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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Friday, September twelve, twenty twenty five. Dementia now kills

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Speaker 1: one in ten Australians more than any other disease. That's

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Speaker 1: the news in a new report from the Australian Institute

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Speaker 1: of Health and Welfare showing dementia's overtaken coronary heart disease

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Speaker 1: as our biggest killer. Chinese officials are fingerprinting citizens of

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Speaker 1: the Solomon Islands and keeping tabs on their households. They

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Speaker 1: say it's all about protection and conflict resolution, but local

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Speaker 1: opponents say it's probably illegal and an infringement on the

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Speaker 1: rights of citizens. That exclusive is live right now at

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Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dou It's the moment that will

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Speaker 1: change Generation z's view of politics forever. The public assassination

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Speaker 1: of thirty one year old Conservative warrior Charlie Kirk. He

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Speaker 1: debated ideas with university students on a campus in Utah.

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Speaker 1: Kirk was globally famous thanks to social media and is

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Speaker 1: widely credited with swinging young men to Donald Trump at

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Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election. Today, how political violence spread

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Speaker 1: across the political spectrum, and why ordinary Americans are arming

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Speaker 1: themselves in a new climate of fear and loathing. Wednesday,

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Speaker 1: September ten was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Oran, Utah,

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Speaker 1: and the hero of conservative America for the TikTok generation,

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Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk, was sitting in the shade under an open

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Speaker 1: sided tent.

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Speaker 2: Thank Martha, bring the best lips that U thoughts.

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Speaker 1: Far, challenging all comers to debate ideas with him.

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Speaker 2: You don't agender Americans have been masshooters over the last

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Speaker 2: eight years, too many.

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Speaker 1: When he was shot dead.

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Speaker 2: If you know how many mass here there have been

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Speaker 2: in America over the last ten years, felt singer Nighttonic

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Speaker 2: Game violence.

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Speaker 1: The footage is nauseating. This handsome young man, a hugely

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Speaker 1: significant figure in American life, slaughtered like so many political

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Speaker 1: figures before him.

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Speaker 3: I think it's a quite a dangerous moment for America.

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Speaker 1: Claire Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent.

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Speaker 3: We are seeing an era of populist political violence in America.

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Speaker 3: It is a slippery slope that America is on at

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Speaker 3: the moment when it comes to the way people react

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Speaker 3: to political debate, the tense that was above. Charlie Kirk

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Speaker 3: when he was shot had the words proved me wrong

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Speaker 3: on it And that was his mandra He who go

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Speaker 3: to university campuses. He'd get people to ask him questions,

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Speaker 3: he'd debate them, he would throw his political arte is

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Speaker 3: at the.

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Speaker 2: But yes, so you do not hate the LGBT community

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Speaker 2: and a turning point is not against LGBT. How could

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Speaker 2: I hate that which I have a heart for? Thank you,

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Speaker 2: and I might.

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Speaker 3: And you know, no matter whether you agree or disagree

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Speaker 3: with Charlie Cook, I think that's actually irrelevant. The fact

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Speaker 3: is that he was promoting the marketplace of ideas. He

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Speaker 3: was the prime rally of the youth vote to Donald Trump.

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Speaker 2: What is Kamala Harris's greatest accomplishment? See that's that question.

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Speaker 2: You can't okay, what is her greatest accomplishment?

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Speaker 4: Oh?

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Speaker 2: I wish I had this on the top of my head,

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Speaker 2: but I don't. There are three things I want you

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Speaker 2: to think about when voting for Trump.

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Speaker 3: Home ownership, border war.

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Speaker 2: Three objective things. Donald Trump will restore the American dream

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Speaker 2: for your generation. How are you leaning this election?

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Speaker 3: Well?

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Speaker 1: After what you said, Trump, let's go on.

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Speaker 3: And you know, Charlie Kirk had a resonance well beyond America.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I have a teenage son, Claire, and you know,

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Speaker 3: he woke up this morning and all your friends it's

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Speaker 3: all they were talking about, you know, and whether they

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Speaker 3: support him or didn't support him, it was just big news.

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Speaker 3: I mean, he is a big figure in the youth movement,

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Speaker 3: not just in America, and so I think Trump's reaction

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Speaker 3: is going to be very important.

