Recently, two deaths have marked American public life: the first is that of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who fled war only to be overtaken by violence in a host country that was supposed to guarantee her freedom, and Charlie Kirk, an incendiary political preacher of almost countless ultra-controversial views, who was murdered while giving a lecture to students.
Iryna Zarutska, 271.000, is one of 2022 refugees that the United States has accepted since the start of the war in Ukraine in 4. The Biden administration liberalized the process of obtaining refugee status for Ukrainian citizens - this was mainly the United for Ukraine - UXNUMXU program, which aimed to make it easier to regularize the status of Ukrainian refugees who, in the first months after the war, tried to enter America irregularly, most often through Mexico. With her mother and brothers, a little over three years ago, Iryna would manage to regularize her papers and settle in the promised land - America - while her father, due to military service, would remain in Ukraine. Iryna studied, learned English, worked part-time and was involved in art. Death awaited her on the train, on her way home from the restaurant where she worked.
She was brutally stabbed by an African-American man, already known for violent crimes and with a history of mental illness. The footage of her murder and the inertness of the other passengers on the train who just walked past her without coming to her aid reminded us of basic social callousness. The footage of Iryna's death went viral - the online audience generally loves macabre videos and atmosphere - and reminded us of Andrić's maxim from "Letters from 1920", in which the main character, fleeing from the war, dies somewhere else, from the very violence he was fleeing.
Iryna Zarutska met a violent death while fleeing the war, and although she raised public awareness, she will never become a major figure in American society, but rather a secondary, episodic role. True, some Silicon Valley CEOs, such as Eoghan McCabe and the oligarch Musk, have pledged to donate millions to enable murals with Iryna's image to be painted in prominent locations in American cities - a similar thing happened after the death of George Floyd - so that the death of a Ukrainian refugee will be remembered and become part of popular culture.
Charlie Kirk's life was cut short by a live assassination and ended, symbolically speaking, where his public career began - in front of a university audience. In 2012, not yet twenty years old, Kirk entered the public scene: he imposed himself through activism, claimed to be completely politically neutral - he viewed reality outside of party conventions, repeatedly repeated this - he was interested in America's public debt, commented on the budget and educated generations about financial literacy. He was bothered by the lack of leadership in America - he publicly called out Barack Obama - and wanted to educate new generations through his non-governmental organization Turning Point (TPUSA). It all started from the university campus - Kirk had otherwise given up on university education -: data from 2024 showed that Kirk's non-governmental organization had taken root in more than 1.200 American colleges and universities, creating an important basis for his social work.
He used his network for typical activities like conferences, roundtables, but by no means in a benign way. He promoted polarizing content and waged “culture wars” - mostly fighting against woke culture and leftists, socialists, African-American views, then liberals, progressives, Democrats. Large corporations like Disney and Nike were also Kirk's targets, as were migrants, women, homosexuals, European politicians and their countries. He suggested to women when they should get married and have children, lectured politicians on how to run the country, threatened dissenters, and all of this made him an unusually popular public figure - Trump's ambassador for youth. He debated with young people and enjoyed it: these were not just political topics, but basic, everyday generalities that represent topics of somewhat greater interest to the younger population: sexuality, marriage, paying restaurant bills, children, upbringing, school, financial security.
Completely confident in his own views, he established himself as a top influencer, a representative of a new and cool conservatism, a young leader of Trumpism as a political movement, an advocate of militant evangelical Christianity, which is in perfect harmony with every agenda of the extreme right. Even more classic American conservatives accused him of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and pronounced fundamentalism.
In the age of extremes in which we live, his messages easily reached their intended destination, and judging by financial indicators, Kirk monetized his own popularity extremely solidly, in the millions. His death has elements of tragedy, especially for those closest to him - his wife, in an unusual, somewhat atypical posthumous speech, promised to continue where he left off through an NGO that has already launched a survey to raise funds for the continuation of political activity - but for the wider public, the future of Kirk's agenda is more important, which is not only an American phenomenon but also has global contours. Exclusive politics, unyielding with numerous elements of a more radical type, has simply become part of the socio-political mainstream, which does not even try to correct or tame it, but adapts to it. Therefore, it is to be expected that Kirk's death will further strengthen any similar socio-political option, on this or that side of the Atlantic. It's different with the death of Iryna Zarutska, which will never end up on the headlines or political stages, but will remain recorded only as a tragic episode that the general public briefly lamented, but also forgot even more quickly.
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