00:00:04
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgett and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:00:17
Speaker 2: Hello.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: So if I sound a little bit out of it, it's because it's been a very long week. I suspect that it's probably true for you wherever you're listening. I think we could all use a week where things just feel a little bit normal. I'm not even asking for good frankly, I'm just asking for normal. But that week is not this week. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what is going on with Charlie Kirk. So I'll tell you the broad strokes of what's happening, and then I want to get into my main point, which is what the reaction has been like and what I think it says about where we're at as a culture. So, in case you have not heard, this week, thirty one year old conservative right wing activist Charlie Kirk huge trump ally was shot and killed during a campus debate at Utah Ballet University in Utah. Law enforcement initially released some pretty like unhelpful videos and images of a suspect, but because notably everybody who might have known what they're doing at the FBI was systematically pushed out of the FBI, people like Matab Sayed, who was pushed out of the Utah FBI in July because she was not a good fit, along with a bunch of other FBI officials as part of a purge. Because of all that, the FBI and law enforcement in Utah, we're basically like, yeah, we have no leads whatsoever, we have no helpful information. We're just looking for a white guy in Utah, which, yeah, if you've been to Utah, not's the most helpful. Just this morning, as I was sitting down to record, I saw news that they do have the suspect in custody. Our FBI director Cash Pattel attended a press conference but did not speak. Frankly, he just looked very much in over his head. There is this video I saw of him kind of silently skulking around the sidelines of the press conference, and I almost thought, you know, even if you don't really know what you're doing, or you're overwhelmed, you could always just thank people further hard work, call out some names. That's always a good thing to do at a press conference. If you don't know what else to say. I'll put the video of him in the show notes, But I know that look. It is the look of somebody who was in way over their head. Honestly, it is the look of a podcaster who was just put in charge of a very high profile murder investigation. Honestly, I would probably have the same look. None of the officials took questions. The whole thing just did not inspire confidence. Patel also was posting updates on social media that then ended up being wrong. At first they said that he had apprehended a suspect, but then that was a mistake and that man had been released, and then Patel said the investigation was ongoing.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: So if you listen to the.
00:02:49
Speaker 1: Episode that we did with our producer Joey Patt about how trans folks are baselessly blamed for instances of violence, that is absolutely what happened in this situation. I just took a search on Twitter and it is filled with verified Blue check accounts sharing images of people that they want say are trans, and two have been named.
00:03:10
Speaker 2: As the suspect.
00:03:11
Speaker 1: Just like clockwork, it sho go without saying that none of that is true. Early reports from The Wall Street Journal indicated that ammunition was found inscribed with quote transgender and anti fascist ideology, and I was thinking, what the hell does transgender and anti fascist ideology mean? The Trans Journalist Association helpfully cautioned against media outlets repeating this without actually knowing more, and just generally reminded that quote transgender ideology is a term coined for and used in anti trans political messaging to falsely equate identity with politics, which is a way to frame trans identity as a political choice rather than an innate identity, as it is often unclear what actions or political positions the phrases actually refer to, not unlike how the homosexual agenda is an amorphous term that has no real death definition. Reporters, they said, should be careful about using this term. It is exclusively used to attack a minority group for political gain. So the Wall Street Journal said that this ammunition had transgender and anti fascist ideology written on it, but soon thereafter, The New York Times reported that a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that those reports had not been verified by ATF analysis and did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted, and then just a few hours later, the Wall Street Journal walked back that story, stopping just short of a retraction. And what is so annoying about that is that it was already posted everywhere, headline after headline that trans ideology was found written on the ammunition. But I have seen a lot less reporting of the fact that Wall Street Journal has now clarify that these are just preliminary reports and cautioned folks against taking them at face value. And that makes sense because we now know there was no trans ideology written on that ammunition. People spent, however, long, humanizing trans folks for no reason and lying about transfolks for no reason, and did not even follow back up with the correct information. So let's talk about how people are responding to this murder. I obviously am not supportive of violence. Frankly, I think this is a really dangerous development which could likely lead to more violence and further increase the fear that so many trans and clear and marginalized people are already living with every goddamn day. So that is where I stand. But I also need to make clear that there is a world of difference between cheering violence against somebody and completely lying about and whitewashing somebody's entire career, what they did, what they said, and what they actually stood for.
00:05:43
Speaker 2: And I feel like I am losing my goddamn mind watching people do that this week.
00:05:48
Speaker 1: We do not have to make Charlie Kirk into a hero or a martyr to wish his family well or to express condolences to his wife and kids. We do not have to divorce Charlie Kirk from what it was he was doing and literally, quite literally the things that he was saying when he was killed.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: We could actually tell the truth about those things.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: I almost think that we have gotten to a point where that if you just read Charlie Kirk's actual recent words in public that he said, you would be told that you were being disrespectful to the dead, because you'll notice that nobody is actually pointing to many words or quotes or videos of him saying things that they found profound or whatever after his death. Freakin Kristin Chenowis from Wicked posted quote, I'm so upset. I didn't always agree, but I appreciated some perspectives, and I would absolutely love to know which perspectives specifically, she appreciated from Charlie Kirk Online. They are comparing Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King.
