Transcription
This is Democracy Now. Democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We turn now to the fallout in the wake of the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The 22-year-old man accused of assassinating Kirk is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. Tyler Robinson was detained Thursday night after he reportedly confessed to his father, who then reached out to a youth pastor, who called the U.S. Marshals. Robinson is reportedly not cooperating with investigators and is being held under special watch in the Salt Lake City jail. Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University Wednesday. Authorities are still trying to determine a motive in the killing.
Tyler Robinson grew up in a deeply Republican family. Authorities say Robinson engraved messages into bullet casings with references to various online and video game memes. Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox claimed Robinson had leftist ideology but did not share any evidence. There's also been speculation Robinson may have been influenced by a far-right movement known as Groyper, which is tied to the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. This is Utah Governor Cox speaking Friday.
>> I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. And there is one person responsible for what happened here. And that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable.
While Utah Governor Spencer Cox said there's one person responsible for Charlie Kirk's killing, President Trump sent a very different message when he appeared on Fox News.
>> How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?
>> I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right often times are radical because they don't want to see crime. They don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious, and they're horrible, and they're politically savvy.
This weekend, Trump called for Democratic donor George Soros to be jailed. Trump's top advisor Steven Miller has also threatened to target and dismantle progressive organizations after Kirk's killing. Miller was on Fox News Friday.
>> The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fermenting violence. That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us. And we are going to do that.
Stephen Miller on Fox News. Supporters of Charlie Kirk have also launched sweeping campaigns to target people for making critical remarks about Kirk after his death. NPR reports at least 21 educators have already been fired, put on administrative leave, or placed under investigation by their employers. NBC News reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegs has urged his staff to identify any military members who mocked or condoned the killing of Kirk.
For more, we're joined here in New York by Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former foreign correspondent for The New York Times for over two decades, an award-winning author, a regular columnist for Scheer Post, where his most recent piece is headlined, "The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk." His most recent book, "A Genocide Foretold," reporting on survival and resistance in Occupied Palestine. Chris, welcome back to Democracy Now. Explain your headline and what your concerns are.
The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk about the horrific murder of Kirk.
>> Well, every you saw that him his murder weaponized even before the suspect was apprehended, and the quote-unquote radical left being blamed. Um, so in every conflict that I covered, martyrs were kind of the lifeblood of violent movements. Um, you hold up the martyr, and any shirking from purging the society through violence of those individuals or groups who are blamed for killing, the martyr is a betrayal of the martyr. And that's we saw that happen instantly. That's how Kirk's casket goes on Air Force 2. He's awarded the presidential, you know, Medal of Freedom. The flags are half-mast. I mean, and that's only accelerated. He comes out of the Christian nationalist movement, which I wrote about about a decade ago in my book "American Fascist: The Christian Right in the War in America." It's a movement I know very well. I'm also a seminary graduate. And, uh, I think we've reached a turn, a very frightening turning point. Uh, I think that he will, we've already seen an assault on civil liberties, on institutions, universities, the media that are tasked with maintaining an open society, that will now be accelerated. I don't take any of this rhetoric lightly. Uh, we, the, I look at it as three phases. First, we saw those who protested the genocide attacked as anti-Semites, although a significant percentage, 20, 30%, were probably Jewish. That was a way to shut down free speech. Then we saw undocumented workers being targeted and demonized as criminals and all this kind of stuff as a way to build Trump's version of the Brownshirts. This rogue paramilitary group ICE with all of these detention centers. I mean, the budget is now larger than all federal law enforcement agencies combined. ICE, these detention centers are not going to be exclusively for undocumented workers. And now we're seeing the radical left demonized to shut down individuals and organizations that dissent from our rap, the rapid consolidation of this police state or authoritarian state.
>> I want to go back to President Trump. Uh, this is the president speaking in Marstown, New Jersey, on the tarmac Sunday before boarding Air Force One.
>> Well, the problem is on the left. When you look at the problem, the problem is on the left. It's not on the right, like some people like to say on the right. The problem we have is on the left. And when you look at the agitators, uh, the, the, you look at the, the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that's the left, that's not the right.
>> So that's President Trump before there is any evidence revealed. Um, after Utah Governor Cox says we have to be very clear, this is the work of one person. I mean, for example, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City building and killed over 160 people, people didn't say they're going to go after white Christian men. Um, but what about what Trump, what Steven Miller is doing and saying they're going after leftist organizations? They're going talking about flag burning. Yeah. When was the last flag burning? I don't remember one.
