White supremacists clash with police in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. One person was killed and 35 people were injured when a car rammed counter protestors. Two state troopers died in an accidental helicopter crash. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.
Fascists love violence and the rhetoric of violence. We liberals are “snowflakes” and “soy boys” who can only shed pitiful and helpless tears when they “own” us. We’re so feckless and confused that we can’t even prove them wrong.
So when a mere soy boy can outshoot most fascists and take out a fascist activist at 150 yards, as Tyler Robinson is accused of doing, fascists react with spit-flying rage (see below). In their minds, it’s supposed to be the other way around.
Fascists can win for while, and a few fascist governments last for a generation or more. But eventually, free people always rise up to teach them a lesson (which they always forget).
The right-wing response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk has been violent rhetoric from top to bottom — from Trump, from Kirk’s wife, to all the sickening right-wing mouths in the media.
The response of the mainstream media has been almost as ugly. I understand why all the mainstream punditry hasten to condemn political violence. It is entirely right that they should do so.
But they did not have to make some kind of saint out of Kirk. “Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way,” said the headline on Ezra Klein’s piece in the New York Times. Really, Ezra? There’s a right way to market fascism and hatred? But at least you get to keep your job at the New York Times. There already is a long list of people who lost their jobs for daring to take a different view of what Charlie Kirk was.
We’re supposed to get the message that fascist dominance is inevitable and that resistance is futile. They suppose that we should love them and submit to them. I’m afraid I’m not Christian enough to manage that.
The NYT are suggesting that the assassin was himself right wing and Kirk was too moderate for his tastes. If that is the case it should be seen as another example of right wing violence, albeit inhouse. Speaking of fascists, I happen to be in London today and unbeknownst to me a far right protest was taking place. They left the streets covered with beer cans and other rubbish, and unsurprisingly violence later broke out. There was a huge police presence everywhere. A counter-demonstration passed off peacefully as I understand.
Hi Chenda: I keep seeing suggestions that Robinson actually was right wing, but so far I have not seen anything convincing. I wonder if he is talking, and I also wonder if whoever is listening to him talk will give us honest reports on what he says.
I’ve also seen that he was involved in right-wing subgroups online in sick places like 4chan. He was supposedly a “groyper” which is a subset of the alt-right that follows Nick Fuentes or at least he used memes and slogans associated with them as a “chronically online” person. As someone who is also online all the time, I’ve never ventured into 4chan or anything associated with Nick Fuentes, though I’ve heard of him and knew he was pretty out there politically. I’m a state employee in my home state, and I’m afraid to say anything that might be deemed “celebrating” Kirk’s death even if the irony of his positions on gun violence are obvious to me. My home state’s governor is one that follows Trump lock-step, so I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my job. I could definitely say hateful, racist things and be safe, but pointing out that comparing Kirk to Martin Luther King, Jr. is a false equivalence would be deemed as a snowflake thing to say that could cost me my retirement. These people are so bad for this country in every possible way.
Hi Dan: Yes. Do they think we will forget how they went on and on about “cancel culture”? Now they are openly demanding the public destruction of anyone who suggests that Kirk was anything less than a saint. Just a few minutes ago I read in the New York Times that the Washington Post has fired a columnist for (my words) not abiding by the Kirk-was-a-saint rule. I still have not found a convincing report on the “groyper” angle. And for some reason the mainstream media seem to be downplaying the apparent fact that Robinson’s roommate was an MtoF trans person. *Someone* ought to be saying something. For example, Luigi Mangione’s lawyer has done a pretty good job of resisting his demonization.
As for myself, it’s nice to be retired and not to have to kiss any corporate ass. Regular readers here know who I am, but those who come in from Google, having searched for a particular subject, would have to do some poking around to figure who I am. That’s intentional on my part. I don’t write for a local audience. In fact more than half of the hits on this blog are from Europe. Most of the Americans who come here from a Google search have searched for Buffalo china. It seems that Americans aren’t much interested in the subjects I write about. I like it that way. If the locals ever find me, maybe I’ll have grounds for getting into the U.K. as an asylum seeker. 🙂