Per Thomas Zimmer on Substack, national-level Democraps and Democrap-oriented media thought leaders are tying themselves in knots to fellate an untrue legacy of Kirk's:
Since the moment Kirk was murdered, however, leading Democrats and influential voices on the center-left have been engaged in a campaign to paint a very different picture of the man who was assassinated. It has been a strange spectacle.
[L]eading Democrats have been asking us to honor Kirk’s memory and “continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse” while liberal opinion leaders are explaining how Kirk was “practicing politics the right way.” I suspect there is an element of trying to appease the President and his followers – which is quite the indication of how far down the dark path America already is. Some of this is also intended to demonstrate how magnanimously above the partisan fray one is: a performances of faux-high-mindedness. But there is certainly, I am sure, a genuine desire to model good democratic behavior behind this. That impulse I commend and share. I believe, however, that sanitizing Charlie Kirk’s politics and actions is the wrong way to go about this. We should trust ourselves and those we address to be able to hold two thoughts at the same time: That we must forcefully condemn political violence but also acknowledge that it festers and thrives in a deeply unhealthy political culture that Kirk himself helped create.
There you are.
He has two links in the original.
The first is to Gov. Pothole's Bluesky, which says:
The best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate — never through violence.
In reality, Kirk did no such thing. As Hasan Piker said Thursday, he was a debate troll who showed up to joint debates with people like him to perform a racist wingnut version of a Gish Gallop and to "own/dunk on the libs." Specifically:
I don’t think he was ever debating for the purpose of finding the truth or from a position of intellectual curiosity. ... For Charlie, I think the format was more so to just humiliate his ideological opponents. And he was very successful at doing propaganda of this sort, by going to college campuses and listening to what people had to say, and then giving them the right-wing talking points on the matter. Getting a couple dunks in the process.
Yep, Charlie was one of the first pushers of the "own the libs" angle.
The second link from Zimmer's original piece is to the odious Ezra Klein, who claims Kirk was "practicing politics the right way."
Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election
I half-joked on Shitter that Ezra will next write that Bibi Netanyahu is "practicing land reform the right way."
Back to Zimmer, for the reality:
The signature “contribution” of Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded as a teenager, is the “Professor Watchlist,” a website TPUSA runs. It serves to enable a McCarthyist hunt for “leftists” so that they can be publicly disparaged; once a professor is on the list, harassment, intimidation, and threat are guaranteed to follow. Kirk existed in a rightwing media and online eco system that runs on anger and monetizes outrage. And he was very good at his job, constantly telling his audience what new devious plot “the Left” was pursuing to take America away from “real Americans.” In the process, he propagated basically any rightwing conspiracy theory that has emerged over the past few years: the Big Lie about the 2020 election, Covid disinformation, Great Replacement… all combined with a hefty dose of bigoted white grievance.
Zimmer links to this Wired piece for the "bigoted white grievance." This:
“MLK was awful,” Kirk said. “He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe.”
Is the real Charlie Kirk, as per the Wired story, that was just one broadside in a planned strategic ongoing salvo.
So, Gov. Pothole was already way off my list of Democraps I would vote for, for president. This makes it even worse.
Of course, Democraps of both sexes have no gonads on many other things. Like Gaza, or even Israel bombing Qatar (with the apparent blessing of Trump).
Worst among the wingnuts are ex-libruls. (I'm aware of no wingnuts who are ex-leftists, at least not popping up on this issue.)
But, isn’t that, to get back to the theme, yet another illustration why I’m not a Democrap? Were all that many of them that good of librulz in the first place? Some, the Bernie—>Trump people like gun nut H.A. Goodman, may only have been interested in him personally, not the party, and found him a mix of stalking horse and cudgel.
At the same time, they, and Bernie himself, refute Marxian-type leftist claims that issues of race almost always reduce to those of class. I’ve argued with Doug Henwood, and with Adolph Reed via Henwood, and others like this. It’s why the family groupies of the Socialist Equality Party aren’t all right for their attacks on the likes of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, either.
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Joe Costello claims none of the recent shootings or assassinations, and attempts, are political. I think he's only half-right. Tyler Robinson and the two would-be Trump assassins, per Costello, seem apolitical with vague but generally wingnut grievances. The Party of Socialism and Liberation dude? Vague but generally aggrieved leftist grievances. But? The shooters of the Israeli embassy staffers were clearly political. The guy who allegedly killed the Minnesota state legislator? Political. Luigi Mangione was "para-political," to the degree that both the right hand of the duopoly and much of the left hand both oppose national health care.
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At the same time, while I'm here, it's a lie that "no Republican" did anything or said anything after Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman was killed. Trump did relatively little, yes. And, given who Tyler Robinson may be — other than meeting all the checkpoints of the lone White lone shooter, per Counterpunch — Trump doing nothing with Hortman, IMO, opened the door for false flagging claims on social media.
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