AlterNet
What can you say about a 31-year-old hatemonger who died? If you’re a pundit, you have to say something nice because the president took Charlie Kirk’s calls. As the leader of the MAGA youth, Kirk was powerful and, by the rules of Washington, that entitles him to a warm and respectful sendoff.
But what can a nice liberal say about a man who made his fortune peddling gutter racism and vicious conspiracy theories?
They can’t praise Kirk’s wit, which ran towards LaQueesha jokes and cringeworthy impressions of Black women. They can’t lionize him as a worthy intellectual opponent. This was, after all, someone who believed Haiti was infested by demonic voodoo that might be turning people into cats.
With limited raw material to work with, the image-makers have repackaged Charlie Kirk as a champion of reason and dialogue. It would have been enough to condemn Kirk’s horrific assassination, denounce political violence, and extend profound sympathy to his family, but leading liberals felt obliged to remake a snarling crank into a martyr for liberal democracy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom kicked off the myth-making. “I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate. [...] The best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.”
“Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way,” Ezra Klein wrote in the New York Times, “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”
Here, Klein is contrasting Kirk’s nonviolent approach with that of the terrorist who murdered him. It’s damning Kirk by faint praise to say he was doing politics better than his assassin, but it’s unequivocally true. However, holding Kirk up as a champion of tolerance and dialogue paints him in a false light to millions who might only know him through a New York Times headline or Newsom’s socials.
Kirk’s commitment to democratic values was situational at best. He bussed insurrectionists to the Capitol on January 6th. Free speech was a tool for him, not a universal principle. He got his start as an activist by compiling a McCarthyite list of liberal professors. For years, he and his organization built support for speech bans and laws muzzling academics. Far from valuing respectful dialogue, Kirk often painted his political enemies as less than real Americans. He even called for Rep. Ilhan Omar, an American citizen and a sitting member of Congress, to be denaturalized and deported.
Kirk made light of political violence against his adversaries, whether it was the crimes of the J6ers, the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi, or the recent terror spree in Minnesota. Kirk urged his millions of listeners to bail out Pelosi's attacker. The hammer-wielding assailant was trying to kidnap then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi based on the same debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories Kirk broadcast to his audience of millions, but Kirk baselessly insinuated that the attacker was Pelosi’s gay lover. When an antivax Christian nationalist shot two Democratic state legislators and their spouses, Kirk blamed Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
Charlie Kirk was a prolific and vituperative racist even by the standards of MAGA influencers. “Anyone holding a DEl job deserves your scorn,” Kirk tweeted last year, “Next time you meet one, you should ask them: "You're a stupid person doing a race hustle job, how do you live with yourself?" So much for comity.
Kirk claimed his Black enemies were incompetents who got their jobs through racial preference. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were just a few of the leaders he dismissed as diversity hires.
“You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said of the nation’s newest Supreme Court justice, “You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” Kirk’s contempt for Black women ran the gamut from New York Attorney General Tish James, whom he called a “savage,” to customer service reps. “If I’m dealing with someone in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder: ‘is she there because of her excellence or is she there because of affirmative action?’” he said.
Insulting Black pilots became part of Kirk’s rancid shtick. “I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified,’” Kirk said. Another time, Kirk mimicked an imaginary Black pilot called “LaQueesha James” who he imagined as so incompetent she greeted the passengers with “‘Hi, ladies and gentlemen, pray for me!’” On yet another broadcast, he did a bit about imaginary dudes “Ramon and Cadillac” getting to fly the plane just because they’re Black.
When a plane crashed, or a natural disaster struck, Kirk liked to pick out a Black, female, or gay officials, label them “DEI hires,” and accuse them of killing innocent people. He was such a deranged racist that he tried to blame Black fire chief of Austin, Texas, for flash flood deaths in Kerr County, 130 miles away. Kirk plastered the man’s name and face across the internet, risking reprisals against him. “They brought [the chief] in from Atlanta, and his priority was not putting out fires or being prepared for floods. No. His priority was to make sure that the fire department was Blacker,” Kirk claimed. “How many little girls died at Camp Mystic because the Austin Fire Department hired a DEl fire chief?” he tweeted.
Kirk shamelessly exploited the fears of his audience. He claimed that, more and more in America, “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA, wrapped itself in the “White Boy Summer” flag and even sold merch with the notorious white supremacist slogan.
We are not going to solve the crisis of political violence by clinging to self-created illusions. Charlie Kirk was a victim, but he was no martyr.
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