00:06:48
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: Representative Anna Paulina Luna circulated a draft letter asking for a statue of Kirk to be placed in the US Capitol. Representative Andrew Clyde supported that, saying, quote, we have a statue of MLK in the Capitol, don't we basically saying that Kirk and MLK.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: Should be similarly honored.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: Mind you, this is how I know these people don't even know what they're talking about, and they don't even know what Kirk actually did or stood for, or said or felt. Because Charlie Kirk did not even like Martin Luther King. This time last year, what was Charlie Kirk doing. He said that he was going to start dedicating his podcast to discrediting Martin Luther King's legacy. So this just lets me understand that these people have no idea about the actual attitudes and positions of the person that they are lionizing in death. The Trump administration ordered flags at half massed around the country. At the Yankees game that did a tribute to Kirk, there was a moment of silence at the NFL game. This after all backhand winging about not bringing politics into sports when people were kneeling for the anthem. Remember that, So Charlie Kirk was a private citizen, a podcaster who did not have any role within the administration or in government, and yet his body was transported on Air Force two with the Vice President.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: At taxpayer expense.
00:07:59
Speaker 1: And I think that there is something about the way the Internet is reacting to this, the speed and the scale of the reaction, the lionization, the spectacle, that has truly broken my brain and revealed to me that we genuinely are just living in a fractured reality because we have people lionizing Charlie Kirk in this way that I simply do not understand, Like, genuinely, if you knew about Charlie Kirk, just at face value, stuff that he did, stuff that he said, what his work actually looked like, they don't think people are actually grappling with Charlie Kirk, who he was, what he did, what he said, what his work actually looked like, to the point where, listen, I don't like Charlie Kirk, but it almost feels disrespectful to the man's work and life and legacy to completely ignore what the work fast aspect he was quite proud of. Like I like, in a weird kind of roundabout way, I feel like people who are telling the truth about the work that he did are being more respectful of him because they're actually telling the truth about the stuff that he's spent his life doing.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: And I think that's why you might see like.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: Your normy aunt or something on Facebook being like, Oh, what a nice young man.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: It's so sad that he was killed.
00:09:06
Speaker 1: And I think the reason is is that he was young, he had a wife and kids, and I think that it's easy for people to say, oh, he just was someone who cared about scripture and the Bible and Christianity, like I've seen people talk about Charlie Kirk like he was more or less a neutral figure who just traveled around to colleges to teach young students about the power and importance of civil debate and discourse, which is so far removed from reality that I simply cannot let it stand. I saw somebody say, oh, he would go into these hotbeds of liberal campuses only armed with a Bible on a microphone, And.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: I think if that's genuinely all you know about this person.
00:09:45
Speaker 1: I could maybe see why you would get into a situation where you're lionizing them because you really don't know what it was that person.
00:09:53
Speaker 3: Actually did or actually stood for. Let's take a quick break at our back.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: The first thing people really need to understand about Charlie Kirk is that he wasn't just a podcaster who said mean things into a microphone for lots and lots of money. Although he did a lot of that, he wasn't just some shock jock radio DJ. His work caused actual harm to people. Just take a look at his work with Turning Points USA. So, in November twenty sixteen, Charlie Kirk's organization Turning Points USA launched what they call the Professor watch List. The initiative aim to quote, expose, and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students at advanced leftist propaganda in the classroom. The watch List functioned as an online database featuring names, pictures, and accusations against professors that Kirk and his followers do not like hook still up. These allegations often stem from student complaints, media reports, or cherry picked selective quotes. Once listed professors face harassment campaigns, including hate mail, doxing, and threats. Y'all, I know real people in my life, academics, speakers, and writers who were threatened, silenced, and harassed because of this list. Here's just a sampling. George Siicarellio Mayer, a political science professor formally at Drexel University, was added to the watch list after satirical tweets critical of white supremacy, including a viral post that read all I Want for Christmas is white genocide Now. He told The Washington Post that the tweet was meant to be satirical, poking fun at this idea of white genocide as quote an imaginary concept used by the far right to scare people. But that got him added to this list, and after he was included on it, he reported an avalanche of violent threats, leading to his eventual resignation in twenty seventeen after a year of harassment by right wing white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs. After threats and threats of violence directed at me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable, he wrote in a statement on Facebook. There's also Tommy Curry, a black philosophy professor formerly at Texas and M University who specialized in race theory. In an episode of a radio show, Curry, who was supportive of gun ownership, was talking about the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained. If you haven't seen that movie, it's a formally enslaved person gets revenge on his enslaver. The Guardian reports that he talked about how uneasy white people are with the idea of black people talking about gun ownership and using them to combat racist