Cleansing the past

Will Charlie Kirk’s death — and life — be remembered in full?

Horst Wessel

Young, good-looking and charismatic enough to impress his party’s elders while rallying lots of other young people to their cause, this passionate true believer was gunned down by people he had long attacked as enemies. As he lay dying, a backer released a statement saying he had been assaulted by “degenerate communist subhumans.”

In death, however, the assassinated man – the son of a Christian minister and a woman whose family included ministers — proved especially useful to his party. His funeral was filmed and turned into a major propaganda event as he was declared a martyr. The party’s top leader called his sacrifice to the “a monument more lasting than stone and bronze.”

The man was Horst Wessel, a Nazi party enthusiast who was killed in Berlin in 1930, as his party was beginning its ascent into infamy. Are we now seeing what happened to Wessel take place with a modern right-wing firebrand, Charlie Kirk?

Wessel was embraced by Nazi propagandist leader Joseph Goebbels and party organs. A wartime article in the Nazi-owned Völkischer Beobachter newspaper called Wessel “the hero of the Brown Revolution” and referred to his “sacrificial death” as one that “passionately inflamed millions who followed.”

Charlie Kirk, source: The Guardian

Today, in Kirk’s honor, flags are being lowered to half-staff around the country by order of President Trump. That’s a distinction usually reserved for deceased presidents and other leaders. Also, the president, without evidence of what drove Kirk’s assassin, was quick to decry the “radical left” for his killing.

So, are we seeing political martyrdom opportunistically bestowed on this polarizing young figure? Are we seeing a nobility bestowed on him in death that many say wasn’t deserved in his life?

Social media, cable TV and other outlets lately have been filled with praise for Kirk, leader of the campus-focused Turning Point USA organization. Vice president JD Vance called him “a true friend. The kind of guy you could say something to and know it would always stay with him.” A tearful CNN commentator, Scott Jennings, called him “one of the most unique and special people in the conservative movement today. What he was able to build, the people he was able to organize, was just so large and powerful.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan called Kirk “a presence in the life of a whole generation of young conservatives” adding that “he set a kind of template for how to discuss politics—with good cheer and confidence, with sincerity and a marshaling of facts.” Over at The Washington Post, George Will compared Kirk with William F. Buckley, that eloquent lion of the right, saying: “Kirk was killed at the beginning of what was to have been a Buckley-like tour of political evangelism among the unconverted: college students. He also was probably killed because, unlike Buckley when he was 31 in 1956, Kirk was advocating a powerful and ascendant politics.”

Even at The New York Times, Ezra Klein celebrated Kirk. “You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way,” Klein held. “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”

When any young person – and Kirk, the father of a 1-year-old son and a 3-year-old girl, was just 31 – is killed, it is monstrous. And when the murdered person is an influential political figure, it is even worse. Such assassinations must be decried anywhere and at any time by everyone on any end of the political spectrum. Such a killing is anathema to the free discourse that is a pillar of American culture or should be.

“There is no place in our country for this kind of violence,” former President Joe Biden said. “It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.” And his predecessor, Barack Obama, similarly said: “We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.”

Also, I concede that it seems churlish to speak ill of the dead person, especially so soon after his passing.

But I also fear that in the lionizing of Kirk, we are seeing a far-too-convenient beatification of sorts that serves Trump and Trumpism too well. Will Kirk’s death be used to further justify outrages that go even beyond anti-immigrant roundups, the placement of troops in cities? Will we now see further rollbacks of reproductive rights and the freedom to marry a person of one’s choosing?

Erin Reed, source: Sociologists 4 Trans Justice

We do ill to ourselves as a society to forget or downplay many of the things that Kirk stood for and built his organization around. As journalist and blogger Erin Reed has written, Kirk in 2023 called transgender people an “abomination” and a “throbbing middle finger to God.” Do such sentiments reflect a compassionate and goodhearted man?

In one interview, Reed wrote, he said the first thing he thinks when he sees a Black pilot is, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” In another, Kirk called for the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be bailed out of jail. He denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964— and infamously said a few gun deaths were worth his Second Amendment rights in the aftermath of a school shooting. He even derided empathy itself as worthless, a sentiment that Reed wrote has since metastasized into a broader far-right project to strip empathy education from schools.

In another interview, Reed noted, Kirk mocked fellow Christians who followed scripture about loving their neighbor. He scoffed that God also “calls for the stoning of gay people,” which he described as “God’s perfect law.”

As the Anti-Defamation League has written, Kirk promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud and Covid-19. He was an enthusiastic backer of Christian nationalism, “the idea that Christians should dominate government and other areas of life in America,” the ADL reported. His TPUSA organization, the league said, has been a magnet for racists and white supremacists.

