“Freedom” of speech at any cost
Players from around the political horseshoe saw in Charlie Kirk’s murder last week the opportunity to exploit his death to advance their own causes and to punish their enemies. If there is anything unseemly in the response to the tragedy it is the zeal with which that has taking place even in the absence of a coherent motive. “Never let a good disaster go to waste” now applies to assassinations.
The Donald Trump administration’s attack dogs jumped on Kirk’s murder like a Rottweiler on a fresh steak. They see a vast left wing terrorist network behind Kirk’s killing. Stephen Miller, Trump’s pet psychopath vows “to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” although he cannot name any.
AG Pam Bondi had to walk back comments that her department would bring federal charges against anyone engaging in “hate speech” after even her own allies pointed out to the former Florida attorney general that the First Amendment protects even noxious speech. The late Charlie Kirk made that clear. He certainly did not want anyone prosecuting him for ugly, gross, or evil speech.
The extremist right created federal and amateur informant networks within days of Kirk’s death to punish anyone who offered a discouraging word about the Turning Point USA founder amidst a push by his allies to elevate him to Martin Luther King status as a champion of free expression. Perhaps Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) will propose he get a federal holiday.
Elsewhere in the U.S. House, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) filed a privileged measure to force a censure vote against Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota. Omar called Kirk a “stochastic terrorist” even as she condemned his murder and expressed empathy for his wife and children.
Like DC’s Peacemaker, America’s extreme right will have peace in this country at any cost, no matter how many civil rights they need to kill to get it.
And no matter how many inconvenient facts it has to memory hole:
Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has quietly deleted a study showing that far-right attacks outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violence extremism.
A June 2024 study on domestic extremism by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency under the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, began by noting that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States.”
“In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” it reads. “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.”
The study is archived here.
Released emails suggest that the reasons suspect Tyler Robinson had for shooting Kirk were more personal than political, and related to his relationship with a roommate. Ken Klippenstein posted leaked Discord messages that the media has not published:
Trump and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called Nihilist Violent Extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war.
What one friend s finds confounding is that Robinson “just never really talked politics.”
The picture that emerges bears little resemblance to the media version. Robinson, I am told, though quiet, was a well-liked person with a supportive family. The friend group who he interacted with on Discord, far from some kind of militia camp or Antifa bunker it’s been portrayed as, represented a range of different political views but mostly talked video games.
But the extremist right is not about to let that get in the way of a useful anti-left narrative.
Everyone wants to get into the act
Not to be left out, the Russians are jumping into the post-Kirk frenzy:
Russia moved to amplify online conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s killing just hours after it happened, seeding social media with the frightening claim that America is slipping into civil war.
Chinese and pro-Iranian groups also spread disinformation about the shooting, with those loyal to Iran’s interests backing antisemitic conspiracy theories while bots linked to Beijing claimed that Kirk’s death shows that the United States is violent, polarized and dysfunctional.
For once, the bots wouldn’t be wrong.
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