MAGA provocateur Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a speaking engagement at an outdoor event on the campus of Utah Valley University, in the heart of deep-red, proto-MAGA Utah, on Wednesday.
Kirk, 31, is survived by his wife and two young children.
The guy said a lot of reprehensible things, but gotta say, and this should go without having to say it, a bullet in the neck is not the counter.
The gruesome shooting death of Kirk – a podcaster popular among the far, far, far right for his controversial, to say the least, views on race, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion and various conspiracy theories – is the latest in an increasingly long line of targeted acts of political violence in our quite clearly hopelessly divided country.
The event in Utah at which Kirk was speaking was the first in a planned series of public events that his Turning Point USA organization was calling “The American Comeback Tour,” which also had a Sept. 24 stop on the schedule on the campus at Virginia Tech, according to the tour website.
Former Utah MAGA congressman Jason Chaffetz, who was in attendance at the Utah Valley University event today, told Fox News that Kirk was addressing a question from someone in the audience about mass shootings perpetrated by transgender people when a single shot rang out.
“I can’t say that I saw blood, I can’t say that I saw him get hit, but I did see him fall immediately backwards and to his left,” an emotional Chaffetz said in the interview.
I can interject here – I have seen video of the shooting, on the hellscape site Twitter, taken from directly in front of the stage, probably 20 feet from where Kirk was sitting on stage, and, there was lots of blood, immediately.
Warning: do not search out that video; it is horrific to see, and to have seen.
To say that it could be triggering to people with PTSD is putting it mildly.
For me, I’m someone who has been the subject of a credible politically motivated death threat, reported to me, as coincidence would have it, by a mole in a far-right militia in Utah.
ICYMI
The threat, according to the mole, who later had to go underground out of fear that he had exposed himself by warning me, was from a neighbor who is still a neighbor; I still think, every time I’m out and about in my backyard or front yard, or walking the neighborhood, that what I saw on Twitter today can and will happen to me.
Which is, as you can guess, no fun.
Like me in my backyard or out for a walk around the block, Charlie Kirk speaking at a public event is a soft target, among many that are out there.
Even supposed hard targets are not immune from the dangers.
Just last night, a group of protestors got within a couple of feet of Donald Trump, JD Vance and members of the Cabinet at a DC restaurant, another obvious failure of the Secret Service that could have been catastrophic, if the protestors, who confronted Trump and his team with chants, had violent intent.
A few weeks ago, a MAGA sympathizer shot two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota, killing the former House Speaker and her husband, and seriously wounding a state senator and his wife, in separate incidents.
Two Israeli Embassy staffers were shot in DC in May by a man who shouted “Free Palestine” as he was being arrested.
Another MAGA attempted to burn down the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in April, targeting Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.
That’s all just in the last six months – further out, there was a plot involving a Florida Democratic congressman and the two attempts on Trump last year, the attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022, the U.S. Capitol attack in 2021, the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, the mass shooting at a baseball practice for Republican lawmakers in 2017.
ICYMI
- Two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers shot: ‘Politically motivated assassinations’
- Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz targeted in attempted assassination plot
- Developing: Trump ‘fine,’ two dead, two wounded, in shooting at Pa. campaign rally
- Waynesboro’s vice mayor joked about the Pelosi hammer attack: How funny is it now?
I don’t know what the answer is to all of this.
I mean, there’s the obvious – it’s relatively easy to kill somebody from a couple of hundred feet away with a gun, not so easy without one; and, you know, maybe we tone down the violent tone of what counts as political discourse and imagery used on social media that has long since gotten out of control.
Charlie Kirk was an active participant – and, to his credit, one of the better players – in the dumb game played these days where people say hateful things about people on the other side to tally up points at the end of the day.
“Prove me wrong” shouldn’t end with a one-person firing squad.
Sadly, this is not even close to being the last senseless targeting in this war we’re waging with ourselves.
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