forces. But when a recording of the talk we surfaced, people thought that he was telling black people to kill white people. This idea, the Guardian reports, swept through conservative media and into the fever swamps of Reddit forms and racist message boards, and the threats followed. So that particular instance did not start on the professor watch list, but the watch list amplified it and Curry faced sustained harassment and death threats. Robin Dangelo, best known for her book White Fragility, was included on the watch list for promoting quote anti white bias in her scholarship and teachings on systemic racism, and I think that her case really illustrates what the watch list is really about, which is punishing and silencing scholarship that names and calls out and critiques inequality. Same thing with Kianga Yamada Taylor at Princeton University, a leading black feminist scholar who writes about race and housing inequality. She was added to the Professor watch list after criticizing Trump in a commencement speech and basically had to pull out of her public appearances afterward because of public threats. In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Professor Stacy Patton, another black woman professor targeted by Kirk for harassment, had this to say on Facebook. It is a little long, but I do think people should hear what she had to say, And just to heads up that her post includes some slurs and you will hear those in this segment, she says, I am on Charlie Kirk's hit list. His so called Professor watchlist, run under the umbrella of Turning Points USA, is nothing more than a digital hit list for academics who dare speak truth to power. I landed there in twenty twenty four after writing commentary that inflamed the MAGA faithful, and once my name went up, the harassment machine roared to life. For weeks, My inbox and voicemail were deluged, mostly white men spit venom at me through the phone. Bitch, cunt, nigger. They threatened all manner of violence. They overwhelmed the university's PR lines and the president's office with calls demanding that I be fired. The flood was so relentless that the head of campus security reached out to offer me an escort because they feared one of these keyboard soldiers might step out of his basement and do me harm. And I am not unique. Kirk's watch list has terrorized lesions of professors across this country, women, black faculty, queer scholars. Basically, anyone who challenged white supremacy, gun culture, or Christian nationalism suddenly found themselves the target of coordinated abuse. Some received threats, some had their jobs threatened, Some left academia entirely. Kirk sent the loud message to us, speak the truth and we unleash the mob. That is the culture of violence that Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence, he curated it, monetized it, and sticked it on anyone who dared puncture his movements lies and now in the wake of his shooting. There is all this national outpouring of mourning, moments of silence, yellow prayer hands, and tribute to painting him as a civil debater. But the truth is Kirk and his foot soldiers spent years terrorizing educators, trying to silence us with harassment and fear, and now the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle. But what I find especially jarring is the dissonance in public mourning for a smug white man whose life work was actively hostile to certain groups. Kirk spent years demonizing LGBTQ people, mocking gun survivors, viewing racism about black folks, and pushing policies that literally shorten lives. It is so revolting to watch a bipartisan wave of grief sweep over this hateful racist as if he was a neutral community servant. So I wanted to share what Professor Patton is saying here because I think that we are seeing this culture that is demanding people who were personally targeted by this person, and personally targeted by the culture this person designed and built up. We are we are seeing systems demand that those same people who were targeted now mourn for this person, Now hold space for this person. Now not speak up about what they experienced about this person and what they experienced at this person's hands. And Professor Patton is not alone. Four or four reports that the American Association of University Professors wrote in an open letter in twenty seventeen that the Professor watch List lists names of professors with their institutional affiliations photographs, thereby making it easy for would be stalkers and cyberbullies to target them. Individual faculty members who have been included on such lists singled out elsewhere, have been subject to threats of violence, including sexual assault, through hundreds of emails, calls, and social media postings. Such threatening messages are likely to stifle the free expression of the targeted faculty member. Further, the publicity that such cases attract can cause to self censor so as to avoid being subject to similar treatment. Campus free speech rights group fire found that censorship and punishment of professors skyrocketed between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three in part because of efforts of the Professor watch List. So we need to really keep it real that the Professor watch List is not just a catalog of liberal professors. It is a tool designed to intimidate and silence people who challenged entrenched power structures by disproportionately targeting marginalized scholars, trans and queer scholars, black women, and anybody who did work around inequality and critical voices. It really underscores the stakes of this never ending harassment campaign that people like Kirk disingenuously call the free speech debate. It is not about protecting open inquiry but about suppressing descent pretty clearly, and it's all about silencing critics of the right.
00:17:54
Speaker 2: And Charlie Kirk got to do this work of.
00:17:57
Speaker 1: Silencing people and bullying people into silence and making people fear for their lives for what they said, while simultaneously branding himself a warrior and protector of free speech on college campuses while he himself was going to college campuses to get paid big money for talking about how black women like me lacked the brain processing power to be taken seriously.
00:18:18
Speaker 4: But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. They're coming out and they're saying I'm only here because of affirmative action. Yeah, we know you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.
