I only really knew Charlie Kirk through South Park. When I heard he got shot in Utah, I thought it was a joke or at worst he staged it to try to give himself some cred like Trump got for that shooting in Pennsylvania last year. Next day I heard Young Charlie was dead and that it wasn't a joke but rather a day of national mourning, at least for the MAGA faithful. The Chief Magster even ordered flags flown at half mast to honor the "the truly great American patriot," although it oddly coincided with the commemoration of 9/11. I suppose in Magaland Charlie is a patriot, but everywhere else he was just seen as a loudmouth bigot with a podcast. The episode has since been pulled from Comedy Channel so as not to show any offense to the fallen conservative ideologue.
My biggest worry is the fallout from the incident as Magsters worldwide have sworn vengeance, although the assassin will probably turn out to be one of their own. I was shocked to learn how far Charlie's message has spread. Even in Estonia, a parliamentarian asked for a moment of silence to honor his fallen hero. Befuddled, the parliament stayed quiet for a few seconds not sure who Charlie Kirk even was. Right-wing MEP's tried to do the same at Europarliament but the gesture was rejected. I don't know what you call MAGA in Europe, maybe MEGA. Who knows?
It used to be left-wing hotheads bore the brunt of these killings, but as Malcolm X once infamously said, the chickens have come home to roost. Charlie was the wunderkind of the MAGA world, its best hope to influence the hearts and minds of young Millennials and Zoomers, or so we have been led to believe. The fact that his death was announced on 9/11 is probably no coincidence. For many on the right, the assassination confirms all their worst fears in a "deep state." They will never accept the lone gunman with a number of conspiracy theories being hatched as I write.
It's pretty hard to google anything that provides much of a backstory to his long list of indiscretions, as Google is filled with the ongoing manhunt for his assailant and all the eulogies being paid to the MAGA idol, but this is a guy who aired so many ugly and nasty grievances, not to mention conspiracy theories, that I was shocked to learn he was only 31. So, I turned to Wikipedia for a laundry list of all the things Charlie spoke out against in his tumultuous short life.
He had ascended quickly in the religious conservative world and I was surprised he hadn't yet run for office, but he had made Turning Point USA into such a lucrative gig with speaking engagements all over the country. Not bad for a guy who dropped out of Harper College and started writing essays for Breitbart alleging liberal bias in high school textbooks. The Magaworld was ripe for young conservative hotheads speaking out against the liberal establishment and his audience grew by leaps and bounds. He was soon hobnobbing with the MAGA elite, including Donald Trump himself, towering over the Donald at a CPAC conference in 2023.
Young Charlie even teamed up with Jerry Falwell Jr. to form Falkirk, a center for faith and liberty at Liberty University. This was before Jerry got called out by a "pool boy" for his threesomes at a Miami hotel. It has since been renamed Standing for Freedom Center. No telling what interest Jerry had in Charlie, but the young MAGA Republican kept to the straight and narrow, getting married in 2021 and quickly fathering a daughter and son. He glorified a woman's subordinate role to a man and his wife Eva dutifully complied, or so it seemed. They often spoke together at these faith-based summits. For Charlie, The Handmaid's Tale was a playbook not a cautionary tale of where our country is headed.
American Taliban is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about guys like Charlie Kirk. They have no interest in freedom except on their own terms. Their aim is to subordinate Americans to a Christian Nationalism where the Old Testament trumps the Constitution. Yet, many on the right are heralding Charlie as a "great patriot" including the MAGA-in-Chief who will probably stage a state funeral for the slayed podcaster. We are all supposed to acquiesce to the wishes of the right-wingers even at MSNBC and Middle Tennessee State, where a journalist and assistant dean were fired for making untoward comments about Charlie's death. Sorry, but I don't hold Charlie Kirk in such high esteem.
ReplyDeleteAfter the events of September 10th (which perhaps (?) in coming weeks may be decreed by Executive Order as an “Annual National Day of Mourning”), I knew that you would be writing a post on this event, so I have been checking your Dispatches every morning for this posting. So, in order to begin my thoughts and comments on your post, allow me to begin by emphatically stating that this event was a horrific and abhorrent act by a single individual. Everyone that I have spoken to (friends and family members) about this have been horrified and sickened by what happened. This is not how we as a society should be "resolving" our disagreements.