“Kirk has created a vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists, who speak and attend his annual AmericaFest and other events sponsored by TPUSA,” the ADL reported. “AmericaFest has showcased extreme rhetoric from speakers and attendees and has attracted white supremacists.”

Will his death legitimize even the worst of his views? And was this really the sort of person young Americans should admire and emulate?

Certainly, Trump thinks so: he plans to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously on him. “Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people,” the president said. “The date of the ceremony will be announced,” he said, adding, “and I can only guarantee you one thing, that we will have a very big crowd.”

Crowds, of course, are important to Trump. And with Kirk’s death offering him a golden chance to draw an audience, this is an opportunity the president will not pass up. We don’t know how and when he’ll commemorate Kirk, but he’s almost certain to make a big show of it.

Melissa Hortman

Recall that Trump has said little about other killings of Democratic leaders. In a Sept. 10 video, USA Today noted, the president did not mention the June shooting of Minnesota House of Representatives speaker emerita Melissa Hortman, though he alluded to his own survived assassination attempts and the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana in 2017. He offered no presidential medal or flag lowering for Hortman.

The president also did not mention other attacks on Democrats, including an arson attack at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house, a kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or an assault on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their home.

Those events apparently don’t serve Trump’s agenda as well as Kirk’s death does.

As former President Obama said, we don’t know what motivated Kirk’s assassin, and it’s possible we never will learn that. Will it prove to be a “leftist” assault, as Trump suggested? In two attempts on Trump’s life, the would-be killers – Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh — seemed to have been driven more by mental illness, anti-government beliefs or antisemitism.

Back in pre-Nazi Germany, Wessel was killed by Communist assassins. His death helped galvanize and further drive the Nazi movement. Kirk’s life certainly helped do the same for Trumpism. Will his death now do even more to advance that cause? And will his life be remembered in its fullest and most honest way, or as something to be sanitized, a martyrdom Trump can market?

The marketplace of ideas: who gets in?

Interesting developments on the free-speech front in Arizona and Massachusetts

The battle royal over free speech on campuses is climbing a few decibels on both sides of the country, it seems. The fracas at Arizona State University is likely to grow louder in coming weeks with a reprise visit by a couple controversial conservatives. As for the East Coast, Harvard has distinguished itself by placing last in a ranking by a prominent free-speech organization.

Let’s turn to ASU. It has become a showcase of sorts for conservatives who feel aggrieved and abused, as well as for academics who find themselves uncomfortably in the crosshairs of today’s cultural warfare.

Source: Charlie Kirk X post

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who stirred up a hornet’s nest in February when they visited ASU, plan to speak there again on Sept. 27. Their “Health, Wealth & Happiness 2.0” session will be sponsored by a student organization, Turning Point USA at Arizona State University, rather than by an individual college such as Barrett, the honors college that controversially hosted them last time through a now-defunct center.

Conveniently setting the stage for their visit, a university report about the brouhaha over their last visit is expected to be released shortly. That report was demanded by Arizona State Sen. Anthony Kern, who led a hearing into the matter in July. Kern said the legislature’s judiciary committee will take so-far-unspecified action dealing with ASU, depending on the thoroughness of the report.

Kern, who co-chaired the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities, has already telegraphed his feelings that he expects little from ASU that would placate him. “I do not trust the Board of Regents,” Kern said at the July hearing. “I do not trust ASU. I do not trust our universities to teach our kids what needs to be taught.”

For their part, it’s not clear what Prager and Kirk plan to talk about in the coming confab, although the session will also feature at least one state legislator who served on Kern’s ad hoc committee, Austin Smith, who also is a former director of Turning Point USA. That suggests that free speech on campus could take center stage at the session, as well as hoary claims of a leftward tilt among faculty.

Source: Twitter

Smith had asked the regents to investigate the termination of the director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett. That ex-official, Ann Atkinson, had complained about her firing in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that it was in reprisal for her organizing the first Prager-Kirk session. In fact, the funding for her position fell away when donor Thomas W. Lewis pulled his backing, citing what he called “the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.” 

Shortly before the wintertime Prager-Kirk session, 39 faculty members at the college had written a letter to their dean complaining about the men’s visit, lambasting them as “purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy, including our public institutions of higher education.”

Notably from a free-speech point of view, however, the Barrett faculty members didn’t call for the session to be cancelled. Instead, as some of them wrote in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, some had slated a teach-in prior to the session called “Defending the Public University.” They maintained that they encouraged students to attend both events and claimed that many students did so. Nor were they party to the Lewis center’s shutdown, the authors said.

