276: Inventing Saint Charlie

Sep 25

Charlie Kirk became the latest victim of gun violence in America on September 10. And he wasn't the only person shot on a school campus that day, nor was he the only political figure killed this year.

Unlike Melissa Hortman and her husband, the motivation for Kirk’s murder remains unclear. That hasn’t stopped right-wing pundits and politicians from framing it as typical extremist left-wing violence.

In between calls for civil war and censorship, the ramping up of police-state authoritarianism, and painting of the slain Christian Nationalist activist as a noble martyr, anti-racist icon Ta-Nehisi Coates called out the strange reflex from some left-of-center figures (like Ezra Klein) to participate in whitewashing Kirk's hateful politics. Today we discuss what happened and what it might mean.