Donald Trump speaks at an event organised by Turning Point, which Charlie Kirk founded in the US (Picture: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
“Charlie Kirk being assassinated is the American Reichstag fire,” says far right writer Matt Forney. It’s one of many terrifying calls for a wave of repression after far right pundit Kirk was shot dead on Wednesday.
Hitler and the Nazis used a fire at the Reichstag, the German parliament, on 27 February 1933 to tighten their grip on power. They banned the Communist Party and rounded up thousands of socialists, trade unionists and political opponents.
Forney went on to demand the arrest of Democratic politicians and the banning of the neoliberal party.
These calls aren’t limited to bloggers, but those with close links to the Trump administration.
One such conservative campaigner, Christopher Rufo, writes, “Last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years.
“It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”
Hoover—who rose to lead the US’s secret police, the FBI—launched two waves of state repression against the left in the 1919 and in the 1950s.
Another far right campaigner close to Trump, Laura Loomer, wrote, “The best way Trump can reinforce Charlie’s legacy is by cracking down on the left with the full force of the government.
“We can’t allow for these people to live among us in society. If you threaten people over their political views, you should be jailed for 25 years or more.”
Fascist Steve Bannon, who has influence on the right wing of the Trumpist movement, declared, “We are at war in this country.”
Trump and the far right want to canonise Kirk as a martyr. The Nazis sought to immortalise Horst Wessel, a Brownshirt paramilitary thug, in songs and speeches after he was shot by Communists.
A similar process of far right martyrdom is taking place with Kirk by painting him as a victim of the far left.
As Trump said, “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
He continued, “We have a radical left group of lunatics out there, just absolute lunatics, and we’re going to get that problem solved.”
What will this “solution” be? Round-ups of the left? We have already seen Trump straying into authoritarianism, from using federal troops to his own ends to pushing the limits of executive powers.
Deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau has warned that the US would take action against those abroad “praising, rationalising, or making light” of Kirk’s death. He said they would not be “welcome visitors in our country”.
In Britain, too, the fascists and far right are using Kirk’s shooting to mobilise. Nazi Tommy Robinson who plans to march in London on Saturday posted, “No retreat no surrender. We are all Charlie Kirk—our time is now.”
This far right response hammers home that now is not the time for the left to “build bridges” or “tone down the rhetoric”.
Now is not the time for “peace and love”, “civility” in public life or recognising how “we’re all human after all”.
A gang of far right gang of racists, sexists and transphobes want to go on the rampage against the left, organised labour and social movements.
Nick Freitas, the Republican Virginia state delegate, wrote that Kirk’s killing is a turning point in a post shared in fascist Proud Boy Telegram channels. He said that the assassination will be “remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is”.
Freitas continued, “It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.”
We are indeed in a war against Trump, the far right and the system that spawned them—and it’s one our side has to win.
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