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J.D. from CUNY School of Law (Graduated 2020)
By now you’ve likely heard about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Many people are shocked and horrified.
I, for one, am not shocked. Charlie Kirk was an amazing orator, and skilled media artist. Instead of using those skills to uplift the vulnerable, and advance our society he chose to use them to monetize the desperation of the working class while offering the least protected in our society as scapegoats for their rage.
Charlie Kirk was a profoundly gifted person who used his gifts for the most vile purposes. His death can only be viewed as a logical conclusion to a career spent manifesting and amplifying the hatred of humanity for money.
If people struggle to understand the reason for this assassination I’ll say it plainly: Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has worked over the better part of the last decade to goad political violence across the spectrum in order to justify a fascistic takeover of the government and society under the pretense of law and order. This is the only logical explanation for why Trump has chosen to exploit Charlie Kirk’s assassination for political theater, such as ordering flags to be flown half mast within hours of the killing.
Yet, when a Democratic lawmaker was assassinated not a few months ago Trump played it silently, even as the MAGA-sphere joked and japed about her death.
Didn’t Melissa Hortman deserve more than 15 minutes in the news rotation? Doesn’t the political assassination of a sitting politician warrant the same, if not, a more serious response to the killing of a prominent political commentator? Apparently in Donald Trump’s nascent kingdom: only if they’re on the Right side.
Donald Trump, and the far-Right movement he figureheads, have radicalized society step by step. First, by ignoring if not outright condoning political violence against their ideological opposites; and second, by seizing on attacks against MAGA idols to justify their narrative of Leftist extremism.
I am not denying Leftist extremists with this post, and I am not denying the horror and immorality of political assassinations. Anyone who knows me knows that I view force as a necessary evil for self-defense in a brutal and unenlightened world.
What I am saying is that this world is the one brought to us by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Let’s not forget that just 15 years ago this country experienced one of the most shocking periods of economic and political unrest in history since the Great Depression, but there was not an epidemic of political violence despite how many Republicans hung and burned Obama in effigy.
No, it is only after the birth of Trumpism and the far-Right MAGA movement that this terrible specter has descended on our country. And not by accident. Once again, this state of affairs is the design and aim of America’s proto-fascist movement. They have spent decades nurturing this beast, and now finally they have unleashed it upon us.
Be careful.
P.S. to people who think it audacious of me to do anything but mourn in this moment I offer this to you:
I for one will not sit idly by like a silent sheep waiting for slaughter as the President of the United States marshals his national lynch mob. For a second time: