There is breaking news on CNN: Utah prosecutors have charged the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk with murder. The Justice Department has announced it will seek the death penalty against the 22-year-old suspect.
I have a lot of breaking comments to make, and the first is this: we are learning that the shooter, a 22-year-old young man who shot and killed Kirk, grew up in a Republican household — a white, suburban home. This already complicates the narratives forming around the case.
Reports suggest there was a conversation between the shooter and his roommate — or his boyfriend’s roommate — who happened to be transitioning. In that exchange, the shooter allegedly described his father as a “diehard MAGA fan, a diehard supporter, a diehard racist.” This is not incidental background; it reveals something about the environment in which the suspect was formed.
Predictably, Trumpists and radical Republicans are already spinning this, pointing fingers at the left, claiming that the shooter was “radicalized” by liberal culture. They even threaten war against liberals and liberal institutions in response. But the facts undermine that narrative. There is no evidence that this young man was radicalized by the left. Psychology tells us something different.
What we are seeing here is a clash of identities within one home. The father, wrapped up in Trump’s MAGA bandwagon, moved further right. The son, in rebellion, moved in the opposite direction. This is not unusual. Developmental psychology shows us that children in politically or religiously rigid homes often push against those boundaries. Here, the son’s rebellion was intensified by his father’s extreme positions, and it spiraled into something tragic.
This is not about absolving the shooter. Murder is murder. But if we are serious about preventing tragedies like this, we must understand radicalization not as a simple product of “the other side,” but as something that grows within fractured households, in communities where intolerance and extremism feed one another.
The lesson? America’s culture wars are not waged only in politics or online. They take root in living rooms, at dinner tables, between fathers and sons. And when we ignore the psychology of rebellion, resentment, and identity, we risk more young people turning violent — not because they were “programmed” by one side, but because they were caught in a cycle of radicalization at home.
Rev. Renaldo C. Mckenzie
Crestor and Host of The Neoliberal Round
President of The Neoliberal Corporation
Author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance
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Note This was first streamed Live on YouTube on The Neoliberal Round YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/live/YKYQMl93Ibo?si=Su2QjR_FiULQCLIC entitled: Charlie Kirk Shooter Became What is Family Hated, Gay..."