While that suggests an openness to free speech, Atkinson has argued that the faculty bullied students into staying away from both the Prager-Kirk talk and the ad hoc committee hearing in July. So far, though, no evidence proving such bullying has emerged (perhaps the university report will illuminate the matter). It may be that students just found the initial talk uninteresting and that, in July, few were on hand for the legislative hearing.

There are some crucial differences between the upcoming Prager-Kirk session and the February one. For one, a student organization is sponsoring the gathering, rather than a college. Thus, while it bears the imprimatur of that student group, it doesn’t need the blessings of a college where most of the faculty find the speakers reprehensible.

Certainly, the men have distinguished themselves as advocates of notions many find toxic. Prager has criticized homosexuality, for instance, writing “I, for one, do not believe that a man’s inability to make love to a woman can be labeled normal. While such a man may be a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals, in this one area he cannot be called normal.” For his part, Kirk has praised Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol as “patriots” whose travel to Washington, D.C., was funded by Turning Point USA, as the Daily Beast reported.

So far, it doesn’t appear as if ASU faculty members plan counterprogramming to rebut likely comments by the pair, which is an interesting approach. Would such programming elevate Prager and Kirk’s status and serve only to legitimize their ideas? One faculty member suggested to me that engaging them in debate would be akin to dignifying a member of the Flat Earth Society by sharing a stage with him or her, even if only to refute the person’s arguments.

Still, the views of Prager and Kirk raise a compelling question for advocates of free speech and those who see universities as places where conflicting ideas ought to be hashed out. When is someone’s speech so far beyond the pale that it doesn’t deserve an airing? And when a school, as opposed to a student group, brings such a person in front of students does that suggest an endorsement (indeed, might it be considered educational malpractice, if there were such a thing)? The challenge in this MAGA era is amplified because a substantial minority of the public share the ideas of such men.

A daughter-in-law of mine who teaches at Princeton frames this as a matter of progress over time. She contends that the line between acceptable ideas and those rightly consigned to history’s dustbin has consistently shifted. There was a time, for instance, when advocates of slavery (indeed slaveholders) could find a forum at universities. Similarly, pro-Nazi speakers and racists were tolerated on campuses. Has the line moved such that it’s left the likes of Prager and Kirk on the wrong side, irrespective of any followings they have in the general public?

Strolling at Harvard, source: the Boston Herald

Now, as to Harvard, the school has been named the worst for free speech among universities reviewed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. As the New York Post reported, Harvard scored poorly in large part because nine professors and researchers there faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written. Indeed, seven of them were disciplined.

Moreover, much of the trouble at Harvard has to do with self-censorship — not the type imposed by authority figures. The FIRE rankings rely in large part on surveys of students. And at the Boston school, the Boston Herald reported: “Self-censorship is pervasive across the board, according to the survey. More than a quarter of students (26%) said they censor themselves at least a few times a week in conversations with friends, and 25% said they’re more likely to self-censor now than they were when starting college.”

The atmosphere at the university has grown so troublesome to free-speech advocates there that more than 100 faculty members have joined a new Council on Academic Freedom on campus. Indeed, the debate about whether free discussion is stifled at Harvard has been joined – ironically but appropriately at Harvard.

Harvard Magazine sketched out the arguments last June. In part, it cited an op-ed that founders of the new council wrote in The Boston Globe: “The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward,” they wrote.  “…The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail.”

This notion, implying that the marketplace of ideas will weed out the intellectual dinosaurs, is a longstanding one, of course. For campuses nationwide, the question today is about who should be permitted into the marketplace and whose ideas deserve only to be shunned.

Let the Sun Shine In

Source: ASU News

Professors at Arizona State University’s honors college were deeply troubled by plans for right-wingers Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk to speak at a confab last February exploring “Health, Wealth and Happiness.” But their impassioned reaction raises important issues about just what free discourse on a campus means.

“Thirty-nine of [the college’s] 47 faculty signed a letter to the dean condemning the event on grounds that the speakers are ‘purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, [and] institutions of our democracy,’ event organizer Ann Atkinson writes in The Wall Street Journal. “The signers decried ASU ‘platforming and legitimating’ their views, describing Messrs. Prager and Kirk as ‘white nationalist provocateurs’ whose comments would undermine the value of democratic exchange by marginalizing the school’s most vulnerable students.”

Despite that faculty outcry, the event, sponsored by the college’s T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, attracted 1,500 people in person and 24,000 online, according to Atkinson. She described the talks as part of a speaker series connecting students with professionals for career and life advice.

Now, in the wake of the flap, however, the university is shutting down the center, effective June 30. Atkinson, an alum of the college who made her name and fortune in healthcare real estate investing, will lose her job. And, in the WSJ piece, headlined “I paid for free speech at Arizona State,” she slams the university for its “deep hostility toward divergent views.” She concludes that “ASU claims to value freedom of expression. But in the end the faculty mob always wins against institutional protections for free speech.”

