by liberal japonicus (image information here)
Hartmut mentioned Horst Wessel in connection with Charlie Kirk. First a little background on Horst Wessel and a Forward article about why people are connecting the two. This academic paper is worth a read, though I am getting sensitive to the criticism that being too academic is problematic.
During the years of the ‘period of struggle’ in Weimar Germany, Goebbels was to give new meaning to the Nazis’ irrational world view with his use of myths which served to cloak a brutal reality. The most effective of these myths grew out of the conditions of the political civil war waged by the paramilitary forces of Weimar Germany’s most radical parties – the Nazis and the communists. I The blood myth – which featured the death of a noble warrior, his resurrection, and ultimately his spiritual return to the fighting columns of Brown Shirts – was the most compelling theme of all, and it found its apotheosis in the saga of Horst Wessel.
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For Goebbels, it was insufficient to intone chants over the bodies of countless SA men. He was convinced that generalities do not move the masses; only easily identifiable symbols would serve such a purpose. The agony and death of Horst Wessel, killed by communists in the winter of 1930, was exactly the theme that the Gauleiter needed to offer his propaganda the unifying symbol it lacked.
I did say precursors, so I’m also thinking Lei Feng. The New Yorker had this article, which is unfortunately behind a paywall. Lei Feng might be a better parallel, in that Kirk isn’t being invoked as Horst Wessel was, a warrior, but the way that Kirk’s Christian faith has been waved like a bloody shirt (though it has been noted that Kirk’s embrace of Christianity seemed to represent an attempt “to distance themselves publically from Neo-Nazism“)
Here’s a Chinese military link lauding Lei Feng.
“Lei Feng is a role model of the times, and the spirit of Lei Feng is eternal. To achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, we need more role models of our times”, President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, said in an important instruction on further carrying out the activities of learning from Lei Feng, a late ordinary soldier and a household icon in China celebrated for selflessly helping others. The year 2023 marks the 60th year since revolutionaries of the older generation, including Mao Zedong, wrote inscriptions for comrade Lei Feng. Over the six decades, on the land of China, people listen to his stories, read his diary, learning from Lei Feng has become a broad ideological consensus and action consciousness. Time goes by, Lei Feng is always in our hearts; with the change of times, the spirit of Lei Feng is timeless.
In fact, in Chinese, you can say 活雷锋 (huó Léi Fēng) the way we would say a Good Samaritan. I await with bated breath the Right complimenting people as ‘he’s a really Charlie Kirk’. God help us.
HSH: I have a problem with jumping right to Hitler as a primary means of criticism, especially after an actual assassination. It is a form of “he deserved it.”
I guess you’re referring to comparisons of Kirk’s potential martyrdom to that of Horst Wessel. I don’t know how that’s a form of “he deserved it.” Nazi comparisons generally occur when people are concerned about the possibility of fascism making a comeback because the Nazis are, by far, the most significant historical example. Your problem is … well … yours.
The guy you link to celebrates the murder of Brian Thompson and notes he (the FB poster) “felon love” with Luigi Mangione. He thinks Charlie Kirk’s LIFE was a tragedy, not his death. All based on ideas. His comments about Kirk’s debate style are simply not representative of what I have seen.
I don’t know anything about the guy. I just thought his criticisms of Kirk’s “debates” were on point. I’m sure Kirk has had other conversations on a more level playing field, but those are for a different audience – people who are probably older and don’t pay attention to his college-campus antics, for whom he could portray a more moderate version of himself to people who aren’t otherwise familiar with his internet schtick. “Oh, gee, he seems reasonable.” Kind of like Vance debating Walz.
lj: The Horst Wessel comparison came first. And the FB poster’s joke was more an illustration of how I wouldn’t rely on him for information about Kirk than on the extremely bad taste of the joke itself. He seems to think Kirk and the CEO deserved it.
nous, I agree with your assessment of the proclamations and your use of “nettlesome.” Still, AOC’s response seems to show that it is more what was not in the proclamation (and the same case could have been made for Hortman). But your point is well-taken.
GftNC, AOC’s response starts out strong but then devolves and illustrates two things: 1) My point above, that it wasn’t really what was in the proclamation but what wasn’t; and 2) her penchant for taking things out of context. I do see her point, but similar things could have been said about Hortman’s legislative agenda.
