Prove Me Wrong

CW: Links to videos of Charlie Kirk engaging in anti-black racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, antisemitism, and transphobia.

Charlie Kirk was unremarkable. He was a racist. A white nationalist, transphobe, and megaphone for fascism but more than anything, he was unremarkable. I am one of the eldest of millennials, and thanks to a litany of health issues as well as a fondness for reading, an indoor kid. So when the internet was accessible for home use, I took to it as soon as I could. With unfettered access to all corners of the Wild West that was the internet before it was effectively owned by four companies, I ran across people like Charlie Kirk often enough.

In the earliest days, they were indistinguishable from the creeps who wouldn't meet your eye at booths in the back of the flea market. Well, my eye, anyway. I'm sure if you weren't a little black kid, they would've gladly welcomed you over to look at their wares, which I'd find out later on in life were things like xeroxed copies of The Turner Diaries and other such reactionary Nazi garbage. As they broke containment from listservs and BBSs, they'd pop up in forums and chat rooms to test the waters to see how tolerable their bullshit was in a given place. More likely than not, the main aim was to find other like-minded scumbags or impressionable kids to pull off into other, more shadowy places.

Later as things gave way to more formalized websites and community platforms that would lead to modern social media, the Charlie Kirks of the world slunk off to corners of the 'Net that might be more familiar to you as seeds of the current hellworld we find ourselves in. Getting booted from Something Awful to end up on the imageboards. Taking detours from their own blogs or frantically refreshing the Drudge Report to jump in the comments sections of more populated and legitimate platforms, yelling invective about whatever news of the day related to their particular bugbear–blacks, gays, and proto-men's rights/incel rhetoric, typically. At least back then in my experience, the more blatant antisemitism was less common even among these types, because there was much less willful confusion about what actual antisemitism was. The associated dogwhistles were much more likely to get you correctly identified as someone who holds the Elders of the Protocols of Zion in high regard. But I digress.

On into the rise of social media, the accessibility of video content, and the ability to post at the speed of your thumbs' dexterity across a phone, people like Charlie Kirk were a dime-a-dozen. Turning Point as a concern aside, the steady erosion of news media under the disastrous and still relevant effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (and, perhaps, the much earlier elimination of the Fairness Doctrine) has allowed for an environment where "objectivity" is an excuse to give blatant fascism apologia the same open floor as actual, substantive and informative political or social commentary. With men like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan as their guiding lights, the internet is lousy with bigots that can offer a veneer of legitimacy because for the average viewer, their cadence and distribution methods are indistinguishable from influencers–which is where a disconcerting number of the public get their news from–and Charlie Kirk was merely a particularly odious member of the pack. He's no different than Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Candace Owens, Tomi Lahren, and countless other reactionaries with Shure mics and ring lights–aside from his "activism," which only really differentiated him from his colleagues because of its intended scope. Whatever else you can say about his colleagues, in my opinion they're more concerned with maintaining a loyal platform, whereas Charlie Kirk's primary aim was stochastic terrorism.

Kirk and Turning Point's MO was advocacy for violence against their chosen targets: black people, trans people, immigrants, Jewish people, and any other person who wasn't a "normal" white man. As a commentator, Kirk regularly trafficked in commentary designed to activate people into violent action with the idea that they were under attack. Just a few examples:

• "Prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people--that's a fact."
• "Why are whites taking this? Why are we just sitting idly by and allowing corporate America to give all the jobs to nonwhite people"
• "The 'Great Replacement' is not a theory. It is a reality."
• "...we've allowed our beautiful cities to just be captured by the cult of anti-racism."
• “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
• "We must ban trans-affirming care — the entire country."

