Palestine flags and ‘better dead’ chants drown Kirk vigil in Vancouver

PENTICTON — Vancouver police walked 13-year-old Daniel Thiele and other candle-holders off the Art Gallery plaza Thursday after a one-year vigil for Charlie Kirk was surrounded and shouted down by angry protestors..Thiele had booked the steps from 6:30 to 8 p.m. to mark the anniversary of Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. He told media earlier in the week the gathering was meant to remember “a human being who fought for freedom."A large group of counter-demonstrators also exercised their freedom of speech Thursday evening, screaming the vigil down in a chaotic spectacle.The New Westminster Times posted video of officers in high-visibility vests forming a moving buffer as the group left. The outlet said counter-demonstrators screamed obscenities and the words “Nazi” and “pedophile” at the teenager as he walked away.Thiele spoke on camera with New Westminster Times assistant editor Lorraine Brett while the noise continued behind him.“My only message is they see God,” he said..Independent journalist Masha Kleiner posted another clip from the Thursday event. In it, a young woman filmed herself on a smartphone equipped with a wired microphone, spinning in circles on the Art Gallery steps and shouting Kirk "was a racist and a misogynist" to whoever, if anyone, was watching remotely.Kleiner asked her politely to name something Kirk had said against women. She paused.“I don’t have to. I don’t have to defend myself,” she said, before going back to spinning and screaming..Another clip in the same Kleiner post, shot after dark on the plaza, shows a counter-demonstrator waving a Palestine flag and shouting that “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences” and “he deserved to die.”.Palestine flags dominated the counter-crowd on the stairs despite Kirk's views on Israel and Palestine being more nuanced than the flags would suggest.Kirk spent most of his public life defending Israel on campuses and on air.In a May 2, 2025 letter later published by the New York Post, however, he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was “losing support even in conservative circles” and needed a “communications intervention.”Leaked messages from his last weeks showed him angry at donor pressure after he refused to drop critics of the Gaza war. He still described himself as a Christian who believed in scriptural land rights for Israel but found himself increasingly at odds with Israel's military campaign in the region..Kirk, only 31, was fatally shot in the neck while taking questions at Utah Valley University. Tyler Robinson, 23, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder.Turning Point USA, which Kirk founded, held its own anniversary event on the same campus Thursday. Kirk started the group at 18 and spent the rest of his life on American campuses running “Prove Me Wrong” debates. He was an outspoken Trump ally, an evangelical Christian, and one of the loudest young conservative organizers in the United States. He was unequivocally pro-life, rejected gender ideology in schools and women’s sport, attacked DEI hiring, called the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake,” and said some gun deaths were the price of keeping the Second Amendment.Those viewpoints made him a villain to many on the political left and a draw for like-minded students who packed his tours to hear arguments they were not getting on campus. Critics called him a racist and a misogynist. He answered that he was debating and exercising his right to free speech, not preaching hate, and asked opponents converse with him. He was killed in the middle of one of those exchanges..The Vancouver Police Department had not issued a statement on the Art Gallery file by early Friday. No arrests were announced on the clips.Thiele posted after midnight, in response to the chaotic scene at the vigil he had organization, that political violence is “never the answer.”

Palestine flags and ‘better dead’ chants drown Kirk vigil in Vancouver

Related Stories

Crown-Indigenous Relations says no evidence of theft as 132 indigenous artworks go missing

Carney promotes Cult MTL article despite outlet’s taxpayer-funding controversy

GIESBRECHT: It’s not too late to abolish the Indian Act

WATCH: Hundreds gather at Calgary city hall to pay tribute to 11-year-old Parker