The Aftermath: Already Avenge Charlie is Rightwing mantra, By Hal M. Brown

 

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There is absolutely no doubt that there are unstable people “out there” who are prone to violence who may be prompted to seek revenge for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I woke up to two headlines on the HUFFPOST main page which were of grave concern to me. They are the third and fourth below:

This is the article about Trump: 

Excerpt:

President Donald Trump quickly placed blame for conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination on the rhetoric of the “radical left,” despite no evidence yet indicating the shooter’s motive.

In a video message posted by the White House on Wednesday evening, Trump mourned the loss of Kirk, a fierce ally of the president’s who helped Trump build support among young conservatives.

Trump said his administration would track down every person who “contributed to this atrocity.” He then went on to list several acts of violence he blamed on the “left,” including the 2024 assassination attempt against him, the shooting at a congressional baseball team practice in 2017 that left Rep. Steve Scalise injured and the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.

“Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” Trump said.

Trump did not mention any of the many recent examples of violence against left-leaning politicians, including the shooting of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota this summer.

The article also included two references that I’d omitted from yesterday afternoon’s Substack (which I have republished below).

Billionaire and erstwhile Trump ally Elon Musk offered a similar message to the president on X: “The Left is the party of murder.”

“THIS IS WAR,” declared Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik.

This is the other article:

It expands the list of people calling for vengeance which I posted yesterday adding a number of figures from the Right and concludes with someone expressing my fear:

Progressive streamer Hasan Piker, who was scheduled to debate Kirk later this month, raised concerns on Wednesday about the focus on retribution after the shooting.

“The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome,” he said.

As I write this Trump is commemorating the 9/11 attack. He began expressing grief over the death of Charlie Kirk and announced he would be posthumously awarding him the Medal of Freedom.

By elevating Kirk to a hero for freedom he is doing more than honoring him. He is making him a martyr and this fuels the desires for those inclined to avenge his death.

It certainly doesn’t help that we have our Secretary of State coming out with this:

Few if any sane people will “make light of Kirk’s death. 

The same applies to those who would belittle him. 

Again, all of this could lead a mentally unbalanced person to think that taking violent action against a public figure on either the Right of Left will make them a hero to their side.

He writes:

let me state right up top that political violence solves nothing, and only creates new problems — and oh boy, are we ever in a world of new problems.

right now, every establishment Democrat is denouncing political violence.

“Today’s act of political violence in Utah against Charlie Kirk is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we should all agree on this: political violence is wrong, and has no place in our democracy.”

as for the Republicans, I wish I could say the same — but they’re not. even though (again, as of this writing) we have no idea what motivated the unknown killer, these dimestore detectives have already decided who to blame — because of course they have.

“The Left is the party of murder.”

These are the lines from popular Substacker JOJOFROMJERZ’s personal and powerful essay about the killing abut why she cried when she heard about the shooting which stood out to me:

I didn’t cry because I loved Charlie Kirk — I didn’t. I cried because this is not what I want for my country. I cried because this is not what I want for anyone, anywhere. The tears came from grief, not for him, but for us — because this is not who we should be.

The reaction described in the above article is what I was afraid of when I wrote this morning’s Substack.

I am posting the Substack I wrote this morning again (below) since there has been a startling and horrifying event that relates directely to the subject I wrote about.

We don't yet know why someone shot Charlie Kirk. For all we know at this time he was shot by someone who knew him and had a personal grudge. More likely than that, he was shot for political reasons. This could be literally the first murder committed by the resistance, small or capital R, against Trump and Trumpism. 

When the shooter is identified depending on what is learned about their motivation this could go down in history as an example of extreme violence committed that has a parallel to what Resistance snipers did in World War II. 

The Resistance snipers, like snipers in other wars, target the highest value enemies that they can. While they can’t get to the top leaders because they are so protected, they try to kill the next highest level officers.

As far as an enemy could be concerned Charlie Kirk would be analogous to a front line colonel rather than a general. He is out and about without the protection a general would have.

I can only hope that the shooter turns out to be deranged. Otherwise if he has some kind of anti-MAGA agenda the country may be embarking on the darkest of violent dark times. I am fearful that this will usher in a police state that makes what Trump has created so far look like child's play.

This is already happening (read article)

Take the following excerpt from the article:

"The Left lectured us for the last decade about the dangers of violence from the Right," Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, postedon X. "From the assassination attempts of President Trump to Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO, being murdered. Now to Charlie Kirk. The danger was actually on the Left."

