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- When is violence political?
I really considered whether to write about Charlie Kirk — a white nationalist and conspiracy theorist — being murdered, and thought hard about what information was important for us, as people in Australia, to know about all this. I’ve settled on three things.
1. Kirk’s martyrdom is very unlikely
They’ve got a suspect in custody now. Tyler Robinson is a 22-year-old local, who comes from a Mormon and traditionally conservative, old-school Republican family. All the vitriol and bloodlust that was pouring out of MAGA personalities and the “new Right” when they thought the killer was left-wing has suddenly disappeared now that a young white man is in custody.
A lot of people were talking about Kirk’s killing becoming some sort of Archduke Ferdinand-style turning point in the US. I didn’t think that was likely before, but now that the suspect is a young white guy it’s probably off the table. You can already see Trump and others losing interest in it. Instead they will focus their fury on Democrats, leftists and normal people online who have told the truth about Kirk online…
…but they were already doing that. The alt-right have already been doxxing and sending death threats to minorities, progressives, academics, journalists, politicians, pretty much anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Not to be dismissive of the fear people feel in the US right now, but Kirk’s murder won’t change the trajectory of the country because it was already pretty far down a dark path.
It’s been crazy to watch political commentators and influencers worrying that Kirk’s death will make things more violent. More violent for who? Brown people have been kidnapped off the street in broad daylight by ICE agents since January. For Black, Indigenous, brown, disabled and queer people, political violence was just as real the day before Kirk’s murder as it was the day after.
2. Left-right binaries don’t apply here
This murder — like many incidences of gun violence — doesn’t fit the ‘normal’ left-right political binary. The authorities and some of the American media are claiming that Robinson’s gun was covered in “anti-fascist” messages but that is not true. The messages are actually chronically online gamer memes that have been misinterpreted by police and media who don’t understand the culture these slogans come from. Ryan Broderick has a really good piece about it here.
There are currently rumours that Robinson is a ‘groyper’ — that’s the term for a follower of Nick Fuentes, another far-right political figure who is even more of an extremist than Kirk. So far this rumour is unconfirmed. But what is clear is Robinson’s act of violence can’t be neatly labelled “Team Democrat” or “Team MAGA” because those are not the only labels. That’s why MAGA and the alt-right are losing interest, because if this turns out to be right-on-right crime, they can’t score the easy political points (and they can’t just lie about him because he’s young, white and male).
Also, there is every possibility that Robinson has no coherent political ideology at all. It possible this is simply violence for the sake of violence. Violence as a meme. An internal rage that desires external chaos. As Broderick writes (you really should read that piece): “Many young extremists now believe in a much simpler binary: Order and chaos.”
3. American nationalism & the willingness to kill
Political violence is normal in the US — it has been constant throughout their history. I watched an informative video about this by American bioethicist Evan Thornburg. Below is a (lightly edited) transcript with some of my own notes added in. You can watch the full video here.
* * *
“Dr Carolyn Marvin, who is a professor of communications, alongside Dr David Ingles, who is a doctor of psychology, wrote this book called Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. In it they introduced this idea of nationalism being a form of civil religion — how Americans engage with nationalism or patriotism in the same way that people engage with religion.
The important thing in a civil religion (as with all religions) is this idea that two things must exist: the willingness to take life, and the willingness to sacrifice oneself/life. It is conceptual — it doesn’t mean all religions enact physical violence, but the idea is that you are willing to lay down your life or you are willing to protect the religion at all costs.
The US is very fond of this idea of sacrifice and bloodletting. You see it in slogans like ‘Some gave some, all gave some’. All of the language we use in nationalism indicates that people were willing to sacrifice themselves or to harm others at the behest of the state. That's the one place where you get permission to do physical harm.”
This is truly the American way. I don’t believe Australians subscribe to nationalism as a civil religion in the same way. Probably the closest we have is the ANZAC legend, and that has ‘mateship’ as its core pillar. White nationalists here try to whip it up, but asking people to get violent for ‘mateship’ is a tough sell.
“For individuals it is immoral to take life, that would be seen as aggression. Especially in a nation that has a history of colonization and apartheid design, another component of this is ‘barbarism’. Not only is physical violence immoral, it's also seen as ‘uncivilized’. It is the behavior of a primitive group, a group that is less than and can be dehumanised. Because a civilized group uses diplomacy, treaties, democratic tools, healthy debate, all of that.
That creates a loophole for oppressors to morally enact physical violence on others and be able to defend it to their religion (or god) and to each other. The loophole is pre-emption — the protect the larger group from the threat of that dehumanised population that has been labelled ‘barbaric’ because their response to oppression has been acts of violence.”
The Australian government, military and police use pre-emptive violence against climate protesters. Perhaps the national ‘civil religion’ is mining? Could be something in that…
“That brings us to the rhetoric of harm and violence. Part of the civil religion is proving that you are patriotic by being willing to sacrifice oneself or being willing to take life in pursuit of protecting the nation. That has led to this constant ratcheting up of very violent rhetoric, using very war-based, violence-based or combat-based language. ‘Fighting for’, ‘defending’, ‘vengeance’, ‘harm’, ‘danger’, ‘peril’... This language that is meant to represent physical threat has been normalized in a lot of very polarized media — everything from legacy media (across the political spectrum) and also in content creation with influencers and people who make things like debate content.
The trouble with violent rhetoric is that it encourages what's called ‘Stochastic Terrorism’. Charlie Kirk’s murder is the result of Stochastic terrorism having a full life cycle. The language of war and violence at some point inspires the actual violence towards someone or some group. The key component of stochastic terrorism is that the person creating, ratcheting up and investing in the rhetoric that inspires the act does not control the output. So they know that they're using language that inspires acts of violence, but they can't tell you when, by whom, or how many times it will happen and that creates danger for everyone.
The reason why someone might take the rhetoric to its forseeable conclusion is because a person sees or hears what's being suggested through harsh, violent rhetoric and understands that if they want to be further included in the group they might have to see the language through to its conclusion of a physical act.”
People who inflame anger through dogwhistles and violent language seem to think two things: 1) that ‘political violence’ only be done to public figures, and 2) the violence they hint at will be done to others, not to themselves. But when you fan the flames of violence, it doesn’t always burn in the direction you want.
The shock we’re seeing from people like debate influencers Dean, Parker and Tilly; journalist Ezra Klein; and Elon Musk, Dave Portnoy, etc is these people realising it’s not just rhetorical, and violence can happen to them.
“The reason why you're seeing everybody from debate bros to legacy media running to provide a more neutral version of Charlie Kirk’s legacy is because they are not on ‘opposite’ sides. They are in a marriage across ideology that is necessary to create the conditions for both of them having success. It’s why you see in election campaigns one group will talk about how the other group is a threat to democracy and our lives, but then the day after the election they will be congratulatory and talk about working together harmoniously. These groups will always need each other for success. So the horror that you're seeing from them is the fact that it was never supposed to become physical, it was always supposed to remain rhetorical and ritualistic, as part of serving the civil religion that is nationalism.”
Speaks for itself really.
Long newsletter today, thanks for reading through!
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