In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting in Utah last week, Donald Trump and the far right want to unleash a wave of repression against the left and marginalized.
“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 FBI—launched two waves of state repression against the left in 1919 (the “Red Scare” with massive raids and deportations of suspected leftists), and in the 1950s (the McCarthyist witch hunts of Communists, resulting in mass firings, purging the left from the union movement, and the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg). Hoover also supported the “COINTELPRO” harassment of the new left in the 1960s, including the cold-blooded murder of many Black Panthers.)
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.”
Steve Bannon, who has a more thought out fascist ideology and 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 canonize Kirk as a martyr. The Nazis sought to immortalize 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, rationalizing, or making light” of Kirk’s death. He said they would not be “welcome visitors in our country.”
Trumpism has always been an American aspect of an international authoritarian trend, and the right’s use of Kirk’s death has international effects. In Britain, the fascist Tommy Robinson, who has planned a provocative march in London today posted, “No retreat no surrender. We are all Charlie Kirk—our time is now.” Groups there are organizing to oppose his march.
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 recognizing how “we’re all human after all.”
A gang of far-right racists, sexists and transphobes want to go on the rampage against the left, organized labor and social movements.
Some of the far-right voices calling for civil war are repeating empty threats they have made many times before, but are getting a bigger hearing. There are still divisions in the ruling class about how far to take this. Spencer Cox, the conservative Mormon Republican governor of Utah, where Kirk was killed, spoke against a rising tide of political violence and rhetoric of revenge. He is keen to maintain some sort of conservative stability, and have the state retain its monopoly on violence. But his praise of Trump and Kirk still helps to justify the more radical elements.
The dangerous vilification of Kirk’s opponents is also supported by the response of Democratic politicians and mainstream press who feel they have to whitewash Kirk now. After his death, the Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom outrageously posted that he “admired his passion and commitment” and practice of “good-faith debate.” New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein said he sometimes disagreed with Kirk but heralded the hate-monger as “practicing politics the right way.” This provides no counter to Kirk’s martyrdom, and the associated targeting of the left – and even Democrats and mainstream press – now taken up by a large portion of the Republican Party.
When asked about the threats of right-wing radicals in a Friday morning interview, Trump answered “I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.” Separately he told reporters “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”
Nick Freitas, the Republican Virginia state delegate, wrote that Kirk’s killing is a turning point in a post shared in 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. Having this fight devolve into acts of individual terror would be disastrous for the left, and the entire working class. This is not a time to retreat from radicalism, but to assist in building collective self-activity of the working class and the oppressed.
There is a pressing need to build united fronts against the right. While the right’s rhetoric is having a radicalizing effect on their base, the majority finds this uncomfortable and certainly does not want to see a civil war. A majority oppose his sending the National Guard into cities. Support for Trump’s deportation policies has fallen to a minority with the visible cruelty of the ICE raids. Active opposition to these raids is having an effect across the country, but needs to be expanded.
Ultimately for our side to win we must build, out of these struggles, organization against this entire exploitative, oppressive, and crisis-prone system.
A version of this article as published earlier at Socialist Worker. All additions here are by Marx21 (US).
Marx21 US 