Politicizing Charlie

The right is politicizing Charlie Kirk’s killing and supercharging anger at the left.

Image courtesy of Deccan Chronicle

We don’t know who killed Charlie Kirk. What we do know was that the killer was an experienced sniper. Kirk was felled by a single bullet that struck his neck from 200 yards away, indicating a professional marksman. The killer managed to escape, though the FBI announced this morning that it found a “high powered bolt action rifle” that they claim was used.

As CNN’s chief law enforcement and intel analyst John Miller noted, this was “someone who knew exactly what they were doing” and “wasn’t an amateur.”

NOTE: Some news reports have since indicated the distance was 120 meters, which would be far closer. But it still would have required an experienced shooter, and confessed suspect Tyler Johnson apparently grew up in a gun obsessed household.

And get this: The authorities now also claim there was ammunition still inside the gun they found that was engraved with “transgender, antifascist ideology.”

Now, color me skeptical. For starters, if someone on the right really wanted to ignite a firestorm through this killing, this is precisely something they might do to plant a false flag. An actual ideological assassin who held these extreme beliefs would probably broadcast them proudly and want to be in the limelight in connection with the attack. And really. Antifascist and transgender? Does anyone else feel like this is a bit too convenient and on the nose?

There’s still no suspect in custody, despite two big public announcements and subsequent embarrassing retractions by the ever professional and measured FBI Director, Kash Patel.

The first guy they nabbed was an older man apparently known by local police to be something of a law enforcement pest. They let him go not long after. The second was Zachariah Qureshi, a man of Arab descent who apparently had worked in some capacity for Turning Point USA. Qureshi was taken into custody and, racial profiling aside, was released after being questioned.

Patel recently and inexplicably fired the experienced head of the Salt Lake City FBI office. She is a decorated female Pakistani American counterterrorism agent who was appointed in February. Why get rid of her after she was appointed? That needs to be looked into much more carefully now.

Patel was having a rough day of it yesterday and should probably stop announcing then running take-backsies on the investigation.

Keep in mind that no killer in custody also means no first hand, reliable information on a motive, other than what is supposedly written on the ammo. But that likely will be enough for the MAGA right to be certain of their fury—which of course may be the entire point.

The left urged compassion and unity

Leaders on the left uniformly condemned the killing and expressed condolences to Kirk’s family and loved ones. President Obama urged the nation to await more information and to think of Kirk’s wife and children:

We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.

President Biden called for an end to the attacks:

There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.

And Vice President Kamala Harris offered her condemnation of the killing and prayers for Kirk’s family.

I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah. Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family.

Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is currently in a locked battle with the Trump White House, was unequivocal in his condemnation.

The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.

On the left, rising young leaders Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Democratic NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani also expressed immediate concern upon hearing the news of the attack. AOC posted,

The scourge of gun violence and political violence must end.

The shooting of Charlie Kirk is the latest incident of this chaos and it must stop. We cannot go down this road.

Mamdani, speaking at an event, addressed the “horrific political assassination” of Kirk, urging,

“It cannot be a question of political agreement or alignment that allows us to mourn. It must be the shared fellowship of humanity that binds us all. And that humanity—It reminds us that this news is not just the news of the murder of a prominent political figure. But also the news of a wife who grieves her husband, of a one-year-old and a three-year-old who will grow up without a father, and the fact that there are families who are feeling that same anguish in Colorado as they wait for their children, also shot at a school, to emerge from surgery.”

Predictably the right exploded anyway

The right reacted to Kirk’s assassination much differently, calling for “war” and vowing vengeance. As Meidas Touch noted on Twitter,

Deeply disturbing rhetoric is spreading from influential MAGA figures (including the President of the United States and the owner of this website).

MAGA leaders and influencers were fueling more hatred and violence instead of lowering the temperature. Meidas put a compilation together:

Elsewhere on podcasts and television, right-wing pundits and politicians echoed this tone, per a summary by Wired Magazine.

“This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” said Alex Jones during a livestream on his Infowars channel.

Stewart Rhodes announced he was reconstituting his militia. “I’m going to be rebuilding the Oath Keepers, and we will be doing protection again,” said Rhodes. “If my security team had been at that event, if they had been up there on the high point, looking for potential threats, they would have saved Charlie Kirk from being shot.”

[Narrator: This is horsecrap.]

Rhodes also called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. “You should declare the left in this country is in obvious open rebellion against the law of the United States. They’re committing insurrection, they’re aiding and abetting an invasion, and they’re blocking the execution of federal law,” Rhodes said, proving that a Yale law degree still doesn’t serve an addled mind.

