Words: Gemma Sawyer (she/her)
There is no good in being able to identify these patterns if we do nothing to prevent their power to indoctrinate
If you weren’t familiar with the name Charlie Kirk before his death, you certainly will be now. Immediately after the shooting – before Kirk was even confirmed dead – thousands of people across the political spectrum had posted messages condemning “political violence”. Transideological agreement online is something rarely seen. It begs the question: Where was this moral urgency over the last two years of genocide in Palestine? And what can we learn about the conservative agenda by unravelling the narratives following Kirk’s death?
Providing legitimacy for violent pursuits, the pattern of selective concern is woven into the conservative agenda. Most notably, in the US, homophobia in Palestine has been used as a reason to justify Israel’s genocide. Jad Salfiti, a queer Palestinian living in Germany, states that ‘as a queer Palestinian, it is enraging to see my identity used as an instrument of war’. Palestinians are locked in a survival-mode at all times which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for queer liberties to develop there so long as an Israeli genocide is taking place. He says, ‘we are under occupation and facing an ongoing genocide … the first layer is simply to exist.’ The US and the UK have seen a major attack on trans rights in recent years, as well as a fresh attack on gay marriage this year. Our institutions treat queer rights as leverage, as tools for justifying racism and homophobia.
Politicians like Trump, who denounced Kirk’s shooting as political violence, have not done the same for the numerous school shootings which happen every year in the US. Guns are currently the leading cause of death for children in the US. Like most Republicans, Charlie Kirk was an advocate for loose gun laws. Many politicians lamenting his tragic death supported laws which allowed for him and countless children every year to be killed by guns. This pattern of false care is intertwined across right-wing agenda in order to legitimise violence against vulnerable groups.
Journalist Taylor Lorenz stated ‘when politicians and the media condemn violence such as what happened to Kirk, universal violence is not what is being condemned, but rather violence against elites’. Violence is framed as unacceptable when it targets the elite, yet routinely minimised and rationalised when it affects ordinary people.
Journalist Jeff Sharlet said ‘we can speak against political violence without somehow twisting ourselves around to defend others who spoke for it’. He states that Kirk supported ‘televised executions’, and even advocated for them to become mandatory for people to watch.
Violence wasn’t just woven into Kirk’s career; it was his career. The perverse irony of publicly mourning a man with such violent ideology sickens those of us who see him comparable only to the likes of Hitler. Why? Because he was one of the most politically violent leaders of all time. The same treatment ought to be extended to powerful people today who, like Kirk, publicly promote violent ideologies. These are powerful people in the public eye. They cannot have this amount of power and take no criticism. People do not need to be commemorated positively if they devote a lifetime to hatred and violence.
What is the point of exposing these right-wing talking points and propaganda? Both politicians and the media fail to point out that Kirk played a role in upholding violent systems of oppression. Whitewashing his legacy is, according to Matt Bernstein, ‘contributing to a movement that is very rapidly threatening our civil liberties in exactly the way Charlie Kirk wanted’.
Liberals, centrists and leftists can fall into a right-wing pipeline by being sucked in by false care narratives. These well-meaning people condemned Kirk’s death, but it is often these events that lead to radicalisation as they follow one talking point to the next. There is no good in being able to identify these patterns if we do nothing to prevent their power to indoctrinate, publicly holding those in power to account by calling out double standards. We have a part to play in exposing how the conservative agenda has permeated many aspects of public life and how we can undo it. Then, and only then, might we have a chance at breaking an essential cog in the conservative agenda.
