains_text.pdf
[14] Kirk said about the death of George Floyd “the guy was a scumbag….does that mean that he deserved to die? Of course not. Those are two totally different things.”