The vomit inducing Beatification of Charlie Kirk
TetleysTLDR: The summary
Charlie Kirk’s assassination has been seized on by politicians and pundits as a tragedy of historic proportions, yet their outrage reeks of hypocrisy. Leaders who barely blink when three children are gunned down in a U.S. school, when two Black men are found lynched and dismissed as “suicides,” or when Gaza’s hospitals are bombed and children starve, suddenly find their moral clarity when a far-right grifter is shot. Keir Starmer calls Kirk’s killing “heartbreaking” and insists political debate must be free of violence, while offering only muted “concern” over Israeli atrocities. Rachel Reeves describes dying babies in Gaza as “heartbreaking” but stops short of demanding real action. Boris Johnson even calls Kirk a “martyr for free speech.” Their outrage is selective, their grief opportunistic. Kirk lived by division and hate, died violently, and is now being weaponised: while the powerless continue to die in silence.
TetleysTLDR: The article
I wasn’t going to write anything about Charlie Kirk.
The man was murdered in a horrific way. I've been watching him for a while and before his shooting was in the process of writing a blog about him. As much as I loathed what he stood for and everything his rancid, Trump-bootlicking, Christian nationalist think tank represented, being shot dead in public isn’t the answer. Aside from the 'leaked' information about this, the credibility of which is more than suspect to say the least, we still don't know the motive behind why someone thought this was the way to deal with him.
Kirk was a salesman for hate. He peddled anti-trans bigotry, anti-immigrant bile, misogyny, and a full-blown persecution complex dressed up as 'Western civilisation'. He thrived on division and weaponised fear. But shooting him doesn’t dismantle the politics he sold. All it does is elevate him to martyrdom, and in death, he becomes more useful to the right than he ever was in life.
And yet, here we are. His blood still fresh on the pavement, and already the sanctimony is flowing like cheap supermarket prosecco. Every news outlet has been plastered with headlines, every pundit who never uttered his name while he was alive is now issuing solemn pronouncements about the sanctity of political life.
Even in Britain, the faux outrage machine is cranked up to eleven. People who had never heard of him a fortnight ago are suddenly sermonising as though he were the reincarnation of John Locke.
Daily Heil on Bibi's unhinged denial
What I find particularly grotesque is not the coverage of Kirk’s murder itself, political violence is news, of course it is: but the hypocrisy is off the fucking scale. On the very same day that Kirk was gunned down in Utah, three children were slaughtered in yet another American school shooting. Barely a murmur. The week after, two Black men were found hanging from trees, their battered bodies explained away by police as 'suicides', the same euphemism used for lynchings stretching back to Jim Crow. That barely made the ticker. But Charlie Kirk? Suddenly it’s a national tragedy, a turning point, a wake-up call.
And Britain, as ever, imported the outrage without the context. You had our moribund Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a man who for months has spent all his effort dodging calls condemning of Israeli war crimes in Gaza with breath-taking levels of mental gymnastics, who bends the knee to the United States at every opportunity declaring with gravity:
“We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear – there can be no justification for political violence.” (Fox News)
This from the man who declared Palestine Action a terrorist group because they made him look like the industrial scale twat he is when they daubed paint on an RAF plane bound for Israel. Political violence is wrong, apparently, unless it’s state sanctioned and drops from the sky onto a refugee camp. Then it’s 'defence'.
Next in line was Nigel Farage, opportunist-in-chief:
“This is a very dark day for American democracy. I am desperately sad for Charlie, his wife and children.”
He couldn’t give a toss about American democracy when Donald Trump tried to strangle it in 2021. He was too busy grinning with Steve Bannon at CPAC, cheering the idea of a nationalist Atlantic alliance. But a dead culture warrior? That’s something he can use.
Then, inevitably, Boris Johnson bumbling phwa pfwarred into the conversation, calling Kirk a:
“Shining new martyr to free speech.” (Independent)
For fucks sake. This from the man who closed parliament unlawfully in 2019, tried to stack the media with cronies, and used the full weight of the state to shut down protest in Britain. The same Johnson who was too busy feathering his own nest to give a flying shite when children in America were gunned down in their classrooms. But Kirk? That’s a 'martyr'. And it didn’t stop there. The far right across Europe pounced. Hungary’s odious strongman, Viktor Orbán, thundered that Kirk’s death was the inevitable result of an 'international hate campaign' by the left. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Monster whose hands are red with the blood of Gazan children had the front to eulogise Kirk as:
“A lion-hearted friend of Israel, murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom.”
