Progressive commentators have spent the past week misrepresenting the views of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, in an apparent attempt to demonize him and justify

his murder

. This behaviour is deplorable and provides a case study of the toxicity that leads to political violence.

Kirk was famous for his embrace of debate and cross-partisan dialogue. He regularly visited college campuses and invited progressive students to rebut his beliefs, often exposing their intellectual vacuity. Videos from these engagements, along with other content produced through Kirk’s organization,

Turning Point USA

, proved highly effective at attracting youth to conservative politics.

While his messaging could occasionally be strident, he generally came across as moderate and understanding. He was, at his worst, no more aggressive than most other political commentators; and, at his best, he was refreshingly conciliatory compared to many of them.

Similarly, his beliefs, though stalwartly conservative and Christian, were not particularly extreme and generally fell

within the bounds

of mainstream American discourse.

His more hard-line views included

opposition

to all abortions, even in cases of rape. In one debate, for example, he argued that, if he had a hypothetical 10-year-old daughter who was impregnated involuntarily, he would still want the child to be born. He was also a relentless critic of transgender activism and

Ukraine

, and maintained, on the basis of his Christianity, an opposition to gay marriage.

As contentious as these beliefs may have been, many people agreed with them. Polling data suggests that around

13 per cent

of Americans want abortion banned in all circumstances, and a third

oppose same-sex marriage

, for example.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Kirk’s ideology. I certainly found myself irritated by some of the things he said, and thought they were indirectly harmful to people I care deeply about. Yet, substantive political disagreements are inherent to a democratic society.

You would have to be insane to think that millions of Americans (or Canadians) deserve to be killed, as Kirk was, because their political opinions differ greatly from your own.

Many people recognize this, which helps explain why Kirk’s assassination has fuelled

such indignation

. Yet, some progressives are uncomfortable with this and have responded by misrepresenting Kirk as being far more radical than he actually was.

Left-leaning influencers have spent a great

deal of energy

over the past few days sharing the following

quote

from Kirk: “I can’t stand the word ’empathy,’ actually. I think ’empathy’ is a made-up, new-age term that does a lot of damage.” Those words, by themselves, certainly sound callous, right?

Well, it turns out that, immediately after that sentence,

Kirk clarified

that he preferred the word “sympathy” to “empathy.” In other words: he was advocating for different semantics, not heartlessness. Yet, on countless progressive social media posts, which have collectively accrued millions of views, this section is left out, completely misrepresenting Kirk’s message.

Similarly, progressives have

widely claimed

that Kirk supports killing gays. Their evidence is that, in a 2024 episode of his podcast, he said that the Bible states that men who sleep with men should be stoned to death. An edited clip of that quote is now

widely circulating online

, and was even amplified by horror author Stephen King to his 6.8-million followers on X.

Shortly after, though, it was shown that Kirk had only mentioned the Bible’s anti-gay passages while making a broader argument on how people selectively quote scripture to support their political views. While

King quickly apologized

for his mistake, other progressives have continued to promote the false “Kirk wants to kill the gays” narrative.

In response to these smears, Kirk’s fans began sharing videos, quotes and stories illustrating his

long track record

of gay tolerance. Some of these supporters are gay men themselves who

knew him personally

. In

one clip

, taken from an event in 2019, an audience member asks Kirk whether he supports including gays in the conservative movement and makes a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

In response, Kirk calls the pedophilia connection a “slippery slop fallacy” and asserts that, if you are sickened by gay men, “then you are not a Trump supporter.” He emphasized that, although he believes in biblical marriage, the United States is not a theocracy and Jesus preached being loving and kind while talking to all people.

And what about Kirk’s supposed racism? Progressives have long smeared Turning Point as a “white supremacist” organization — a claim that was

rejected

in 2022 by Politifact, a prominent non-partisan fact-checking organization.

Mirroring this, many have, in recent days, used cherry-picked quotes to suggest that Kirk hates Black people. Yet videos of his

debates

on racial justice, along with the

testimony

of his of

Black fans

, tells a different story.

In truth, Kirk’s racial views were fairly milquetoast and, drawing from Black conservative thinkers, such as

Thomas Sowell

, focused on encouraging the formation of Black nuclear families to overcome cycles of poverty. He further criticized affirmative action as encouraging mediocrity.

On the whole, Kirk was a man who abhorred violence and believed in navigating differences through sincere conversation. He did not deserve to die. Yet partisan extremists — in this case on the left — are more than happy to overwrite the truth with dehumanizing caricatures if doing so excuses political violence against their foes.

