Berl Falbaum
I usually don’t write about political issues that receive massive coverage; thus, I was going to pass on the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
But a headline in The New York Times caught my attention, a headline that advised: “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.”
This piqued my interest given the messages of racism, antisemitism, and misogyny which were so much a part of Kirk’s political agenda that he spread on U.S. campuses.
This, after all, was The New York Times.
So, here is a summary of Kirk’s “practicing politics the right way” as collected from a variety of news sites:
On Blacks:
• Blacks “…were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad. It was evil. But what happened? Something changed. They committed less crimes,” said Kirk.
When challenged by a member of the audience that “4,000 Black men, women and children were killed in violent lynch mobs. Racial terror permeated American culture for hundreds of years. You don’t think that affected the generational psyche of an entire group of people?” Kirk responded:
“Black America is worse than it has been in the last 80 years.”
• On another show, Kirk offered that the following Black women — Joy Reid (political commentator), former First Lady Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee (former Texas Congresswoman who died in 2024), and Ketanji Brown Jackson (U.S. Supreme Court justice) — were “affirmative action picks...”
• Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said.
More on race:
• “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
• He repeated misinformation on the death of George Floyd, who died in May 2020 after a Minneapolis Police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes. Kirk claimed that Floyd’s death was the result of an “overdose.”
On Jews:
• After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Kirk said on several episodes of “The Charlie Kirk Show” that “Jewish dollars” were funding Marxist ideas in education and policy and contributing to opening the borders to “cultural Marxism.”
• He said Jewish philanthropy funding American universities was effectively “subsidizing [their] own demise by supporting institutions that breed antisemites and endorse genocidal killers.
• “Jews control … the colleges, the nonprofits, the movies, Hollywood, all of it,” and he accused “elite” and “secular” Jewish philanthropies of “pumping money” into universities while turning a blind eye to antisemitism, effectively casting Jewish donors as complicit in the problem. He charged that “elite Jewish culture” was a main funding source for schools that “breed Jew hatred.”
• He maintained, in another antisemitic trope, that radical or liberal cultural and political institutions are primarily funded by Jewish donors.
• Defending an antisemitic post from Elon Musk, Kirk said, “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” adding, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
• He charged that accusations of antisemitism were increasingly being weaponized to restrict debate. “Once ‘antisemitism’ becomes valid grounds to censor or even imprison somebody, there will be frantic efforts to label all kinds of speech as antisemitism -- the same way the left labeled all kinds of statements as ‘racist’ to justify silencing their opposition. Not only that, but all of this won’t even work.”
On abortion:
Asked what he would do if his 10-year-old daughter were pregnant as a result of a rape, Kirk answered, “Yes…the baby would be delivered.”
On transgenders:
“A man who calls himself trans is wearing ‘woman face,’ no different than I would wear black face trying to be a black person. It’s assuming an identity that isn’t yours.”
On gun control:
• “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty... We need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
• “Gun control, like vaccines and masks, is focused on making people feel ‘safe’ by taking freedoms away from others. Don’t fall for it.”
• He called Democrats “vermin, maggots and swine” proposing that Joe Biden be arrested, sent to Guantamano Bay, and possibly face the death penalty.
And to all Trump and Kirk supporters: Hold your emails. I condemn Kirk’s assassination in the strongest terms. I condemn this tragedy as I condemned the two attempts on Trump’s life and the shooting in 2017 on a baseball field that left Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, seriously wounded.
But I also condemn: Trump asking his supporters to beat the crap out of opponents and he’ll pay the legal bills; inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021 (a “day of love” in which nine people died and 150 police officers injured) and pardoning or commuting the sentences of more than 1,500 rioters; suggesting support for hanging his vice president for not violating the Constitution by overturning the 2020 election; calling for the execution of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; mocking Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had his head bashed in with a hammer; and attacking Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer after she was the target of a kidnap plot.
Or what about the implied threat in August 2016 during Trump’s first campaign, when he said: “…if she [Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Little, if anything, is being said about Trump stoking violence for 10 years in the analysis of the Kirk atrocity.
Back to Kirk’s record; there is more to Kirk’s “legacy” than quoted above. For instance, his organization may have had a hand in the January 6 insurrection. Kirk invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination numerous times when interviewed by the January 6 committee. He also supported the lies that Trump won the 2020 election.
Despite all of this, Klein wrote: “I envied what he [Kirk] built. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy.”
Sorry, but the virtue of a vibrant democracy is built on integrity, honesty, decency, morality, respect, honor, and civility.
We are not talking about disagreements over policy. We are talking about hate, lies, deceit, racism, etc.
As Mother Jones magazine wrote: “…[A]s a movement strategist, he [Kirk] relied upon and advanced lies and bigotry…that fueled violence and an assault on our national foundation.”
Commending Kirk for his skills in organizing and persuading students on university campuses while turning a blind eye to his bigoted messages is comparable to admiring Al Capone for his talents in robbing banks, but ignoring that he was committing crimes.
No, Mr. Klein, Kirk was not practicing politics the right way, and playing on The Times’ famous motto, yours was not a column fit to print.
