Kirk Out: MAGAmerica Eats Its Young

James Baldwin, 1961:  To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one's work. And part of the rage is this: It isn't only what is happening to you. But it's what's happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance.

“Just throw your guns in the air, and buck-buck like you just don’t care!” Onyx, “Throw Ya Gunz”, 1993

Political activist and conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.  Some 40 miles to the southeast of Salt Lake City, the campus was hosting a Turning Point USA conference and rally.  Reportedly, Kirk, 31, had just finished suggesting that transgender individuals were largely responsible for most American mass shootings in the past 10 years, and following up an audience member’s counter-question about the sheer number of mass shootings with a quip about “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

Then a single shot rings out, apparently striking Kirk in the neck.  He would later die at a nearby Timpanogos Regional Hospital.   The FBI is already involved, and reportedly a Mauser .30-caliber, bolt-action rifle was discovered wrapped in a towel in a forested area near the campus.  Authorities found a spent cartridge in the chamber and three additional rounds.

President Donald Trump, for his part, has promised to award Kirk—now posthumously—with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  “Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people… I have no doubt that Charlie's voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on."

The Donald Trump White House regime and the Republican party writ large has ushered in a ruinous vision for the country, that values the most toxic of human traits and promotes them as virtues; all the while promoting anti-humane policies that do nothing for the poor, the working class, or even the “middle class”.  Simply put, President Donald Trump, the Republicans in the US House, the Republicans in the US Senate, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court are only looking out for the wealthy, the very-connected, and white-supremacy sympathetic among the public.

Charlie Kirk, vastly influential for his syndicated radio shows and podcasts, started Turning Point USA in 2012. Ostensibly a mainstream conservative-values driven policy think tank for college students and a candidate promotion mechanism.  But also for the past 13 years, Kirk has been centered as a growing thought leader.  His policy views express what could only be generously described as a revanchist ultra-right wing movement, that would consider the Tea Party circa 2010 to be caffeine-free conservative.  Kirk parlayed his college-campus driven activism and podcasts into being a multimillionaire and an in-demand lecturer.  It would be no exaggeration to point out that Kirk’s movement went hand-in-hand with the contemporary “manosphere”, “redpill” and “incel” culture of (mostly, but not exclusively) white men who have open disgust for the alleged oppression of men in contemporary America, an allegedly ultra-masculinizing of contemporary women and who long for the simplified gender roles of the early 20^th century.  The social-media savvy Kirk was said to be a key figure in recruiting Generation Z men in their 20s and early 30s to vote for the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections.

Among the assortment of nuggets of alleged wisdom from Kirk, was his relentless assertion that the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was a “mistake.”  Kirk claims that the law engendered an anti-white bureaucracy of rules that also ushered in (his opinion) the ‘damaging’ customs of diversity, equity and inclusion.  He also called Martin Luther King, Jr. was “not a good person".  Kirk also endorsed the Great Replacement Theory that American Caucasians are being “replaced” by non-Caucasians (and Jews), that legal abortion “was worse than the Holocaust.” 

Kirk, a staunch supporter of the death penalty, also asserted that they should be publicized on television.  “(They) should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, it's an initiation..."  Prime time viewing for November sweeps?  Somebody call NBC, CBS, ABC, especially Fox.  They might go for it.

Kirk was a gun rights absolutist.  In 2023, he went on record stating that gun-related homicide was essentially worth it for keeping the 2^nd Amendment in place unchanged. “it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

So there you have it.  A cost worth paying.  But I wonder, did Kirk think the cost would include him?

Progressive-leaning writer Ezra Klein wrote a New York Times-published essay concerning Kirk and it was full of high-minded acknowledgement about how Kirk went about his political activism “the right way” (e.g. going to his audiences and speaking frankly) and how liberalism could learn some lessons from his charisma. Essayists and television reporters alike have uplifted the notion that despite Kirk’s content being (their words) ‘disagreeable’, that he at least went about it the so-called ‘right way’, even if—when you go further beneath the veneer of suit-and-tie-wearing “respectability” of his image—Kirk was loudly and unapologetically advocating anti-black, anti-Latino and anti-a-whole-bunch-of-other-folks extremism in this country. Kirk’s vision of the American Dream was steeped in the policy tactics of deliberately relieving the rights of any perceived minorities and only allowing for white males to dominate in politics and business/commerce.  Nobody else mattered.  Kirk wanted to recreate the vibes of Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet in 21^st century America.