00:18:37
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk's whole thing was about setting a double standard where he got to say whatever he wanted and his opponents were forced into silence, Like I get to say whatever I want and it's free speech, but if you have anything to say about it, you will line up on my watch list for it and get fired. And it's the exact same culture that we're contending with right now, where Charlie Kirk openly talked about how he hated empathy, and yet anybody who was deemed not being empathetic enough about Kirk's death winds up on a list.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Literally.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: Wired has a great piece called right wing activists or targeting people for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, all about how far right influencers and violent extremists are posting identifying details about people that they view as celebrating or glorifying Charlie Kirk's death. The campaign has been swift and widespread, and has already led to at least one person losing their job and others receiving death threats. There is already a website, Charlie murderers dot com that Wired reports is a quote central hub of this activity, which was registered in the early evening on the day Kirk was shot, and is revealing certain personal information such as social media usernames and email addresses of individuals that the operators believe were celebrating his horrific murder. One of the first names on the list is journalist Rachel Gilmore. She posted that she was terrified to think of how far right fans of Kirk aching for more violence could very well turn this into an even more radicalizing moment. Will they now believe their fears have been proven right and feel they have to retaliate, regardless of who actually was behind the initial shooting. So after she was put on this list, she told Wired that the website has made her genuinely afraid for her safety. I feel awful for anyone whose name was on it. It's clear that purpose of the website is to do exactly what the posts that landed me on their warn Kirk supporters might want to do retaliate, and obviously she is not wrong. Rachel got death threats and rape threats and dms from people promising to find out where she lives, and importantly, Wired reports that just like Rachel, a lot of the people who got on that list did not glorify violence or really even celebrate Kirk's death. Some of the posts are just apathetic tweets, things like posting the news of Kirk's death and writing and the world keep spitting. But that apathy, not even outright celebrating or condoning or glorifying his death, was enough for them to be included on this list. Libs of TikTok's Chaia Rachik highlighted that the assistant dean at the Office of Student Care and Conduct at Middletonnessee State University wrote on her Facebook page that she had zero sympathy for Charlie Kirk, and she was fired within hours. The university put up a statement saying an MTSU employee today offered inappropriate and callous comments on social media concerning the horrific and tragic murder of Charlie Kirk. The comments by this employee, who worked in a position of trust directly with students, were inconsistent with our values and have undermined the university's credibility and reputation with our students, faculty, staff, and community at large. This employee has been fired effective immediately. Variety even reported that Comcast, the parent company of NBC, MSNBC, Bravo, etc. Sent out an all staff memo warning staffers not to say the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk. So this was after MSNBC swiftly fired Matthew Dowd, who had been working as an MSNBC contributor, after he said on air that Kirk was a divisive figure who pushed hate speed. The Comcast memo said that that coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue and being willing to listen to the points of view of those who have differing opinions. We should be able to disagree robustly and passionately, but ultimately with respect. We need to do better. So you really see how mainstream media is doing the work of whitewashing Kirk's actual words and attitudes and also setting the agenda that stepping out of the norm of how people are deciding to talk about that in his death will not be tolerated. It doesn't stop there, because Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins says that he's going to seek to have social media companies place lifetime bands on users that he deems as having glorified or celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. He says, I'm going to use congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Mind you, this is the same representative Clay Higgins who threatened to put Twitter executives in prison because of what he's claimed was unfair censorship of content about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: So we again see the.
00:23:03
Speaker 1: Double standard where censorship of me is bad, but censorship of my opponents is virtuous and patriotic. There is no principle here other than oppression, so Higgins continued. If they ran their mouths with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a constitution, those profiles must come down. He said. He plans to lobby big tech to have zero tolerance for violent political hate content. I'm also going after their business licenses and permitting their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively. They should be kicked out of every school, and their driver's license should be revoked. He added, I'm basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: I'm starting that today. That is all.
00:23:56
Speaker 1: More, after a quick break, Let's get right back into it. The Trump administration warned that they could even look at revoking existing visas or denying them to applicants if they were deemed to have been making light of Charlie Kirk's death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landue posted on x saying that he's directed consular officials to undertake appropriate action, saying, I've been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the State Department can protect the American people, like protect the American people from what Expressing apathy about a podcaster you all liked. Now, keep in mind that as of recording this on September twelfth, we do not yet know much about the suspects.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: Motive. Stuff is starting to trickle in.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: That is not stopped right wing figures from essentially using Kirk's death to call for war and retribution.
00:25:06
Speaker 2: I guess against.
00:25:06
Speaker 1: Leftists or liberals or Democrats, or queer folks or trans folks or people of color or anybody they've decided is against them because they are not white straight men. Pushing that party line, the Congressional Black Caucus is calling for an investigation after a spate of bomb threats at historically black colleges and universities, Which just makes me wonder since the suspect is white, and Charlie Kirk is white, and it happened in a mostly white state, Like why are we in it? But you know what, I don't even really have to ask, because I know why.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: This is a war.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: This is a war, said Alex Jones. Steve Bannon said, we have to have Steely resolved. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are, and of course our old pal Elon Musk had this to say, if they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die. You probably saw Trump's weird probably AI video where he said for years, those on the radical left have compared wonder full of 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 the country today. What's also so wild to me about this is the fact that the left, save for some like random people on social media, have all condemned what happened to Charlie Kirk. They are not celebrating it. But that's the thing. It genuinely does not matter really what is said or what even really happened. Actually, what matters is this big narrative that is clearly being weaponized. His death is being turned into a tool, a way to justify harassment and threats and censorship of anybody who disagrees the content of our words, what we actually say, the nuance of our positions, None of that seems to matter anymore. What matters is that we are targets were simply existing in a world where we don't really want to make him a murder or erase the reality of the things that he said and did. It's also just a complete rewriting of history.
00:26:56
Speaker 2: Currently we do.
