I’ve largely refrained from commenting on The Assassination of Charlie Kirk By The Coward Robert Ford (wait, this should be Tyler Robinson). I oppose murder, and the killer was apprehended, and will be punished. It should be simple, but I know it’s not.
It will surprise no one that I disagree strongly with the agenda Kirk advanced during his career as a soapbox orator funded by oligarchs, which to my mind is Christian-nationalistic and fundamentally bigoted. The manner by which Kirk advanced this agenda was sloppily idealized before he was murdered, and his death only stands to romanticize it even further.
To me, Kirk was a proto-vaudevillian in the service of authoritarianism, and those praising the late rabblerouser for the purported excellence of his debating techniques have done so because to them, in the absence of greater depth, it’s about whatever they perceive at the moment to be “winning” against the libtards.
As we’re now compelled to state the obvious aloud as a prelude to commentary, I’ve consistently abhorred murder throughout my adult life, and probably before that. Violence is destructive, and I oppose it.
In fact, I view it as commentary unto itself about these purely irrational times of ours that we must issue these ritualistic condemnations of violence in all forms prior to discussing Kirk’s martyrdom.
However, I’d suggest (along with so many others who’ve actually read and respect the study of human history) that now is the perfect time to bone up on Horst Wessel; as an aside, never expect to learn anything useful about history while seated in a church pew; they have a vested interest in twisting it for the sake of theology and collection plates.
Horst Wessel is now forgotten, because the Nazis lost. I support this trajectory.
It is my view that Kirk was a capable and adept propagandist, astutely wielding tried and true methods of Barnumesque flimflam which, in the absence of knowledge about the traditional parameters of debating, seem like such to a generation raised to ignore history entirely.
Context matters, and whatever else we might thing about the state of humanity, today’s twenty-somethings largely lack it. But silver-tongued grifters forever stand ready to offer artfully simulated context to the terminally gullible, which in Kirk’s case meant money, power and the desired end of radicalizing these younger people.
He might have been a preacher or a populist politician, but snake oil salesmanship was his métier. In previous and simpler times, Kirk probably would have specialized in used cars.
Unequivocally, Kirk should not have been murdered for any of this.
Rather, he should have been vigorously rebutted, cleverly refuted and relentlessly satirized. If he’d have “debated” people his own age and size, we’d have seem more of this, but I give Kirk full credit for presciently recognizing that his ideological opposition in the realm of ideas has become as incapable of stating its case as he was in making his.
It’s why the college football powers schedule Div. III cream puffs, except that eventually they do advance to their own weight class.
But murder is the ultimate and most disgusting way of denying freedom of speech. Kirk should not be dead. He should be alive, counting his money and recruiting converts while continuing his endless tour of college campuses, a calculated roadshow very much resembling a pop star’s itinerary; today Moline, and tomorrow a 4H fairgrounds outside Mobile.
Kirk should as yet be peddling his vision of right-wing nirvana to teenagers as eager to succumb to the colorful gyrations of totalitarian sophistry as their great-grandparents were seeing Elvis in black and white.
I’d suggest everyone read Elmer Gantry, the novel by Sinclair Lewis about an evangelist charlatan, but that was a hundred years ago ― and I know how much history hurts the brains of MAGAs.
In closing, yes; it’s true that I can’t change any of this. What I can do is provide my own damn opinion at a web site, rather than social media, and state for the record that I mourned Charlie Kirk’s death in spite of his beliefs, because free speech matters so much, and because “holy” books and influencers aren’t necessary to condemn violence in all forms.
Horst, we hardly knew ye. Or, maybe we did, all along.
You never really went away, did you?
