The Free Press Asks Why America Forgot Its Own History of Left-Wing Terror — Charlie Kirk’s Killing Is Where Noah Rothman Says the Story Restarts.
Ten months after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, The Free Press published a conversation between columnist Coleman Hughes and author Noah Rothman titled “The Charlie Kirk Killing and America’s Forgotten History of Left-Wing Terror.” The piece, tied to Rothman’s new book Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America, argues that Kirk’s death was not an aberration but the latest entry in a lineage of American left-wing political violence — the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and a wave of bombings in the 1970s — that Rothman says the country’s institutions have spent a century minimizing, euphemizing, and forgetting.
This is a retrospective argument about historical pattern, not a breaking-news account — Kirk’s killing remains a pending criminal case, and the man Utah prosecutors charged in it, Tyler Robinson, has entered no plea and is presumed innocent. But the Free Press piece lands amid a live argument over whether 2025–26 really does mark a left-wing resurgence, or whether that framing is being oversold — a dispute playing out in competing think-tank data, on Fox News, and inside the Trump administration’s own counterterrorism strategy.
- May 2026 — publication month of Noah Rothman's Blood and Progress, the book anchoring the Free Press's July 20 interview
- ~2,500 bombings — the FBI's count of bombings across the U.S. in an 18-month stretch of 1971–72, the era of the Weather Underground and the SLA
- 750 incidents — terrorist attacks and plots CSIS tracked from 1994 through July 2025 — researchers say 2025 was the first year in 30+ years left-wing incidents outnumbered far-right ones
- 68 vs. 195 — left-wing vs. right-wing political murders the Cato Institute counted, 1975–2025, excluding 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing
- Sept. 1, 2026 — date a Utah judge hears arguments on whether Tyler Robinson, charged in Kirk's killing, is bound over for trial
Rothman, a senior writer at National Review, opens Blood and Progress with Kirk’s assassination, arguing the killing became a test case for how American institutions talk about violence from the left. He points to reactions in its immediate aftermath — comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about the shooter and former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray’s commentary — as examples of what he calls a “permission structure”: a pattern in which left-wing violence gets reframed as understandable protest while right-wing violence gets named as terrorism outright.
Hughes, who hosts Free Press’s Conversations with Coleman, pushes Rothman on whether his framing simply mirrors, in reverse, the same partisan pattern-matching he criticizes. Rothman’s answer is the book itself: a century of case studies he says the historical record already contains, whether or not anyone has been willing to add them up.
The history Rothman revisits is not obscure, but it has faded from popular memory. The Weather Underground, a violent offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, launched its 1969 “Days of Rage” and went on to claim roughly two dozen bombings between 1970 and 1975, including devices at the U.S. Capitol and, on January 29, 1975, the State Department itself. Three of its own members died on March 6, 1970, when a bomb they were building exploded inside a Greenwich Village townhouse. Per the FBI’s own case history and journalist Bryan Burrough’s reporting for TIME, the Weather Underground was only part of a far larger wave: the FBI counted roughly 2,500 bombings across the country in an 18-month span of 1971–72 — nearly five a day — carried out by a constellation of radical groups most Americans today could not name.
One of those groups, the Symbionese Liberation Army, formed in Berkeley in 1973 and assassinated Oakland schools superintendent Marcus Foster that November, shooting him eight times with cyanide-laced bullets over an ID-card policy he had actually opposed. Three months later, on February 4, 1974, the SLA kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, a case that became a national spectacle before her 1975 capture. Rothman’s argument is that these are not fringe footnotes but a template — and that the same euphemizing instinct that turned 2020’s riots into “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” on live television has roots running back to how the press covered the Weathermen and the SLA five decades earlier.
“Rothman writes like a man who believes that politicized cultural institutions can still be shamed into honesty.”
Carl Paulus · Washington Examiner review of Blood and Progress
The Free Press piece leans on real data, not just history. The Center for Strategic and International Studies tracked 750 terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. from 1994 through July 2025 and concluded that 2025 was on pace to be the first year in more than three decades in which left-wing incidents outnumbered far-right ones. Before Kirk, the CSIS dataset attributed only two deaths to left-wing attackers in that entire span: Aaron Danielson, shot in Portland in 2020, and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, shot in December 2024.
