Minneapolis, Charlotte, Orem—Massacres That Concern All of Us

Recently, three massacres in the United States have deeply shaken the public. The terrible events are not just about America—they concern the entire West, and indeed every person of goodwill, as they reflect three major crises afflicting Western civilization. They represent the extreme point of the Revolution—the subversion of Christian Order. Like fruits that contain the seeds of the plant from which they grow, these events hold the very essence of the Revolution, stripped of all appearances.

The tragedy in Charlotte occurred on August 22, 2025, when a man with many prior violent offenses stabbed, without motive and in broad daylight, a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman named Iryna Zarutska on the subway. The massacre in Minneapolis took place on August 27, 2025, when a radicalized transgender individual, showing clear signs of mental disturbance (if not worse), opened fire on children attending Mass at a Catholic school. In Orem, Utah, on September 10, a sniper—apparently romantically involved with a man transitioning to be a ‘woman’—fatally shot Charlie Kirk, the most prominent voice of young American Christian conservatism. These three tragedies reflect the Revolution of the West in its social, religious, and political dimensions.

First, these events lay bare a deeper Western unease with the idea of justice. 

In ancient Rome, ius gladii was referred to as the right and duty of legitimate authorities to apply the death penalty in specific, well-defined cases—against those who commit crimes so heinous that they shake the very foundations of civil coexistence. Whoever deliberately and knowingly denies another person’s right to life forfeits, ipso facto, their own right to life. 

This is the basic principle of retributive justice, long recognized by natural law, Sacred Scripture, and even Catholic teaching, which has never absolutely excluded the legitimacy of capital punishment when necessary to protect the common good. It needs to be noted, however, that things changed under Pope Francis, who revised the Catechism on this issue and published Dignitas infinita.

Today, we are overwhelmed—and even desensitized—by illogical and nauseating rhetoric about equality at all costs, which fuels a practice whereby criminals are protected while law-abiding citizens are crushed. Simple common sense should suffice to see that the modern penal system in the West is profoundly unjust. It is not justice to sentence someone to decades in prison, because it means forcing citizens—including the victims’ own families—to pay for the criminal’s upkeep with public funds collected through taxation.

The West must relearn that the role of the judiciary is not to redeem the wicked, but to deliver justice to the victims and restore the order disrupted by crime. The purpose of punishment is expiation proportionate to guilt.

When guilt is extreme and undeniable—as in the gratuitous and brutal murder in Charlotte—no form of expiation is adequate except capital punishment. In this, Donald Trump is right. Those who reject this principle are not merciful; they are simply unjust, because they deny victims and their loved ones the recognition of their suffering and deprive society of a necessary barrier against the advance of barbarism.

Another deeply troubling social issue emerges—especially in light of Kirk’s murder—in the moral decay within universities and other academic institutions, which ought to be centres of dialogue, debate, and personal and social growth. Western universities, particularly in the humanities, increasingly resemble madhouses. The ideological indoctrination of a socialist bent imposed on students distorts their perception of reality. The consequences are plain to see: isolation, depression, internet addiction, and suicide—among the leading causes of death among young people.

Leftism is not suited to human nature; it is a distortion of the intellect. Rooted in collectivism, it paradoxically breeds both isolation and consumerism—two sides of the same coin. It is a dehumanising ideology that robs individuals of the ability to find joy in simplicity, to love reality in its immediacy and order, and to receive it as a gift.

This leads to a moral and intellectual short-circuit: they kill you while claiming you’re the violent one. They want you to believe that expressing common sense is the same as spreading hate. They want you to believe that if you’re murdered for saying you wish to marry, have children, and raise them with Christian values, it’s somehow your fault. Even if all you aspire to is living in a safe neighbourhood and sending your children to a school that teaches reading, writing, and arithmetic—rather than exposing them to sexual ideologies—they still accuse you of being violent.

A third issue concerns the media. As I’ve written elsewhere, the information age is the age of disinformation. For instance, in recent hours, the killing of Kirk is being portrayed as the tragic outcome of a clash between political factions, when, in truth, it was first and foremost a religious act—an expression of hatred directed at Christ and those who bore witness to Him publicly. That’s precisely why his voice was dangerous: because through dialogue, he showed that truth does not bend to ideological whims.

In Italy, the well-known commentator Roberto Saviano compared Kirk’s death to the Reichstag fire, which gave legitimacy to Hitler’s regime. He suggests that American conservatives will exploit this tragedy to establish an anti-democratic regime. This is a textbook example of sophistry. Kirk’s politics were rooted in the primacy of God and the human person—not in an all-powerful State. That is the crucial difference. In truth, it is not Kirk who bears resemblance to the fascisms of the last century, but rather his detractors—those who, in recent days, have celebrated his death.

National Socialism—as the name itself suggests—was a variant of socialism. And isn’t today’s Left reviving many of its traits? The use of the state to impose a single worldview through education; the censorship of “dangerous” ideas; the illusion of a utopia that excludes the unwanted; the monopolisation of weapons and the economy; abortion elevated to a right; environmentalism and transhumanism enforced as new civic religions. These were all elements Hitler once presented as social progress.

So why is the reductio ad Hitlerum always turned against those who oppose such ideological excesses?

If a historical analogy must be made, the murder of Kirk more closely resembles the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, Italian socialist politician and secretary of the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU). Mussolini declared that it was “intolerable that such a man should walk freely.” Today, progressive leaders and influencers are echoing similar words about Kirk. The cold civil war that fractured Italy in 1924 is now repeating itself—under new forms—in both America and Europe.

After Matteotti’s murder, Mussolini turned the crisis into an opportunity to consolidate power. The scandal had weakened the regime, but the future dictator exploited the climate of fear to present himself as the guarantor of order, using the tragedy to entrench authoritarianism and suppress dissent.

A similar mechanism could well repeat itself today with the murder of Charlie Kirk. The Left, which for years has sought to legitimise ever broader restrictions on fundamental freedoms, already has its narrative prepared: if even one of the Right’s most prominent defenders of gun rights was killed by a firearm, then surely conservatives must now admit the need to limit their circulation.

It’s a powerful sophism—exploiting the emotion of mourning to introduce measures that, under normal conditions, would face strong resistance. This is a recurring strategy of the Revolution: to draw from the blood of its enemy a pretext for expanding oppression.

But it doesn’t always work.