National Post

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HALIFAX — On Sunday afternoon, I walked over to a local synagogue to see if they needed help removing a swastika.

The shul’s sign had been defaced with paint overnight, according to a posting on X from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and I wanted to see if I could help clean up. I’m not Jewish, but the synagogue, Halifax’s Shaar Shalom, has personal connections for me, and I’ve attended services there.

As it happened, on Friday night I had watched, from a distance, as anti-Israel activists gathered in Halifax’s Grand Parade square. They stood on the steps of City Hall and denounced Israel and chanted “Free Free Palestine.” They were taking a victory lap for having disrupted plans for the Davis Cup match in Halifax between Canada and Israel, which organizers ultimately decided to stage without spectators.

From what I heard, the Grand Parade protesters didn’t chant From the River to the Sea or condemn Jews. I would have different personal views on who Gaza needed to be freed from, but the protest was orderly and seemed to fall within the grounds of reasonable debate and free speech.

It wasn’t like some of the rallies we’ve seen in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, featuring Calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, takeovers of streets, intimidation of Jewish neighbourhoods.

I’ve spoken to Jews who are fleeing, or thinking of fleeing, a Canada they no longer recognize. I’d argue that may well be the point of the big-city protests: some people want the Jews to leave.

In Halifax, one person (or perhaps more, the closed circuit cameras will likely clarify) was able to cause extreme discomfort to the city’s modest Jewish population. We learned later that three synagogues in the city were hit by graffiti; none served as the Israeli consulate, so there seems little point in litigating motive.

By the time I got to Shaar Shalom on Sunday the graffiti had been power-washed away; the concrete steps were still wet but the synagogue’s sign was pristine again.

Initially, no one else was there — not police, not congregants, not media. Soon, though, a friend and synagogue member happened by and we talked about the rise in Jew hate, and about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, seemingly triggered by events that started with the wholesale slaughter of Jewish civilians by frenzied terrorists.

I was, and am, furious and heartbroken about the swastika graffiti and its impact. He was furious, and resigned. He knows Jewish history.

In the early days after October 7, we at National Post decided to shine a light on acts of antisemitism in Canada. We wrote stories daily, but couldn’t keep up. There was just too much of it.

The Jew hate started even before the Gaza war began, with graffiti and ugly chants. The haters moved on to firing bullets and setting fires at Jewish institutions in the dark of night; more recently the antisemitism has taken an even darker turn, with the Montreal father who was beaten in front of his daughter, his kippah thrown into a puddle, and an elderly woman stabbed at Ottawa’s “Kosher Loblaws.”

I saw a social media post (which I haven’t confirmed myself) from someone who said she saw the elderly Ottawa woman at shul that same week proudly wearing the same Magen David that singled her out to her attacker. She recited a blessing thanking God for keeping her safe, there was a response of “Am Yisrael Chai,” and the whole congregation erupted with song and applause.

I have another story to share, from my own experience. I was walking with an observant Jewish man; he had removed his kippa while on the street, out in public. You could not find a prouder Jew, but this is a time for prudence.

CIJA’s posting about the Halifax synagogue called it “an assault on our core Canadian values,” and said it required “an unequivocal and urgent response from police and political leaders.”

Mayor Andy Fillmore, who I had heard being called “Genocide Andy” at Friday’s protest at City Hall, responded with this: “There is no path to peace anywhere that includes bringing fear and division to Halifax. We are better than this.”

This is exactly the choice Canada needs to make, isn’t it?

Rob Roberts is editor-in-chief of National Post.

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Technology has not only permeated our lives, but our government, as well. Foreign tech companies control the systems that allow government employees to communicate and store the personal data of Canadians. Now, an increasing number of decisions are being placed in the hands of opaque AI models. In a new series, international trade lawyer Barry Appleton explores how Ottawa’s lack of control over its IT infrastructure is eroding Canada’s digital sovereignty.

On a typical Monday morning, Canadian government epidemiologists log into their workstations. They are analyzing Canadian health data, shaping public policy for 40-million citizens. But the algorithms that process their findings were designed in California. The cloud servers crunching the numbers are subject to American law. Even when the data never leaves Canadian soil, it can still be accessed under Washington’s CLOUD Act.

The doctors likely do not know this. Their supervisor likely does not know this. The deputy minister who signed the cloud contract for the federal government probably does not know this, either.