Fox host Jesse Watters said on his program, “They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?”

Other right wingers also issued dire threats of war and chaos. Per Wired,

Ed Martin, the US pardon attorney and former acting US attorney for DC, wrote on X: “For it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord,” citing Romans 12:19.

Elon Musk, the X owner and former figurehead of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), posted: “The Left is the party of murder.” He then quoted a post blaming “the left-wing mainstream media, as well as figures like Gavin Newsom” for radicalizing people against right-wing figures like Kirk. “Exactly,” Musk wrote.

Katie Miller, who worked closely with Musk at DOGE and is the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, wrote on X that even liberals condemning the violence “had blood on their hands.”

Vying for worst possible take, Matt Forney posted, “Charlie Kirk being assassinated is the American Reichstag fire. It’s time for a complete crackdown on the left.”

Pro-tip: If you don’t want us to say you’re Nazis, maybe stop pulling directly from the Nazi playbook.

All of these are dangerous, pour-gasoline-on-the-fire statements. But the most disturbing of all came from the chief arsonist himself.

Coming for the “radical left”

Donald Trump went on television last night in what appeared to be a pre-taped and possibly AI assisted address to the nation. Trump said that he was “filled with grief and anger” at the fatal shooting and called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom.”

He then blamed “radical left” rhetoric for the killing. And he vowed to pursue organizations that fund and support “political violence,” signaling a coming crackdown on political opposition in the name of fighting “terror.”

Never mind that Trump has used similar rhetoric to criticize his own political opponents. In 2024, the press reported that Trump accused Biden of running a “Gestapo administration.”

On the campaign trail, Trump regularly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “marxist, communist, fascist socialist,” whatever that means.

The fact is, Trump is an authoritarian and a fascist, as was Kirk. And he has been stoking violence and speaking of war on people in his own country regularly.

Saying this truth about Trump aloud doesn’t radicalize anyone, as the overwhelming Democratic condemnations over Kirk’s assassination show. No major voice on the left is calling for more killings or more conflict. The talk of violence and even war is all coming from the right.

Moreover, Trump’s condemnations of dangerous political rhetoric and alleged acts of political violence are entirely one-sided. Where were these sentiments when Democratic politicians and individuals were targeted for violence, including Paul Pelosi, who became the butt of MAGA jokes and conspiracies, and Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, executed in cold blood in their home? Trump offered no words of condolence and no condemnation whatsoever about these attacks and slayings.

Nowhere was the GOP hypocrisy more evident than in Rep. Nancy Mace’s response to a reporter’s question yesterday. Mace’s very first words on Charlie Kirk were to allege that “Democrats own what happened today.” When a reporter followed up asking if that means Republicans “own” the shooting of Minnesota lawmakers, Mace responded, “Are you kidding me?”

What if it wasn’t the left?

Until we have a suspect in hand who can authenticate what honestly feels like might be planted evidence, we should remain skeptical. After all, the fascist playbook requires some kind of inciting incident—a Reichstag fire, a bombed building in Russia—to justify war or a government crackdown. This assassination with “ammo messages” has all the trappings of that.

Further, it’s at least plausible that a right-wing extremist targeted Kirk. Why do some observers believe this? For starters, there has been a long simmering conflict between Nick Fuentes’s Groyper white supremacists and Kirk, whom they have long considered a traitor to their cause and a sell-out to the billionaire class. Kirk also recently earned enemies within MAGA after he called for full release of the Epstein files. And right wing troll Laura Loomer has had Kirk on blast for months for allegedly stabbing Trump in the back.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that the right killed Kirk and made it seem like the left did it. But there is enough out there that we ought not to jump to conclusions, and we should treat this new and convenient “evidence” with appropriate skepticism.

But here’s the thing: Even if a crazed antifascist, trans person did kill Kirk to send a chilling message, that still doesn’t mean that the entire left is out for MAGA blood. The contrary is true, in fact, based on everything Dems are saying and doing to condemn the killing.

Unlike the right, the left is not prone to ascribing to an entire group the terrible acts of a single person. That does make us very different people, who must now constantly strive to keep the lid from blowing off the national pot. This is admittedly exhausting, frustrating and all-consuming work, especially as MAGA officials and influencers stoke the fires of conflict ever hotter.

And forgive me if I no longer fully trust the findings of a captive FBI. This is the high price of allowing our intelligence services and our Justice Department to so blindly serve the White House.