I was aware of this person (sorry, but I won’t say his name) from various social media platforms, videos and news articles....and even the South Park episode that you mentioned in your posting. I certainly did not agree with any of the views that he espoused and I probably would not have walked across the street or around the corner to hear anything that he had to say even if you had offered to pay me $100 bucks - I consider my time to be more valuable.
When I heard what had happened in Utah, I immediately thought of the well-known philosophical quote “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – (a side note: I always thought that this was a direct quote of Voltaire’s, but it is from Evelyn Hall’s biography of Voltaire). That said, I believe that I would have had great difficulty engaging this person in a debate on just about any subject. I don’t believe there could have been a single issue that we would have found common ground. The few videos that I have seen in the news show him calling people stupid and idiotic for expressing views that did not align with his set of skewed and hateful beliefs. Well, so much for my “warm and fuzzy” fondness for Voltaire.
And then we have the wonderful First Amendment to the US Constitution that guarantees our right to free speech, but I guess that is now under assault if you happen to say anything that offends “the dear leader” – just ask Jimmy Kimmel or Steven Colbert. And I’m watching with great interest the ongoing lawsuit that has been filed against the New York Times for their endorsement last year of Kamala Harris for President. It’s simply nauseating that corporate America has repeatedly chosen to roll over with tails tucked between their legs. In the end, it’s all about the money.
There is a certain irony that this person’s life was ended at a school - given that he was quoted as having said that “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”. Depending on which source you check, there have been 146 separate incidents of gun violence in K-12 US schools thus far in 2025. I don’t know if the final question that was posed to him in Utah was directly related to gun violence in schools or just gun violence in general – it’s just ironic that his last response to a question involved gun violence.
He also had some horrible things to say about empathy (one of the cornerstones of humanity) – and I just don’t even want to go there at this particular moment.
So, to conclude my comments to your post - has the MAGA movement found their “Horst Wessel” and will school children in the coming years be required to sing an anthem in his honor every morning? A statue in the capitol has already been suggested. Perhaps a 47-cent 1st class stamp issued by the USPS. But……I am still sick to my stomach that a misguided individual thought that this was the only option available to remedy a problem that he alone had recognized (sarcasm - we all see the problem).
And as far as the dear leader is concerned, I’ll remind you of Benjamin Franklin’s response to the question “What have we got – a republic or a monarchy” – to which Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it”.
- Your SRB golfing buddy
Here's an interesting piece someone wrote on Medium linking Horst to Charlie and the parallel aftermaths,
Deletehttps://medium.com/@ossiana.tepfenhart/has-charlie-kirk-become-the-new-horst-wessel-9db04495e4aa
Extremely well said! I had taken the South Park approach, not wanting to give this guy any more credit than he deserved, but your post points to a much more ominous scenario that is unfolding as we speak. VP Vance has literally taken over Kirk's podcast, launching vitriolic attacks against what he and his MAGA Chief call "the radical left." So, the Nazi German reference is not far off. The only question is will the American public roll over and play dead, as corporations have, or will we see an uprising. Either scenario is scary.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I'm shocked it has come to this, as we all knew Project 2025 was real but too many people dismissed it as just political rhetoric. It was a virtual playbook on how the right-wing of the Republican Party planned to take over government and reshape it in their autocratic vision. Kirk was a "true believer" in this regard and very valuable to the movement as he reached a young audience of disillusioned males (mostly white) who apparently are having a hard time finding jobs right now and blaming their female counterparts. How prophetic was that season of American Horror Story entitled Election Night in direct reference to 2016. While not as heady as Voltaire, it was written in the same spirit and for the most part gave an ominous account of what was to come. We were spared the first time around but I don't think we will be so fortunate the second time around.
As for Kirk, I recently watched some of his debates with Cambridge students on YouTube to get a feel of his "prove me wrong" style. He was proven wrong so many times that he became a caricature of himself. Most of his arguments were nothing more than religious conservative tropes that fell flat with the assembled audience. He tried to couch some of his "arguments" in language completely foreign to him, like alluding to Plato's meaning of soul, which made his positions sound all the more silly. Yet, we were supposed to take him seriously as a debater and spokesman for the religious conservative movement and now in death as some sort of martyr.
Yes, the circumstances were appalling but you reap what you sow.