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In the aftermath of the execution of rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk, there was a telling moment of narrative panic. What kind of a person was the killer? To many, a couple of assumptions seemed immediately reasonable: he would be a he (or maybe a they) and of the left. Then we heard about engravings on the bullets. 'Hey, fascist! Catch ↑ → ↓↓↓’ sounded pretty lefty. 'Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao' was, similarly, a popular anti-fascism anthem during Benito Mussolini's dictatorship. But then there was: ‘notices bulge, OWO, what's this?’ We were told it referenced a meme, and concerned someone noticing a genital bulge in the underwear of a Furry. It sounded transphobic. Could it be that the villain was actually of the right, and killed Kirk because he wasn’t sufficiently extreme?
As I write, it seems clear that the accused killer – 22 year old Tyler Robinson – was indeed of the left. We’re informed his partner was transitioning from male to female; Robinson himself had apparently commented on his motive, “I had enough of [Kirk’s] hate. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” But this wasn’t enough to convince many on his side of the divide, with late night host Jimmy Kimmel telling his audience, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it” – a comment that got him cancelled. Others on the hyper-progressive left told a story which seemed to imply Kirk deserved it. The comedian Gina Yashere, for example, who [called] the dead father of two, “xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist and sexist.”
Which side is more hateful? Recent research indicates that US liberals are much more likely to agree that it is justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals – a finding that should surprise nobody who has been alienated from that side of the aisle over the last decade and more, as its elites contracted Twitter-brain and rage and intolerance became the celebrated norm. Does this mean we’ve identified the villains, then? Is it the woke left? But the right are also excellent haters. Many right-wingers hate the woke left as much as the woke left hate them. And isn’t defending Israel, for example, a rightwing norm? What does the default Republican or Tory feel about the dispossession of the Palestinians and their starvation and slaughter? They are like a million Gina Yashere’s, insisting they deserve their nightmarish fate because of their hatred.