Researchers Michael Jensen and Amy Cooter countered in Just Security that CSIS built its “most violent year” claim on just five incidents over seven months, and that widening the lens undercuts the reversal narrative: 13 people died in left-wing attacks from 2016 through mid-2025, compared with 112 killed in right-wing attacks over the same stretch. The Cato Institute’s 51-year count tells a similar story — 195 right-wing political murders to 68 left-wing ones since 1975, excluding 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing. Both figures can be true at once: incident counts and body counts are different measures, and Kirk’s killing is precisely the kind of high-casualty-per-incident event neither dataset weighted heavily until it happened.
I hope you'll consider pre-ordering my forthcoming book: 'Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America.' For years, America's elite and the institutions in their control have led the public to believe that domestic political violence in the United States is...
The administration has already acted on the premise Rothman documents. Days after Kirk’s killing, President Trump (R) signed an order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, and National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 directed federal agencies to investigate funding networks behind left-wing political violence. On July 16, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened representatives from more than 65 countries in Washington for what participants informally called an “Antifa summit,” extending the campaign internationally. Thirty-one members of Congress wrote to the White House in October 2025 warning the memo could be used against lawful protest and dissent — a live civil-liberties objection the administration disputes.
I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Posted seven days after Kirk's killing — the post that preceded the formal Antifa designation order and NSPM-7.
Fox News has carried its own version of Rothman’s argument since the night of Kirk’s killing. Greg Gutfeld told his “Five” co-host Jessica Tarlov that “the both sides argument not only doesn’t fly, we don’t care” after Tarlov raised the killing of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) as a counterexample — the same both-sides-versus-pattern argument Rothman and Hughes revisit in the Free Press interview nearly a year later, now backed by a full book of case studies instead of a single news cycle.
The criminal case that sits underneath all of this remains unresolved. Tyler Robinson, charged with aggravated murder and related counts, sat through a five-day preliminary hearing in Provo that concluded July 10, 2026, without a ruling. Judge Tony Graf set a briefing schedule running through August and scheduled oral arguments for September 1 on the single question of whether prosecutors have shown enough evidence to bind the case over for trial. Robinson has entered no plea, remains in custody without bail, and is presumed innocent; nothing in the charging document has been proven in court.
Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, was unanimously elected CEO and chair of Turning Point USA’s board within days of his death and has led the organization since, later joining the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors on Trump’s appointment. Whatever the September ruling holds, the Free Press piece argues the more durable question is the one Rothman poses in his book’s title: whether “progress” and political violence have been quietly bundled together in the American memory for a century, and whether Kirk’s death finally forces an honest count.
Charlie's death does not end the argument he was making — it proves it. The country needs an honest reckoning with where political violence actually comes from, not another round of excuses.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrase of Turning Point USA's consistent public messaging since September 2025; not a verbatim post.
What a great review of 'Blood & Progress!' Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts on the book.
Noah Rothman — National Review senior writer; author of Blood and Progress, the book anchoring the Free Press interview.
Coleman Hughes — Free Press columnist and host of Conversations with Coleman; interviewed Rothman for the July 20 piece.
Tyler Robinson — charged, not convicted, with aggravated murder in Kirk’s killing; no plea entered; presumed innocent.
Judge Tony Graf — presiding over the Utah preliminary hearing; will rule on bindover after September 1 oral arguments.
Erika Kirk — Kirk’s widow; CEO and board chair of Turning Point USA since September 2025.
President Trump (R) — designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization; administration expanded the campaign internationally in July 2026.
Greg Gutfeld — Fox News host; argued on air against “both sides” framing of political violence within days of Kirk’s death.
The Free Press’s case is that Charlie Kirk’s killing was not without precedent — it was the reappearance of a pattern America keeps choosing to forget, from the Weather Underground’s bombs to the Symbionese Liberation Army’s assassination of Marcus Foster to the euphemisms that followed 2020’s riots. The data fight over exactly how much more violent the left has become is real and unresolved. What is not in dispute is that a man is now dead, another sits in a Utah jail cell awaiting a bindover ruling he has not yet faced trial to answer, and the argument over what to call the history in between has only gotten louder.
