Dem
47
GOP
53
We must admit, we never really cared much about Charlie Kirk, one way or the other. There are a whole bunch of blowhards on the right, and they all kind of blend in together for us, most of the time. In particular, we often struggled to remember which one was which between Kirk and Nick Fuentes. Both are/were Podcasters/YouTubers, both have palled around with Donald Trump, both have a vaguely similar appearance, both say/said a lot of divisive things. "Which one is the actual Nazi, and which one is just Nazi-curious?" we would have to ask ourselves. Really.
Point being, this is another one of those stories that we're not exactly enthusiastic to write about. However, the murder of Kirk by a still-unknown assailant continues to absolutely dominate the news. And the fact is, this story raises several issues that are broadly important to American politics in the coming weeks, months, and years. So, we're going to make the best of it, with a rundown of some of those broadly important issues:
Law Enforcement: At the moment, the folks who are investigating this crime are not exactly clothing themselves in glory. Authorities think they have photographs of the killer, and have released those images, asking for the public's help in identifying the suspect. For what it's worth, he appears to be college-age, white, and male-presenting. They reportedly also found the gun that they think was used.
Beyond that, however, not much is known. Not only was security at the event lax, but the assassin has now evaded capture for more than 24 hours, which means a significant decrease in the chances he'll eventually be caught. Meanwhile, there's been all kinds of saber-rattling from officials, like Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT), who insist that he will be arrested, tried, convicted and executed. This kind of bloviating is not a great look when you haven't actually caught him yet, nor do you know anything about him or his motivations (for example, what if he's mentally ill?).
Law enforcement officials have also circulated information that is, or may be, incorrect. To take one example, they said they'd already nabbed the perp, and then decided they had the wrong guy. Then they did it again. Also, some unknown person in law enforcement (Federal? State? Municipal? Nobody seems to know) allegedly put out a bulletin that asserts that the three bullets remaining in the recovered rifle were inscribed with messages advocating "transgender and anti-fascist ideology." This was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, and then pretty much all the other right-wing media outlets ran with it. We believe that is called "confirmation bias."
The non-right-wing outlets, by contrast, have almost universally declined to run this bit of news. They are absolutely correct in this. First, the details here are a bit too squishy. Second, even if the bulletin exists, it is well within the realm of possibility that it was cooked up by some law enforcement officer to advance their own political agenda. Third, even if the bulletin exists, and is entirely truthful, it is entirely possible that the shooter was a Steve Bannon-style sh**-stirrer, whose goal is to burn it all down. If so, he could have put that stuff on the bullets not because he believes it, but because he's trying to get right- and left-wingers at each other's throats. That would certainly be consistent with the slightly unusual choice to leave the weapon behind. In any event, there are just too many unknowns here right now.
The lack of solid information, and the authorities' promulgation of shaky information, has quite a few people indulging in conspiracy theories, the most popular of them being that the shooter escaped on a getaway plane, and will never set foot in the U.S. again. There are others who are not conspiratorializing (and yes, that is a word), but who are trying to figure out what we know, based on what we know. There are, for example, a huge number of people who have tried to draw conclusions from the distance the shot traveled (200 yards), and the fact that it hit Kirk's neck. The problem is that those conclusions run the spectrum from "only a Mel-Gibson's-character-in-Lethal-Weapon-style black-ops sniper could hit a shot like that while firing over a crowd, and dealing with a crosswind and a moving target" to "three-quarters of the men, and nearly as many of the women, in Utah could hit a shot like that; this is huntin' country, folks." For our part, we are inclined to side with reader and former Marine A.G. in Scranton, PA, who sent us this assessment:
No good reason for you to know this, of course, but neck shots are generally far from "the mark of an expert" shooter.
Neck shots were either meant to be head shots by amateurs who don't understand the trajectories of ammunition over longer ranges or the mark of a pretty crazy and sadistic shooter trying to send a message.
Expert shooters aim for the chest. Center mass. Highest percentage shot.A.G. is right; there is no good reason for a couple of academics who work in very urban environments to know the best way to score a kill shot. So, we definitely have to defer here.