To compare, if former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon turned GOP candidate for governor David Duke—or the late radio host Rush Limbaugh—had the scope of influence of the old brick-sized cell phones of the 1980s, Kirk was the iPhone 17 version.  Among contemporary white supremacy-adjacent mainstream political pundits, Kirk was slick, very attractive, thousands of people wanting to check him out, some not even quite knowing why.  Even Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom thought enough of his influence to invite him onto the governor’s podcast earlier in the year, to no small consternation among avowed liberals.

In the wake of the killing, there’s a lot of people going out of their way to semi-excuse the rank toxicity of Kirk and his movement.  It is abhorrent that intellectual dishonesty tends to drive the hand-wringing that goes on with both elected officials in this country as well as many news professionals—and yes, the general public, too.

“I take seven (kids) from (Columbine), stand ' em all in line, Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine, a Mack-11 and it oughta solve the problem of mine, and that's a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time...” Eminem, “I’m Back”, 2000.

It’s galling to see people trying to whitewash the white supremacy of Charlie Kirk.  People like Ezra Klein and others are intelligent enough to see what he represented and how detestable it is—but in the aftermath of his murder it’s still considered the height of civility to find something really nice to say about him. To emphasize that he was a married family man.  Of course, leading up to all of this, Kirk was cheerleading masked ICE agents snatching people from Home Depot parking lots and their homes and placing them in detainment centers while sending many of them to countries that they’ve never visited, let alone not born there.  And despite this, there's at least one case of a white, Irish woman, a longtime legal resident, husband a Trump voter, being detained by ICE and held in a deportation center, concerning a bounced check from over 10 years ago.  Whoops?

“When I pop the trunk, hit the deck, John Wayne couldn’t even stand the reign of the Tec…” Beatnuts, “Rein of the Tec”, 1993

James Baldwin, 1971:  “What the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. You become a collaborator, an accomplice to your own murderers, because you believe the same things they do.”

“This is not America”- This has been America since 1776.  If the legend holds true, it was Crispus Attucks, a Black man, who was the first to die for the revolution.  And after it was over and the British were defeated, America was kind enough to let all the Blacks who were enslaved (Attucks was a free man) stay that way.  Oh, but you don’t have to look way back into those “ancient” times.  Charlie Kirk was a supporter of the insurrection of January 6^th, 2021.  “There are hundreds of peaceful people that went into the Capitol on January 6. They did not touch a police officer. They didn’t smash a window, but they have been charged federally for trespassing and called insurrectionists for the rest of their life.”  Capitol police officers were assaulted, maimed and some died in the aftermath.  But the phrase Charlie’s folks often use is “back the blue”, right?

“violence has no part in our political system”-straight capping! Out of our 46 presidents so far, four have been assassinated.  John F. Kennedy, William McKinley, James Garfield and Abraham Lincoln, to be more precise.  Ronald Reagan survived the assassination attempt by John Hinkley.  Other presidents to also survive assassination attempts include Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford.

“This is not who we are”- Yes it is.  Even when you look outside of presidents, any number of political figures have met their maker thanks to someone holding a gun.  Civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton.  Senator Robert F Kennedy.  Oh, and going way, way back, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton. (folks have seen the play, right?)

“Guns have no place in America”- knock it off.  Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt last year and not a single Republican voted to support meaningful gun-reform legislation.  Not a single one. Just earlier this year, Democratic state legislature lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were both killed by a gunman who self-identified with the MAGA movement and Donald Trump.

The killing of Charlie Kirk can rationally and morally be condemned.  But the choice—and it is a choice—to simply look past the cosigning of violence he was responsible for is hypocritical.  It’s more important to call these people out for what they were, regardless of the circumstances of their departure. 

Charlie Kirk was a bigot.

Charlie Kirk was a misogynist.

Charlie Kirk was the real life version of the Christian Bale character in American Psycho.

Charlie Kirk’s American dream is not mine.  It never has been.  It never will be.  I don’t aspire to the aesthetic of a Charlie Kirk. In his ideal world, someone who looks like me isn't supposed to be on equal footing with him.

Kirk’s legacy is one of unashamed racial vitriol—underneath which is an existential fear at the gradual “browning” of America, belligerence disguised as folksy talk, and, yes, policy murder.  It is not completely unpredictable that he met his fate in a way that he decried was no big deal.

May he rest in peace, but damn—he could have at least cleaned up behind himself before he left.