The Nation, oldest progressive newspaper in the US, doesn't pull any punches

There is no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign, and refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins “Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.”

I also enjoyed this perspective, a bit long form as its a substack post, but well written. Authored by Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge.

A couple of months ago, Laura Loomer was shrieking into her phone that Charlie Kirk had stabbed Donald Trump in the back. MAGA’s attack dog had him marked as a traitor, an apostate, another soft-boy conservative who wasn’t vicious enough for the blood cult. Then Kirk gets shot, and suddenly Laura is draped in black, clutching pearls, wailing like a widow at a mob funeral. That’s how fast the MAGA spin cycle runs: enemies are canonized, heretics become martyrs, and yesterday’s punching bag is today’s sacred cow. Loyalty isn’t about consistency. It’s about whatever Trump’s mood demands.

PETE HEGSETH, HALL MONITOR OF THE REPUBLIC

Now comes Pete Hegseth, a man who wears the title Secretary of Defense but operates more like the comment-section sheriff. Instead of worrying about actual defense — China, Russia, Iran, cyberwarfare — Pete’s priority is disciplining soldiers for making snide jokes about Charlie Kirk.

Yes, the Pentagon is now a glorified Facebook moderation team. Hegseth isn’t projecting strength; he’s enforcing pity. Soldiers aren’t preparing for war — they’re purging their timelines, terrified Laura Loomer will screech their names into his ear. This isn’t civilian control of the military. It’s civilian coercion, where MAGA influencers call the shots and the brass salutes like nervous interns.

THE BLACKLIST WITH A SEARCH BAR

Enter the grotesque centerpiece: CharliesMurderers(dot)com. A site so dystopian it makes J. Edgar Hoover look subtle. A searchable database of Americans whose “crime” is failing to sufficiently mourn Kirk.

They claim it’s not doxxing, it’s “education.” Bullshit. This is McCarthyism with HTML. It’s a digital scarlet letter, a witch hunt in the cloud. Post the wrong meme, roll your eyes at the wrong martyr, and congratulations: you’re on the list. Employers can search you, neighbors can shame you, trolls can harass you. Your livelihood isn’t safe because Laura Loomer needs another dopamine hit.

CANCEL CULTURE WITH A MAGA LOGO

Remember when these people howled about “cancel culture”? When they cried that a comedian losing a Netflix special was tyranny? Now they’ve built the most efficient cancellation machine in modern America. Only this time it’s not corporations doing it — it’s the government, the Pentagon, and a mob of red-hat lunatics demanding loyalty tests. You don’t just lose a sponsor. You lose your job, your security clearance, maybe your entire career. And it’s not because you committed violence. It’s because you laughed at violence. Thoughtcrime, MAGA edition.

GRIEF AS A WEAPON

This isn’t mourning. It’s weaponized grief. Kirk spent his career spitting on empathy, mocking victims of shootings, and treating compassion like weakness. Now the same movement that rejected empathy is demanding you show it on their terms — mandatory, performative, unquestioning. Don’t mourn? You’re purged. Don’t post a sad-face emoji? You’re dangerous. Cruelty has always been the point, and now grief is just another tool of cruelty. Charlie Kirk didn’t believe in empathy, and his allies are proving they don’t either. What they believe in is obedience.

THE BLUNT EDGE OF FASCISM

Let’s stop pretending this is theater. It’s not play-acting, it’s raw authoritarianism. Trump is the wannabe strongman. Loomer is the megaphone of madness. Hegseth is the hall monitor with a badge he didn’t earn. Together they’ve taken the death of a professional troll and spun it into a loyalty purge. They’ve turned the Pentagon into an instrument of political grievance and a martyr into a weapon. And they want the rest of us to treat this clown show like sacred history.

The only thing sacred here is the grift. The only thing holy is the purge. And the only thing growing is the list of Americans marked as enemies because they refused to cry on command. This isn’t about honor. This isn’t about respect. This is about power — stupid, brutal, authoritarian power clawing for control under the guise of grief.

Yep, fuck these nazis, I don't really need any more reasons to hate them, but they keep coming up with them
- At this point it's not just the Nazi leadership .... it's the citizenry that just sits on the sidelines waiting for it all to go away.
  The country needs to stand up and shut things down. Not violently or to cause a civil war ... strike, stop work, refuse and picket everything and everywhere until things change or are brought under control.
You are a Master of words and logic ! All too grim but true.

I do not believe anyone should be murdered because of their views, but that is because I don’t believe people should be murdered generally, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. I am against the death penalty, pro–gun control, and believe war is a failure of humanity, not a necessary byproduct of it. Kirk was fine with murder as long the right people were dying.

Well said, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy a bit of schadenfreude at his passing.

specifically, pleasure from his death, or pleasure that he is no longer alive?
the angry right wingers on the internet seem unable to understand the difference between the two
- More that I won't have to hear any of his nonsense any more. Even the people eulogising him don't seem to be actually quoting him because they can't find anything he ever said that wasn't stupid.