Anyhow, law enforcement is not doing so well right now. And the fact that they really, really, really, really need to arrest someone means that we recommend a healthy dose of skepticism when and if they do, at least until the evidence is laid out.
One last thing we will note: We are far from the only ones to notice/write that law enforcement, particularly federal law enforcement, has underwhelmed here. There are already credible whispers that FBI Director Kash Patel, who was already clearly an incompetent, is in danger of losing his job, particularly if the murderer cannot be found.
The Right-Wing Reaction: The vitriol coming from many folks on the right remains... intense. They are angry, and sad, and scared, and... well, there's probably a dozen other negative emotions in there, too. And a great many of them have lashed out. For example, someone put together this collage of vicious right-wing tweets sent in the last 24 hours or so:
There's so many, it's a little hard to read, but they pretty much all call for the Democratic Party to be outlawed, or for conservatives to "bring the hammer" against Democrats, etc. For example, the tweet from Laura Loomer (second from bottom, far-right column) says "We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat." The one from Elon Musk (right below Loomer) says: "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die."
Obviously, these folks are engaging in no small amount of tunnel vision and/or hypocrisy. There is no shortage of people who have pointed out that when a nutty right-winger killed Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman (D), nobody on the left was suggesting Republicans should be outlawed, while nobody on the right appeared to be one-tenth as distraught as they are now. Further, these attacks on Democrats/liberals not only overlook the fact that right-wingers have put plenty of vitriol, and plenty of calls to violence out there, but that they have also done so in the direction of other right-wingers. For example, while she was calling for Democrats to be dealt with as a national security threat, due to having ostensibly caused Kirk's death, Loomer seems to have forgotten tweets like this one:
Do as I say, not as I do, it would seem.
Quite a few right-wingers have really leaned into the notion that the time has come for a second civil war. Among the folks who have expressed that exact idea, using that exact word (war), since Kirk's death are Steve Bannon (who, it should be noted, has been eagerly looking forward to such a war for decades), Alex Jones, Jack Posobiec, Jesse Watters, Tyler Bowyer (who is likely to succeed Kirk as leader of Turning Point USA), Matt Walsh, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), Andrew Tate and a long, long, long list of others.
Perhaps one can forgive this kind of rhetoric, at least for a few days. These folks are very, very upset. And some of them—Loomer, Jones, etc.—are clearly mentally unwell, and have been for a while. On the other hand, maybe they are crossing lines that cannot and should not be crossed, and that cannot and should not be forgiven. We really aren't sure what the correct response is.
To their credit, there are a couple of prominent Republicans who are trying to tamp down the violent talk. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), whose ideas are anathema to most liberals, but whose actions are just what they're looking for, said that some of his fellow Republicans, particularly Trump, need to stop throwing fuel on the fire. And Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who risks the possibility of his almost-completely-dysfunctional chamber turning into his 100%-totally-dysfunctional chamber, has tried to be a calming influence.
Of course, the person who has far and away the most power to unite the country is the person who occupies the bully pulpit. Anyone reading this is likely old enough to remember George W. Bush's eloquent words of peace and brotherhood after the 9/11 attacks, or Barack Obama's tearful address after the Emanuel AME Church shooting. Many readers probably remember Ronald Reagan's remarks after the Challenger disaster, and there are surely a few who remember what Robert F. Kennedy did and said after the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination.
Donald Trump does not do empathy and he does not do unity. At a time when his #1 job should be bringing the nation together, and binding its wounds (especially the wounds of his followers), he's just pouring gasoline onto the fire. He is, at this very moment, in the midst of one of his greatest failures of leadership (and as a president who has had many of them). And we are hardly the only ones to notice this.
The Non-Right-Wing Reaction: When people are as angry and upset as the friends, fans and supporters of Charlie Kirk are, they will generally FIND someone who will pay for what has happened. Think Muslims after 9/11, or Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, or Black Southerners after the Civil War. Sometimes, it's the actual perpetrator who pays. Sometimes it's someone else (or many someone elses). Sometimes, it's both.
