by liberal japonicus
This NYTimes youtube video about the Kirk memorial actually made me feel ill. In response to “What made you decide to come out today?” one man answered.
This is a historical moment. This was a Martin Luther King Jr. in our day that was essentially assassinated for his free speech and this is our turning point as well.
A second man answered the question with this
I think this is igniting a fire in America. There is a sense of good and evil. There is a sense of right and wrong and this is kind of the time people are waking up to realize which side am I going to be on.
They then asked “What do you hope to hear in there?”
I want to hear true leadership say that they will no longer tolerate this. Not with words, but with policies, with laws, no longer being tolerant to the left. It’s now clear that the one person that was willing to reach across the aisle and have conversations with them, they shot him. So, at this point, there there is no changing their minds. There is no uh kumbaya anymore. You’re over there, we’re over here, you stand for that, we stand for this. Why is it always our side being attacked?
The rest of the piece is a close analysis of the event, it is here if you want to listen to it.
On April 18th, 2020, I posted an excerpt from Anthony Beevor’s The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Unfortunately, I’ve subsequently found out that this was not what actually happened. The evidence that leads to the conclusion is worth a look, but I want to highlight this quote from the librarian who wrote about it, Severiano Delgado.
What Portillo did was to come up with a kind of liturgical drama, where you have an angel and a devil confronting one another. What he wanted to do above all was symbolise evil—fascism, militarism, brutality—through Millán Astray, and set it against the democratic values of the republicans—liberalism and goodness—represented by Unamuno. Portillo had no intention of misleading anyone; it was simply a literary evocation.
At this point, I should note that the NYTimes piece is structured precisely to make someone sick IF they know the sorts of things Kirk said and his history. And if this were the old days, I can imagine some commenters making hay with that.
There are tons of points to observe, the cultural touchstones invoked, the way knowledge and ignorance were intertwined (Don jr highlighting his lack of knowledge of the bible with Kirk’s supposed understanding), or the way that forgiveness and punishment were balanced in the forms of Kirk’s widow’s speech followed by Trump’s. But if you had to sum it up, you would probably have to say that we are f**ked.
Well, these are people who have been absolutely hammered with eliminationist propaganda for a generation now. If you can accept the premise the rest flows naturally, despite the lack of names. Anecdotal violence is pumped up to provide examples of the violent left, and that is sufficient for these warriors for Truth and Good. They love the righteous feeling, but will that be enough to pull the trigger when the moment arrives? We will all find out together, because this kind of worldview never stays controlled, only unleashed.
The think I noticed was that the rhetoric of retribution was about evenly split between End Times dogwhistles and QAnon dogwhistles. Either way, it’s pretty clear that I, being an academic, am on the wrong side of the friend/enemy distinction.
I think the potential for some sort of campaign of retribution is very high, and California campuses have to be near the top of that list. I especially worry for my friends and colleagues at UCLA, but I think we all need to be wary.