00:26:57
Speaker 1: Not know much about the motive, but let's just say it was political violence. How can you live in a country like the United States and acts like political violence just started this week with the murder of Charlie Kirk. It's like a far right extremist never broke into Nancy Pelosi's home and bashed her elderly husband's head in with a hammer, and you know what people on the right did after that happened. Donald Trump Junior responded with a tweet mocking the attack, saying the Internet remains undefeated, basically implying the whole thing was a joke rather than a serious assault on an elderly old man. Elon Musk shared a link to a false report claiming that Paul Pelosi was involved in a romantic or sexual dispute with a male sex worker, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked. And Clay Higgins, the representative from Louisiana who said that we should have no tolerance for political violence, amplified the same thing. And you know what Charlie Kirk did after that happened. He encouraged his audience to post a bail for Nancy Pelosi's husband's attacker, who he called a patriot. Or what about Melissa Hortman, the Democratic lawmaker who was a fascinated alongside our husband and Doug just a few months ago? Why didn't Trump order national flags that half masked for her? Why no tribute at Yankees games? In a post after Kirk's death, Gavin Newsom said the best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work. Engage with each other across ideology through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good face debate, never through violence. Honest disagreement makes us stronger. Violence only drives us apart and corrodes the values at the heart of this nation. But that is my thing. Let's not pretend like Kirk's whole thing was honest disagreement. It is just so insulting to call his brand of debate honest disagreement.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: He didn't think women should work or vote.
00:28:44
Speaker 1: When asked about whether or not black women could be pilots or doctors, he said, and I quote I don't want Laquisha James flying the plane or a black lesbian operating on me at the hospital. How was that an honest disagreement? Do we really need to treat this as spirited discourse and not what it is? It is a refusal to see entire groups of people as fully human or capable. Calling that debate doesn't just sanitize his rhetoric. It erases the real harm that it causes and the dangerous world view that it promotes. And worse, it sets the people up that he targeted with this kind of rhetoric to just have to swallow it and call it ice cream. I saw this post from a lawyer named Cheryl Weichel last night, and I think it really makes the point well. Open debate is for economic policy and whether we should charge for public transportation. Open debate is not whether some human beings are lesser than others like in Gavin Newsom's mind. How would I even debate that? How would I even have a spirited discourse about whether or not I am a less than human being than somebody like Charlie Kirk because I'm a black woman.
00:29:42
Speaker 2: And furthermore, I just have to push back.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: On the idea that newsom raises here that I've seen repeated like it's repeated in the Ezra Cline piece called Charlie Kirkton Politics the Right Way that basically posits that kirk was good and virtuous because he was willing to engage in debate, not set aside for a moment that always wanting to debate others isn't an inherently moral or virtuous stance.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: And like the most.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Annoying people you know probably are like, oh, I love to debate. But also, Charlie kirk was a grown man whose bread and butter was going to college campuses and debating students teenagers.
00:30:17
Speaker 2: That's what he was doing in Utah.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: His whole thing was not standing toe to toe with experts or peers or people with the same access and resources he had. He built his brand on picking fights with kids who are still figuring out who they were, and parading those interactions online as if he had scored some great intellectual victory to personally enrich himself. Why do we then have to pretend that that is moral and noble? And that's why I think this moment is such a dizzying one for me. I know, I've been all over the place in this conversation because genuinely, I'm something is broken inside of me. I think we're seeing all these people and institutions lionizing Kirk. And I'm not even saying that they shouldn't more, and if that's what they feel they have to do, but lionizing him and whitewashing his hateful rhetoric and reckless tactics that hurt people really makes clear how much these mainstream institutions were not really put off by the kind of life that he actually lived and the kinds of things that he actually said and stood for. And it's a reminder that these systems around us will always celebrate power and spectacle and influence over accountability, and that they will reward people who harm others if they do it loudly enough or strategically enough, where they do it while they're like young and have kids and a family. But for the rest of us, the ones who I don't know want to call out harm or inequality, it feels like the rules are entirely different. You know, these are the same people that have spent the last decade saying fuck your feelings as a rally and cry and I saw a great tweet that put it very well, but said no, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: I said, fuck your feelings.
00:31:47
Speaker 1: My feelings are very important and must be handled gently like a tiny baby hummingbird. And that is exactly what's going on here. I think it's fuck our feelings, but their feelings.
00:31:57
Speaker 2: Have to be treated with respect or else.
00:32:00
Speaker 1: How Our deaths are political, their's are national tragedies. It's their free speech rice to say whatever they want about us, but if we verbalize a problem with it, we end up on a list. Our heroes will be removed from history books on government websites, but we will be forced to mourn their heroes or else. As I'm recording this, the police have just announced that they have an alleged shooter in custody. So far, all I know right now is that he's a young man who lives in Utah, not far from campus, and he was turned in by his father after he confessed, So the FBI, it sounds like, did not really play a huge role here. I'm sure that we will learn more, but as of right now, we don't know a ton. We don't know why you pulled the trigger, or even if it was really him. And I just have to say that this is one of those times that I genuinely fear that our country is heading down an increasingly violent path, and this feels like another big step in that violent direction. The way that people so quickly galvanized around lionizing Charlie Kirk, lying about Charlie Kirk, using his death as a way to bash trans people and further target and surveill and harass them, use their death to call for war, all of that.
