On August 21, at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco, Hasan Piker stood on stage in his now-signature Mao jacket and led a packed house in a mocking sing-along about Charlie Kirk's assassination. The crowd — young, laughing, ecstatic — belted out the meme song "We Are Charlie Kirk" with lines like "We are Charlie Kirk, we carry the flame. We'll fight for the Gospel, we'll honor his name." His co-hosts Will Neff, QTCinderella, and AustinShow reportedly laughed hysterically alongside them.
As Jonathan Turley detailed in a column published August 23, the Piker event was a stop on his "Fear & LIVE" tour — a live-show circuit that has turned political rage into a touring act. Turley, a constitutional law professor who has written extensively on the erosion of civil discourse, described the scene as "commodifying rage" and called Piker's audience "a nation of rage addicts." Before his death, Kirk had debated Piker and called him a "socialist hypocrite." Piker's response, apparently, was to wait until Kirk couldn't respond at all.
Turley's column connects the San Francisco spectacle to a broader pattern. "We have seen protesters on the left around the country mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even reenacting his murder," he wrote. He singled out Jennifer Welch, whom he labeled a "hate trafficker," for having justified Kirk's assassination outright. Piker, Turley argued, simply took the same impulse and put it on a stage with a ticket price.
"It is the very essence of this movement to desensitize people, particularly young people, to violence and hate," Turley wrote.
The timing is worth noting. This isn't happening in a vacuum. Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon has been comparing ICE agents to "modern-day slave catchers" and claiming the government is "literally trying to kill us." Abdul El-Sayed — who has campaigned alongside Piker — promises to "choke out" Republicans and describes moderates like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman as ogres whose heads should be "put on pikes." These aren't fringe bloggers. These are candidates running for office.
Turley's legal framing is precise: Piker, his co-hosts, and their fans have every right to spread this kind of bile. It's protected speech, the same way KKK and neo-Nazi rallies are protected speech. Nobody is arguing for censorship. The question isn't legality. It's what it reveals about a political movement that celebrates assassination while simultaneously accusing the other side of being threats to democracy.
"It is a narrative that allows you to speak like a Nazi while claiming to be fighting Nazis," Turley observed.
The irony Turley identifies cuts deeper than the Piker show itself. Kirk's entire career was built on walking onto hostile campuses and challenging people to debate. He infuriated the left not with violence or intimidation but by showing up and asking questions. That's what made him a target — first for cancellation, then for something worse. Turley points out that on those same campuses, a professor who pleaded guilty to assaulting pro-life students was not only retained on faculty but honored by another school. Pro-life teenagers were recently kicked out of the Wydaho Roasters coffee shop in Idaho because the owner found their presence intolerable.
The pattern is consistent: disagreement is reframed as danger, danger justifies rage, and rage justifies anything — including laughing about a man's murder in a theater full of fans.
Turley called the new political entertainers "berserkers" — after the old Norse warriors who fought in violent trances. The comparison fits. El-Sayed campaigns with Piker. Nixon calls federal agents slave catchers. Welch justifies assassination. And a theater full of young people sings along to a dead man's name like it's a concert encore.
Charlie Kirk debated people for a living. He asked questions. He showed up where he wasn't wanted and made his case.
The people mocking his death can't even do that much.