Rightwing shit-stirrer and professional troll Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Authorities are still trying to track down the killer, who shot Kirk from a building some 200 yards away from where Kirk was speaking at an open-air rally. Two people were briefly detained after the shooting, and released.
FBI Director Kash Patel, unsurprisingly, added to the confusion by live-tweeting what he thought might be going on, at one point announcing (link to news story) that “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody,” but then reversing himself about an hour later (also a news story) and saying that person had been “released after an interrogation by law enforcement.”
As of this morning, the shooter remains at large and there’s very little definite to be said about how the killing happened, but plenty to say about how America has gotten to be such a violent place, particularly in the decade since Donald Trump began his first presidential campaign by accusing immigrants of being rapists and murderers sent by their governments to invade America, demonizing Muslims, and regularly fantasizing about sending protesters out of his rallies on a stretcher.
And although we still know nothing about the actual shooter, the online far Right immediately blamed “the Left” for the murder, and some, like Libs of TikTok owner and self-proclaimed stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik declaring “THIS IS WAR.”
The nation’s top elected troll, Donald Trump, who was elected on a platform of online rage, weighed in with a four-minute video statement last night from the Oval Office, first posted to his social media site. Trump claimed that the killer had obviously been radicalized and driven to shoot Kirk because progressives and other sane people keep calling out the similarities between Trumpian politics and fascism, insisting,
“For years those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today and it must stop right now.
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Trump then listed a number of incidents of “radical Left political violence,” such as the two assassination attempts against him by registered Republicans, the 2017 shooting of Steve Scalise and three others, the murder earlier this year of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and “attacks on ICE agents.”
Left out of Trump’s list of unacceptable examples of political violence were the murders and attempted murders of Democratic state legislators and their spouses (and dog) in Minnesota in June, or the near-deadly 2021 attack on Paul Pelosi, which was really pretty funny to Republicans, including Trump. And of course Trump didn’t mention his own supporters who attacked the Capitol in 2021 and threatened to hang Mike Pence, or the endless death threats received by election workers since the 2020 election — not only those directly targeted by Trump and his subordinates, but also county clerks and random poll workers just for the hell of it.
And let’s also not forget the endless parade of threats from the Right against a broad range of others they deemed dangers to America, including healthcare workers, public health workers who did tyranny by asking people to wear masks or get vaccinated, trans people, drag performers, immigrants both documented and not, progressive members of Congress and state legislatures (threats doubled if named by Trump), librarians and teachers (threats doubled if those folks were gay or trans, even higher if they were targeted by Libs of TikTok), hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, healthcare workers who provide abortions, and those are just the ones who come readily to mind.
Charlie Kirk himself was an enthusiastic participant in the drive to push American politics toward constant outrage and violent rhetoric, especially if it made libs mad. The most infamous example, in endless circulation after he was shot, even before the news broke that he’d died, was his April 2023 appearance at an event held by the rightwing group he founded, Turning Point USA, at which he explained that the occasional mass shooting is acceptable if that’s the cost of having a Second Amendment, just as we accept traffic deaths as something that’ll happen if we have lots of cars:
“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am — 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
As wildfires burned in Los Angeles in January, Kirk also kicked off a bizarre, eugenics-tinged 48-hours hate by rightwingers who were suddenly oppressed by sign language interpreters. And of course back in 2022, Kirk’s increasingly strange alignment with fundagelical Christianity spilled over into an accusation that rappers performing at the Super Bowl halftime show were unleashing “sexual anarchy” right on Americans’ teevees.
Kirk has also notably insisted that it’s perfectly rational to be more afraid of crashing if your plane has a Black pilot, that Black women like Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Michelle Obama “do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” and should not be allowed to “steal” white men’s jobs, and so much more. His TPUSA started its own own hit list of university professors to harass, although Kirk of course said no one should threaten the Marxist indoctrinators, just try to get them fired.
In any case, it seems that with his murder, we’re now getting closer to that moment a Kirk fan dreamed of right down the road from me in Idaho, when patriots could finally start shooting Democrats. Kirk did warn him not to talk like that, but only because it’s “what they want” so They can impose Tyranny.
We Bet Democracy Would Work Better If Election Officials Didn’t Fear Being Murdered
Middle-Aged Hip-Hop Stars Bring ‘Sexual Anarchy’ To Super Bowl Halftime Show
Uh Oh, Charlie Kirk Is Oppressed By Sign Language Now
[AP / Mother Jones / Guardian / Media Matters]
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