by W.D. Ehrhart
I do not advocate, have never advocated, and never will advocate for the murder of anyone, and nothing I am about to write negates what I’ve just said. Though I have no doubt that at least some people will claim I am doing just that, it is not true.
Truth, however, seems to have little value in Trumpian America. I cannot stop the Trumpasaurians from thinking and saying and believing what they think and say and believe. But the real and actual truth is that I am not glad or grateful or relieved that Charlie Kirk was murdered.
There is, however, a kind of cosmic irony to his murder, a certain galactic symmetry, given that he himself publicly declared on April 5th, 2023: “I think it’s worth it 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
So his murder is simply a part of the “prudent deal” he himself thought “rational.” Meanwhile, as I write this—according to the Gun Violence Archive—over 10,900 other Americans have died so far this year by gunfire. No one is flying flags at half-staff for any of these people. No one is holding nationally televised memorial services. Where was our president’s outrage when Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband were gunned down by an evangelical Christian posing as a police officer? Where were Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi and Kash Patel?
I do not rejoice over the murder of Charlie Kirk. But I am not going to shed a tear over his death. He was a racist, sexist, homophobic spewer of bigotry who stood for everything that is twisted and cruel and unkind about Trumpian America. My real regret is that the Trumpsters have turned this man who worried that Black airline pilots are not competent to fly, who believed that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” that the “American Democrat party hates this country,” that successful Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” but instead “steal a white person’s slot,” that separation of church and state is “a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it is not in the constitution,” that women should “reject feminism” and submit to their husbands, insisting “you’re not in charge.” My regret is that the Trumpasaurians have turned this man into some kind of sainted martyr.
People who seem perfectly happy with the dismantling of our American constitutional republic and the transformation of American politics and civil society into dictatorship and authoritarian executive rule get upset when anyone equates what is happening in this country to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. My own senator, alleged Democrat John Fetterman, recently condemned the use of the words “fascism” and “Naziism” in connection with the Trump Administration (though his commitment to thwarting Trump’s policies has been questionable at best).
And while historical analogies never hold up well under close examination because no two circumstances are ever identical, the similarities and parallels are certainly disturbing. Hitler came to power by legal means supplemented by quasi-legal actions and violent intimidation. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and his incitement to riot and insurrection can be called “quasi-legal” only because a Republican-controlled Senate did not have the courage or decency to declare it illegal and were intimidated by his power to punish them if they ruled against him. And he has not needed Brown-shirted thugs and bullies to intimidate his opponents, because he has been able to sue them endlessly or threaten their economic viability or have his Department of Injustice investigate them and charge them with crimes.
Adolph Hitler and his Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels relied on what historians have come to call The Big Lie: if you tell a lie often enough, eventually people will believe it. Donald Trump and his Minions have gone the Nazis one better and turned all of reality into The Big Lie. Anything that contradicts their version of events, their vision of the world we live in, is Fake News.
Global warming is nothing more than a leftist conspiracy. Voter fraud is rampant in America. Urban violence is out of control, but only in cities run by Democrats. Job creation and employment figures indicating that Trump’s economic policies are failing are fraudulent. Trump’s majority unpopularity ratings are falsified by biased pollsters. Leftist domestic terrorists are responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder. An escalator that stopped working just as Trump and his third wife stepped onto it was a terroristic attempt to harm and perhaps kill the president. (Seriously. Did you hear the Fox News Talking Heads ranting about all of this? It would have been comical except that they were serious. And millions of their viewers actually believe them.)
So when I see what the Trumpsters are doing to Charlie Kirk, I just find it impossible not to think of Horst Wessel, the murdered Nazi who became the inspiration for the Nazi anthem, “Die Fahne hoch.’’ My very real regret about the murder of Charlie Kirk is the opportunity it gives Donald Trump and his Minions to take advantage of the murder to hasten the decline and fall of American Constitutional governance.
–=≈=–
W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.