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Speaker 1: In that way. Is this the Martin Luther King moment

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Speaker 1: for a new generation, for that TikTok generation where suddenly

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Speaker 1: they see that their political figureheads are so vulnerable?

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Speaker 3: That's right. In fact, I think for a lot of

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Speaker 3: that teenagers today, they just haven't really seen this happen.

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Speaker 3: I think it will shock a lot of younger people.

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Speaker 3: And you know, again, younger people, let's just hope that

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Speaker 3: they react appropriately and sensibly here and that we don't

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Speaker 3: have sort of vigilantes running around in the US trying

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Speaker 3: to avenge this, as some commentators have called for.

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Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk was famously a supporter of the Second Amendment,

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Speaker 1: the right to bear arms. He in fact said that

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Speaker 1: some gun debts a year where the price Americans had

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Speaker 1: to pay full freedom.

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Speaker 2: I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to

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Speaker 2: have a cost of unfortunately some gun debts every single year,

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Speaker 2: so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect

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Speaker 2: our other God given rights. That is a prudent deal.

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Speaker 2: It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in

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Speaker 2: a complete alternate universe. So how do you reduce very

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Speaker 2: simple people say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings?

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Speaker 2: I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games?

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Speaker 2: Because armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why.

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Speaker 1: Now he's been shot dead. And of course his enemies

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Speaker 1: are very quick to suggest that this is the chickens

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Speaker 1: coming home to roost for him. How do you think

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Speaker 1: this will fit into the conversation about gun control in

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Speaker 1: the United States.

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Speaker 3: I don't think it will change that conversation, Claire. There's

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Speaker 3: been so many cycles of this. When I was the

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Speaker 3: correspondent there, I went to Las Vegas when the government

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Speaker 3: shot sixty people. At that point, there was a whole

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Speaker 3: range of big mass shootings in schools, etc. Probably even

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Speaker 3: more so than there are right now. We have this

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Speaker 3: exact same cycle in America when a prominent person or

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Speaker 3: a mass shooting happens, there's a lot of discussion about

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Speaker 3: it for a very short time. Occasionally people talk about

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Speaker 3: doing something, and then it just gets lost in the

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Speaker 3: political process because the Democrats haven't got the numbers quite

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Speaker 3: simply to push through strong gun control. It's an endless

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Speaker 3: debate in America, but it really goes around in circles.

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Speaker 1: America has a shocking history of political violence, the assassinations

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Speaker 1: of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, of course,

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Speaker 1: of Martin Luther King Junior. But is there something different

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Speaker 1: about what's happening now, Ken, It's a.

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Speaker 3: Very different American society, Claire. I mean, it's interesting because

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Speaker 3: you think about the way this has happened in American history.

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Speaker 3: You're right, there has been a lot of this stuff.

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Speaker 3: I mean, in the nineteen sixty three example, we had

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Speaker 3: both Kennedy's shot, Martin Luther King. We had two incredibly

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Speaker 3: polarizing debates, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 3: So now that was a hugely turbulent time and people

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Speaker 3: wondered at that point in time, where America could ever

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Speaker 3: come out of that cycle of violence. Well, look, it

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Speaker 3: did punctuated by other violence. But what we are seeing

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Speaker 3: now is a slightly different manifestation of this violence, and

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Speaker 3: I think quite a concerning one in the sense that

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Speaker 3: America is as politically polarized now as it has been

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Speaker 3: for generations. You have a whole series of things happening

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Speaker 3: at once, which is contributed to this one is a

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Speaker 3: complete loss of faith in institutions. When you go out

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Speaker 3: to small towns in America, especially in sort of Trump

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Speaker 3: regions Republican regions, there is a real distrust about the

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Speaker 3: institutions and the leaders of their country. And that's because

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Speaker 3: their lot has not improved very much at all. They

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Speaker 3: see wealth is view very unequal in America. The rich

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Speaker 3: are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. And of

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Speaker 3: course that's the phenomenon that helped Trump get elected in

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Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and again in the last election. Trump didn't

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Speaker 3: create that. I mean, Trump is a polarizing president, but

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Speaker 3: it's wrong to say that Trump has created that. He's

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Speaker 3: perpetuated some of those trends. Certainly, Trump doesn't trust institutions.