But a headline in The New York Times caught my attention, a headline that advised: “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.”
This piqued my interest given the messages of racism, antisemitism, and misogyny which were so much a part of Kirk’s political agenda that he spread on U.S. campuses.
This, after all, was The New York Times.
So, here is a summary of Kirk’s “practicing politics the right way” as collected from a variety of news sites:
On Blacks:
• Blacks “…were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad. It was evil. But what happened? Something changed. They committed less crimes,” said Kirk.
When challenged by a member of the audience that “4,000 Black men, women and children were killed in violent lynch mobs. Racial terror permeated American culture for hundreds of years. You don’t think that affected the generational psyche of an entire group of people?” Kirk responded:
“Black America is worse than it has been in the last 80 years.”
• On another show, Kirk offered that the following Black women — Joy Reid (political commentator), former First Lady Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee (former Texas Congresswoman who died in 2024), and Ketanji Brown Jackson (U.S. Supreme Court justice) — were “affirmative action picks...”
• Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said.
More on race:
• “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
• He repeated misinformation on the death of George Floyd, who died in May 2020 after a Minneapolis Police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes. Kirk claimed that Floyd’s death was the result of an “overdose.”
On Jews:
• After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Kirk said on several episodes of “The Charlie Kirk Show” that “Jewish dollars” were funding Marxist ideas in education and policy and contributing to opening the borders to “cultural Marxism.”
• He said Jewish philanthropy funding American universities was effectively “subsidizing [their] own demise by supporting institutions that breed antisemites and endorse genocidal killers.
• “Jews control … the colleges, the nonprofits, the movies, Hollywood, all of it,” and he accused “elite” and “secular” Jewish philanthropies of “pumping money” into universities while turning a blind eye to antisemitism, effectively casting Jewish donors as complicit in the problem. He charged that “elite Jewish culture” was a main funding source for schools that “breed Jew hatred.”
• He maintained, in another antisemitic trope, that radical or liberal cultural and political institutions are primarily funded by Jewish donors.
• Defending an antisemitic post from Elon Musk, Kirk said, “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” adding, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
• He charged that accusations of antisemitism were increasingly being weaponized to restrict debate. “Once ‘antisemitism’ becomes valid grounds to censor or even imprison somebody, there will be frantic efforts to label all kinds of speech as antisemitism -- the same way the left labeled all kinds of statements as ‘racist’ to justify silencing their opposition. Not only that, but all of this won’t even work.”
On abortion:
Asked what he would do if his 10-year-old daughter were pregnant as a result of a rape, Kirk answered, “Yes…the baby would be delivered.”
On transgenders:
“A man who calls himself trans is wearing ‘woman face,’ no different than I would wear black face trying to be a black person. It’s assuming an identity that isn’t yours.”
On gun control:
• “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty... We need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
• “Gun control, like vaccines and masks, is focused on making people feel ‘safe’ by taking freedoms away from others. Don’t fall for it.”
• He called Democrats “vermin, maggots and swine” proposing that Joe Biden be arrested, sent to Guantamano Bay, and possibly face the death penalty.
And to all Trump and Kirk supporters: Hold your emails. I condemn Kirk’s assassination in the strongest terms. I condemn this tragedy as I condemned the two attempts on Trump’s life and the shooting in 2017 on a baseball field that left Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, seriously wounded.
But I also condemn: Trump asking his supporters to beat the crap out of opponents and he’ll pay the legal bills; inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021 (a “day of love” in which nine people died and 150 police officers injured) and pardoning or commuting the sentences of more than 1,500 rioters; suggesting support for hanging his vice president for not violating the Constitution by overturning the 2020 election; calling for the execution of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; mocking Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had his head bashed in with a hammer; and attacking Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer after she was the target of a kidnap plot.
Or what about the implied threat in August 2016 during Trump’s first campaign, when he said: “…if she [Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Little, if anything, is being said about Trump stoking violence for 10 years in the analysis of the Kirk atrocity.
Back to Kirk’s record; there is more to Kirk’s “legacy” than quoted above. For instance, his organization may have had a hand in the January 6 insurrection. Kirk invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination numerous times when interviewed by the January 6 committee. He also supported the lies that Trump won the 2020 election.
Despite all of this, Klein wrote: “I envied what he [Kirk] built. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy.”
Sorry, but the virtue of a vibrant democracy is built on integrity, honesty, decency, morality, respect, honor, and civility.
We are not talking about disagreements over policy. We are talking about hate, lies, deceit, racism, etc.
As Mother Jones magazine wrote: “…[A]s a movement strategist, he [Kirk] relied upon and advanced lies and bigotry…that fueled violence and an assault on our national foundation.”
Commending Kirk for his skills in organizing and persuading students on university campuses while turning a blind eye to his bigoted messages is comparable to admiring Al Capone for his talents in robbing banks, but ignoring that he was committing crimes.
No, Mr. Klein, Kirk was not practicing politics the right way, and playing on The Times’ famous motto, yours was not a column fit to print.
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