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'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters
It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.
As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.
Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?
If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.
The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.
And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.
Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.
If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him. Right-wing George Floyd 'I can't breathe' memes are scrubbed off the internet, while Kirkist mockery stays online because of leftist bloodthirstiness.
Tu quoque?
"Discredit" is the wrong word entirely. Kirk has not been discredited by being turned into a meme, people still widely think it was wrong to kill him (as you can see by the fact his alleged killer is on trial and likely to be sentenced).
BLM was a largely serious reaction by people who mostly took themselves seriously. The Kirk aftermath was silly and hyperbolic by people who didn't even believe in their own words. People like LOTT or Steve Bannon saying "this is war" are not serious. They did not and have not picked up arms or done serious protests (of what exactly anyway? Robinson was caught). They claim war, and yet do nothing. They do not mean what they say.
This goes up to the highest levels even. When we have JD Vance searching for conspiracies to believe in, and guests at Kirk's own funeral making it into a joke, how is anyone else supposed to treat it seriously?
Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it. (The other says its a bad thing, but also deplores what he said, thus negating the virtue of the first.) Virtuous centrists are a rounding error.
Maybe you are sincere. But there are certainly players that are not, and I am tired of listening to the snide and back-biting commentary of the partisans of the other side. You take it seriously because a man is dead because he was killed for speech, a right that he had every freedom to exercise. Nothing can diminish that, although you've certainly tried.
If you applied the same lack of charity to Donald Trump's poasting that you need to get to "half of the left wing said it was a good thing", then he would be at the business end of a noose. Trump repeatedly shitposts about beating up demonstraters, molesting teenage girls in locker rooms, suspending the Constitution, celebrating political violence against the Pelosis, deporting US citizens, invading NATO countries, and running for a third term. Fundamental to the case for Trump is that this is just shitposting, and Trump's opponents who take it seriously are either dishonest or mentally ill.
"Every premature death is a tragedy, that of Charlie Kirk less than most" is not a belief I hold (I feel more commonality with people doing the work of politics on the other side of the aisle than I do with my own allies who stick to shitposting) but it is one that is entirely compatible with a commitment to democracy, free speech, the rule of law etc. Unlike the Cult of Luigi, I do not see any comparable sympathy for Tyler Robinson, which is what you would expect to see if large numbers of normies did in fact think the murder was a good thing. Essentially everyone on both sides of the aisle's attitude to Robinson is "please let him not be one of ours." What I saw was a lot of shitposting in violation of de mortuiis nil nisi bonum, which is a rule of etiquette and not of law or custom.
Is the claim here that the President of the United States should be held to a lower standard of public decorum than a classroom assistant in Minneapolis, or is it that it is different when it is our guy doing it?
Even more so as I constantly have to point out, there's a difference between professional conduct and private citizen conduct. A government employee shitposting in their private time is way different than shitposting on their official government accounts.
Political leadership, especially the president, is a 24/7 jobs. It's a job so important that it's even in some sense lifelong and we expect (or at least expected) even the former presidents to have some form of decorum about them. Bush takes it ultra seriously, beyond what I even think is necessary, and won't even comment about ongoing issues.
Anyone who seriously thinks low level small town government employee posting on their private accounts should be held to higher standards of etiquette than the president on his official accounts used for serious announcements has the world flipped on its head.
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