It is one thing to condemn, as we all should, the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk or, for those who cared about him to mourn his death.
It is quite another to turn Kirk into a MAGA saint, or to use his death as a Reichstag fire-like justification for increasing Trump’s authoritarian chokehold on America.
I am sure that Kirk and his family are grateful for the outpourings of support from the president and vice president of the United States, the cabinet, members of Congress, the media and the public.
But at this point, it appears that we as a country have lost our minds.
The president of the United States has ordered all flags in the United States to fly at half-mast. He has announced he will posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Vice President decided to skip out on 9/11 observations—among the most solemn on the federal calendar—to be with Kirk’s family.
He then offered Air Force Two to fly Kirk’s casket from Utah to Arizona. The Secretary of Defense used a 9/11 remembrance speech to salute Kirk. Congress declared a moment of silent reflection on the loss. So too did sporting events across America. Trump called Kirk “a martyr.”
All as if Charlie Kirk were some kind of American hero.
But Kirk was no hero. The record is clear. If Kirk was a victim of a pernicious culture of violence in America it also must be acknowledged he was an author of that culture.
His primary accomplishment in life was to foment hatred and division across the United States. He blamed all of America’s ills on the left, and cheered violent attacks on Democrats. He fought against equal rights for many Americans; some of his last words were condemning women’s reproductive freedoms. He promoted America’s gun pathology, and asserted the death of innocents was an acceptable cost for that culture.
But what is happening is far worse than simply devoting our national resources or devaluing our national reputation through the elevation of an unworthy individual.
In tributes from across the political spectrum, Kirk is being praised as a champion of “free speech.” He was not. He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity. Kirk perverted the idea of our First Amendment rights to suggest they required universities to embrace lies, as though there were some obligation to present unfounded idiocy and malice simply because some special interest or political group supported them.
Much of his political identity was tied up in the dangerous promotion of white Christian nativism and its alliance with the most corrupt president in American history—a felon, a sex offender, a man who incited an insurrection against the United States government.
This president has already explicitly said he will use the attack on Kirk to justify going after his opponents, condemning the “left” in America as terrorists and lunatics and asserting—without presenting evidence—that they were responsible for Kirk’s murder. The State Department announced consular officials were being directed to revoke visas or deny them to people who might have commented on Kirk or his death in ways about which they did not approve.
What a fitting tribute to a fake First Amendment warrior.
The right in America has also sought to use similar criteria—posting or sharing views of Kirk they felt were critical of him, even when those views were entirely fact-based—to cancel media commentators and even social media posters.
How do we reconcile that with the assertions that Kirk “did politics right” or promoted free speech?
Easy.
These tributes are bulls–t. Furthermore, many of those on the far right who are elevating Kirk to a lofty pedestal that he does not deserve are doing to help them justify precisely they claim of he stood for.
Trump and Vance and Hegseth and Rubio and Patel and Loomer may be truly shocked and appalled by Kirk’s murder—as we all should be—but they also instantly saw it as an opportunity to accelerate their campaign to attack our democratic institutions and to demonize all those who do not agree with them.
Kirk’s supporters are the ones embracing the language of war at this moment. It is no accident that you hear such rhetoric from Jesse Watters on Fox News or from Steve Bannon or Elon Musk, just as it is not a coincidence that Trump has been deploying troops in American streets or promoting memes depicting him as leading a battle against American cities. The war against their opponents, using the resources of the federal government to suppress dissent, gut democracy and solidify their rule on this country was their priority all along.
Now, the death of Charlie Kirk and the elevation of Charlie Kirk and the lies about who Charlie Kirk was are all being used as weapons in that war, as part of a new offensive against those who believe in the values and ideals on which this country was founded.
This is not merely about an outpouring of emotion and over-the-top responses to the grief of a horrible moment.
Nor are they the usual spin of partisans. They are something far more dangerous: the monstrous opportunism of those who have been planning for a moment like this all along, a moment that rather than making America great again, is seized in the hopes of making the America we once knew, an America for all of us, the America that guys like Charlie Kirk have long sought to undermine, cease to exist once and for all.
The post Opinion: Why MAGA’s Canonization of Charlie Kirk Is Truly Monstrous appeared first on The Daily Beast.