>> Um, well, it's all fictitious. They, they've already started going after these organizations, but this has given them a green light to lift all constraints. And we've seen, uh, you know, a bill was the, uh, the Florida, what was his name, Best or Most, I don't remember this, in the House, where groups that supposedly provide material support to terrorism can have their citizenship revoked. Remember Tom Cotton right after 9/11 wanted to prosecute or go after mainstream media organizations, AP, CNN, The New York Times, for using pictures, graphic pictures from October 7th and from the genocide. So, the process has already begun. Universities such as Columbia have already capitulated, and CBS is about to be turned over to a rabid Zionist, and Bari Weiss, if everything goes through. We've already seen that assault, but now in the name of the martyr Charlie Kirk, I think that they will carry out activities that will essentially in the end, and look to Miller because he's the, Steven Miller is the one who's kind of organizing all of this, just as he has with the assault on undocumented workers and on immigrants. They will begin to shut down organizations. I'm, I'm sure they're not very happy with Democracy Now. They will, they essentially intend to create a, a closed society, a police state, an authoritarian state with under the rubric, with the kind of ideology of what I call Christian fascism. I mean, I label these Christian nationalists as heretics.
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale capitalized on Kirk's death to advocate for a takedown of the "red-green alliance" of communists and Islamists who, he claims, have united to destroy Western civilization. He proposes an app where citizens can upload pictures of crime and homelessness in exchange for property tax rebates.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the kind of lunacy, you know, it's the old, you know, the Vatican and the Masons and the Communists, you know, where where these subterranean dark groups all come together. The kind of idea that there's a left, far-left, radical left alliance with Islam is insane. It's absurd. Uh, but we've left the rational universe for one of magical thinking.
You quote in your piece Elon Musk who wrote on X, "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die."
>> Yeah, that's one of the interesting things. All this came out on my Substack, crusaders.com. So that, that's I found the quotes and again, remember this was before the suspect had been apprehended. There was almost a giddiness to it. Uh, you know, there I'm certainly certain that there were people who were upset about his death, but, uh, uh, they, Bannon and others, they, you know, there was almost an excitement about the launching, the war's already been launched, but really prosecuting this war on what's left of our anemic institutions tasked with defending an open society.
You wrote in your piece, "Kirk's killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration. His murder, given the movement he represented, grounded in Christian nationalism, a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending."
>> Yeah. And that, and from the moment he was killed, that was the essentially the role that he was given in terms of perpetuating this assault. Yeah.
Can you talk about what happened over the weekend at a vigil for Charlie Kirk in Huntington Beach, California, when the chant broke out, "White man, fight back," the intersection of white supremacy and Christian nationalism that Charlie Kirk represented? Again, um, we talk about this as he was horrifically assassinated this past week.
>> Yeah. Well, that hyper-masculinity is key to the movement, and there's great work by, I think, the way called "Male Fantasies," where he talks about the importance of hyper-masculinity to fascist movements, and Charlie Kirk, you know, he very much pushed this. He pushed Trump, for instance. He was one of the, you know, the principal agents of the Trump cult, fostering the Trump cult. And that hyper-masculinity is very much part of the Christian right. When I did my book, you would actually see pictures of kind of a very muscular Jesus. Uh, it, they embraced the jihad or the crusade against Muslims. These were during the wars in Iraq, writing Bible verses on guns and this kind of stuff. But that hyper-masculinity is key, and it appeals to disenfranchised white males. I mean, most of the country at this point, especially young people, are disenfranchised, but that it plays very well to white males.
Before we go, uh, you sat here watching, uh, Dr. Sak, who was the head of nursing in, uh, Gaza at Nasser Hospital, extremely gaunt. Our radio audience couldn't see that. And you talked with me at the break about, um, you haven't been a reporter in Salvador for The New York Times, and who you met.
>> The Times, but I wasn't with The New York Times in Salvador, but I was there for five years, and I shared my apartment with, uh, one of the founders of Medsandon, Alina Margolus. She was in the Warsaw Ghetto. She was married to Mark Adelman, who was the deputy commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And, uh, every story she told me about the Warsaw Ghetto fits at this point with Gaza, including the forced starvation and baiting people in the ghetto to get on the transports by giving them two kilos of bread and marmalade, which is exactly, they're using food, paltry amounts of food, as bait to lure starving Palestinians to the south of Gaza and putting them into these concentration camps.
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, award-winning author and activist, a regular columnist for Scheer Post. His most recent piece is headlined, "The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk." His most recent book, "A Genocide Foretold," reporting on survival and resistance in Occupied Palestine. Thanks for watching Democracy Now! on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to make sure you never miss a video. And for more of our audience-supported journalism, go to democracynow.org, or where you can download our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to the daily podcast, and so much.