Among universities nationwide, ASU is hardly alone in battles over whether some speakers are simply beyond the pale. Debates over visitors of all stripes have roiled campuses from Princeton in the east to Stanford in the west. For a bit of detail, see “What Are the Limits of Free Speech?” While conservative speakers have been at the center of most of the hubbub, the occasional left-winger has slipped in, as happened at the CUNY law school with a pro-Palestinian’s vitriolic talk condemning Israel, capitalism and a host of other bogeymen. See “A Commencement Rant Suggests Poor Schooling.”

The brouhahas raise plenty of questions for anyone interested in open exchange on colleges. They go to the heart of what freedom of speech is and isn’t.

Here are a few such questions: At what point are faculty members being too protective of students in wanting to shut out speakers whose views — no doubt — will offend many? Are students so vulnerable that they should be shielded from obnoxious views? Would they be exposed to noxious notions through the Internet and other venues anyway? And is there anything preventing faculty from criticizing the speakers, essentially turning their appearances into teachable moments, occasions for poking holes in the most outrageous arguments?

Many provocative speakers – on both the left and right – are hardly unique or original in their views. Their opinions percolate about in the zeitgeist, almost always for ill, and are rarely avoided. Indeed, the ideas espoused by some of them have become mainstream in some partisan talking points in the already boiling presidential race.

Is it better to ban such folks or to have faculty members whom students respect intellectually disembowel them? Will reprehensible views go away when a campus here or a campus there simply bars the advocates? And does welcoming such folks reflect badly on a given campus, especially if the purpose of the invitation is for smarter folks to defenestrate their arguments?

Dennis Prager, source: The Daily Beast

Let’s stipulate that radio host Prager has outraged many folks. He condemned Covid lockdowns, lambasted same-sex marriage, and even criticized a Muslim congressman for using the Quran instead of the Bible in a swearing-in ceremony. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, Prager extols Judeo-Christian traditions above all others, a view that resonates with some but would hardly play well in much of the world outside of the West (indeed in most of the world, in sheer population numbers).

Charlie Kirk, source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Similarly, let’s acknowledge that Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, seems like a throwback to an idealized 1950s. His attacks on feminism and “the transgender agenda” – whatever that is — likely appear wacky to many folks, though not to the future “trad wives” who attended sessions such as the recent Young Women’s Leadership Summit, held fittingly in Texas. Attendees heard about buying tampons and beauty products and other items from companies that market themselves as pro-Christian or anti-woke, as a Washington Post writer noted.

But are campuses, in fact, doing a disservice to their students and larger communities when they prevent them from airing their odd views? There’s no doubt that some views and some speakers are intolerable – one thinks of leaders of the KKK and Nazis on the right and some pro-Palestinian speakers on the left, of course. And attacking folks for their race, religion or sexual orientation in general should keep some speakers off limits.

But even in some of those areas, is it not risky to shut off discussion? For instance, the arguments for and against Critical Race Theory would seem to deserve a full airing. And, when it comes to religion, should there not be room for talking about, say, whether images deemed inappropriate by some Muslims should be shut out of art classes? And would discussions of cults benefit from the airing of such documentaries as Shiny Happy People, a critical exploration of a form of Christianity that some defend but others find odd and dangerous?

As to sexual orientation, many on the right are making hay of attacking homosexuality and transgenderism these days. Some folks, succumbing to the demagoguery of the day, apparently don’t or won’t grasp that respecting gays and transgender folks seems like basic decency. Should there not be room for education about such matters, even if it comes in a debate or counter-programming involving a Kirk or a Prager?

Plenty of odd and disturbing views are coursing through a troubled America nowadays, but it seems that campuses could harm students by not letting them get a full –- and critical — airing. Put them under the microscope, expose them to the hot lights of bright academics. Instead of banning the advocates, would we not be better off pitting them against intelligent opponents in settings where the vacuousness of their ideas could be exposed?

Yes, that is admittedly “platforming” them, as the ASU faculty noted. But have the Internet and social media not already platformed them far more effectively, giving people only one side of the story? Are campuses immune to noxious ideas just because they aren’t delivered in person?

Free speech is often not pretty. But does one defeat ugly ideas by simply shutting off some of the outlets in which exponents could espouse them? Would it not be better to expose racism, hypocrisy, venality, ignorance and such for what they are, holding them up to scrutiny on an enlightened campus?

Letting Kirk and Prager and their ilk speak while showing up the bankruptcy of their ideas would not win over all students. For evidence of their appeal, just look at their popularity in off-campus venues. Still, an intellectual free-for-all would offer a chance to win over the sharper students. There is such a thing as a battle of ideas, and these days the best ideas must be allowed to win.