Myth, martyrs and the 'armor of God'
The American right laid Charlie Kirk to rest on Sunday, and laid out their vision for a Christo-fascist future.
It’s a common joke to take a photo or a video of something the president or one of his people says or does on any given day and say something like, “Imagine explaining this to someone” 20, 10 or even five years ago.
The joke works because it’s simple. It points out the absurdity of our increasingly strange and disturbing politics. The White House will post a video of a professional wrestler spraying water from his mouth like he’s entering an arena on Monday Night Raw and it looks like something from a bad 80s action movie. Kid Rock will visit the Oval Office in an American flag suit and pose with the president at the Resolute Desk. The joke works in these circumstances — and many more — because it forces us to reflect on how abnormal this all is. But the joke wouldn’t be funny if it simply pointed out our detachment from what was once thought of as normal.
The joke only works if it’s juxtaposed with something cartoonishly tacky, downright strange, or shockingly stupid. Luckily, for the purposes of flippant online comedy, all three of these aesthetics are in bountiful supply in Donald Trump’s second presidency.
The latest entry in this very specific way to capture the absurdity and danger of American politics came yesterday in Glendale, Ariz., where 73,000 people gathered in a football arena to mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk.
The marquee speaker was the president, who entered as pyrotechnics shot sparks into the air, and Lee Greenwood sang “Proud to Be An American.”
Beyond the classlessness of Trump’s entrance — imagine allowing such a display at a memorial service for your husband or father — the president’s presence there was notable for an entirely different reason: he was there to kiss the ring of Kirk, a troublingly powerful figure who has built an empire of right-wing youth and their all-important voting power based on the fundamentals of bigotry and Christian nationalism.
Kirk took these beliefs — typically reserved for old, angry white men like Trump who cannot or will not come to terms with a changing world — and successfully marketed them to his massive audience of young, angry white men.
Those men are now growing up in a political environment that is not based on mere policy disagreements, but a belief that they are engaged in a battle between good and evil.
Specifically, they’re calling for a Christian nationalist culture war in order to “save western civilization.” Kirk’s side believes they can win, essentially, by owning the libs like he did in all his viral debate-me confrontations. But that was just the messaging front in this war. The second Trump administration is carrying out its particulars, which are meant to punish the opposition and silence dissent.
With Trump they have a savior — even a mythic one who survived an assassin’s bullet. In Kirk they have their martyr. Trump told the crowd on Sunday that the bullets in the gun of Kirk’s assassin were meant just as much for all of them as they were for him.
Meanwhile, Kirk was also elevated to the role of messiah. Jack Posobiec, a third-rate version of Kirk who has made his millions and gained his influence on the back of a conspiracy about Democrats sexually abusing children in a Washington DC pizza restaurant — a marquee event in the lore of the American right’s narrative of good versus evil — implored the mourners on Sunday to don the “armor of God.”
Posobiec compared Kirk to Moses, leading his people to the “promised land” of a new America in which everyone believes what he and Kirk believe — even though Kirk’s murder meant he would never see these chosen people reach their destination on earth. Then, Posobiec compared Kirk to Christ himself, noting that both had sacrificed their own lives for the benefit of their flock.
Posobiec and others said Kirk’s killing would be looked back upon as a pivotal event in their battle for the future. Part Christ, part Martin Luther King, Kirk and his Turning Point USA were made immortal on Sunday.
In typical right-wing fashion, those gathered in Glendale were both overestimating their role in history and professing their misguided belief in their own importance. This, despite the absurd display of Trump dancing onto the stage to YMCA, plus other circus-like spectacles inside and out of the arena.
While all this seems like a joke to those of us watching from the realm of reason, it’s anything but to the true believers.
Kirk’s part of this authoritarian movement encouraged many younger Americans to gamify politics: you either win or you lose. There is no middle, which means there is no compromise with the other side, which means that to win you have to crush your opponent entirely.
This is obviously bad for democracy and portends a violent future. The movement that has metastasized under Trump, who does not understand it beyond the terms that he should get to decide what everything in this country looks like, was furthered by Kirk and many others into a full-fledged fascist ideology. The movement now has everything that fascist movements throughout history have had: iconography, specific enemies, religious nationalism, and an over-arching plan to remake all of society, from art and speech to rules and laws, in their own vision.
Unfortunately, none of this is a joke.
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