And the FB poster’s joke was more an illustration of how I wouldn’t rely on him for information about Kirk…
I wasn’t relying on him for information. I linked to him because he wrote something that expressed what I was already thinking and did so in a better way than I probably could have. (I could have copied and pasted what he wrote in full and pretended to have written it myself. Then you’d be left researching my history to discredit me.)
bc’s point about AOC taking Kirk’s comments (presumably that’s what bc meant by “things”?) out of context reminds me. I think it was wonkie who said on another thread that she was going to counter people saying that Kirk had not said the things he is quoted as saying by showing video of him actually saying them. A compilation of that kind of thing would be enormously useful, particularly with brief lead-ins and what follows. Does anybody know if something like that exists? In any case, it would be interesting to hear anything substantiating that Melissa Hortman ever said, did or proposed anything that could be realistically compared to the many things we have evidence of Kirk saying or believing.
bc – AOC’s response starts out strong but then devolves and illustrates two things: 1) My point above, that it wasn’t really what was in the proclamation but what wasn’t; and 2) her penchant for taking things out of context. I do see her point, but similar things could have been said about Hortman’s legislative agenda.
AOC’s statement (https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-cortez-statement-charlie-kirk-resolution-and-trump-administrations) deserves a bit of close reading and analysis because I don’t think that she said anything out of context. Her argument is pretty straightforward and does not stray into anything that is not relevant to the resolution. AOC says:
House Republicans today brought to the floor a resolution ‘honoring the life and legacy’ of Charlie Kirk. I voted NO.
Condemning the depravity of Kirk’s brutal murder is a straightforward matter – one that is especially important to help stabilize an increasingly unsafe and volatile political environment where everyday people feel at risk. We can disagree with Charlie and come together as a country to denounce the horror of killing. That is a bedrock American value.
These are the grounds for her argument. In divisive political moments where the civil peace is breaking down, it falls to our representatives to come together and denounce the act in a way that is not divisive.
It then only underscores the majority’s recklessness and intent to divide by choosing to introduce this resolution on a purely partisan basis, instead of uniting Congress in this tragedy with one of the many bipartisan options to condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder, as we did with the late Melissa Hortman. Instead, the majority proceeded with a resolution that brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry today.
Here she is pointing out the “nettlesome” nature of the praise that the resolution authors included in the text and says that this creates division where the situation calls for some unifying theme – a reaffirmation of common cause.
“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a ‘mistake,’ who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that ‘some amazing patriot out there’ should bail out his assailant, and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges – it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.’ His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans – far from ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority in this resolution.
These examples are not a shift into an ad hominem attack on Kirk. She is providing support for her argument that the majority’s statement is divisive. Her examples are chosen to support her earlier claim that “millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry” are being nettled because Kirk’s statements that she highlights here do not promote unity. But it’s not Kirk’s statements that she is objecting to, it’s the mischaracterization of him “‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority.” And her use of “We” at the beginning is an important qualifier that limits her context. We means “we representatives issuing this resolution” not “we as a society.”
Which is why her final paragraph is about the surrounding rhetorical context that has been created by Trump and his FCC.
I don’t see anything that is out of context or lacking in relevance to the resolution.
GtfNC/Wonkie: I remember that too, and Wonkie’s comment in particular about a campaign against her sister’s church. I would be interested in that too.
lj: The Horst Wessel comparison came first.
Ahhh, got it. I’ll have to slap Hartmut on the wrist /joke/
In my defense, I was more suggesting that Lei Feng was closer (and I wish I had remembered Stakhanov) and saying that all four have some commonalities. While I appreciate taking time, the difference between Kirk and the other three is that only in the US case were people fired from their jobs.
Even though I cannot tell you how letdown I am by Ezra Klein’s recent stuff and I have found Corey Robin to be a bit glib, this youtube dialogue between the two is quite good (here’s the deadtree link, though it may disappear behind the paywall soon)
Here’s a bit
Klein: What we were talking about with the Red Scare, it took a long time to build that. The Trump administration is speed-running this — very fast.
Robin: This is the scary part of the story: The Second Red Scare succeeded.
Part of what deprived McCarthy of oxygen wasn’t just that he went after the military. It was that they had really drummed out — at the level of what their ambitions were, they had succeeded in stopping the New Deal from where it was heading. His electoral returns were diminishing to some degree.
The parallel I would highlight is just as the Red Scare came about to stop the New Deal, the MAGA movement has come about to erase all of the things that AOC listed.
…this youtube dialogue between the two is quite good
I listened to the whole video. It’s interesting and informative.
