Charlie Kirk and the Deadly “They”
One sunny afternoon when I was a kid in Allentown PA, which was every bit as exciting as you’d imagine, a number of construction trucks showed up in an open field near where I lived.
In our neighborhood, this qualified as “big news!”, mostly because the second most exciting story from around that time was the day before when nothing showed up in that open field.
Nobody knew precisely what the trucks were doing there, and this lack of knowledge created a vacuum. Since nature abhors a vacuum, a variety of theories were quickly conceived, although I don’t remember any of them making reference to the “Deep State”. It was a more innocent time.
The theory that most people finally settled on was that the trucks were there to build a new Heckingers, which was the Home Depot of it’s day. Of course, there was absolutely no reason to believe that this was true. But even back in the 1970s, the complete absence of evidence never stood in the way of a good story.
The only thing people were more sure of than the impending arrival of a new Heckingers, was the indisputable fact that “they” didn’t want you to know about it. Why “they” didn’t want us to know about our exciting new opportunity to buy bathroom fixtures was never made clear. All that was clear was that “they” had a plan, and were all-powerful to impose it on the rest of us.
Even back then, I found myself confused by just who “they” are, how “they” got so much power, and whether or not I would ever be one of “them”.
All of this came rushing back to me recently in the wake of the horrific murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
It should go without saying, but seemingly doesn’t these days, that Kirk’s murder was a hideous and appalling attack on not just a person, but on the very foundations of our nation.
If America is not about free speech, it’s literally just a collection of mud, indistinguishable from all of the other collections of mud that call themselves countries around the world. As someone who spends a good bit of their time spewing controversial content, I rely not only on the freedom, but on the safety of a writer in our society.
Nonetheless, I find myself again confused by the immediate emergence of the undefined “they” in connection with Kirk’s murder. Many of Kirk’s far-right supporters were, from the first minutes after the shooting, sure who committed the crime, and it is “they”, or, I fear, “us”.
Typical posts I’ve seen on-line including sentences such as “They killed Charlie!”, or “They aren’t going to stop at Charlie” or even “They tried to kill Trump twice, they killed Charlie and they are coming for us next!”, and, most ominously, “We have to destroy them for this!”
Who is this “they”? At first, we had no idea who shot Kirk, so how can we ascribe the shooter or shooters to any specific, if undefined group? And when they finally arrested a suspect named Tyler Robinson it appeared he acted alone, and thus “he” was a far more accurate descriptor of the assassin than “they”.
It soon became clear that by “they”, the fans of Charlie meant everyone who disagrees with them about politics. In other words, anyone to the left of Charlie Kirk is part of the deadly “they” that murdered him. And there is a lot room to the left of Charlie Kirk. It seems that the murderous “they” includes virtually all of us.
All of this is to be expected of right-wing internet trolls, with green frogs as their avatar and user names such as “White Genocide” or “Goebels Fan Boy”. But those accusing the large, amorphous “they” of being complicit in Kirk’s killing include people with huge platforms, including Fox News commentators, popular internet influencers and…and I know this is shocking, the President of the United States.
President Trump has blamed “the radical left” for Kirk’s shooting. As an aside, is there a NON-radical left? Like a normal, moderate, sensible left? Or is every liberal a wild-eyed, insane Communist looking to physically eliminate every God-fearing American? I ask because I’ve never heard Trump describe anyone to the left of him without the word “radical” in front of the description.
Anyway, it is clear that the homicidal “they” includes all Democrats, liberals and progressives. This, despite the facts that at least one of the people who tried to kill Trump was a Republican who had a Trump sign on his lawn in the last election, and while we don’t yet know everything about Charlie Kirk’s killer, we do know he is a white, cis male from a MAGA family in Utah who the preliminary evidence suggests to be a groyper. For those not hip, the Groypers is a group founded by open neo-Nazi and Mar-a-lago dinner guest Nick Fuentes who hated Charlie Kirk because he wasn’t right-wing enough.
The argument many on the right make is that by referring to Trump and some of his minions as “anti-democratic” or even “fascist”, liberals have incited the sort of violence that took Charlie Kirk’s life. But when asked about Trump referring to liberals as “radical left lunatics” “Scum” “Communists” “Sickos” who “hate America” and “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”, those same people are suddenly very forgiving.
Also, apparently, telling an angry mob to go to the US Capitol and “fight like hell or you won’t have a country” was in no way responsible for the violent attack on that Capitol 20 minutes later.
I’ve also noticed how those referring to everyone on my side of the political divide as the murderous “they” do not appreciate themselves being lumped into their own “they”, as in the “they” that killed Minnesota State Rep Melissa Hortman, or bashed Paul Pelosi’s skull in with a hammer, or firebombed Governor Shapiro’s mansion, or injured 174 police officers on January 6th. That would be OUTRAGEOUS!!
The truth is, “we” didn’t kill Charlie Kirk or try to shoot Donald Trump. Nor did we try to murder Ronald Reagan (yes, I’ve seen that too). Speaking only for myself I can promise you I’ve never had the slightest interest in impressing Jodi Foster. And as a life-long and somewhat well-known member of the left, I can tell you that I’ve never been invited to any of the meetings where the left, as a whole, plans out it’s next series of America-destroying assassinations.
Using the collective “they” to defame basically 50% of the country is not only lazy and stupid, it’s also dangerous. If “they” will do anything to harm those on the right, then that would seem to justify those on the right doing anything to stop “them”, as the internet’s ocean of violent revenge threats proves. This blaming of the collective “they” has to stop.
By the way, they never did build a Heckingers in that field.
