Content Warning: Description of real death. Click to expand section.
Far-right power broker, Charlie Kirk, got shot at an event yesterday. R rang me up, having an almost euphoric sound to her voice, and said he was dead and that she'd seen the video of it happen. I immediately went into "datahoarder" mode and told her, "girl, this is gonna get scrubbed off the internet and fast; you gotta save it." She found an alternative angle off Instagram and sent it to me. While I wouldn't recommend this video for just anyone to watch, it was a pretty vindicating experience for me personally. If you didn't know much about Charlie Kirk, you can say his name in the same breath as Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. He's— rather, he was one of those people. A faux-Christian trustfunder activist who gained fame through fascist behaviour. Like R said, he was shot. He was in the middle of a transphobic tirade when someone capped him in the neck, and blood gushed out of his carotid artery exactly like Saving Private Ryan. He briefly brought his arm up to his neck in reaction, but lost consciousness and presumably died before the camera could pan away to show the crowd running around in a frenzy. Poetic justice, considering how pro-gun he was, to be killed in an act of gun violence.
I have since been informed by a reader that the arm-raising was most likely a decorticate response, rather than anything that was done consciously. According to Wikipedia, "Decorticate posturing indicates that there may be damage to areas including the cerebral hemispheres, the internal capsule, and the thalamus. It may also indicate damage to the midbrain." Therefore, he was most likely dead a second or two after the bullet hit him.
I've been generally avoiding talking about this and interacting with posts where it was mentioned, mostly because trans women have been terminated off websites for less. But like I said, I've been in datahoarding mode. Videos, audio clips, news articles, memes, anything I feel is in danger of being sanitised from the internet. During my travels around Tumblr and reddit nicking things for the datahoard, I've seen a lot of people complaining that Charlie Kirk was the wrong target. "Great shot, wrong target" says one random Bluesky user. What? You would prefer if some higher-profile target was killed instead? Maybe someone in the US federal government? What would that accomplish exactly? Donald Trump has been spending the past 9 years assembling loyal yes-men and the past 9 months installing them in key positions throughout the federal government. If any of them are killed, another is there to take their place. Even the top post itself will not benefit from an assassination, since the 25th Amendment makes the power succession very clear. If Trump is killed, JD Vance takes his place. Ew. So, let's take this to an absurdist extreme, shall we? Let's assume there's some hypothetical assassin lurking behind the curtains in the Oval Office who kills anyone who sits at the desk. Let's look at the succession of presidents, shall we? As we saw, JD Vance comes first; far-right senator from Ohio whose rhetoric is nearly indistinguishable from Unlucky Chucky, only with extra racism and queerphobia. So, our shadowy assassin leaps into action, badda-bing, badda-boom, JD Vance is sleepin' wit' da fishes. Who's next? Well, Wikipedia provides us with a very concise listing of the presidential line of succession, wherein Trump's handiwork can be seen with clarity at a glance:
The implications of this list are pretty clear: the fascist power structure at the federal level is too deeply entrenched to be affected by assassinations. Our hypothetical assassin would have to get everybody on this list, and that's just too much work even for someone who only exists in our imaginations. Assuming that it were done, the next ones in line are the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, quite honestly, I don't want to live in a military junta.
In any case, saying stuff like "good shot, wrong target" minimises the importance of Charlie Kirk's rhetoric. This was not some small-time Asmongold wannabe with a handful of social media subscribers, Charlie Kirk was a fascist power-broker. He directly advised Donald Trump in reference to who should be in his cabinet and who should be leading agencies and departments, and Trump acted based upon Kirk's recommendations. He was the founder of the largest purely political fascist think-tank in the country, whose organisation was given actual power by Trump's Department of Education. You could call him the architect of Fascist America. And now, he is dead.
Still not convinced? Let's put it another way. Do you think anyone intermed at Auschwitz would have objected if someone shot and killed Josef Mengele? The initial form of Wikipedia's article about the assassination drew parallels to the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO, Brian Thompson; and the 2 assassination attempts on Donald Trump. Essentially, it shows the beginnings of a breakdown of the public confidence in the fascist power structure. Quite honestly, I feel this was the correct target. You can't stop tree rot by continually cutting off diseased branches, you have to take down the whole tree and dig out the surrounding soil before planting a new sapling. What happened to Charlie Kirk was the chainsaw hitting the tree.
If you're still on the fence about whether to join the world's leaders in eulogising Charlie Kirk or to throw a party and play the footage of his death on repeat, read this piece by Riza @ gremlin.neocities. I think you'll come to the same conclusions that I did.