You know, in the absence of video showing Kirk saying many of the things he is accused of saying (none of which have been exactly denied), I looked at his own old tweets etc. His wholehearted, full-throated defence of RFK Jnr, a man who is looked on by the entire worldwide scientific and medical community as an idiot and a very serious risk to human health (at the very least responsible for 80 deaths in a measles outbreak in Samoa, and who knows how many to come in the US) were enough to absolutely confirm the opinion of his malevolent influence. And telling Taylor Swift ” Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge” makes it much harder to doubt the things he is alleged to have said about black people, and jews.
In the “Kuzushi and Charlie Kirk” thread I wrote: I give Saint Charles of Kirk credit for one thing: unlike the gun fetishists we used to joust with on the old ObWi, he was willing to admit that an occasional massacre is the unavoidable cost of, and an acceptable price to pay for, our god-given 2nd Amendment. And I meant it. Although his position disgusts me, I really do appreciate the honesty of it. Here’s the “full clip”, to avoid accusations of quoting him out of context.
I mention it because this, from bc, caught my eye:
There was a lot I didn’t agree with, and some of his interactions somewhat resemble what was described.
Out of sincere, no-fooling curiosity, I wish bc would mention one or two of those things he didn’t agree with. We might have common ground, somewhere.
–TP
TP: Most of it has to do with race. Frex: 1) I get his point about the DEI/merit debate. He went too far IMHO naming specific people (Michelle Obama et al) and essentially calling them not so bright. They apparently all admitted that affirmative action helped them in one way or another. But he was unkind and it detracts from his argument. 2) I think it is wrong to throw out MLK’s impact due to his personal character issues, as bad as those have been alleged to have been. 3) I understand his argument with respect to the Civil Rights Act, and agree to a point (that it has led to unconstitutional DEI programs and, as some say, has become a “second constitution” unto itself). However, its initial impact was so very good and important and I didn’t see him acknowledging that. In short, while he reached out to, encouraged and mentored many young black conservatives, these comments were, at best, tone deaf.
I also diverge to a point on immigration. I think his position is rational (enforce the law) and I largely agree with that. I would personally soften the edges somewhat of what can lawfully be done under the conditions we face now due to Biden’s open border policy.
I would have more exceptions for abortion.
There are other issues, and I think Charlie had other rough edges, but it seemed to me that he was a work in progress. He was still quite young. I think marriage and kids was good for him. And now we won’t see what he might have become.
bc, thanks for this too. I knew of Charlie Kirk, but I didn’t follow much, so I’m not going to try and dig up stuff, I think that was a mode of commenting that caused/causes a lot of problems (remember fisking?)
However, I have to say that his turn to Christianity seems a bit of a grift. In a podcast recently, he claimed it was 5th grade when he saw the light, but there is no sign of that until after Trump’s second election. While it’s possible that his marriage was an important influence (his wife graduated from Liberty University), the claim about the 5th grade conversion is probably a lie.
btw, you can see turning point ads (and find other ads) here
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/1E9X/turning-point-usa-help-us-take-back-our-country
There are a few with nods to Christianity, but those seem to be in conjunction with Trump trying to please that demographic.
Can I just say, I was talking (and thinking) very carelessly upthread @4.05 on Charlie Kirk. For clarity’s sake, I have no idea whether or not Kirk’s influence was “malevolent”, since I have no idea what his real wishes were. I do not necessarily take his Christianity at face value, and not only for the excellent reasons lj gives immediately above. But there is nonetheless no doubt in my mind that his influence was malign, and despite the undoubted tragedy of his murder, and the terrible and understandable grief of his family, it is somewhat sickening to see the rightwing glorification of this deeply problematic person. He might have changed for the better, as bc seems to suggest was a possibility, but he might also have changed for the worse. Murder and political violence are a curse wherever they occur, and neither their perpetrators nor their victims need by glorified in order to condemn them.
bc, thanks for your reply. I am sorry to say it depresses me. Your tenor seems to be that Kirk was just a little too … strident? extreme? Which word is more apt depends on whether he was mainly a provocateur or an ideologue. I think he was both, of course, but YMMV.
The “Prove Me Wrong” schtick was theater, not debate. Whether your position is popular or not, odious or not, sincere or not, the burden of proof in a debate is on you, the person asserting the position. Imagine me asserting that “Santa Claus is real” and demanding to be proved wrong.
Anyway, thanks again for replying. Maybe we do have some common ground in at least one way: canonizing Charlie Kirk is just a little too much.
–TP