How many times must people shout that democracy’s on fire before people listen? Before people with the power to save it take action to save it?
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was speaking at an “Exposing Critical Racism” event at Boise State University recently when a man from the crowd stood up to ask a question “a bit out of the ordinary.”
As in, next stop Rwanda.
Newsweek (where Kirk is a contributor) reports:
The man asked Kirk when should people start shooting those who stole the 2020 Election, pushing the so-called “Big Lie” that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. The false claims are still being peddled by Trump and his supporters, including Kirk, despite no evidence proving the election was rigged nearly one year since the vote took place.
“At this point, we’re living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns?” the man asked, prompting cheers and applause from the crowd.
“That’s not a joke, I’m not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
Naturally, Kirk denounced the question, suggesting the man was playing into “their all their plans, and they’re trying to make you do this,” Kirk said before reinforcing the man’s paranoid fantasies of political violence.
[Kirk] goes on to validate the question by giving a list of unrealistic actions for the state government to take, all of which amount to defying Federal mandates. He says the state should refuse Federal vaccine mandates, kick the Bureau of Land Management out of the state, and keep going:
“Idaho could now could pick and choose through the state legislature which one of the federal laws they think actually applied to the Idaho constitution…”
He also makes it clear that the reason he’s saying conservatives shouldn’t turn to violence immediately is only because that would “justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties,” which he says is what “the other side” is waiting for.
He allows a follow-up, in which the asker just reiterates his question: “I just want to know, where’s the line?”
Kirk answers plainly:
“The line is when we exhaust every single one of our state ability to push back against what’s happening…”
So much for denouncing the question.
It may be Idaho where Kirk claims conservatives “outnumber the liberals eight to one.” But the man’s question is percolating around right-wing militias across the country, and in subdivisions, and in gun shops with bare ammunition shelves.
We have yet to hear prosecutors’ case against Oath Keepers alleged “to have stashed weapons at a hotel in Virginia as part of a so-called ‘Quick Reaction Force’ they could activate” to support protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Marcy Wheeler provided more detail on what’s known here.)
What will it take for members of Congress from both major parties to speak out against and act to quell the mass, right-wing insanity infecting the country? Where is their pushback against the blatant actions of Republican officials in state after state to neuter the power of citizens to choose their own leaders, to render democracy null and void? How many times must people shout that democracy’s on fire before people listen?
Over 50 influencers from the left and the right on Wednesday published an open letter in both The Bulwark and The New Republic asking Americans to defend the pluralism at the heart of democracy. They have no illusions about from where the threat arises:
We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things.
Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we believe in the pluralism that is at the heart of democracy.
But right now we agree on a fundamental point: We need to join together to defend liberal democracy.
Because liberal democracy itself is in serious danger. Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, respect for the rights of others, the rule of law, a commitment to truth and tolerance in our public discourse. All of these are now in serious danger.
The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism. Unimpeded by Trump’s defeat in 2020 and unfazed by the January 6 insurrection, Trump and his supporters actively work to exploit anxieties and prejudices, to promote reckless hostility to the truth and to Americans who disagree with them, and to discredit the very practice of free and fair elections in which winners and losers respect the peaceful transfer of power.
So we, who have differed on so much in the past—and who continue to differ on much today—have come together to say:
We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.
We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.
We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.
We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.
And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.
Now is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.
Perhaps the signers — from William Kristol to Joan Walsh — had not seen the Kirk event video before issuing their letter or they might have added a line or two asking Republican leaders to stop disseminating disinformation, and to stop feeding conspiracy theories and civil war fantasies among their base. Even if they had seen the Kirk video, they might have thought first, as Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks did on Jan. 6, about donning body armor.