Normally, when major public political events happen, we have a strong and loud opinion about it.
Rest assured; we certainly do. But this time we took a strategy of waiting. Letting folks have their say first; show which side of the line they are on between Freedom and Fascism.
-Several folks we followed on FA have posted journals expressing dismay at criticism against Charlie Kirk, and regurgitating the talking points of the Republican administration that seeks to martyr him.
Mistake. You don't get to rewrite how a guy lived just because of how he died.
Response: We did not counter their opinions. We simply unfollowed them. Let them be forgotten.
-Several folks across social media have attempted to wade into the swirling mire of misinformation and fish out talking points that support Republican Fascism, blasphemy laws, and the practice of doxxing.
Mistake. We live in a post-truth society where the creation of talking points that sound good, that feel right, that serve ideology first and facts second.
Response: Unfollowed, blocked, and when appropriate, discussed these people in private when they were someone we could actually do something about.
Now that it has been a week after the event, and the lawsuit against the shooter is filed and the Republican administration fell over themselves to make Charlie Kirk their very own "Reichstag Fire" (the event that gave Germany pretext to suspend civil liberties and establish Nazi Germany), now is the time to speak up and strike.
Mistake. Republicans and Maga severely overestimate the willingness of American citizens to en-mass go along with anything. For all their red-faced screaming into TikTok, crocodile tears on camera, and showy displays of hypocritical grief for a man they never cared for in life except for the votes he could deliver them by the army of aggrieved young white men that followed him (which they seek to weaponize further into 'justified retaliation')... for all of this, it hasn't actually earned them any allies. EPSTEIN lost them the conspiracy base a few months ago, and the conspiracy base is much more interested in bouncing up and down in their chairs about conspiracies about the shooting than attacking left. ISRAEL/GAZA lost them the No Violence crowd, who voted for Trump because they believed his lies about stopping the wars, and are much more interested in peace than persecuting a civil war. LA/CHICAGO/MEMPHIS lost them the National Guard and the Army, who reaaaally fucking hate being made into theatrical intimidation pawns (and not even being paid for it). ICE/IMMIGRATION lost them nearly every non-white community because they believed Trump's lies about only going after criminals. TARIFFS/FED CHAIR FIRING lost them a lot of corporate / business support because the ONLY thing they cared about was their money and now Republicans are fucking with that. INFLATION lost them the everyday working class person who's not on social media and doesn't even listen to the news because "ITS THE ECONOMY, STUPID." There is no-one new joining MAGA / Republicans to pass 'hate speech' laws, prosecute online speech, or enact violence against Liberals.
Response: Republican Overreach is going to hurt them, and the more they overreach, the worse it will be. So taunt them. Entice them. Give the Republican administration and leadership, give MAGA and supporters, as much ammunition as possible to descend into red-faced frothing rage and make more mistakes. Help them wail and caterwaul about how upset they are about people 'celebrating' Charlie Kirk's death. Destroy them in the comments, rip apart their feelings (especially because the facts don't care about their feelings!), and isolate their shitty opinions that the rest of us don't deserve to have opinions they disagree with. Get them to call for arrests to be made; make them say the words in support of doxxing and criminal punishment for free speech. It's not about them, it's about all the people who follow them, who read their words, and will be disgusted. Who will themselves quietly unfollow and block.
Why?! Why would anyone WANT people to ACTIVELY make things worse?! This is a lesson that the show Star Wars: Andor demonstrates wonderfully well, but has parallels to multiple wars the US has been in. It's about giving your enemy every opportunity to make more mistakes. In this case, if Republicans go full, violent Totalitarian before they are actually ready to do so, before they have allies supporting it, before they coerce more corporate capitulation, before the Democratic party leadership can find a way to fail to resist - there are just too many goddamn Americans in an absolutely gargantuan mass of land, across 50 independent states, for any outcome other than "I didn't vote for this." The Midterm backswing will be so outrageously Blue Wave that the damage being done might get stopped or even partially reversed. If they try to 'cancel' the midterms? Good, do it, see how badly THAT goes too. Another mistake, to encourage our enemy to make.
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"But what are YOUR opinions about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and how people talk about it online?"
Trans rights are human rights. Being a Trans person in the US is to be, now, the #1 most at-risk and persecuted person in the country. Charlie Kirk's assassination showed us that the Republican administration had a plan ready to go to justify the further weaponization of our justice system, attack dissent as treason, and get social media platforms to capitulate and obey their desire to sanitize the internet that does not obey their view of total rule. Charlie Kirk in life meant nothing to them other than the transactional relationship they had with him - propaganda mouthpiece. In death, Charlie Kirk is so much more useful to them. He's their Reichstag Fire. He's their Martyr. He's the Suit-And-Tie Nazi they can hold signs and vigils for because of how he looked and the way he said things without being held responsible for what he meant.
We have been warning and informing others about Charlie Kirk for as long as he and Turning Point USA have been known. Unfortunately for Charlie Kirk himself, he did not heed any of the warnings about why what he was doing and how he was doing it was a stupid fucking idea. The millions he made, the political power he was adjacent to, the support from billionaires to make for them the army of aggrieved young white men to keep up the distractionary culture war bullshit, depended on him doubling down, tripling down, on the very speech and actions that create stochastic terrorism. The idea that influential individuals may demonise target groups, inspiring unknown actors to take up violence against them. That's the thing about creating an army of aggrieved young white men - IF YOU RECRUIT SOLDIERS FOR YOUR CULTURE WAR, IT ONLY TAKES ONE OF THEM TO SHOOT YOU DEAD.
Charlie Kirk is a man who's death was a shocking and disturbing thing to see, at a lizard-brain level below empathy or sympathy. To see a person become unmade in an instant, no longer a person, is never welcome and not how we as a society should strive to live. But this is exactly the society that Charlie Kirk himself championed. Only he never thought that he personally would pay that price he said was worth it. I am not happy that a man died, but the way you die does not justify nor rewrite anything about how you lived.
As for Charlie Kirk's killer? Remember, we're in a post-truth society. Republicans and the Right were ready to go before Charlie Kirk's body was cold about how the shooter was [insert lie here]. The facts of the killer never mattered to them except for how they could use it to justify what they had already been planning to do. So what do the facts of the killer matter to you? Why should they matter to us? Anyone wasting time on what the killer's motives were is looking to waste YOUR time; they're going low, so get ready to kick them in the teeth.