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Speaker 3: You can tell that by the people he's putting in

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Speaker 3: charge of the Health Department, the FBI, etc. To put

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Speaker 3: his own people in But the manifestation of this polarization

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Speaker 3: in America comes from the haves and the have nots.

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Speaker 3: And what that's done is that when it comes to

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Speaker 3: political debate, people are very intolerant of other people having

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Speaker 3: a different view. The left considers the right the Charlie

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Speaker 3: Kirk views of America to be a great danger to

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Speaker 3: American democracy, and the right considers the left the Democrat views, which,

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Speaker 3: of course, the powerhouse of Democrats is the inner city

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Speaker 3: elites these days, and they consider them to be a

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Speaker 3: real threat to the future of America and the American dream.

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Speaker 3: So people interpret different political opinions through a rather apocalyptic

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Speaker 3: lens in the way they didn't before, and I think

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Speaker 3: that does fuel the risk of this actually manifesting itself

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Speaker 3: into violence.

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Speaker 1: Always when there's one of these shootings, there's a very

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Speaker 1: quick look at the possible motivations of the person involved.

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Speaker 1: When there was a shooting of Donald Trump in July

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, he was shot in the ear famously

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Speaker 1: at a rally in Pennsylvania, it was difficult to tell

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Speaker 1: the political persuasion of that shooter. Thomas Crooks, who was

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Speaker 1: shot dead by the Secret servers ready he was a

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Speaker 1: registered Republican, but he'd also donated to the Democrats. Similarly,

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Speaker 1: Ryan Ruth, who was detained allegedly with a high powered

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Speaker 1: rifle outside Donald Trump's golf club in September twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 1: in fact, his trial was just about to get underway.

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Speaker 1: It's similarly unclear what if any political motivation he actually had.

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Speaker 1: He seems to be a disillusioned Trump supporter who had

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Speaker 1: also indicated some sort of democratic support. Is there a

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Speaker 1: way to frame the left versus the right in terms

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Speaker 1: of who is actually carrying out political violence?

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Speaker 3: Look, it's very difficult because the truth is that most

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Speaker 3: of the people who carry out these acts are mentally unstable.

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Speaker 3: A lot of them have fallen into being manipulated by

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Speaker 3: the dark recesses of the internet, conspiracy theories. You know,

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Speaker 3: these are not normal people who put out guns and

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Speaker 3: try to kill leaders. But you're absolutely right, there is

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Speaker 3: no ideology in America owns this violence. It's perpetrated on

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Speaker 3: both sides. We had the two assassinations attempts against Donald Trump,

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Speaker 3: and while we don't know the motivations actually of those

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Speaker 3: those shooters or would be shooters, clearly they were hostile

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Speaker 3: towards the president. We also had earlier this year the

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Speaker 3: assassination of a Democrat congress woman from Minnesota, and we

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Speaker 3: had a violent us AN attack on the governor's residence

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Speaker 3: in Philadelphia of Josh Shapiro, again a Democrat. So it's

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Speaker 3: all spectrums of the political divide that are carrying out

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Speaker 3: this violence. So I think we need to look well

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Speaker 3: beyond the ideology. And I think one of the problems

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Speaker 3: perhaps in the next couple of days, in the debate

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Speaker 3: in America Claire with Charlie Kirk's death, is that, you know,

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Speaker 3: you've already got a couple of conservative commentators saying that

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Speaker 3: we must avenge this, this is war. I mean, the

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Speaker 3: real danger here is copycat killings. Someone who's a bit unstable,

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Speaker 3: who considers there should be a vengeance retaliation for his death.

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Speaker 3: Of course, that would be a disaster. And that's one

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Speaker 3: of the problems with these this sort of violence is

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Speaker 3: it does perpetrate potentially copycat killings. But it's certainly I

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Speaker 3: think the ideology of it is actually just not nearly

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Speaker 3: as important as the concept of people being willing to

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Speaker 3: cross that threshold and commit political acts of viole regardless

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Speaker 3: of what the ideology of the victim.

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Speaker 1: Is coming up the ordinary Americans who no longer feel safe.

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Speaker 1: It feels too dangerous to be in public life in

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Speaker 1: America now unless you have a full secret service detail.

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Speaker 1: Does that limit the pool of people who are willing

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Speaker 1: to put their hands up to stand for public office.

