 |
| Nick Anderson |
It took 33 hours to capture the killer of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk. We are learning more about him.
Not only was he not a "radical leftist," he killed Kirk because Kirk was not far right enough.
We still don't know a lot about the killer, but here is what we do know.
- He is a 22-year-old (apparently) straight, cisgender white man who lives in Utah who grew up in a family with guns.
- His family is all registered Republican and according to Grandma, Drumpf supporters.
- He is registered to vote but not registered with a party, and he did not vote in the 2024 general election, which would have been the first since he turned 18.
- He is a Mormon but has not regularly attended church lately.
- He has one semester of university education at Utah State University. At the time of his arrest he was in his third year at an electrician trade school.
- His family is a hunting family, and he has experience with firearms.
- He has no criminal history.
- He talked about Kirk being "full of hate and spreading hate" in the days before the incident.
- The markings on his ammunition, on first glance, seem to be left-leaning and anti-fascist, but people in the know say that the words and phrases are found in meme culture and video game culture and used ironically by ultra conservative sites.
Not trans. Not foreign. Not woke. Not any of the vilified "other." No, he was one of their own. Again.
Though we don't know much more, I would be willing to wager that he has these traits: I bet he is another disaffected, isolated, lonely young man, incel-adjacent, with few friends.
In fact, the "Groypers," an alt-Right group led by Fuentes, uses the language that was on the ammunition. The Groypers thought that Charlie Kirk was too moderate and regularly vilified him.
Please revisit it.
You won't hear the sitting president or anyone else apologize for blaming the "radical left" and calling for war with them. (By the way, how does one denounce political violence in one breath and call for war in the next?)
The Inciter-in-Chief won't say anything more, let alone something preposterous like an apology, because he accomplished what he wanted to do. He fed misinformation to his followers early and loudly, because no matter what facts that come out later, they will lap it up and instill it in their brains. Whatever truth comes out later simply doesn't matter.
The Responses
The Right has pretty much labeled the shooting "an act of war," and they are getting the base worked up.
You saw 47 saying, "We have to beat the hell" out of the "radical Left." (No doubt still gunning for that Peace Prize).
When it came out that the killer grew up in a MAGA household and Kirk was perhaps not Right enough in the killer's eyes, there were crickets.
In fact, after his initial statement that he "was filled with grief and anger," he seemed to move on quite quickly.
A reporter asked about his dear friend's death and how he was holding up. The reporter asked, "My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. Can I ask you personally, how are you holding up in the last day and a half?"
47's response: "I think very good and by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know for about a hundred and fifty years. And it's gonna be a beauty. It'll be an absolutely magnificent structure. And as you see all the trucks, we just started, so... It'll get done, uh, very nicely and it'll be one of the best anywhere in the world actually."
So very touching......
Here's the video:
He sure got over it quick. Has the man ever thought of anyone but himself?
The Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has been commendable in his calls for calm and his condemnation of violence. I've been impressed by him.*
He said, "It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been and who we could be in better times.
"We can return violence with fire and violence. We can return hate with hate. And that's the problem with political violence, is it metastasizes, because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse. These are choices that we can make."
*However, I learned at publishing that Cox, too, had some dangerous and divisive language when talking about the killer. He said, "For 33 hours, I was … I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn’t be one of us. That somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country. Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for. Just because I thought it would make it easier on us if we could just say ‘Hey, we don’t do that here.’"
Oh wouldn't it have been so much easier for the tar and feathering if the killer was just an "other." Dang.
The Rest of Us
Many people have posted on social media that they do not condone murder but Charlie Kirk was a bad person. Those people are in trouble.
MAGAts have been literally policing the response. Not grieving enough? Not praising Kirk enough? You may be doxxed, harassed, fired from your job, or worse.
Look at this:
There have been many reports of this happening. I've heard of it in my own professional groups.
In fact, there is a website called charliesmurderers dot com, where people can report those who do not reach the standards of grief and/or praise of the dead man that they think is sufficient. Employers or others can search the database and then.... do what they will with the information.
Scary stuff.
AltNPS is calling for people to help take down the website, as it clearly violates the hosts' terms of service. Here's the info:
Commentator Matthew Dowd on MSNBC was asked by an audience member about the Kirk killing. The question was about "the environment in which a shooting like this happens."
Dowd said, "He's been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures, in this, who's constantly sort of pushing this hate speech aimed at certain groups. I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions."
He was fired.
What a radical concept that hate begets hate!
You know who wasn't fired for comments made on air? (Side note, unrelated to Kirk's murder.) Brian Kilmeade on Faux News said these words in a discussion about the how to manage the mentally ill unhoused population. "Or involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill them."
Thoughts
As I think about the killer, I come back to the the thought that we've lost our young men. Many young men are socially isolated, dependent on the internet, and vulnerable to being radicalized. We've got to bring them back.
I am reminded of a post I wrote about the time of the Kavenaugh hearings when right-leaning people were oh-so-scared that their sons may someday be falsely accused of rape.
I examined then that men have a very low chance of being falsely accused, but have a host of other life problems. The post is from October, 2018: A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.
As compassionate people and as feminists (yes, woke!), we need to find a way to solve the problems that men, and especially young men, are facing. If not, we'll find more of them becoming radicalized and deciding that they must act out.
No more murders!
