WATCH: Winston Marshall pays tribute to Charlie Kirk and calls for 'turning point' in society

You've just flown in from America. You've been there these last few days

What was the response when this tragedy happened? Well, perhaps we can just go straight to what I think the significance of this heinous assassination is

Charlie's opinions were mainstream conservative thought in America, not just of the boomer generation, but also of young conservatives in America

In fact, he was the figurehead of the young conservative movement, of the young MAGA movement

It wasn't just the horrific assassination that we all saw on social media

It was the reaction to it. We saw how his detractors, those who have vilified him, reacted with glee, with happiness

And not only did we see it, a lot of normal people, a lot of normies, a lot of people who don't normally pay attention to politics didn't just see the murder

They also saw how their friends and neighbours were reacting to that murder

and it horrified them. It made them understand exactly what was going on around them

And actually, this is maybe the significance of free speech. One of the other important parts of free speech

we can see what other people are thinking. And I think this is a similar moment

September 10th, 2025 is a similar moment to October 7th, 2023, where here in London, I remember seeing as soon as October

I think October 8th, maybe celebrations. Israel had not responded. Celebrations of what had happened on October 7th in Israel, that pogrom, that horrible pogrom of the heinous violence and murder we were seeing then

We saw who our neighbours were. And actually, it's helpful to see who your neighbours were because it helps us to understand how best to act next

And I think what would transpire is that we at a point now and I don want to use the term turning point because that was the name of his organization but it seems it is a turning point because when people act this way how exactly are we supposed to be reconciliatory with them If we know how gleeful they are in such times how exactly are we supposed to form any sort of alliance any sort of

compromise? They don't want the same future as us. They want to tear this all down. We

saw this. In fact, this actually plays out in statistics because a lot of people are comparing

right-wing violence with left-wing violence. And I think it's pretty clear that at both

extremes. I hate to do what aboutism, but at both extremes, there is a lot of violence that goes on

But what's the difference, I think, between the right and left? And this is there's a recent poll

that shows this. In America, those who identify as left of center in politics, this is a recent poll

48 percent said they believed that murder of Elon Musk was somewhat justifiable. 55 percent said

murder of Donald Trump is somewhat justifiable. That means the majority of those who are left

of centre in politics think in some circumstances murder is OK, that violence is OK. That doesn't

play out at all on the right. It's a completely different story. So we're really now awake

and I sound awfully woke saying that, saying we're awake, but we now see, because of free

speech, we now see what we're facing. Yeah, I mean, those statistics, but also their gleefulness

there in that reaction, I guess it speaks to the most incredible thing here is how

how proud they are with their opinion, how they're not ashamed by any means, by actually the fact

that they think that they're going to be celebrated within their bubble for having these terrible

reaction? Two nights ago I was at a vigil for Charlie in Washington Square

Park in New York City. There was probably about 30 of us. It was evening time, it was

getting dark there were some young students there some were crying some had candles there was a little choir there was a string section playing hymns and singing hymns and mourning him

And really there was a lot of grief. Some of the kids were really upset. And about halfway through, like demons, some couple of guys, black clad, came in smiling like this, coming up into our faces, filming us, going like this, and then started shouting, he was a fascist

I mean, they were acting like demons. And then they backed up and said, free, free Palestine, as if that had anything to do with what Charlie Kirk was about

What on earth? But then actually it makes sense because it's all part of the same ideology

They say free Palestine. They don't say they don't want free Palestine from Hamas

They want free Palestine from Israel. They're not pro-Palestine. They're pro-Hamas. That's exactly what's going on. It's part of the same ideology

It's anti-Western. It's anti-British. It's anti-American. They wanted to tear down everything that Charlie was about, not because he was pro-free speech

They don't care about that. It's because of his ideas, which are fundamentally pro-our civilisation

Yes, but I guess that argues the opposite of what I was saying, which is that one of the foundations of our civilisation, of course, is this idea of free speech that he embodied so well

And when you watch these clips that have sort of they've been on social media for a long time now, but they've just absolutely been pushed out there these last few days

But how he was so willing to talk to everybody and how how scared people must be that he was willing to go out there and express these ideas

Do you think that the fact that they're so willing to go to murder and celebrate it just shows how they're just how afraid they are, how rubbish their ideas are, frankly

Yeah, clearly, that's obviously the case. Look, I had the privilege of going on Charlie's show a couple of times and we disagreed

And I going to have to dig up these old clips when we disagreed about a couple of things But it was such a great conversation because we were able to go deeper on the things We both chiseled each other in our ideas chiseled our ideas rather And

I even look back at some of my messages with him. Again, we were disagreeing on stuff

but he was so curious. He wanted to understand. He pushed me. Why do you think that way? What

is it? What am I missing? He came at it with total humility. Now, it might be the case that

in some of those debates you see on college campuses that he was a little bit more pugilistic

That's the kind of nature of it. But if you see him on his show, if you see him in private, you see a different Charlie

His detractors only saw the very worst of him. And perhaps the most viral things, they might not even be true about him

There's a lot of stuff I'm seeing on X that are being said about him, like what Alistair Campbell said, just was not true

And so they've misportrayed with Stephen King. And they've had to backtrack because they've taken something out of context

Yes. Doesn't that also reveal how information has been absorbed by certain members of our kind of cultural media class where they just will take a snippet

And if that seemingly fits with whatever they've been told, this guy is a far right white supremacist, then that's what they're so willing to spread

As well as exposing our neighbours, it's also exposed the media classes

It's not just these these types who have behaved this way, jumped to conclusions

But I know when there's, let's say, an incident of far-right violence, let's say Jan 6th, for example, we don't hear Louis Goodall suddenly going, what about the BLM riots

What about all the far left? What about the 25 people killed in the BLM riots

So they don't do any whataboutery then. But now they're doing it. Now that, well, there's violence from the left as well

You know, it's not just from one side. These are not journalists

They're political activists. and this is another thing that this heinous assassination has exposed to us

Yeah. Well, look, it's been a terrible week. I'm very grateful to you coming to join us and give us your perspective

Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause, please, for Winston Marshall