In The End, Fascism Always Eats Its Own

Why the death of Charlie Kirk reminds us that you can be on the side of violence and still fall victim to it.

I didn't really pay close attention to Charlie Kirk. Like most of us who are chronically online, clips would find their way to my various feeds from time to time, and because pretty much every one I saw (against my will) was garbage, I tuned him out as best I could. His outrageous far right Christian views aside, he also espoused some of the most virulent rhetoric I've heard. On the one hand he said some antisemitic trash like, "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," and then, in the next breath, tried to convince Jews he was with them by being staunchly pro-Israel and spouting anti-Arab nonsense. As an anti-Zionist Jew myself, both of those stances made me dislike the man even more, but he has said much worse. Some examples include:

• "If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'" Source
• "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s." Source
• "The 'Great Replacement Theory' is not a theory, it's a reality." Source
• "[Black women] do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously." Source
• "I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." Source
• "Israel is not starving Gaza." Source

There is a lot more than that, too. His extreme stance on abortion, his Christian nationalism, his anti-woman beliefs. So much of what he stood for was ultimately about protecting and upholding white supremacy and furthering the right's attempt to codify America as a place for white cis-straight Christian men to thrive.

None of this means I'm happy about what happened, what is happening. I’m not celebrating that Kirk is dead. In fact, it makes me very sad. It makes me very sad that those of us who have time after time spoken out against the kind of violent rhetoric that he perpetuated were proven right, yet again. It makes me sad that his children will have to grow up without a father knowing that he died by the same violence he excused and glorified. It makes me sad that his kids and my kid and all of our kids have to grow up in a country that does more to perpetuate gun violence than to stop it, fueled by the kind of rhetoric he espoused. It makes me sad that our kids will have to go to school and think about whether or not they will be shot to death because of that violent rhetoric. It makes me sad that all of our children have to grow up in a country founded on violence, that used violence against the very people whose hands built our infrastructure, that continues to be violent in perpetuity.

Again, violence like this is not new. This country is a violent country. It has always been a violent country. Our government has long used violence to suppress dissenting voices, disenfranchise minorities, exploit humans for profit, and more. It has always legislated violence, whether through failing to tighten gun control, taking away healthcare from those who need it most, cutting food stamps for hungry poor people, and a slew of other things we in our society have come to accept as normal.

Not only is it not normal, it is not acceptable for the richest country on the planet to disinvest in its citizens the way we do. It is violence down to its most basic definition.

And it's that kind of state-sanctioned violence that perpetuates all of the most physical and deadly forms of violence, and it's people like Charlie Kirk who have not only supported it, but have taken it, branded it as "Christian," and fed it to the masses to manufacture consent for today's fascism. It's because of Kirk and his organization Turning Point USA that we have an administration kidnapping people off the streets, deploying the military to our cities, stripping people of their rights, taking away healthcare access, and most relevantly, fighting hard for more guns in more people's hands to kill more kids in more schools and more churches and more malls and more festivals and...you get the point.

And as is always the case, when you promote violence - when you're on the side of fascism - you're not protected from it, either. The leopards are gonna eat your face, too. The fascism is gonna eat its own, always. None of us win. All of us lose.

It makes me very sad to once again be proven right. To be proven right that this country chooses violence every day and that you could be on the side of the violence and still fall victim to it. That if we say preventable deaths from guns are okay so long as people can be armed to the teeth with whatever weapons they want, well, eventually, it's gonna come back around on you, too.

What is happening to this country is bleak. It does not have to be this way. I believe in a country (or better yet, a world) where everyone has what they need because we care for each other. Where we as everyday people don't have to be a part of this endless stream of violence that is perpetuated by the state. Where young men don't have to grow up hearing the kind of filth that permeated Kirk's brain and continue the cycle of hateful rhetoric that has become so normalized here. I believe in a world where we see each other's humanity and act in step with that.

Unfortunately that's not the world we live in. And even more unfortunately, more people will die at the hands of fascism whether or not they supported it. More kids will have to grow up without fathers and mothers and siblings because of our own complicity in this endlessly violent system.

When will we learn? Probably not today, or tomorrow, or for quite a while. I just hope more people wake up soon before they fall victim to this, too.

It does not have to be this way.