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In death, Charlie Kirk reaped what he sowed.
It's the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. On his death, there were many in the Right who believed he could serve as the martyr that would finally force the Right to "get serious". This meant very different things to different people from retaliating for cancel culture, to aggressively implementing Trump's immigration agenda, to turning the US into an outright dictatorship and instituting the Day of the Rope. In the end, none of this happened since his death got bogged down in endless conspiracies.
It's no secret that the Republican party under MAGA really likes conspiracies. They let you substitute wishcasting for evidence. Kirk pushed a lot of conspiracy theories from big ones like [The 2020 election was stolen] to [Aghanistan's collapse was engineered to import D voters] to [J6 was instigated by the FBI/Antifa/BLM]. He also pushed smaller ones that are closer to simple misinformation, like implying the Covid vaccine makes you blind and paralyzed. But for Kirk, all of these conspiracies were instrumental. They all pointed in the same direction: helping the Republican party, or more specifically Trump.
But conspiracy theories have a tendency to mutate. When you let in epistemological rot like this, some of it might end up being turned against you during the course of factional infighting. That's exactly what happened in the case of Kirk's death. Sure, the official report from the mainstream media (bah!) is that he was killed by some rando named Tyler Robinson. But... isn't that just a little too convenient?
Tucker Carlson eulogized Kirk by presenting the Biblical narrative as a story powerful people in Jerusalem “sitting around eating hummus,” adding that “there’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him.’”
Candace Owens opened her show the day after Kirk's memorial by mocking Erica Kirk and claiming Charlie had been "betrayed" by someone within the TPUSA, either Jewish donors or Erika Kirk herself because golly gee, didn't Charlie's wife seem a little too enthused about going on camera after his death?
Does this strike you as charitable?
In what way is it uncharitable?
Trivially, there's another side of the political aisle that's spent decades chasing conspiracy theories. Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, Diebold stole the 2004 election and Stacy Abrams is a competent governor who totally won, HIV was a Reaganite plot, Dan Rather was totally innocent and credible. This did not result in Gabby Giffords getting forgotten and unloved among the Left: indeed, it meant that even years after it was proven that the murderer was a complete nutjob, the central example of the mainstream media would still claim a Republican politician was really responsible, and never actually pay for it.
Just as trivially, we have a surfeit of other plausible and more likely explanations that the ground facts about Kirk's assassination don't seem to have drawn out a lot of their obvious consequences, as evidenced by the part where countless progressives and leftists who would not be caught dead (to be fair, a good choice!) listening to Carlson or Owens, who either have not commented about a major political assassination (hey, Trace!), commented only to say they don't care, or actively cheerlead the killing. It there any chance that the widespread support for violence on the progressive bench, and the broad supply of FUDD about Kirk's behavior and against ? For some strange and unforeseeable reason, you haven't considered a single one.
Hell, it's even just misleading on its own terms. Kirk had actual behavior that was bad enough, but in particular the description of Kirk's treatment of J6 is conflating observing a real thing (presence and prolonged concealment of informants, presence of a left-wing person cheering the violence) as something far broader than he actually did say.
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Grave dancing on the anniversary of a young man’s tragic death (by assassination no less) is extremely poor taste.
We shouldn’t give people who write stories like this clicks. It’s despicable and he knows exactly what he’s doing. Remind me again why we are supposed to care about what this person thinks. As far as I can tell, his influence is zero, except for a growing cadre of haters.
That's not what "charity" means in the context of political discussions.
And I remember in the wake of his death that a lot of people on this site it was "too soon" to say anything negative about him. It's been a full year and that's still not long enough? He was a political operative, who helped accelerate the Republican party's epistemological decay. That's worth discussing at some point.
Fully fine to talk about him including negative things. I think the article is trash, but that's another issue.
The bigger issue is using an anniversary or something similar to get clicks. It's like, okay you think MLK was a bad guy who did lots of bad things? Okay, legit viewpoint, but maybe not something you want to write an article about on the 1 year anniversary of his death hoping to draw attention to yourself. It's just ghoulish behavior.
I would never suggest, by the way, that the mods should delete this or that people shouldn't be allowed to talk about it. Certainly not here.
But we're also free to have a meta conversation of why we don't like it.
The anniversary produces an upsurge of talk about the topic, and then some of that talk is negative. It's not unheard of, or even particularly uncommon to hear things like "MLK cheated on his wife" on Apr 4 (the anniversary of his assassination) or on MLK day.
I haven't looked into it but aren't there are allegations that are waaay worse than simply cheating on his wife?
MLK is still a sacred cow 58 years after a death and it's considered extremely taboo to mention bad things about him. And that's despite the fact that he was perceived very unfavorably by the public in the years before his death. The left's ability to canonize him is impressive and that power should not be taken lightly. Near total narrative dominance.
Nevertheless, I certainly wouldn't use the anniversary of his death or MLK day to write about all the bad things he did. We 363 other days to do that.
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"My sacred idols are holy and above reproach, your sacred idols are base heathenism and should be torn down and trampled in the dirt."
Do you extend a similar level of taste towards tearing down your enemies sacred ideas?
Yeah, if I was going to write something like this I wouldn't use the first anniversary of their death to get clicks. Hanania is famous for this sort of trollish behavior.
But respect for the dead shouldn't be a partisan issue. If some lunatic were to shoot Hanania himself, I'd find something positive to say about him or at least bite my tongue.
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