My first inclination was to write SOMETHING about Charlie Kirk. Then not. But what I’m noticing that would be fascinating if it weren’t so damn scary is this: “conservatives” are engaging in the very “cancel culture” that they complained about less than a decade ago. In fact, the graphic is from the website of a conservative Republican Congressman from 2020.
I put “conservatives” in quotes because the mainstream media and other entities have been cowed into punishing people who have challenged the narrative that Kirk is a free speech advocate and that he was killed by the “radical left.” The attacks have little to do with grief and much to do with political weaponization.
The Daily Show has covered the topic here and here.
ITEM: From Katie Couric -“A 2024 report from the National Institute of Justice found that since 1990, far-right extremists have carried out the vast majority of ideologically motivated killings in the U.S. — 227 attacks that claimed more than 520 lives. By contrast, far-left extremists were behind 42 such attacks, killing 78 people.”
Couric notes, “The study was reported missing from the Justice Department’s website on Sept. 13, just three days after Kirk’s assassination. It has since been archived, but the DOJ hasn’t explained the removal, saying only that it is ‘reviewing its websites … in accordance with recent Executive Orders.’ This study isn’t an outlier. Other research points to the same conclusion.”
I would accept “radicalized” without the descriptor.
Frankly, I find the discussion about whether Kirk’s killer was radicalized by the “left” or “right” sophomoric. But it was the reason Disney’s ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused Kimmel of misrepresenting the politics of the accused, a ‘Red Alert Moment’ for Free Speech, according to Common Dreams.
From the NYT: Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, “was interviewed on the right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast and appeared to threaten fines or revoke broadcast licenses over what he called ‘news distortion’ and specifically mentioned — of all people — Jimmy Kimmel.” Soon, Kimmel was gone.
Sen. Ted Cruz, not one of my favorite people, said that Carr sounded like a mafia crime boss when he threatened ABC’s licenses over Kimmel’s comments about Kirk.
SAG-AFTRA noted, “The decision to suspend airing ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ is the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms.” Free speech was the hallmark of the Charlie Kirk “brand,” even though Kirk regularly berated the TV host.
ITEM from The Guardian via MSN: Pam Bondi faces rightwing backlash for saying she’ll target ‘hate speech’ after Kirk killing. “Bondi said on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller, the wife of the rightwing White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, that there is ‘free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.’
“Legal experts and conservative pundits have condemned the comments because there is no ‘hate speech’ exception in the First Amendment right to speech, and as such, targeting people for their charged rhetoric would be unconstitutional.” As Daily Kos noted, “Even Charlie Kirk would’ve disagreed with Pam Bondi about ‘hate speech.'”
Republican political strategist Karl Rove, whom I disliked intensely when he was in W’s administration, noted in the Wall Street Journal. “No. Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by ‘them.’ ‘They’ didn’t pull the trigger. One person did… Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it.”
Your brain on propaganda
ITEM: Read Brainwashed nation, part I: Assault and battery upon the American brain from Nation of Change. “Propaganda is not just about the content of a message but its mode of delivery. The right-wing media moguls and their ranting hirelings; a radically politicized fundamentalist Christianity that preaches a puerile albeit vivid biblical literalism… have reshaped not only the American ‘mind,’ but millions of brains as well.” I will admit that Charlie Kirk was REALLY good at this.
Per Heather Cox Richardson: FOTUS “Has Divided the World Into Friends and Enemies.”
“Vice President JD Vance hosted The Charlie Kirk Show and ended his episode with a rallying call to report anyone sharing negative views of Kirk in the wake of his death to their employers.” I wonder what Charlie would think?
One week before the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Utah Valley University released a statement affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.” The statement went on to paint a vision of the intellectual environment the university strives to create: one in which “ideas — popular or controversial — can be exchanged freely, energetically, and civilly.”
So that’s “civility”?
So Charlie Kirk could “civilly” say, as he told the crowd at his annual conservative political conference, AmericaFest, in 2023. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” His narrow sense of history boggles.
He could “civilly” make undermining comments like, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” Ah, he was the target audience of “DEI in the Sky? No More, Thanks to Racial Support Pilots” on The Daily Show a few months ago.
He could “civilly” tell TV children’s star Miss Rachel, who quoted Leviticus 19, “love your neighbor as yourself,” that “in Leviticus 18,’ thou that shall lie with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just saying.” This bastardization of Christianity rankles me.
He could “civilly” put professors on his Turning Point USA target list, some of whom had received death threats.
And the presumed constitutional scholar could “civilly” say, “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
But what IS truth?
Journalist and author Ann Neumann notes, per my friend Jeff Sharlet: “The outpouring of grief for Kirk has been fraught with controversy: The old ruse of not speaking ill of the dead has melded with Republican righteousness to warp newspapers’ reporting and lead to the sacking of employees for saying the truth about Kirk: He called enemies ‘maggots’ and ‘vermin,’ he suggested that Black women lack ‘brain processing power,’ that Jewish financiers fund anti-whiteness, that children might benefit from viewing televised executions. He said it all with an affable affect. It made him rich and powerful.” The effect makes folks think, “Well, I never thought about it THAT way.”
“It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views,” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in Vanity Fair. “It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry.” By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, Coates argues, pundits and politicians are sanitizing Charlie Kirk’s legacy.
Finally, DelSo has some sage advice: “Protect yourself and your energy. Refuse to engage with anyone wishing to debate you – especially when evidence (I like to call it facts) supports your position. You will never persuade someone to abandon their stance when actual documented events are rejected by those who instead choose willful, blind ignorance.”
Charlie Kirk would “debate anyone,” but he was largely successful by ambushing young, naive, and unprepared college students who had not thought their arguments through. When a Cambridge student confronted him, Charlie got SCHOOLED.
So I have, I hope, purged the topic from my mind. Probably not. Oh, yes: Charlie Kirk should not have shot. Do I really have to say that? I’d better, just in case.
My wife took a walk around the neighborhood on Wednesday, September 10th. She said she’d return at 7:30 a.m., but came back about seven minutes early.
This is the blog-specific edition of Ask Roger Anything. People have asked me general questions, sometimes in person, some via email or Facebook. I’ve often gotten them enough that I should address them.