00:33:08
Speaker 2: It just really I'm quite unnerved in this moment.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: And now that we know that the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, we're watching so many people who were talking tough about wanting to start a war with the left and trans people in this and that, and Democrats basically walk that back without any kind of public accountability of why they rushed to say stuff like that when we didn't know anything about what happened. Yet, for all the handwringing about trans people, the suspect is a white guy from a Republican family. So we're already seeing how those same voices who were calling for blood when they suspected the suspect could have been a trans person have now totally changed their tune. Here's what Nancy May said before we knew any information about the killer whatsoever.
00:33:52
Speaker 2: And I'm kind of a problem with politic political violence across the spectrum. Yeah, we're talking about Charlie Kirk right now. That's the subject of this that we're talking about right now.
00:34:00
Speaker 4: Democrats own this one.
00:34:02
Speaker 1: And now that it turns out the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, she says, we all know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: We will do the same.
00:34:15
Speaker 1: And I say all of this to say that we can condemn violence. We can condemn what happened to Charlie Kirk without rewriting the record of who Kirk was or what he actually stood for. Because violence does not wash hate clean, It does not make bigotry noble, it does not turn cruelty into courage. We have a public record of the things that Kirk stood for, the things that he said, the things that he did. We don't have to forget all of that because it makes it easier for the powers that be. I want to close with the words of poet Lucille Clifton. They ask me to remember that. They want me to remember their memories, and I keep on remembering mine. We do have a news roundup for you all, featuring a very cool guest, co host Ashley Ray of the podcast.
00:35:00
Speaker 2: I say it's a fun one.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: I promise you will hear that next week, so please stick around.
00:35:05
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey pat I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgett and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:00:17
Speaker 2: Hello.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: So if I sound a little bit out of it, it's because it's been a very long week. I suspect that it's probably true for you wherever you're listening. I think we could all use a week where things just feel a little bit normal. I'm not even asking for good frankly, I'm just asking for normal. But that week is not this week. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what is going on with Charlie Kirk. So I'll tell you the broad strokes of what's happening, and then I want to get into my main point, which is what the reaction has been like and what I think it says about where we're at as a culture. So, in case you have not heard, this week, thirty one year old conservative right wing activist Charlie Kirk huge trump ally was shot and killed during a campus debate at Utah Ballet University in Utah. Law enforcement initially released some pretty like unhelpful videos and images of a suspect, but because notably everybody who might have known what they're doing at the FBI was systematically pushed out of the FBI, people like Matab Sayed, who was pushed out of the Utah FBI in July because she was not a good fit, along with a bunch of other FBI officials as part of a purge. Because of all that, the FBI and law enforcement in Utah, we're basically like, yeah, we have no leads whatsoever, we have no helpful information. We're just looking for a white guy in Utah, which, yeah, if you've been to Utah, not's the most helpful. Just this morning, as I was sitting down to record, I saw news that they do have the suspect in custody. Our FBI director Cash Pattel attended a press conference but did not speak. Frankly, he just looked very much in over his head. There is this video I saw of him kind of silently skulking around the sidelines of the press conference, and I almost thought, you know, even if you don't really know what you're doing, or you're overwhelmed, you could always just thank people further hard work, call out some names. That's always a good thing to do at a press conference. If you don't know what else to say. I'll put the video of him in the show notes, But I know that look. It is the look of somebody who was in way over their head. Honestly, it is the look of a podcaster who was just put in charge of a very high profile murder investigation. Honestly, I would probably have the same look. None of the officials took questions. The whole thing just did not inspire confidence. Patel also was posting updates on social media that then ended up being wrong. At first they said that he had apprehended a suspect, but then that was a mistake and that man had been released, and then Patel said the investigation was ongoing.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: So if you listen to the.
00:02:49
Speaker 1: Episode that we did with our producer Joey Patt about how trans folks are baselessly blamed for instances of violence, that is absolutely what happened in this situation. I just took a search on Twitter and it is filled with verified Blue check accounts sharing images of people that they want say are trans, and two have been named.
00:03:10
Speaker 2: As the suspect.
