I Figured Out Who Charley Kirk Was in the Trump/Maga Universe

 

                                                Horst Wessel, the beau ideal ideal of a young Nazi. 

I figured out just who Charley Kirk was to Donald Trump and his enthralled followers.  It may seem like a stretch at first, but bear with me.   He was their very own Horst Wessel.

So who was Horst Wessel?  He was a 22 year old member of the Sturmabteilung (SA).  Those guys were the original Brown Shirt Storm Troopers of the Nazi Party in 1930 Germany.  They looked like senior Boy Scouts, marched like soldiers, and specialized as street brawler attacking the Party’s enemies.  They raided other organization meetings, attacked street meetings and marches, and targeted traditional liberals, Social Democrats, academics, Jews, and especially Communists whose prestige and influence grew after the Great War.  Of all of their targets only the Reds went toe to toe with them fighting them in the beer halls, campuses, and streets.

 

             Storm Troopers on the March.

He rose to command several SA squads and districts. On  January 14, 1930 he was shot in the head by two Communists. Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was arrested and charged with his murder. Höhler was initially sentenced to six years in prison but was forcibly removed from jail and killed by the SA after the Nazis came to power in September 1933.

 

The Horst Wessel Song suitable for framing in any good Nazi home. 

Wessel's funeral was given wide attention in Berlin, with many of the Nazi elite in attendance. After his death Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels him a propaganda symbol.   A march for which he had written the lyrics was renamed the Horst-Wessel-Lied (Horst Wessel Song) and became the official anthem of the Nazi Party. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the song became the co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first verse of the previous Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.

 

                Honoring the Martyr.

Even as Wessel was lying seriously wounded in hospital, Goebbels was already releasing reports asserting that those who had carried out the attack were “degenerate Communist subhumans”.  Wessel received medical attention and recovered somewhat but eventually died in hospital on February 23 from sepsis contracted in hospital.  Over the next years he became a martyr to the cause and a recruiting asset especially among students and disgruntled young men.  Those who refused to mourn him were vilified and isolated socially.  In other words his carefully maintained image was a critical part of the Nazi rise to power.

 

 Charley Kirk, a glib and charismatic brand spokesman for young adults--White men--for Donald Trump's fascism.2.

As for Charlie Kirk, he didn’t have to wear a uniform.  Instead he was clean cut dressed in blazers and slacks when hobnobbing with grownups and in casual t-shirts and caps at the campus events for which he was best known.  While Horst Wessell was notorious in Berlin and Prussia, Kirk was already a recognized rising figure on the hard Right its first influencer for young White men in Social media.  He was Trump’s MAGA connection to the young.  He was also a particular pet of the Orange menace who credited him for mobilizing previously apolitical incels and gamers for the 2022 election.

Kirk’s many White nationalist, Christian Denominist, anti-abortion and anti-women’s rights, racist, xenophobic anti-labor-antifa-Democrat-progressive-socialist-take-your-pick statements were all over the internet, his youthful charm, photogenic young family, and claim to desire “open dialogue” were enough to get much of mainstream media to take him at face value as simply a passionate conservative and ironically as a Free Speech  advocate.

 

                 The image shown repeatedly--the photo shot seconds before the gun shot.

When Kirk was cut down on a Utah campus by a confused young man with contradictory beliefs and murky motives Trump and his minions wasted no time all pinning the blame rabid Democrats, evil liberals, and Trans folks without a shred of evidence.  National mourning with flags at half-staff was speedily declared and enforced.  Anyone who dared out Kirk as a neo-fascist  using his own words was attacked by orchestrated virtual lynch mob howling for heads to roll, or at least Tar and Feathers.  Trump personally coerced ABC to “suspend” Jimmie Kimmel and threatened NBC if they do not sack Jimmie Fallon and Seth Myers

 

The coercion of Disney/ABC/affiliates took Jimmie Kimmel off the air weeks after CBS canceled Steven Colbert.  Attacks and targets have spread to every level of government and society.

It has all rolled downhill from there.  

Complaints and charges have been filed against members of Congress and Senators for quoting Kirk’s own record.  Moves have been made to recall or censure Democratic Governors and Mayors.  Academics are under attack,  and there are nationwide demands to remove school board members and teachers.  Journalists have been singled out and nervous employers demand “restraint” or detach themselves from risky voices.

Sunday Kirk’s funeral in Arizona was live streamed nationally  and excerpts dominated news casts.  Trump, J.D. Vance, and host of ambitious sycophants  repeated calls for vengeance.    No body has written a song for Charlie yet–that I’ve heard of—but wait one is surely coming.  

       

                    The canonization of Charley Kirk. 

If this dog and pony show succeeds in rallying new supporters and shoring up support from the wavering, Charlie Kirk’s involuntary sacrifice may be even more important than Horst  Wessel’s.

What do you think?     

 

 

Charley Kirk Assassination and the Reaction to it Flips the Stomach and the Heart

 

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.