To the public, the system looks Canadian: Canadian websites, government seals, the familiar language of service delivery. But the reality is stark — every click crosses a border into someone else’s jurisdiction, optimized for someone else’s interests.

These scientists think they are serving Canadian democracy. In reality, they are operating inside someone else’s jurisdiction.

This is sovereignty in the algorithmic age: not about soldiers at borders, but about who governs the cloud contracts, the inference engines and the artificial intelligence logic that quietly structures national decision-making.

Canada is losing jurisdiction and control — one system update and one procurement order at a time.

Your phone does not display a foreign flag. Your social media feed does not play another nation’s anthem. Your government portal is branded in familiar fonts and speaks the language of efficiency and service. But every time you scroll, tap, search or transact online, you cross a border into someone else’s jurisdiction, governed by someone else’s rules and optimized for someone else’s interests.

This is not an empire in the old sense of armies and territory. It is an algorithmic empire: a system of extraterritorial jurisdiction enforced not through military occupation, but through computational architecture, technical standards and embedded governance logic. It does not conquer land, it captures the infrastructure of decision-making. Canada is no longer sovereign within it.

Empires once built railroads. Now they build AI systems. And Canada has already surrendered its tracks.

The algorithmic empire

The algorithmic empire is a new kind of geopolitical power. It does not conquer territory. It governs through code. The empire is built on control of the digital infrastructure that societies depend on: cloud services that store and process government data; artificial intelligence systems that make decisions on visas, taxes and health care; recommender engines that shape what citizens see, hear and believe; and digital finance rails that move money across borders.

Through this infrastructure, foreign powers extend their legal and economic norms directly into Canadian life. It enforces laws, norms and economic preferences across borders without physical occupation. Lawyers call it “jurisdiction without borders.” Citizens experience it as a convenience. In reality, it’s outsourced governance.

Unlike the industrial empires of the past, which relied on controlling physical choke-points such as canals and ports, the algorithmic empire holds cloud contracts, app stores and inference engines.

In the last century, power flowed through railways, shipping routes and telegraph lines. The state that controlled the bottlenecks controlled the future. Today, the new bottlenecks are digital. Cloud platforms, machine-learning engines and algorithmic systems process the flows of information that governments need to govern.

Unlike ports or pipelines, this infrastructure is invisible until it fails — or until it’s weaponized. Canadians think their government controls it. In fact, Ottawa has quietly outsourced much of its sovereignty to foreign corporations.

When a Canadian official logs into Microsoft 365, they are not simply sending an email. They are entering a system governed by American corporate law, subject to foreign intelligence orders and designed to reflect business priorities that may have little to do with Canadian values. This is not efficiency, it’s dependency disguised as modernization.

Three pillars of dependency

Modern governance rests on three digital pillars:

1. Cloud computing — the foundation layer. Ottawa’s “cloud first policy” shifted critical systems to American providers. Shared Services Canada now runs much of government on Amazon, Microsoft and Google servers. These contracts embed foreign law into Canadian government operations.
2. Artificial intelligence has become Canada’s shadow government. AI algorithms now help decide who gets visas, which taxpayers the Canada Revenue Agency audits for fraud and how your provincial health system distributes life-saving resources. Yet many of these digital decision-makers were trained on foreign datasets that know little about Canadian values or laws. Worse still, many run on American cloud servers governed by the CLOUD Act — meaning Washington could access your most sensitive government data. The kicker? Canada has zero AI reporting requirements. Ottawa literally cannot inspect many of the algorithms making decisions about your life. We’ve outsourced governance to black boxes built mostly by foreign corporations, with no oversight, no accountability and no way to peek under the hood. Canada isn’t just losing its digital sovereignty — it’s already gone.
3. Digital finance — the transaction layer. From PayPal to Stripe to crypto platforms, Canadian money increasingly travels on foreign rails. Parliament can regulate interest rates, but it cannot audit the algorithms setting credit scores or processing stablecoin transactions.

Together, these pillars form the “digital hinge.” The state that controls them governs the future. Canada is not that state.

Europe acts, Canada sleeps

While Canada drifts, Europe is legislating. The European Union’s Digital Services Act forces transparency from platforms. The Artificial Intelligence Act requires risk-based oversight. The General Data Protection Regulation ensures European privacy rules follow European citizens wherever their data flows.

Europe understands the stakes: digital systems are constitutional infrastructure. If governments cannot govern their own algorithms, they cannot govern at all.

