'One Of Our Own: On Wonderful Americans Like Charlie'

"The fiery shards from the murder of Charlie Kirk still ricochet in baleful ways, even as his shooter’s views and motives remain murky. Despite rabid calls by a regime eager for revenge to extinguish leftist 'scum' who rendered their bigot hero 'a martyr for truth and freedom,' the killer seems to be a muddled mix of gun freak, devout gamer and violent nihilist. In his bloody wake, many now beset by irrational vitriol are left to argue, 'I don’t support what happened to Charlie, but Charlie supported what happened to Charlie.'

"Political violence is, of course, as old as America: Federalists vs. anti-Federalists, indigenous genocide, slavery, lynching, war, Lincoln, the 1960s’ white and black assassinations, civil, women’s and gay rights struggles, Jan. 6 riots, police state troops, racist ICE raids and, in a country with perhaps 500 million guns, an estimated 125 Americans killed daily with guns - a rate 26 times higher than any other developed nation - and up to 800 children killed in school shootings impacting over 360,000 students. In 2023, the most recent year with full data, nearly 47,000 people died in gun violence. The first six months of this year saw an almost 40% surge in gun-related acts of terrorism and targeted violence over last year, with over 520 reported plots or acts of violence and, to date, 300 mass shootings, forty-seven at schools. In a nation awash in killing machines, an increasingly right-wing GOP and a mood of rage-fueled paranoia and polarization, each act of political violence makes the next more likely."

"Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot and killed by an assassin’s bullet in the neck while speaking under a tent that read 'Prove Me Wrong' on the campus of Utah Valley University on the first of a 15-stop 'America Comeback Tour' by his right-wing Turning Point USA; he was struck just as he responded to a question about mass shootings by blaming gangs. It was the day before a historically freighted Sept. 11 symbolizing myriad acts of or against violence: It was the day when Gandhi launched the first nonviolent resistance in South Africa in 1906 to stunning political effect; when Chile’s democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende was assassinated; when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Americans came together with such inspiring grace and strength the event came to represent 'the ultimate failure of terrorism against the United States' - until a pernicious Bush Administration launched two bloody, pointless, illegal wars, which still haunt us, in its name."

"Kirk was a vibrant, hateful, genial, incendiary mouthpiece for a MAGA worldview of bigotry and intolerance, a 'loathsome human being (who) celebrated violence against people he didn’t like' and used his mocking, performative 'debates' with students to effectively spread misinformation, inflame young, impressionable, vaguely discontent people, surreptitiously urge democracy be replaced by an emergent Christian Fascism, and make millions. 'The language has been violent. The discord has been great,' wrote Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. 'There has been a consistent invitation to dine at the table of heated racist discussion posing as legitimate political speech,' in which Kirk 'rhetorically violated' the safety of Blacks, Muslims, queers, immigrants and multiple ‘others’ in the name of a defaming, divisive 'free speech.' 'He (did) not care about the security of others. He did not show empathy,' said Hagler. 'Charlie Kirk expanded hatred (and) marketed the vile speech of old racisms in new wineskins.' "

Continued at link:

https://www.commondreams.org/further/one-of-our-own-on-wonderful-americans-like-charlie