Honestly great article that summarizes my thoughts on this exactly. I live in the south and I am seeing a lot of people I really respect lose their fucking minds about this and start frothing at the mouth mourning this guy that they didn't know existed two weeks ago because all they know was that he was a "Christian activist" shot for his beliefs, either not realizing or not caring that the dude was racist as fuck and spent his whole life being a right wing internet troll but in real life.

Several of my colleagues did the same thing and I told them I have zero sympathy because Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler had children too.
- Also didn't Goebbels poison his own children before he and his wife commit suicide?
The added "correction" at the bottom is gold. Im glad someone, somewhere, didnt pull punches. The media response to this has been sickening.
The same insane bullshit is happening all over the UK. The amount of family I hessian these aren't quite rich in the head is staggeringly sad.
And got paid lottery jackpot sums at age 31

"It is rude of me to say all of this, because we live in a culture where manners are often valued more than truth." This is a really good quote actually

- Except that this generally applies to life and not just politics. Another thing is that a lot of times it is the left that imposes this on their own and not even the right.

Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.

lol

Full sentence for anyone who is confused by the comment:
It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins “Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.”
Who also killed all of them rather than let them live in postwar Germany...
- Wait Joseph Goebbels killed all his children??
- *rather than
- More to stop the soviets getting hold of them
then he had them all killed....because of shame. HA!
Heinrich Himmler too and his fucking Naz daughter believed in the asswipe until her death.

even more to the point, he got what he wanted.
- So I guess he wasn't proven wrong, good for him, right all the way to the grave

Every civilized country on earth has figured out that there needs to be acceptable limits to free speech and that freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the consequences of saying something.

freedom from the consequences of saying something.
Freedom of speech in the US protects you from consequences from the government, not anyone or anything else. You can still get fired, or at, for your free speech.
- No because that would be murder.
- s/at/shot ?
freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the consequences of saying something.
Exactly.
- I've seen it summed it up thusly: "If your speech incites violence, don't be surprised when people use violence in response."

The best thing about events like this is it helps me identify more or less trustworthy news sources by how they react to it. The Luigi case culled many

more articles like this should include the bit about how "[Biden should get the death penalty]"

the dude openly stated that a political figure he disagreed with should be killed. the right must acknowledge this statement while they whitewash his legacy of hate.

Promoting hate just to get rich. Conservatives are ugly on the inside & the outside.

it's not to just get rich. They hate you, and want you to die. Things like that make them happy. Your suffering, pain, and those of your family. You're either them, or you deserve to die for not being them. That's how nazis work. The religion doesn't matter, but we've all seen how catholic nazis work in nazi Italy, and how christian nazis work in nazi Germany. All nazis fully supported by their hate churches, of course.
- Except that one guy, who was fine with the hate against communists, labor unions, romani, jews, and disabled people. Until they came for him, and then he was really upset that nobody stood up for him. He was a church person too, but eventually became the wrong type of church person. Many such cases.

Just one of thousands of hate preachers indoctrinating the local population (and children) with the exact same extremist religious propaganda. Only religious extremists do this, and there are only religious extremists of religions that exist. Stop supporting religions. ALL of them.

Not really sure what you are trying to say, but it sounds like you are way too focused on religion being a source for extremism in the world. Yeah there are religious extremists, but every movement has them, or at least has potential for extremists who indoctrinate kids or even advocate for violence against the detractors or enemies of the movement. Always has been and always will be.
- I think the reason it looks like religion motivates violent extremism is because the demography of the people most vulnerable to extremist propaganda are also more likely (statistically) to be more religious.

The nation seems to be the only big paper with any rationality.

Killing Kirk sure did put that Epstein shit way over to the side. Hmm...

Not as strong as it should be. Some speech should be exterminated. Divisive lies for hatred and anticonstitutional genocide makes democracy dysfunctional. Trump having been jailed during last Presidency was both deserved and more democratic. Reaction to the shooting that is criticism of Kirk has an extermination movement ranging from cancel/firings to calls for civil war and genocide of everyone threatened by Kirk. There will be no political retributions for Americans cheering Putin's death, and establishment would get ultra aggressive if in Hitler's death someone pointed out his love of dogs. Discussion of a person's political views should never be exterminated.

2 specific areas of speech that need extermination:

Replacement theory. If you have/are allowed to have children, then you will challenge the "ultimate deserved ethnic supremacist" power to control democracy. Structural or individual violent repression of undesirables is validated. GOP establishment must go along with this, as voter suppression has always been a requirement of their corruption.
Christofascist justification of ZIonazi first rule over America. Zionazi supremacist speech is establishment speech. DNC (Zionazi) "donor pressure" is against criticizing Christofascism because it is subservient ally to Zionism. Kirk was always granted establishment cred because Israel supremacy was the actual centeral purpose of his platform. Just as Chuck Schumer views his job as to "gaslight the left into being pro Israel" Kirk was gaslighting the right into doing the same. Nick Fuentes, whose speech is said to have inspired the murder, gaslights the right into thinking "Trump is not the most Zionazi supporting US demon in history". Christofascism's demonization of Islam, and "godless abomination freedom", in addition to bribing pastors to emphasize bible passages/revelations, both support genocide, and demonize those most likely to dislike genocide.