Then see how this way of thinking leads to this:

"I don’t think the Left knows what they’ve just started," political consultant Joey Mannarino posted on x.

What, indeed, is Mr. Mannarino suggesting that the Left has started? Is he saying “if you think we’ve had a police state, you ain’t seen nothing yet?”

Here’s another story along the same lines:

Excerpt:

"They are at war with us," Watters continued. "Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves."

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What can happen if lower case R resistance becomes upper case R Resistance? ICE agents may have turned tail and run in Rochester, but this is a dangerous precedent.

 

Excerpt from 'Gestapo!' Immigration agents swarmed and tires slashed in explosive standoff:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who moved to make an arrest in an upscale neighborhood of Rochester, New York, were blindsided as a crowd of angry protesters descended on them and vandalized their vehicles, according to WXXI.

"The group shouted 'shame' and 'Gestapo,' and applauded as agents in the ICE-led action drove a Border Patrol SUV away on four flat tires, which had been slashed," said the report. "One of the roofers was taken into custody, but agents left others apparently unchecked on the rooftop of the Westminster Road rental house."

The crowd in Park Avenue accosting ICE and CBP agents was said to be around 200 people.

Here’s another article:

This article has videos:

This is the first incident where citizens behaved something like the Resistance did during World War II. During the war the actions of the Resistance were planned and this was spontaneous. Resistance cells were small groups of men and women who conducted guerrilla warfare and published underground newspapers. 

The Resistance also spied on the Nazi and conveyed vital information to the Allies. 

Consider this from the DDay Center article: The Role of the French Resistance in Intelligence for the Allies: Strategies, Impact, and Legacy

The intelligence work of the French Resistance gave Allied forces critical details about German defenses, troop movements, and military plans. These men and women risked everything, collecting info on German positions along the Atlantic Wall, Wehrmacht deployments, and communication networks.

Their efforts helped Allied commanders make smarter decisions, saving lives and, honestly, probably shortening the war.

The story of French Resistance intelligence is full of ordinary people who became extraordinary spies when things got dangerous. University professors published underground newspapers, and farmers reported German troop movements.

These resistance fighters built networks that stretched all over occupied France. They worked with British and American intelligence, creating a tangled web of information sharing that played a crucial role in Allied victory.

Resistance spying was depcited in the Pulitizer Prize winning novel and NetFlix miniseries “All the Light We Cannot See” (reference). In the dramatic story a blind girl radioed coded messages about the Nazis to the Allies.

In real life well known entertainer, jazz singer Josephine Baker who was known as “The real Goddess,” became a spy for the French Resistance. Baker used her celebrity to gain access to high-ranking Axis officials. (Reference)

Lepa Svetozara Radić was a 17 year old Serbian Resistance fighter executed by the Nazis for shooting at German troops. This is from Wikipedia: 

“As her captors tied the noose around her neck, they offered her a reprieve from the gallows if she would reveal her comrades' and leaders' identities. She responded that she was not a traitor and that her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death.”

The Nazis made villagers pay with their lives when the Resistance had successes against them. Residents would be rounded up and be shot or hung in the town square. If one Nazi was killed by the Resistance, many more would be murdered in retribution. Bodies would sometimes be hung on utility poles and noone was allowed to cut them down.

This was all done to send a message to others who dared go against them, whether through sabotage or actual violence. 

For example: “When the Nazis Massacred Greek Civilians to Send a Warning to Those Who Resisted. German soldiers killed an estimated 500 Cretans in Viannos and Ierapetra in retaliation for an attack by local partisans.” (Read article)

In the photo above I was struck by how “The Butcher of Crete” bears more than a passing resemblance to Tom Homan.

How soon will it be before a non-bloody version of retribution for resistance to immigration actions happens here?

While there is a visceral satistfaction to be had in the story about what the residents in Rochester did, such actions are unwise. If people are to use the World War II Resistance as a model, it is best to limit themselves to what the spies did and not do anything that will give an excuse for Trump to escalate towards either something that might as well be martial law whether of not he actually declares it. 

The non-violent, though illegal, sharing of information that may help people avoid imminent ICE raids would be similar to what Resistance and other allied spies (like Churchill’s three female spies) did. 

Check back later… it’s 5:00 AM here and I haven’t even read the news…..

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