Turning Point USA expanded this rhetoric's reach by engaging in campaigns to target groups and individuals directly–like its Professor Watchlist, and School Board Watchlist projects that compile lists of academic staff, or his claim to have sent over 80 buses to the January 6th insurrection–and to more broadly target cultural institutions, for example, his plan to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King and correct the "huge mistake" of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

There's nothing unique about any of this from the sorts of internet dirtbags I opened this blog talking about, aside from the platform and scope. His rhetoric and tactics are nothing special, but the state of political discussion has eroded to the point that unvarnished bigotry can be classified as a "differing viewpoint" that must be subject to open debate, so long as the aesthetics of those "differing viewpoints" are suitably buttoned-up. Kirk's aesthetics were a Stormfront body clad in a Breitbart or The Federalist tailored suit. The universe has a bit of dramatic flair, as Kirk's last words were a "black crime" joke, responding to a serious question about school shootings and his transphobia.

So if he was unremarkable, why did I just waste so much ink on him? Well, as I type this, Kirk has been the subject of multiple sorrow-filled memorial posts from people across the political spectrum (including a post decrying "political violence" from former President Barack Obama, a man whose wife Kirk called a diversity hire). In editorials from David French and Ezra Klein, it was said that "...he died he was doing exactly what we ask people to do on campus: Show up. Debate. Talk. Engage peacefully, even when emotions run high," and that "Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness" respectively. California Governor and Greg Stillson avatar Gavin Newsom declared that "The best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate — never through violence." Flags were flown at half staff in multiple locations, and moments of silence were reverently observed. His body was flown to Arizona aboard Air Force Two. To be frank, no one should go to these lengths for a glorified internet troll. I don't feel the need to qualify this by making grand statements about violence, or the senselessness of Kirk's death. He made a life's work out of yelling fire in a crowded theater with the exits locked, and regularly advocated for the conditions that led to his death. So it goes. I hope his family are able to grieve and eventually find some measure of peace in the wake of their loss.

The death of Charlie Kirk's as a cause célèbre is absurd. Debates over political violence, respect for the dead, and the potential for the Trump administration to use this as an excuse for authoritarian action (ignoring the metric ton of authoritarian action we're currently swimming in), it's all been in the air almost immediately since his death was confirmed. All in honor of a man who had none, and whose career was the amplified equivalent of the shifty Nazi at the back of the flea market. I'm not too surprised that the Trump administration and its most ardent sycophants jumped at the chance to crown a new martyr, as they've tried to manufacture several others to energize their base, with no lasting success. What concerns me is the willingness of so many to play along, either knowingly in an effort to signal their class solidarity (see: Newsom, Klein) or unwittingly in misguided dedication to civility.

Neither is a suitable means of going along to get along anymore. In the former, politicians on the opposite end of the aisle may not know exactly what things would look like if the shoe were on the other foot–a leftist podcaster or video essayist hasn't been killed that I'm aware of–but Democratic lawmakers have been assassinated this year, and their lives apparently didn't warrant an equal degree of reverence. In the latter? One has to wonder what good civility, and being seen performing a more reasonable facsimile of humanity does in the face of countless atrocities your colleagues either ignore, rationalize, or commit? Leaving aside deaths that were state-sanctioned, two children in Colorado were critically wounded in a school shooting on the very same day, less than an hour later. While it's been a pretty popular talking point among liberal and leftist commentators who can't resist the tired cliche of pointing out hypocrisy among the right-wing, it's unfortunately become yet another justification for The Onion's most darkly famous headlines everywhere else in short order.

To perhaps traffic in another cliche, the shooting at Sandy Hook is often referred to as a crossing of the Rubicon, when America looked at the actually senseless deaths of children and simply gave a sad, helpless shrug. This week, I feel as though we've crossed another one. One where our lawmakers and the eviscerated husk of the Fourth Estate assigned the status of respected statesman to a racist podcaster with a 501(c)3 and equated his death, likely the consequences of violent rhetoric coming home to roost, with the silencing of a champion of free speech. Free speech that, ironically, no one is willing to give details of in the print of a fawning obituary. It's a road we've been on for a while, and I'd be lying if I said the people driving us down it at present are capable of turning us around the right way. But in the spirit of their martyr of the moment, I'm willing to have them prove me wrong.