Republicans have found a doubtful place to blame Charlie Kirk

After a two -day human hunt last week, the authorities arrested a suspect on Friday in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the CEO and founder of Turning Point USA, a right -timed right height organization centered on youth.

There is no clear motive connected to the suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22. But that has not prevented certain conservative leaders from identifying a villain in the attack: universities.

“You heard family members say that this man became more political in recent years. What did he do in recent years? He went to university,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy He said Friday During an interview in News. “That’s where children are being radicalized. Not only online. Our campus are where a lot of radicalization, hate and intolerance begins.”

Robinson attended Utah State University for a semester in 2021 before leaving, school said in a statement. Then he enrolled in a technical university. The Utah University University, where the shooting occurred, is about two hours from the state of Utah.

But the conservatives have joined around the idea that Robinson was radicalized while attending the university, and are using the shooting to speak in general against higher education. (Although some Republicans, including the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, have said Robinson embraced the “leftist ideology” The suspect’s political beliefs are not clear).

“Our universities, in many cases, have become incubators for extremism,” Stephen Miller, the White House personnel for politics, Said in a News appearance on Friday. “They have become the equivalent of stepmother for jihadism,” he said, using the Arabic word for educational institutions.

Kari Lake, a close ally of Trump and the main advisor of the United States agency for global media, weigh In a commemorative service for Kirk at the Kennedy center on Sunday.

“How does a 22 -year -old getting so full of hatred?” asked Lake, who has embraced numerous conspiracy theories. “Five years before, they told me, it was a Trump supporter, and we sent our children to the university, and washed their brain.”

“I am doing a plea to the mothers,” he added. “Do not send your children to these fields of indoctrination. Don’t do it.”

Kevin Dietsch through Getty Images

In particular, Kirk himself adopted the idea of ​​using universities as a place to spread the message of his organization. Turning Point USA, which he founded in 2012 with Bill Montgomery, It has 900 Campus chapters.

Kirk was known for going to universities and establishing tables “demo me morré” where he would participate in debates with university students. The podcast often advocated lax weapons laws and often Incendiary comments about black people, women, immigrants and their political opponents.

Kirk was at the first stop of his last tour on the University Campus when he was shot. He was sitting in front of a multitude of about 3,000 people and had just answered a question about the mass shootings when the shots sounded.

Conservatives not only suggest that the university radicalizes the suspect; They also ask for a dismantling of higher education institutions.

“Tyler Robinson is the worst nightmare of all conservative parents,” Dion D’O Souza, a right -wing political commentator, author, said in X Friday. “Send your child to the university where leftist professors are radicalized in a violent” anti -fascist “.

“We need to trial the radical academy along with its precious product, Tyler Robinson,” he wrote.

The right anti-Islam activist and the remarkable theoretical of the Laura Loomer conspiracy has also advocated that American universities are punished by Kirk’s death.

“It’s time to discourage American universities. You don’t need to go to university. Charlie Kirk did not go to Said in X Sunday.

The hurry to frame higher education as the culprit in Kirk’s murder is an extension of the right of the right against universities, which has received a great impulse from the Trump administration.

Since January, the Federal Government has tried to control admissions and hiring practices of elite universities.

In February, Trump signed an executive order saying that all public schools must get rid of their diversity programs. The State Department International Visas of Revoked Students And he has submitted foreign university students to additional scrutiny, claiming that they are importing dangerous beliefs.

Trump too demanded that several Ivy League The universities, including Harvard and Columbia, prioritize the registration of students who support the “US values” and promote right -wing teachers. The universities that did not meet were threatened with the loss of federal funds, which would affect scientific research.