Charlie Kirk talking about gun violence and Transgender folk moment's before a sniper's bullet slammed into his neck.
Yesterday your scribe refrained from joining the wave of commentary from the Right, Left, and the confused middle following the assassination of hyper conservative/White Supremacist/Christian nationalist leader Charley Kirk at an open air college campus rally in Utah. The social media savvy Kirk began his career as the neo-fascist brand ambassador to students and young adults as a suburban Chicago high school student and built a lucrative empire with the love, admiration, and gratitude of Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd. You might be able to tell, I was not a fan.
On the other hand, there was also a personal repulsion of gun violence of any sort and a human sympathy for the traumatized witness/survivors and his young family. A lot of commentators slid over those contradictory feelings as if they were skating on banana peels. I needed time to try and avoid that trap. I’m not sure I really have.
Everybody and their uncles were decrying political violence and calling for tempering the extreme rhetoric of both sides that is fueling a looming civil war. It was the old “a plague on both your houses” equivocation. But on those edges and sometimes not buried very deep was the assumption that it was all the “other” side’s fault. I have been blogging about the rising threat of Civil war since the rise of the old Tea Party movement and emergence of permanent armed cadres of militias, neo-Nazis and White Supremist, and Christian Dominionists on the edge. Alienated and resentful White middle class folk were drawn in by promises to protect them from their own privet boogeymen—“gun grabbers,” LBGTQ folks especially the transgender, uppity women, immigrants and People of Color, and haughty elites in Hollywood, the media, government, and academia. Several were radicalized into becoming lone wolf attackers and got wink-and-nod approval. Think of attacks on Gabby Giffords, judges, Kamala Harris’s husband, Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
The Left had a much less developed infrastructure but individuals were still driven to revenge. Think GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the iffy sniper attack on Donald Trump himself, United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson.
Beyond posts of sympathy and calls for even handed mutual respect much of the Right, including high ranking officials were calling for naked vengeance and suppression. The EuroNews service reported:
But it became quickly and predictably apparent that the divisions at the heart of Trump’s America were only going to be galvanized by Kirk’s death.
Speculation, conspiracy theories, partisan takes and misinformation about the shooter being a “liberal nut case” quickly followed—all before authorities named a suspect.
Trump quickly started blaming the “radical left” for Kirk’s killing, while Laura Loomer, a MAGA loyalist, called for ‘cracking down on the Left with the full force of the government…“Every single Left wing group that funds violent protests needs to be shut down and prosecuted. No mercy,” she added.
Her sentiment was echoed by Elon Musk, who added further fuel to the fire by bluntly writing on X: “The Left is the party of murder.”
So we must gird ourselves for both reciprocal violence and official repression. Progressive U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, no stranger to death threats herself, has postponed a rally with the North Carolina Democratic Party on Sunday citing security concerns as well as respect for Kirk’s family. Leading Democratic critics of Trump and his minions including California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have stepped up security. Kamala Harris just lost her Secret Service protection at Trumps order will have to assemble elaborate and expensive private security for her upcoming book tour. Leaders of many organizations and protests have far fewer resources. Some online firebrands are even calling for retribution to ordinary rank and file supporters. Even posting a blog entry like this could become cause for suppression.
So yes, the whole situation is explosive.
I did not really know that much about Kirk until reading some of his quotes. Many were threatening and provocative and targeted the Transgender, immigrants, and abortion appointments. At the moment of his death he was trying to link trans folks with school shootings.
He previously compared mass shooting as just a simple fact of modern civilized society like auto accidents and a price worthwhile to preserve “our Constitutional freedoms.” Mocking those who want to reduce gun deaths to zero, he went even further:
I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.
It is worth noting that on the very day of his own death next door in Colorado at Evergreen High School near Denver three students were shot and seriously injured and a student gunman died. That tragic case of serendipity was ignored by Kirk’s fans all the way up to the Resident himself.
What caught my attention was about words said during an October 12, 2022, episode of his pod cast The Charlie Kirk Show:
I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.
Empathy, it seems, weakens the resolve of the entitled to protect their interests ruthlessly from the weak, demanding, and undeserving. Adolph Hittler and Adolf Eichmann.
Years ago I was asked how as a Universalist I could define evil. Evil, I wrote, is simply the intentional infliction of pain and suffering on other human beings and creatures. Empathy prevents cruelty and allows us to love even our enemies.
So sorry you were murdered, Charlie. Even sorrier that your poisonous ideas did not die with you.
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