The Turning Point We Never Wanted

What the Murders of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk Reveal About America

The past three days in America have been nothing short of surreal.

First came the murder of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death by a black man on a train in Charlotte. Though she was killed late last month, most people only “saw her die” this week — as new, horrific video cuts spread across the internet. For many, it felt like her murder happened in real time, online.

Before the country could even process that horror, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at a packed Utah Valley University event.

Two lives ended in senseless violence. Two very different victims. And yet both deaths revealed the same disturbing truth about where America is headed.

The Reactions

There were no “mostly peaceful” protests after Iryna’s and Charlie’s murders. No flash mobs. No looting. No rioting. No boarded-up shops or cities abandoned to chaos.

None of that happened — and nobody expected it to.

What did happen was an avalanche of mockery. Left-wing users flooded TikTok with clips of people laughing, dancing, and celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. On X, 10-second soundbites of his debates were posted with captions like “good riddance” or “one down.” Others went further, openly speculating about who “should be next” — with conservative, pro-Israel commentator Ben Shapiro seemingly being everyone’s favorite target. Here’s a quick compilation I came across. Click to zoom in if you want a closer look.

Source: X

That was disturbing enough. But then it hit closer to home.

I was knee-deep in the filth online when my phone buzzed. It was my aunt in Europe. The conversation soon turned to recent events. She had barely heard of Charlie Kirk before — probably not even his name — but with full certainty declared he was a racist, a far-right extremist, even a defender of slavery.

Now, she wasn’t justifying the murder, but the way she spoke made it clear she thought he had it coming. When I pressed her on where she got that impression, she admitted it came from something she’d seen on TV.

Of course, I thought to myself, remembering a recent headline I’d come across in the Belgian press.

Source: DeMorgen

Translation: American citizens who disagree with Republican ideas are speaking out more often.

(Apparently, in the media’s eyes, the brutal murder on Wednesday qualified as nothing more than “speaking out.” They later changed the headline and softened the language, but the core framing stayed the same: his death was presented as the natural result of his rhetoric).

Or here’s a screenshot from the Spanish show Más Vale Tarde (MVT) on La Sexta, where they gleefully rattled off Charlie Kirk’s supposed positions — some real, others fabricated — on abortion, slavery, Israel, and race, painting him as a monster whose assassination was no tragedy at all.

Source: La Sexta

Now, toward the end of our conversation, I asked my aunt if she’d heard anything about Iryna’s murder. She hadn’t.

That tracks.

Much like their American counterparts, European liberals care about Ukrainians — just not about all of them.

The Media

When Iryna was murdered, the media’s first response was silence — despite it looking like a racially motivated hate crime. People on X kept posting search results from CNN, the New York Times, AP News, and other outlets showing zero coverage.

It’s obvious to me that if it weren’t for X — and Elon Musk amplifying the story — we probably wouldn’t even know about it at all. Just like many other similar black-on-white crimes in recent years that were quietly buried.

When the New York Times finally broke its silence, the headline it ran with read: “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right.”

That was the angle. Not the tragedy of a young woman who had finished her shift at a Charlotte pizza parlor, boarded a light-rail train, and was riding home when she was brutally stabbed. Not the systemic failures that allowed her killer — a 14-time offender who had been released on cashless bail — to roam free. No — the story was framed around conservatives “reacting.”

Worse still were the excuses. CNN’s Van Jones, in a bizarre display of misplaced sympathy, chose to focus not on Iryna’s suffering but on how her killer was “hurting.” Naturally, it didn’t take long before multiple GoFundMe campaigns appeared — since taken down — not for her family, but to fund his legal defense.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination coverage was even more grotesque. The media couldn’t ignore it, so they muddied the waters instead — blaming everything from Donald Trump, to January 6th, to a supposed “climate of hate.”

MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd, while Kirk’s body was still warm, declared: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” The implication was unmistakable: Kirk brought it on himself. Dowd even speculated he may have been killed by “someone firing off a gun in celebration.”

If you’re shocked by that kind of rhetoric, you haven’t been paying attention.

For years, the legacy media has painted white Americans as inherently racist, conservatives as Nazis, and figures like Trump and Kirk as existential threats to democracy. Here’s a quick video compilation to jog your memory.

Last week’s tragic events are the result of all that brainwashing.

Yes, the thug on the Charlotte train may have driven the blade into Iryna’s neck — but it was the media that sharpened it. And Charlie’s shooter may have pulled the trigger — but it was the media that built the gun and manufactured the ammo.

The Turning Point

Let me circle back to my thoughts on Charlie Kirk in the intro.

Whether you agreed with him or not, Charlie is dead purely because someone didn’t agree with what he had to say.

And let’s be clear: his views weren’t fringe. They were mainstream Christian values, expressed in debates and speeches. That’s all.

So it was really eye-opening to watch leftists celebrate his death in the streets and across social media. I won’t post links or examples — it’s too grotesque — but suffice it to say, the reactions crossed every line of basic decency. Spend five minutes on X or TikTok and you’ll wish you hadn’t, if you value your sanity.

Watching it felt like witnessing the outcome of a massive experiment in mass brainwashing. It’s both chilling and, in a dark way, impressive how much the media has reshaped minds in little more than a decade.

The problem is that these radicalized people aren’t just anonymous trolls or terminally online basement dwellers. Sure, some are. But many are people just like you and me. They’re teachers, nurses, small business owners, yoga instructors — people you’d otherwise think of as ordinary. Ordinary, that is, until you see them openly celebrating a murder.

It’s hard to overstate the level of distrust this breeds in society. I came across a comment on X that captured it perfectly: “These are the same people who pour my coffee at Starbucks. The same people who treat me in the hospital. Can I really trust them not to slip something into my latte or deny me care if they don’t like my politics?”

That fear may not be rational, but millions are thinking it. When ordinary people see a father of two gunned down in broad daylight and his death cheered, they realize they could easily be next in the eyes of his killers and their cheerleaders.

The terrifying part? Many on the Left genuinely believe they’re fighting Nazis. And once you’ve convinced yourself of that, anything goes. Violence doesn’t just feel acceptable — it feels like a moral duty.

And while the media shoulders enormous responsibility for this brainwashing, they’re not the only ones. Leftist professors push it in classrooms, politicians repeat it in speeches, Hollywood packages it into entertainment, and activist groups preach it in communities. The media just makes sure the message echoes the loudest.

Source: The Internet

I’ll be blunt.

If we keep going down this road, my fear is we’ll end up like Yugoslavia.

A Croatian man I met years ago told me: once you stop seeing neighbors as neighbors and start seeing them as enemies, all it takes is a spark. He knew what he was talking about. In the ’90s, he watched it happen — one day people were sharing schools and soccer games, and before long they were at each other’s throats with knives and rifles. The thin veneer of order gave way to bloodshed and destruction.

Charlie Kirk called his movement Turning Point USA. His murder may prove to be just that — but toward a future none of us want to see.

I hope I’m wrong.

Regards,

Lau Vegys