00:03:11
Speaker 1: Just like clockwork, it sho go without saying that none of that is true. Early reports from The Wall Street Journal indicated that ammunition was found inscribed with quote transgender and anti fascist ideology, and I was thinking, what the hell does transgender and anti fascist ideology mean? The Trans Journalist Association helpfully cautioned against media outlets repeating this without actually knowing more, and just generally reminded that quote transgender ideology is a term coined for and used in anti trans political messaging to falsely equate identity with politics, which is a way to frame trans identity as a political choice rather than an innate identity, as it is often unclear what actions or political positions the phrases actually refer to, not unlike how the homosexual agenda is an amorphous term that has no real death definition. Reporters, they said, should be careful about using this term. It is exclusively used to attack a minority group for political gain. So the Wall Street Journal said that this ammunition had transgender and anti fascist ideology written on it, but soon thereafter, The New York Times reported that a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that those reports had not been verified by ATF analysis and did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted, and then just a few hours later, the Wall Street Journal walked back that story, stopping just short of a retraction. And what is so annoying about that is that it was already posted everywhere, headline after headline that trans ideology was found written on the ammunition. But I have seen a lot less reporting of the fact that Wall Street Journal has now clarify that these are just preliminary reports and cautioned folks against taking them at face value. And that makes sense because we now know there was no trans ideology written on that ammunition. People spent, however, long, humanizing trans folks for no reason and lying about transfolks for no reason, and did not even follow back up with the correct information. So let's talk about how people are responding to this murder. I obviously am not supportive of violence. Frankly, I think this is a really dangerous development which could likely lead to more violence and further increase the fear that so many trans and clear and marginalized people are already living with every goddamn day. So that is where I stand. But I also need to make clear that there is a world of difference between cheering violence against somebody and completely lying about and whitewashing somebody's entire career, what they did, what they said, and what they actually stood for.
00:05:43
Speaker 2: And I feel like I am losing my goddamn mind watching people do that this week.
00:05:48
Speaker 1: We do not have to make Charlie Kirk into a hero or a martyr to wish his family well or to express condolences to his wife and kids. We do not have to divorce Charlie Kirk from what it was he was doing and literally, quite literally the things that he was saying when he was killed.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: We could actually tell the truth about those things.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: I almost think that we have gotten to a point where that if you just read Charlie Kirk's actual recent words in public that he said, you would be told that you were being disrespectful to the dead, because you'll notice that nobody is actually pointing to many words or quotes or videos of him saying things that they found profound or whatever after his death. Freakin Kristin Chenowis from Wicked posted quote, I'm so upset. I didn't always agree, but I appreciated some perspectives, and I would absolutely love to know which perspectives specifically, she appreciated from Charlie Kirk Online. They are comparing Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King.
00:06:48
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: Representative Anna Paulina Luna circulated a draft letter asking for a statue of Kirk to be placed in the US Capitol. Representative Andrew Clyde supported that, saying, quote, we have a statue of MLK in the Capitol, don't we basically saying that Kirk and MLK.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: Should be similarly honored.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: Mind you, this is how I know these people don't even know what they're talking about, and they don't even know what Kirk actually did or stood for, or said or felt. Because Charlie Kirk did not even like Martin Luther King. This time last year, what was Charlie Kirk doing. He said that he was going to start dedicating his podcast to discrediting Martin Luther King's legacy. So this just lets me understand that these people have no idea about the actual attitudes and positions of the person that they are lionizing in death. The Trump administration ordered flags at half massed around the country. At the Yankees game that did a tribute to Kirk, there was a moment of silence at the NFL game. This after all backhand winging about not bringing politics into sports when people were kneeling for the anthem. Remember that, So Charlie Kirk was a private citizen, a podcaster who did not have any role within the administration or in government, and yet his body was transported on Air Force two with the Vice President.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: At taxpayer expense.
00:07:59
Speaker 1: And I think that there is something about the way the Internet is reacting to this, the speed and the scale of the reaction, the lionization, the spectacle, that has truly broken my brain and revealed to me that we genuinely are just living in a fractured reality because we have people lionizing Charlie Kirk in this way that I simply do not understand, Like, genuinely, if you knew about Charlie Kirk, just at face value, stuff that he did, stuff that he said, what his work actually looked like, they don't think people are actually grappling with Charlie Kirk, who he was, what he did, what he said, what his work actually looked like, to the point where, listen, I don't like Charlie Kirk, but it almost feels disrespectful to the man's work and life and legacy to completely ignore what the work fast aspect he was quite proud of. Like I like, in a weird kind of roundabout way, I feel like people who are telling the truth about the work that he did are being more respectful of him because they're actually telling the truth about the stuff that he's spent his life doing.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: And I think that's why you might see like.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: Your normy aunt or something on Facebook being like, Oh, what a nice young man.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: It's so sad that he was killed.
00:09:06
Speaker 1: And I think the reason is is that he was young, he had a wife and kids, and I think that it's easy for people to say, oh, he just was someone who cared about scripture and the Bible and Christianity, like I've seen people talk about Charlie Kirk like he was more or less a neutral figure who just traveled around to colleges to teach young students about the power and importance of civil debate and discourse, which is so far removed from reality that I simply cannot let it stand. I saw somebody say, oh, he would go into these hotbeds of liberal campuses only armed with a Bible on a microphone, And.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: I think if that's genuinely all you know about this person.
00:09:45
Speaker 1: I could maybe see why you would get into a situation where you're lionizing them because you really don't know what it was that person.