As the tweets and quotes above indicate, the early favorite for scapegoating is the Democrats and/or the libs. Most of the MAGA types have already persuaded themselves, despite there being no actual evidence, that the shooter was some sort of left-wing fanatic. They are further persuaded, as we note, that criticism of Kirk (and other MAGA types) from Democrats is what made possible the climate that got him killed. (Again, this is some pretty profound tunnel vision.) Finally, the MAGA types are really upset that not everyone is as distraught as they are; they see that as an additional (and, often, "war"-worthy) failing.
It is true that some people have gotten on social media and said some unkind things, generally along the lines of "glad he's dead" or "Kirk deserved it." We all know that social media is (often) a real cesspool. However, we have read dozens of letters from readers, and many dozens of responses beyond that, from various sources. And we think we have a pretty good grasp on what the majority of non-MAGA types are thinking. To start, they are overwhelmingly against the use of this kind of violence in this context, they find the killing abhorrent, and they believe that it did not advance anyone's cause—liberal or conservative, MAGA or non-MAGA. They also, nearly universally, lament that there's now a young widow out there, along with two young kids who will grow up without a father.
At the same time—and we're not going to sugar-coat this because the man just died—the public Charlie Kirk (we know nothing about the private person) was generally a reprehensible figure who said a lot of very hurtful and very hateful things. He also did a great deal to create the context that allowed for his death. There were many occasions where he embraced violence against one's opponents, such as when he cheered the man who assaulted Paul Pelosi (aka, Mr. Nancy Pelosi). We have made the observation before that the problem with a leader who says "violence is OK" and "the rule of law doesn't matter" is that those things can and will eventually turn against them. That's how Benito Mussolini, for example, ended his life strung up by his feet in a town square in Milan. Meanwhile, as we pointed out yesterday, Kirk was all-in on very permissive gun laws, up to and including his observation that a few shooting deaths are an acceptable price to pay for protecting the Second Amendment.
As a result of all of this, a huge portion of the non-MAGA types (at least, the non-MAGA types who have an opinion) have taken a pretty nuanced position where they lament the killing, but are unwilling to simply ignore Kirk's part in it. The cleanest and simplest expression of this perspective that we saw goes like this: "I don't support the things that led to Charlie Kirk's death. But Charlie Kirk did."
Something that we think is particularly instructive is this. There was an NFL game last night, between Green Bay and Washington. Although the game was in Green Bay (and not the nation's capital), the league nonetheless felt they had to address the situation. Keep in mind, this is a league that has a lot of fans across all parts of the political spectrum, and that has become very attuned to the political winds. At the same time, it's also willing to come down on the conservative side of some issues, as with the Colin Kaepernick protests a few years ago.
In any case, what the NFL did before the game was observe a "moment of silent reflection." The exact announcement:
The National Football League asks that you please join us in a moment of silent reflection following the murder of Charlie Kirk. The NFL condemns all violence in our communities. It will take all of us to stop hate. Thank you.Maybe we are reading too much into this, but that looks like a very, very carefully threaded needle to us. If the deceased was someone unproblematic—say, Jimmy Carter, or Colin Powell—it would have been called a "moment of silence" and would have been "in honor of" Carter or Powell. The approach to Kirk, by contrast, seems to have been crafted so as to acknowledge him, and what happened to him, without necessarily paying tribute to him. Put another way, this looks to us like NFL-speak for "It's complicated."
The Other Targets: Yesterday, for several hours, #ReichstagFire was trending on Twitter. We imagine many readers know the reference, either because they already knew, or because it came up so frequently yesterday, but just so everyone is on the same page, the Reichstag building in Berlin was targeted by an arsonist on February 27, 1933, just 4 weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. That incident remains shrouded in mystery, and in conspiracy theories, but the important thing for our purposes is that it became justification for the Nazis to crack down on everyone they had been wanting to get to. So, it was a key moment in the development of the Nazi Party.
We were worried about this yesterday, and we remain worried about it today, that MAGA types, from the president on down, could be militarized by Kirk's death. It might be because they just want someone to pay. It might be because they are cynically using this as an opportunity to take action against those who are disfavored. It might be both. Whatever the underlying dynamic, the outcome is pretty much the same (and note, the potential to use Kirk in this way is obvious enough that, as with the Reichstag Fire, there are already plenty of conspiracy theories that it was an inside job undertaken to give the administration a rallying point).