Pardon me while I go and get the fucking sick bag. Freedom. That word again. It drips from the mouths of these people, coated in blood. So Here’s the truth - prove me wrong: the global right is using Kirk’s death as a weapon. It’s not about him, not really. It’s about building a narrative. They want his body to become proof that the left is dangerous, violent, out of control. They want to paint any criticism of their poisonous politics as incitement. They want to roll this into the wider culture war, to tar progressives, to criminalise dissent, to equate opposition with terrorism.
And all the while, the overwhelming bulk of political violence in America, BY A FUCKING COUNTRY MILE, and in Britain for that matter comes from the right. It’s the militia cranks, the white supremacists, the religious fanatics, the flag-waving fascists. It was a far-right terrorist who massacred Black worshippers in Charleston. It was a white nationalist who ploughed a car into anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville. It was an incel who gunned down women in Isla Vista. It was QAnon lunatics who stormed the Capitol, gallows in tow, chanting for Mike Pence’s neck.
But mention that? Silence. Doesn’t fit the story.
Instead, we’re supposed to mourn Charlie Kirk, a man who spent his life railing against the rights of women, trans people, Black Lives Matter activists, Palestinians, and anyone who didn’t fit his white Christian nationalist fantasy and its imported GBeebies wet fucking flag-shagging dream.
We’re supposed to forget the three kids slaughtered in their classroom on the very same day, their blood already washed off the gym floor, because hell, in his own words previously when other kids were shot, it was a second amendment right. t We’re supposed to forget the two Black men found hanging from trees, their families begging for justice as the police shrug. We’re supposed to forget the thousands of Palestinians starved, bombed, and bulldozed, their lives reduced to rubble while Western leaders nod along. We’re supposed to swallow the idea that one man’s blood matters more than all of theirs combined.
And the British commentariat, those odious slimy Fleet Street hacks step up to play their part too. You had columnists in the Times and the Telegraph solemnly intoning about the dangers of 'rhetorical radicalisation'. You had Labour MPs lining up on Twitter to condemn 'extremism', but not a single word about right wing violence both here and in the US, where it thrives. These are the same MPs who call Palestine Action 'terrorists' for throwing red paint, who vote for arms sales to Israel, who sneer at Black Lives Matter marches as 'identity politics'. Their outrage isn’t moral; it’s selective and it's fucking shameful.
There's something really wrong with the Americans. but this is off the scale.
That’s the real obscenity. And it’s not just obscenity, it’s complicity. Because every time the narrative is warped around the violent death of a powerful man while the deaths of the powerless are ignored, the hierarchy of whose lives matter is reinforced. Every time the press amplifies the grief of leaders like Netanyahu or Orbán while muting the voices of lynching victims’ families, the system of white supremacy and imperial violence is strengthened.
Charlie Kirk lived by the sword of hate and fear. He made his living weaponising division, stoking paranoia, sneering at the vulnerable. He drowned out reason with bile. And he died violently, as America itself is dying violently. There’s no triumph in that. Only irony.
The problem is not that he is being mourned, the problem is who else has not been, because in the end, this isn’t about Kirk. It’s about narrative control. It’s about what stories get told, and whose blood counts. It’s about turning one far-right blowhard into a symbol, while the daily carnage of American guns, American racism, and American empire is quietly shuffled off the page.
So are we mate ... the ignorant drivel you put out is weapons grade
And the next time some public school prick in Westminster or some slimy pundit in Fleet Street wants to wring their hands about 'political violence', we should all remind them of what they never mention. We should remind them of the violence they don't condemn. Their outrage isn’t moral. It’s selective. It’s calculated and it makes them every bit as complicit as the bastards they pretend to mourn.
So no, I won’t be lighting a candle for Charlie Kirk. I didn't want him dead but I won't mourn his passing either. I’ll save my sympathy for those who deserve it. And I’ll save my scorn for the hypocrites who cry over Kirk but turn their faces away from all the rest.
Because if there’s one thing Charlie Kirk’s death reveals, it’s this: we live in a world where power grieves for its own, and only for its own. The rest of us? We’re malleable, gaslit and expendable.
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