Charlie Kirk’s Murder
A shocking, but not surprising, event. I fear it's a harbinger rather than an outlier.
I don’t have strong thoughts on Charlie Kirk, who was murdered yesterday by an as-yet-unknown assailant for as-yet-unknown reasons. While I’ve seen snippets of his various debates at universities, I haven’t followed him all that closely.
Like my co-blogger Michael Bailey, I of course feel terrible for his wife, children, and others who were close to him. But murder is so commonplace in our society, including yet another school shooting yesterday, that I’m all but inured to it.
Indeed, a longtime Facebook friend called out the “hypocrisy of being upset about the murder of Charlie Kirk but staying silent about the murder of Melissa, Mark & Gilbert Hortman” and I had no idea who the hell they were, much less that they had been murdered. It turns out that Melissa Hortman was the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives and was murdered at her home, along with her husband Mark, by a man who was also targeting a Minnesota State Senator and his wife, back in June. I don’t believe I ever saw the news.
Several Democratic Party leaders, including former President Barack Obama and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, have issued kind statements. Others, not at all surprisingly, are essentially saying that Kirk had it coming because he was a divisive figure. Many, in particular, are calling attention to his declaration, just months ago, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, was fired from his job as a political analyst at MSNBC for his political analysis of the murder:
During his appearance on Katy Tur Reports, Dowd suggested that Kirk’s rhetoric may have contributed to the violence that claimed his life. Kirk, 31, had a history of rightwing provocation and Christian nationalism, and frequently espoused bigoted rhetoric about Islam, women , LGBTQ+ communities and people of color.
“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said, adding: “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”
Dowd also speculated about the circumstances of the shooting, saying: “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration. So we have no idea about this.”
Honestly, my only problem with that is the glibness of the “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration” remark. The rest, while speculative, is hardly arguable.
To be clear, I don’t believe murdering people for expressing even the most vile political ideas is justified. But inflammatory rhetoric inflames. And we live in a hyperpolarized time and are being led by an incredibly polarizing, inflammatory man.
While every election in my memory has been “the most important election of our lifetime,” that rhetoric has intensified geometrically since Trump became the leader of the Republican Party. His opponents have, not without reason, declared that electing him would lead to an existential crisis for American democracy. His first election win was greeted with mass protests and the declaration of a Resistance. His failed re-election bid was treated as a stolen election and led to a violent assault on the Halls of Congress. Two assassination attempts were made on him during his third run. And, now, he’s turning the apparatus of the Executive Branch, including the U.S. armed forces, against his political enemies.
I fear that Charlie Kirk won’t be the last political figure murdered.
Charlie Kirk’s shtick was to go to venues, often college campuses, lay out his beliefs, and debate them with the audience. He would have a sign set up saying “prove me wrong”.
Let’s examine his beliefs. He said this:
Assailing affirmative action “picks” Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Kirk said, “you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously” without affirmative action. “You had to steal a white person’s slot.”
He called Martin Luther King, Jr. “awful,” and “not a good person,” while insisting, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
Here’s another; “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
So he’s a garden variety racist who believes that black people are inherently intellectually inferior.
Then there are his comments about Muslims. When Zohran Mamdani shocked the nation by winning the New York City Democratic primary, Kirk said, “Twenty-four years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11…Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.” . He called Islam “the sword the Left is using to slit the throat of America.”
While on a trip to Japan, Kirk promoted the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Muslims, Arabs, and Indonesians were secretly being funneled into Japan to “erase, replace and eradicate” the country.
How about his reaction to the Paul Pelosi beating? “Why has he not been bailed out?” Kirk said on his podcast of the man who allegedly beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer. “By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,…
Feel bad for the family, he had two young children. As they get older wonder how they will feel about his comments. His murder was terrible. He was an evil person. I would just as soon see David Duke receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom as Charlie Kirk.
That remark about a supporter shooting his gun in celebration seems like it’s some sort of coded reference to some other situation/incident.
@Lucys Football: I’m reluctant to dig into Kirk’s schtick all that much, but it appears that he probably gets a lot of mileage from masculinity shaming of 20-year-old males.
All of those outrageous statements support a persona of “alpha” of “strenth” and “boldness”. This is a place where 20-year-old males are frequently vulnerable, and have been for a long time. In most groups they join, they will be the “kid”, not yet a “man”. I think Kirk exploited them.
And also, it has long been said, ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
All the same, I don’t want to get in the habit of celebrating someone’s murder.
I suppose someone’s already mentioned this, but the suspects shirt is for Disabled Vets. The shooter suspect does not appear to be a disabled vet himself. A disabled vet might be a gun enthusiast who’d own a Mauser. So, (heading right down the rabbit hole) maybe the child of a DAV with a beef of some sort?
At a speaking event in Idaho, one man asked right-wing activist Charlie Kirk about using violence against democrats.
This CNN video is dated October 27, 2021.
To know him is to loathe him.
I’d think of him more as a hate-filled podcaster who got off on saying outrageous things to piss people off than a political figure. But I guess that’s what passes for politics on the right these days.
@Michael Reynolds:
He looks rather gaunt and frail to my eye. I would not rate that look as hale and hearty, anyway.
The rifle, or at least the rifle of that scanty description, is not all that rare. True not many are sold these days, but since they’ve been around since the end of WW2 there are many thousands about. The rugged nature of the design grants a cared for and seldom fired one a practically eternal life-span, so to me it seems the sort of rifle that could obtained in the wild and woolly US used rife market discreetly.
Dowd is the latest victim of the irrational mentality that believes to explain why something happened is to excuse it. We see it from both sides of politics any time thoughtful people discuss thorny questions such as what motivates suicide bombers, or why Russia invaded Ukraine.
@dazedandconfused: Mauser still makes rifles that you can buy today. The Mauser m18 series can be bought for around $700 plus tax/fees. I can get it in a variety of rounds chambered.
The NYPost has an article up that claims they have a picture of the murder weapon. The picture is very low quality but the gun shown has a modern mauser look to it.
Oh and if you see the supposed “trans” shell casing that’s got to be bullshit. That’s a Turan 9mm pistol round. The picture is low quality so I can’t see if it’s para (9×19) or makarov (9×18). Neither of those rounds are used in mass produced bolt action rifles.
@Ken_L:
Matthew Dowd was fired simply because MSNBC’s parent organizations – NBCUniversal News Group and Comcast – are completely intimidated by Trump and his MAGA fellow travelers.
It really is that simple.