Opposing Zionist supremacist rule over America is the actual speech that establishment exterminates from America. It is fundamentally treasonous and inhuman to protect and normalize genocide, and supremacy of another nation. Another 9/11 would only strenghten our loyalty/committment to Israel's blame for the next 9/11. They will once again "only hate us for our freedom".

When establishment speech is the one that should be exterminated, it obviously complicates exterminating anti-constitutional and demonic evil speech.

Some speech should be exterminated. Divisive lies for hatred and anticonstitutional genocide makes democracy dysfunctional.
Ok, but who defines what these divisive lies are? Allowing for any sort of speech to be systematically exterminated is allowing every sort of speech to be systematically exterminated.
- This is crazy. It's like when people say "let's eliminate a whole swath of the population because they are impure" and "please don't murder us" are phrases that carry equal weight.
- It can't be establishment that decides. Current establishment requires disinformation to be protected speech. We have always had to say Eurasia is evil.
  There needs to be a layer independent of establishment, and/or a much stronger constitution that protects truth/values from supremacist lies and direct abuses of constitution.
  The 2 absolute evil examples I gave are absolute. OP spent too much energy on speech that is similar to "blacks can't swim and whites can't jump." As long as it doesn't lead to establishment policy that restricts sports team enlistment by race, it is just "relatively innocent" racism that may or may not have a grain of truth in stereotypes, and doesn't matter. Speech that doesn't matter is the only type that is allowed by establishment, but it would be overly broad to interfere with it. Speech/disinformation for antihuman establishment demonism shift is the critical speech, and whether establishment welcomes it or not, has no basis in whether it be permitted.
  More on Christofascism.... religious organizations will typically purpose themselves for demonism. Using idealist principles to capture souls in order to sell them to the most demonic evil powers/establishment. The commonality between Christofascism and (Christo)Humanism is classifying production (children, work) as good. The humanist approach instead of punishing women for failing their 28 baby quota, is positive family planning decisions made easier by easier access to prosperity, which unfortunately for the christofascists, means much freer alternatives to the requirement of listening to demons' sermon for salvation before getting soup.
  By embracing both Zionaziism and Replacement theory, Christofacsist "ambassadors" are also serving White fascism above Christianity. When Black Christians making positive family planning decisions are "acts of war" against US establishment, then the white part is necessarily more important to the fascists than the Christian demonism.

The people going "fuck yeah I love that he died from gun violence" are showing their hands. Just liberals with no real moral compass. The same ones that cheer for genocide Joe. Those are apparently the "extreme leftist" right now that the media is eating up.

Meanwhile, the real leftist are just responding, to people saying how "great" he was, by asking one simple question.

Oh? What views of his did you like?

Because for every "free speech" answer there are 20 quotes from him to the contrary.

I feel like liberals get too excited when something like this happens and just turn into blue maga.

It's really simple. All you have to do is ask simple non-aggressive questions. You don't need to do anything more than that. Your coworker or normie friend is just repeating what they heard from the media. You can dismantle that calmly without saying he "got what he deserved!".

We all know he got what he deserved. But you don't start with the conclusion when you're talking to normies. You let them come to that conclusion on their own.

The people going "fuck yeah I love that he died from gun violence" are showing their hands.
I mean, there's also the hilarious irony of someone who argued there shouldn't be any gun regulations because of school shootings and the cost that is "some deaths" being killed by a school shooting while under a giant banner saying "prove me wrong" while in the middle of blaming minorities for most killings.
It'd be like a huge homophobe dying because he choked on a huge dildo.
There's inherent schnaudenfreude in someone hateful dying in such incredibly ironic way, and certainly different than a person cheering on the death of someone else who didn't harm others, didn't advocate the harm of others, and simply existed, as the right wing usually does.
Damn, the libs really didnt like getting a correct analysis lmao blue maga is dead on. A lot of yall just want your team to get away with the same stuff republicans do with no structural analysis of the reason things are so shit for everyone.
I wonder, was it blue maga that triggered them or genocide joe? They are still salty they threw away their last chance to win an election over a genocide.
- It's really gotta be those parts of my comment I guess. It's less about what I said and more about HOW I said it. But I can't be shocked liberals are all in the aesthetics anyway.

Well-written and surprisingly thoughtful commentary given the heat so far

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There is no such thing as original sin. The chaos of words spoken by those in power doesn't conjure evil; it merely exposes the darkness that already dwells within us all—darkness that is readily available, waiting to be awakened. The fear surrounding Kirk is nothing short of madness. We can’t allow ourselves to be crushed by the petty outrage over mere words and fleeting pixels. Instead, let's recognize that this fierce energy, this intense emotion, often stems from a deeper place—an unspoken pain or frustration rooted in a world that too easily dismisses genuine action and truth, especially when faced with the complacency of the indifferent. It’s time to wake up, to feel, to stand against the silence that enables the real injustice to flourish.

Write something meaningful and turn off your fucking AI word-hose
Nope. All Russia. One .gif like the one in Star Trek that made the Borg sleep, except this one made you all vote for Trump, except when it made you all vote for Biden.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum. But still...

Charlie Kirk is dead. Oh well.