There has already been a depressing roll call of people and groups who might end up in the MAGA crosshairs (figuratively OR literally). We already noted the libs. Derrick Van Orden, another person who seems to be legitimately unbalanced, wants to prosecute social media users who said celebratory things about Kirk's death. He also wants to go after schools and universities where students said such things, and he wants to do something about liberals in Europe and, apparently, about EVERYONE in Canada.
Alternatively, a number of historically Black universities have received so many threatening calls that they are now on lockdown. How anyone could persuade themselves that Black students at universities over a thousand miles away from the murder site had anything to do with this is beyond us. And, as a sidebar, wouldn't it be nice if we could issue a blanket Get Out of Bigotry Free card, with expiration date sometime in the 25th century, to all Black people and Jews? Lots of groups have been the targets of this sort of hatred, but it sure seems those two groups have gotten it the most, and the most regularly, and with the least provocation. (NB: This is NOT a statement about Israel; Jews ≠ Israel.)
Meanwhile, in the Reichstag-fieriest response of all, we would say, the Trump administration has already issued warnings that any immigrants who make light of Kirk's death are at risk of having their legal status revoked.
We think we are very well justified in being very nervous about what might come to pass in the next few weeks and/or months. Last night, Fox's Greg Gutfeld looked right into the camera and said that it's not easy to radicalize conservatives, but the Kirk assassination and response have done it. It's amazing someone could say that with a straight face. Has Gutfeld never heard of, say, militias? Or the nutty Bundy family in Oregon, Idaho and Nevada? Or Tim McVeigh? Or... well, you get the point.
In any case, there is a professor at the University of Maryland named Mike Jensen, who oversees and maintains a database of U.S. events that involve political violence. The numbers are presented in pretty graphical form here, if you'd like to take a look. Jensen says there have already been 150 distinct acts of political violence in the U.S. this year and that the trendline has been headed upward for much of the last decade. Incidentally, four of the five most prolific perpetrators of violence (#1 KKK/white supremacists; #2 Sovereign citizens; #4 Militia members/gun rights fanatics and #5 pro-Trump extremists) are all radicalized conservatives. Sorry, Greg Gutfeld.
Long-Term Impact on MAGA/The Right: This is our last, brief section—we promise. We aren't much interested in these conference/podcast/radio show/cable news bubbles, right or left, and so we know relatively little about their dynamics, or exactly how the various players fit into the bigger picture. On the whole, it seems to us that when one conservative star falls, another takes his place. Andrew Breitbart was replaced by Steve Bannon. Bill O'Reilly was replaced by Tucker Carlson. Rush Limbaugh was replaced by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Tucker Carlson was replaced by Sean Hannity. If you asked us, then, we would have just guessed that some other angry white guy would assume Kirk's place in the mediasphere and the movement.
Not so fast, says The Bulwark's Will Sommer, who is surely far more knowledgeable about this than we are. He argues that Kirk was unusual, maybe even sui generis, in that he was something of a nexus between key segments of the right-wing world: younger and older conservatives, conspiracists and more mainstream conservatives, new right-wing media and old right-wing media, etc.
If you want to read Sommer's full assessment, click on the link. But the most interesting point he brings up, and the one we feel most qualified to comment on, is the notion that Kirk was a future presidential candidate. In fact, he thinks that Kirk was the person best suited to inherit the MAGA mantle from Donald Trump, much more so than J.D. Vance, or Marco Rubio, or Donald Trump Jr. This actually makes a lot of sense to us, between Kirk's charisma, and his youth, and his already demonstrated ability to rally the troops (an ability that none of the other MAGA pretenders has demonstrated). So, the movement might well have taken a huge blow here, one that will echo years down the line.
So, there you have it, the elements of the story that we think are important, at least at the moment. You probably didn't want to read that much about this subject, and we certainly didn't want to write this much. But, you know how it works: When the news breaks, we fix it. (Z)