Phelim McAleer: ‘Fake quotes’ spread by radicals ignoring Kirk’s faith and friendliness

And if there is one thing American colleges do not like - it is the truth about Israel.

Needless to say, security was very, very tight, especially as Kirk's assassination has raised, not lowered, temperatures at American universities.

There is no sense that we have hit a turning point and that the rhetoric and misrepresentations need to be dialled down.

In fact, a few days before I arrived at Bowdoin, a student prayer vigil for Kirk had to be cancelled because of a “credible bomb threat”.

Across the country, many of my friends went to Kirk’s memorial. The service was part political but very religious, which seems to have surprised a lot of journalists and commentators.

This surprise only proves how little real journalism is done nowadays. So much of what was written about Kirk after his assassination was cut and pasted from anti-Kirk blogs that quoted him out of context and ignored his faith and friendliness. Many of these ‘fake quotes’ were spread by fake radicals who seemed to want to be the biggest and best Kirk haters.

Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell accused Kirk of advocating stoning gay people to death. Also joining the chorus were fiction writer Stephen King and shock jock Irish barrister Joe Brolly. King and Campbell apologised when it was brought to their attention that Kirk was merely calling out a leftist for cherry-picking other parts of the Bible that suited her agenda. Joe Brolly has said he has nothing to apologise for.

A little original research – such as actually listening to Kirk’s podcast – would have prevented the error, but perhaps the story was too good to check.

Leftists are loath to admit that political violence is a predominantly leftist activity so they would rather darken the victim's name and reputation so that it appears that Kirk at the very least deserved no sympathy.

To be clear, the stoning remark was not the only inaccuracy in Brolly's response. He also misrepresented what Kirk had said about people given jobs or promotions because of skin colour, not character.

Brolly wrongly claimed that Kirk had said all black people had “low brain power”, which he might be basing on a debate in which referred to specific African American women who had, by their own admission, benefitted from affirmative action.

How did we get here? How did a young man feel that it was okay to pick up a gun and shoot someone because he disagreed with his political opinions? There are a number of factors that led to the shot heard across the culture wars. The shooter was living with a trans – a man who believed he was a woman.

We are not supposed to talk about just how violent young trans men who want to be women can be.

They are normally already suffering from severe mental illness (that is ignored by their doctors), they are part of an angry cult, and they consume drugs that are so powerful they change their body shape. No wonder they often go crazy and have recently been a disproportionate number of mass shooters in the US.

Another reason leftists believe it is okay to kill their opponents is that they have been told their political enemies are dangerous.

A student journalist wrote in the college newspaper that he and his fellow leftists were proudly boycotting the OCTOBER 7 play. It had ideas and words so dangerous they could not risk being exposed to them.

According to the journalist, the play is racist, bigoted, and advocated for genocide. In fact, he said the OCTOBER 7 play was “an embrace of racist Manichaeism.” And no, I don't know what racist Manichaeism is either.

I do know that stupid fake journalists say they are threatened and in real danger from our words, and slightly crazy and much angrier people see that as permission to remove the threat by any means necessary. And as a result, two children are growing up without a father.

Phelim McAleer, from Tyrone, lives in LA