Canada, by contrast, tried and failed. The artificial intelligence and data act collapsed in committee. Even if it had passed, its scope was too narrow. It would not have touched the recommendation engines that dominate our information environment. The legislation was not suited for its important purpose.

Parliament has not yet grasped that sovereignty in the 21st century is not only about energy pipelines or borders. It’s about who owns the cloud contracts and the AI logic that shape daily life.

The lock-in trap

Every new dependency makes escape harder. Economists call this “vendor lock-in.” Digital dependence is not temporary — it hardens. Governments that migrate to Microsoft 365 cannot easily switch to Canadian alternatives without chaos. Health systems utilizing American AI cannot suddenly move to domestic engines.

Most contracts are governed by U.S. law. Disputes are often governed by American law, not Canadian courts. Once contracts are signed, sovereignty leaks away in ways that are invisible to voters. Every renewal entrenches foreign jurisdiction deeper into Canadian institutions.

China’s alternative

Where Canada has surrendered and Europe has regulated, China has imposed control. Beijing mandates algorithm registration, data localization and state oversight of all digital infrastructure.

The model works — at the price of freedom. China proves sovereignty is achievable. But it also shows the danger of confusing sovereignty with surveillance.

Canada should not copy Beijing. But we must recognize that drifting toward dependency is equally dangerous.

Canada’s policy vacuum

Canada has no equivalent to Europe’s comprehensive digital sovereignty framework. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulates television and telecommunications. But there is no Canadian regulator with authority over cloud platforms, AI inference engines or algorithmic governance.

The result is that our health data is governed by U.S. law, financial transactions are processed in the United States and cultural discourse is shaped by Chinese algorithms.

The genius of the algorithmic empire is that it feels like convenience. Canadians choose U.S. platforms because they work well, not because they are coerced.

Canadians supply the raw materials: data, engagement and problems to solve. Foreign platforms own the rails, set the terms and harvest the value.

This is digital sharecropping. We work the digital fields; someone else collects the harvest.

The results are visible everywhere: foreign firms dominate Canada’s ad-tech stack, payment platforms and even the cultural narratives Canadians consume. The wealth and power flow outward. What remains is dependency — dignified with the language of modernization.

Canada now faces three stark paths. We can continue outsourcing core infrastructure, adapting piecemeal to U.S., EU and Chinese rules. This guarantees permanent dependency. Alternatively, we can import China’s sovereignty-through-surveillance model. This would allow us to secure control, but would sacrifice our traditional Canadian freedoms.

Thus, the only viable path is to assert a Canadian model of digital sovereignty, rooted in democratic oversight, transparent algorithms and domestic infrastructure.

The government should introduce a “digital infrastructure act” that treats AI, cloud and payment systems as constitutional infrastructure. Algorithmic transparency should be enshrined as a legal right: citizens must know how automated systems affect them. Canadian disputes must be resolved under Canadian law. And government procurement should favour Canadian providers, incentivizing homegrown alternatives to foreign tech solutions.

In the 19th century, sovereignty meant controlling railways and ports. In the 20th century, it meant pipelines and broadcasting. In the 21st, it means cloud contracts, algorithmic systems and digital finance. We must govern code with the same authority we once applied to borders.

If governments cannot govern their algorithms, they cannot govern at all. If Canada fails to legislate sovereignty into its digital architecture, we will find ourselves living inside someone else’s empire — quietly governed, invisibly ruled, without ever being conquered.

We stand at the hinge of history. The choice is simple: renew sovereignty through law, or drift quietly into the algorithmic empire — a province of someone else’s digital domain, ruled without conquest and governed without consent.

Canada must decide what it means to be sovereign — before that decision is made for us.

National Post

Barry Appleton is an international trade lawyer, distinguished senior fellow and co-director at the Center for International Law at New York Law School and a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

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In an astounding coincidence, as the news arrived that Charlie Kirk, founder and head of the enlightened traditionalist movement Turning Point USA, had been assassinated, I was sitting in the Oval Office of the White House across the Resolute Desk from the President of the United States. Although I have known him for more than 25 years and have generally been in touch with him throughout that period, I had not seen him in person for some years. I have written approximately two million words about him, almost all of it reasonably or unambiguously favourable, though not uncritically so, mainly on U.S. Internet sites, as well as a book that was appreciative of him though no hagiography, (A President Like no Other).

