They so badly wanted Kirk's killer to NOT be a cis white man
"Bad stuff happens" was how Utah Gov. Spencer Cox described Charlie Kirk's killing last week.
In a speech that's garnering lavish praise for promoting unity in contrast to Donald Trump's war on the left, Cox revealed his hand, saying, "for 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn’t be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country. Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for..."
He hoped it wouldn't be "one of us." By which he obviously means a cisgender white man. But it was.
Watch Cox's speech and judge for yourself:
Cue the lengthy humanizing and nuanced portrait of the 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, Kirk's suspected killer, in The New York Times – the same paper that eulogized Black police victim Mike Brown of Ferguson, Missouri as "no angel."
From the moment Kirk was killed until the moment his suspected killer was captured, conservatives promised "war" because they assumed Kirk was killed by someone resembling the rest of us. The movement that has made political violence mainstream, that has centered racism, transphobia and misogyny in its assault on American democracy is lecturing the nation about political violence.
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Cox ought to be confronted with the question of what he would have done had the killer been his dream assassin: a transgender undocumented Black immigrant, for example. Would he have called for unity?
In his speech he quoted Kirk at length, cherry picking the white supremacist's speeches to lift up expressions of understanding: "When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to commit violence," said Kirk apparently.
Unsurprisingly, Cox failed to point out the many dehumanizing statements that Kirk made a living off of:
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of Kirk's ugly legacy, one that Trump and the conservative movement embodies.
Trump will be Trump, and unsurprisingly will not let a little thing like reality get in the way of his agenda. He and his ilk have promised to punish the left, promised to prosecute, ban, deport, anyone who spoke ill of their racist white supremacist martyr. The party that decried "cancel culture" and claimed to uphold free speech is threatening to strip anyone who disagrees with them of rights. And that ought not to surprise us. This is part of Kirk's legacy.
Media Matters for America has a good collection of documented hate speech by Charlie Kirk:
It is also unsurprising that liberals have fallen in line with the Trump Republicans, rewriting Kirk's legacy, from The New York Times' Ezra Klein who decided that Kirk was "practicing politics the right way," to California Gov. Gavin Newsom who decided that "we should all feel a deep sense of grief and outrage" at Kirk's killing and that "the best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work." And in many ways, centrist liberals are continuing Kirk's legacy by appeasing rightwing extremists and throwing those of us who are women, people of color, LGBTQ+. immigrants under the bus in their eagerness to praise the late Kirk.
On the same day Kirk was killed, a teenager who was apparently radicalized online went on a shooting rampage in Evergreen Senior High School in Colorado, terrorizing students and leaving several critically injured. Kirk once said, "I think it’s worth it. 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."
On Friday my own children came home from school and reported that they spent part of their day on lockdown, hiding under desks and locking doors due to a "swatting" incident. Police were called in and the kids and teachers did what they were trained to do: hide in case of gun violence.
The conservative movement in the U.S. is a death cult and Kirk, Trump and their ilk have been its champions. So have their moderate and centrist liberal apologists such as Cox, Klein, and Newsom.
P.S. This week on Rising Up With Sonali, I'll be interviewing one of the many people Kirk and his followers terrorized and targeted.
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this writing I referred to Tyler Robinson as a "straight white man." As there is no evidence confirming his stated sexual orientation, I have edited this post accordingly to reflect that he is a cisgender white man.