We're not going to get to 'unity' by pretending the murdered racist bigoted demagogue was merely making political points
..by whitewashing the hatred that Charlie Kirk and his followers thought was oh-so-clever and valid when wrapped in specious political rhetoric.
One example that sticks out to me was his denigration of black pilots where he remarked at the height of the arbitrary and dangerous cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration that, "If I see a Black pilot, I'm gonna be like 'boy, I hope he is qualified.'"
He later was reported to have added it was "not who I am, that's not what I believe," but said he was being made to react that way because he felt policies adopted by major companies regarding ethnic minorities meant less-qualified people were being given jobs with significant responsibility, including airline pilots.
That's not even a clever lie, and it represents just what these political splinters of maga are doing right now to portray the advancement of blacks, women, LGBTQ individuals and others traditionally left out or underrepresented in government and industry as placing unqualified people in positions of responsibility which is more than just an outrageous lie; it's a scheme to divide and marginalize entire classes, races, genders from our public life.
It's dressed up in complains about 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts which are a weak sop to these marginalized groups of individuals in America; but more importantly, represent government and businesses recognizing the folly and shortcomings of just drawing talent from a narrow pool of white male applicants, which self-described conservatives like Kirk believe should not only get priority in hiring, but should be considered superior by mere virtue of their light skin color, their birthplace, or their country of origin.
Kirk's producer, Blake Neff, blamed left-wing politics for Kirk's comments, saying it was the "reality the left has created."
It's no coincidence that the 'left' is being cynically blamed by maga this morning for inspiring or provoking someone to kill Charlie Kirk because some of us have had the temerity to point out the racist, bigoted screeds that political operatives who are associated with Trump's maga movement have adopted in their open efforts to basically pull down all of the progressive advancement this country has made legislatively and socially in the 20th century.
...some examples:
"America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first,” Kirk wrote on X on 2 September.
While many experts have accused Israel of starving the Palestinian people, Kirk has rejected this argument. “No, Israel is not starving Gazans,” Kirk said in July 2025. That same month, Kirk called images of starving children in Gaza “propaganda”, saying it’s “emotional, visual, optical warfare.”
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational,” Kirk said at the Turning Point USA Faith event on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church.
Appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, he claimed that young women do not value having children. He stated, “This is one of the reasons why we are seeing a fertility collapse in the West.”
https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/india-gaza-guns-why-charlie-kirk-controversial-13932800.html
Kirk adopted a traditional Christian conservative stance in his approach to many contemporary issues, telling an audience at a Trump election rally in Georgia last fall that Democrats “stand for everything God hates” and adding: “This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way.”
He also lashed out at the gay community, denouncing what he called the “LGBTQ agenda,” expressing opposition to same-sex marriage and suggesting that the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which endorses the execution of homosexuals, serves as “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
He also argued against gender-affirming care for transgender people and insisted there are only two genders, sporting a T-shirt at one Arizona rally last year that read: “xy = man.”
More recently, he discussed the burning of Pride flags, writing on X (Twitter): “We should work to overturn every conviction for those arrested, fined, or otherwise harassed for the ‘hate crime’ of doing donuts over Pride flags painted on public streets.
“It should be legal to burn a rainbow or Black Lives Matter flag in public.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/where-charlie-kirk-stood-on-guns-the-lgbt-community-and-the-future-of-the-united-states/ar-AA1MlKcF
Charlie Kirk made false accusations about exonerated “Central Park Five” defendant and NYC Council member Yusef Salaam.
After deleting an earlier post on X, Kirk insinuated that Salaam had been involved even though a court vacated his conviction in 2002. The initial post is still on Kirk's Telegram channel as of publication.
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-makes-false-accusations-about-exonerated-central-park-five-defendant-and
MANKATO, Minnesota (AP) — Charlie Kirk stood 80 miles from where George Floyd was murdered, faced an overwhelmingly white audience, and declared he was going to say things “no one dares say out loud.”
What followed was an avalanche of aspersions and debunked claims about Floyd, the Black man whose death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer set off a global reckoning over racial injustice and broad calls for change. But the white conservative agitator had a counter view: Floyd was a “scumbag,” he said, unworthy of the attention.
The insult lodged at Floyd, a 46-year-old father suspected of passing off a counterfeit $20 bill, was intended to be shocking. But anyone familiar with Kirk shouldn’t be surprised. For years, the conservative provocateur and his group, Turning Point USA, have built a following inflaming racial divides and stoking outrage. Kirk thrived during President Donald Trump’s tenure. He landed speaking spots at the Republican National Convention in 2016 and 2020 and occasionally counseled Trump on campaign messaging and tactics.
Now the 28-year-old is expanding his reach, trying to rally a next generation of aggrieved white conservatives. On a tour of college towns, he blasts schools and local governments for teaching about racism, with a confrontational style some call dangerous. Yet Kirk is drawing large crowds of millennials and Gen Zers, millions of online followers and donor cash, often with little media attention.
https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2021/11/18/charlie-kirk-exploits-racial-divide-to-reach-gen-z-4768434/
...it's an abomination of our political debate in this country that we're forced to argue against this new generation of privileged, wannabe segregationists who pine for an America that disappeared over a century ago.
It's even more pernicious that we're forced to re-argue our nation's social progress we've achieved through the animosity and division that Charlie Kirks are fomenting as we speak for their partisan political ambitions to dominate non-white Americans to try to regain the advantages they enjoyed when all of the 'DEI' individuals in America were subjugated and repressed by the tyranny of the white majority.
It's interesting how these words convey more meaning and importance in this moment of dangerous peril nation; for the democracy which many intend to protect and defend that progress we've made for historically marginalized people in this country once systematically divided away from the full benefit of America by our government and others.
Kirk and others who have been stalking Americans behind the cult of personality and power in the White House want to codify their newly revived racism and bigotry as legitimate political positions and debate.
You can't get there quoting the murdered Charlie Kirk.
Nor is it credible to legitimize any of his political efforts as 'seeking unity' while promoting nothing but division and denigration of so many Americans who he regularly portrayed as inferior to his white maleness. That's not an ideal which deserves inclusion into our political debate, it's what we need to fight against; what we need to remove from our social politics.
Kirk was unfairly murdered, perhaps for his rhetoric or beliefs, and that's an anathema to everything that Democrats have stood for in the decades we've represented our party as inclusive and progressive.
There's no need for Democrats to pull back on any of the debates and objections we had against the racism and bigotry Kirk and his ilk made the centerpiece of how they relate their republicanism to America.
His supporter look to want to wrap all that we abhorred about his divisive rhetoric into some indictment of Democrats for his assassination, but we've never failed to condemn gun violence, even as Kirks own republican dictum wouldn't allow any effort to regulate weapons most likely similar to the one that took his life.
Our politics intends to sustain and protect the Kirks in America, despite our political differences. It's a further tragedy that, for some, his killing has only deepened their resolve to continue promoting and amplifying those divisions the murdered republican activist fomented against so many Americans.
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