I had developed a few ideas about a couple of his programs, in emails and by telephone, and he suggested I visit him. Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025 was the day. As I was arriving at the White House visitors’ entrance I saw on my mobile phone that Charlie Kirk had been wounded in an assassination attempt. I did not really know him and was only generally conversant with his Turning Point movement and from the initial wording of the bulletin I hopefully assumed that he would recover. There was no sign of alarm as I sat in the outer anteroom with a number of distinguished fellow visitors including a prominent senator and the well-known economist Arthur Laffer, whom I had not seen in thirty years. A few friends in the administration came and went and we exchanged greetings and the time passed pleasantly.

The outer anteroom for the Oval Office is rectangular and has doors on three walls and in the middle of what I assume was a typical weekday afternoon, an astonishing number of people were constantly coming and going through all three doors, one the entrance and the other two into parallel inner anterooms to the Oval Office. The ambience is one of constant and purposeful activity in a shared and good-spirited cause. Occasionally, it happened that successive doors were simultaneously ajar, and the familiar voice of the chief occupant would be heard, good-humoured but authoritative. A pleasing aesthetic aspect, as usual in Trump matters, is the presence of very capable and attractive youngish ladies on the presidential staff.

Although I had been a number of times to the White House before, it was in groups and in reception rooms. Here it was possible to see how the private office functioned and it was clear the president’s staff is devoted to him personally and that he, unlike some holders of great offices that I have known, is unfailingly polite to staff. In this he reminded me of Margaret Thatcher, who frequently beat up her cabinet ministers because she thought they could and should defend themselves if they were any good, (and if they weren’t she sacked them), but never forgetting her own modest socioeconomic beginnings, she was unfailingly courteous to people in lesser positions.

After about an hour I was invited to leapfrog the crowded intermediate waiting room and was cordially greeted by my eminent host. He was looking trim, fit, and completely undaunted by the requirements of his position. In my observations, going back to the Eisenhower years, U.S. presidents either enjoy their position and get on top of it or are worn down by it and the presidency imposes itself upon them. Donald Trump is distinctly in the first category. We were briefly joined by Art Laffer who wanted a photograph taken of himself with the president in front of the painting of President Reagan to the right of the president’s desk. After a few pleasantries and reflections Laffer departed and the president said that Charlie Kirk had died.

I condoled with him and when he indicated that it would be appropriate, I started into my reasons for being there. He listened intently and made a few comments and we were shortly joined by the vice president, J.D. Vance, known even by me to be a close friend Charlie Kirk. He was reporting on the initial results of the investigation. My offer to excuse myself was declined and there followed a surrealistic and unforgettable scene: the president and vice president lamented their deceased friend and I was likely almost as improbable a third party as could be found to participate in such an exchange. In the circumstances, I only commented when my opinion was asked.

Especially in the light of ungenerous imputations of motives to both men in their public remarks in ensuing days. I would be remiss not to emphasize that neither the president nor the vice president expressed any sentiment except sorrow at the death of their friend and sympathy for his wife and family and close associates, and calm, deep concern at the extent of violence in the country. There was not a vengeful or partisan word or even an ill-tempered one. Both men were absolutely exemplary and in fact somewhat inspiring in their sole preoccupation with the horribly premature and violent death of a talented friend and supporter, and their shared concern at the frequency of recourse to political violence in America and much of the western world.

The only reference to the immediate political implications of this tragic event was by me when I said that this was such a ghastly episode it might have a salutary effect in sobering public discourse and discouraging violence. This elicited a noncommittal response. All Americans, whatever their political leanings, should be reassured that the two holders of the national offices of the United States, in a poignant hour of great sacrifice and sadness, had no thoughts except charity for the bereaved and concern for the country. It was my sad privilege to be a witness to this and the completely spontaneous tastefullness and generosity of the thoughts of the president and vice president did not reduce but somewhat ameliorated the deep sadness of the occasion.

The vice president departed, the president invited me to finish what I’d come to say which I did with uncharacteristic economy of words and got up to leave. He said he had then to telephone Mrs. Kirk. I was staying near the White House and walked back, reflecting on the fortuitously fine qualities of America’s leaders, whatever controversies they may arouse on other grounds. And for the 31-year-old Charlie Kirk, whom I knew to be a committed and patriotic Christian, I could only wish him eternal rest with the Prince of Peace as he reposes in the honoured memory of the great nation for which he made the highest and noblest sacrifice.

New York Sun