Essay: Speak Truth of the Dead
Turning Point USA Co-Founder Charlie Kirk speaks during a campaign rally, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
Charlie Kirk is dead. Good riddance.
The Patron Saint of the Male Debate Me Industrial Complex died doing what he loved–spewing hate and incitement at a debate. Kirk’s last words before someone shot him in the neck at a “Prove Me Wrong” debate at Utah Valley University were of hate against transgender people, one of the many communities he has targeted.
The man who urged supporters in 2023 during the Biden administration to “Buy weapons. Buy ammo. If you go into a public place, bring a gun with you,” because “You have a government that hates you, you have a traitor as the president” was killed during the administration of Trump, for whom he rallied young supporters, by someone who bought a weapon, bought ammunition, took the gun to Kirk’s public appearance and turned that gun against him.
As I said, good riddance.
I will not whitewash the white supremacist that was Charlie Kirk. For someone so young, what an embarrassment of hatreds he left us to excoriate him with.
The United States is talented at political amnesia. It kicks in especially virulently when someone odious dies. That amnesia comes too readily to those who were least affected by the now dead person’s danger. Exhibit A: California Governor Gavin Newsom, a white cisgender, heterosexual, wealthy man who in a bid to court the manosphere and broligarchy et al as he eyes a Democratic presidential nomination had Charlie Kirk on his podcast earlier this year.
“I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate. His senseless murder is a reminder of how important it is for all of us, across the political spectrum, to foster genuine discourse on issues that deeply affect us all without resorting to political violence,” Newsom said.
Only a wealthy and powerful white man unaffected by Kirk’s dangerous hate and ideology could find anything to “admire” about his “passion and commitment to debate,” as if debate were just words that had no ramifications on real people’s lives; only words that were not themselves a form of political violence.
The Male Debate Me Industrial Complex loves to debate because it is rarely, if ever, their humanity that is up for debate.
The United States is talented at political amnesia. It kicks in especially virulently when someone odious dies. That amnesia comes too readily to those who were least affected by the now dead person’s danger.
As if Charlie Kirk were the only victim of political violence, as if the right-wing activist did not himself engage in political violence against the multiple communities he targeted with his hate—his racism was political violence, his misogyny was political violence, his bigotry was political violence,
Men like Newsom, and Trump who was unsurprisingly effusive in eulogising Kirk, do not recognise the hate and incitement that Kirk peddled in as political violence. Only guns and bullets qualify as political violence for them. And for Trump–who incited and inspired the violent insurrection on January 6, 2021–it is a violence that he recognises as perpetrated only by his opponents, rather than the ICE thugs his regime sends to terrorise migrant communities, or the political violence he used to abduct, detain, and deport anti-genocide protestors.
I will not whitewash the white supremacist that was Charlie Kirk. For someone so young, what an embarrassment of hatreds he left us to excoriate him with.
What is there to admire in the “passion and commitment to debate” of a virulent racist like Kirk who said “"If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified,” and “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” and claimed that deaths from the Texas floods “would not have been as high if it wasn’t for” diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives”
What is there to admire in the “passion and commitment to debate” of a blatant misogynist Christian zealot like Kirk who extolled the subordination of women, telling girls and young women, “Young ladies need to be willing to submit to a godly man when you meet one. And if you're not willing to do that, then you've got to pray about that,” and would exhort those girls and young women to focus more on getting married and having children than on earning degrees and having careers?
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes Turning Point USA (TPUSA), which Kirk co-founded as “a hard-right student organization known for throwing flashy, expensive, multiday conferences primarily targeting young people.”
“These events regularly platform xenophobic, racist, sexist, homophobic and other hateful views. The nonprofit has links to Southern Poverty Law Center-identified extremists as well as prominent conservative politicians, including President Donald Trump,” SPLC said.
As if Charlie Kirk were the only victim of political violence, as if the right-wing activist did not himself engage in political violence against the multiple communities he targeted with his hate—his racism was political violence, his misogyny was political violence, his bigotry was political violence,
What is there to admire in the “passion and commitment to debate” of a bigot like Kirk who cheered the far-right boycott of Target over the retailer’s Pride collection — which included trans-friendly youth apparel and other LGBTQ-positive gear — for what he decried as “their support for grooming kids,” when that same bigot accepted corporate sponsorship from a registered sex offender convicted of attempted “coercion and enticement” after trying to persuade “a minor female” to “engage in sexual activity.”
Instead of the truth about how dangerous he was, instead of how much hate and incitement he whipped up during his life, we hear eulogies and platitudes demanding we refrain from speaking ill of the dead. As if that dangerous and now dead person did not speak plenty of ill about so many of us during his life.
Fuck that.
That is how the worst among us is whitewashed.
As if death were a penance that erased the damage he inflicted while alive; a wand that abracadabra’d away his danger. The worst among us who are still alive must know that we will remember the worst in him, that he will be known for the worst things he said and did, and that we will not succumb to political amnesia.
Charlie Kirk took the most repugnant white Christian nationalist zealotry from the places it festered in the odious margins and moved it to the Trumpian mainstream, becoming a millionaire who moved into a $4.75 million estate in the process.
Speak ill of him. It is the truth.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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PREACH!
My immediate reaction to his demise was "those who live by the sword, die by the sword' which obviously applies to guns too.
We will have to speak up loudly to remind people that he was a vile racist white nationalist. But with all your resources here that'll be easy. Thank you!
THANK YOU.