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Speaker 3: Look, you wonder whether that would be a factor. And

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Speaker 3: it's not just politicians, Claire, I mean this sort of

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Speaker 3: form of political violence, if you like, manifests itself in

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Speaker 3: other ways. We saw the head of United Healthcare, huge

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Speaker 3: health company in America, of course, being gunned down on

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Speaker 3: the streets, and insurance company by a guy who didn't

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Speaker 3: like the company's insurance policies. You know, We've seen two

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Speaker 3: Jewish employees at the Israeli Embassy in Washington gunned down

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Speaker 3: over the Gaza war. We're seeing violence manifests itself, and

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Speaker 3: you might not call it direct political violence, but he

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Speaker 3: is the same concept. And I think that is a

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Speaker 3: disturbing trend.

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Speaker 4: It's a long past time for all Americans and the

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Speaker 4: media to confront the fact that violence and murder are

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Speaker 4: the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree

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Speaker 4: in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years,

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Speaker 4: those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like

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Speaker 4: Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

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Speaker 4: This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism

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Speaker 4: that we're seeing in our country today, and it must

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Speaker 4: stop right now.

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Speaker 1: You've raised children in the United States, cam in ordinary life,

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Speaker 1: day to day life, even in places like Washington, DC.

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Speaker 1: You know, does it feel scary to to have children

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Speaker 1: at school, to have people going out to football games,

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Speaker 1: to be yourself out on the streets? Does it feel

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Speaker 1: that dangerous in the United States.

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Speaker 3: Look, my honest answer is no, in the sense I

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Speaker 3: just sort of tried to put it to one side.

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Speaker 3: But look, there was a part of me. My child

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Speaker 3: was in elementary school, which is our primary school, and

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Speaker 3: he spent his ninth birthday reciting the lockdown drills he

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Speaker 3: had in his classroom that day. And so these things

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Speaker 3: definitely pray on you when you live in America. But

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Speaker 3: generally speaking, it's a fantastic place to live. It is

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Speaker 3: just a society that is suffering, I think from the

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Speaker 3: crumbling of the civic and social guard rails. That once

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Speaker 3: stopped people from sliding from political dissent and political opinion

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Speaker 3: into the potential for violence, especially over the last five

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Speaker 3: or six years. But it's really been happening slowly. I

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Speaker 3: think over a generation.

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Speaker 1: Every time there's a public place shooting in the United States,

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Speaker 1: we hear hopeful talk that this might be the moment

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Speaker 1: that creates some momentum for gun reform. That happened when

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Speaker 1: kindergarteners were murdered at Sandy Hook when President Obama was

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Speaker 1: in office. It's been repeated again and again, and yet

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Speaker 1: nothing ever happens. Is there ever a moment when things

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Speaker 1: are going to change and could this be it?

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Speaker 3: I don't think so, because the Americans just see it

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Speaker 3: very differently. People do believe in the Second Amendment. There

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Speaker 3: are so many guns out there you could never have

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Speaker 3: a buy back. I mean, America is not the sort

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Speaker 3: of country that would ever tolerate a buy it back

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Speaker 3: on both sides of politics. The best you can ever

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Speaker 3: get in America as far as gun control goes, is

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Speaker 3: a renewed debate over assault weapons, over AR fifteen's and

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Speaker 3: those sort of weapons that shoot so many bullets you

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Speaker 3: can have mass killings in just a couple of minutes.

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Speaker 3: Even then, Bill Clinton introduced legislation to ban them, but

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Speaker 3: that was a sunset clause and that's never come back again.

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Speaker 3: And this increasing distrust of institutions that we're seeing at

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Speaker 3: the moment in the States is only going to lend

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Speaker 3: itself to people wanting to buy guns. Even well. I

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Speaker 3: know a friend of mine in Washington is died in

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Speaker 3: the Wall Democrat and he has bought a gun. I said,

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Speaker 3: why was that. I was over there a few a

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Speaker 3: few weeks ago, and he said, because I just don't

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Speaker 3: I just don't feel safe anymore.

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Speaker 1: Cameron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. This story

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Speaker 1: is moving fast and you can keep up with the

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Speaker 1: latest by joining us subscribers at the Australian dot com

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