00:09:53
Speaker 3: Actually did or actually stood for. Let's take a quick break at our back.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: The first thing people really need to understand about Charlie Kirk is that he wasn't just a podcaster who said mean things into a microphone for lots and lots of money. Although he did a lot of that, he wasn't just some shock jock radio DJ. His work caused actual harm to people. Just take a look at his work with Turning Points USA. So, in November twenty sixteen, Charlie Kirk's organization Turning Points USA launched what they call the Professor watch List. The initiative aim to quote, expose, and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students at advanced leftist propaganda in the classroom. The watch List functioned as an online database featuring names, pictures, and accusations against professors that Kirk and his followers do not like hook still up. These allegations often stem from student complaints, media reports, or cherry picked selective quotes. Once listed professors face harassment campaigns, including hate mail, doxing, and threats. Y'all, I know real people in my life, academics, speakers, and writers who were threatened, silenced, and harassed because of this list. Here's just a sampling. George Siicarellio Mayer, a political science professor formally at Drexel University, was added to the watch list after satirical tweets critical of white supremacy, including a viral post that read all I Want for Christmas is white genocide Now. He told The Washington Post that the tweet was meant to be satirical, poking fun at this idea of white genocide as quote an imaginary concept used by the far right to scare people. But that got him added to this list, and after he was included on it, he reported an avalanche of violent threats, leading to his eventual resignation in twenty seventeen after a year of harassment by right wing white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs. After threats and threats of violence directed at me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable, he wrote in a statement on Facebook. There's also Tommy Curry, a black philosophy professor formerly at Texas and M University who specialized in race theory. In an episode of a radio show, Curry, who was supportive of gun ownership, was talking about the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained. If you haven't seen that movie, it's a formally enslaved person gets revenge on his enslaver. The Guardian reports that he talked about how uneasy white people are with the idea of black people talking about gun ownership and using them to combat racist forces. But when a recording of the talk we surfaced, people thought that he was telling black people to kill white people. This idea, the Guardian reports, swept through conservative media and into the fever swamps of Reddit forms and racist message boards, and the threats followed. So that particular instance did not start on the professor watch list, but the watch list amplified it and Curry faced sustained harassment and death threats. Robin Dangelo, best known for her book White Fragility, was included on the watch list for promoting quote anti white bias in her scholarship and teachings on systemic racism, and I think that her case really illustrates what the watch list is really about, which is punishing and silencing scholarship that names and calls out and critiques inequality. Same thing with Kianga Yamada Taylor at Princeton University, a leading black feminist scholar who writes about race and housing inequality. She was added to the Professor watch list after criticizing Trump in a commencement speech and basically had to pull out of her public appearances afterward because of public threats. In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Professor Stacy Patton, another black woman professor targeted by Kirk for harassment, had this to say on Facebook. It is a little long, but I do think people should hear what she had to say, And just to heads up that her post includes some slurs and you will hear those in this segment, she says, I am on Charlie Kirk's hit list. His so called Professor watchlist, run under the umbrella of Turning Points USA, is nothing more than a digital hit list for academics who dare speak truth to power. I landed there in twenty twenty four after writing commentary that inflamed the MAGA faithful, and once my name went up, the harassment machine roared to life. For weeks, My inbox and voicemail were deluged, mostly white men spit venom at me through the phone. Bitch, cunt, nigger. They threatened all manner of violence. They overwhelmed the university's PR lines and the president's office with calls demanding that I be fired. The flood was so relentless that the head of campus security reached out to offer me an escort because they feared one of these keyboard soldiers might step out of his basement and do me harm. And I am not unique. Kirk's watch list has terrorized lesions of professors across this country, women, black faculty, queer scholars. Basically, anyone who challenged white supremacy, gun culture, or Christian nationalism suddenly found themselves the target of coordinated abuse. Some received threats, some had their jobs threatened, Some left academia entirely. Kirk sent the loud message to us, speak the truth and we unleash the mob. That is the culture of violence that Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence, he curated it, monetized it, and sticked it on anyone who dared puncture his movements lies and now in the wake of his shooting. There is all this national outpouring of mourning, moments of silence, yellow prayer hands, and tribute to painting him as a civil debater. But the truth is Kirk and his foot soldiers spent years terrorizing educators, trying to silence us with harassment and fear, and now the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle. But what I find especially jarring is the dissonance in public mourning for a smug white man whose life work was actively hostile to certain groups. Kirk spent years demonizing LGBTQ people, mocking gun survivors, viewing racism about black folks, and pushing policies that literally shorten lives. It is so revolting to watch a bipartisan wave of grief sweep over this hateful racist as if he was a neutral community servant. So I wanted to share what Professor Patton is saying here because I think that we are seeing this culture that is demanding people who were personally targeted by this person, and personally targeted by the culture this person designed and built up. We are we are seeing systems demand that those same people who were targeted now mourn for this person, Now hold space for this person. Now not speak up about what they experienced about this person and what they experienced at this person's hands. And Professor Patton is not alone. Four or four reports that the American Association of University Professors wrote in an open letter in twenty seventeen that the Professor watch List lists names of professors with their institutional affiliations photographs, thereby making it easy for would be stalkers and cyberbullies to target them. Individual faculty members who have been included on such lists singled out elsewhere, have been subject to threats of violence, including sexual assault, through hundreds of emails, calls, and social media postings. Such threatening messages are likely to stifle the free expression of the targeted faculty member. Further, the publicity that such cases attract can cause to self censor so as to avoid being subject to similar treatment. Campus free speech rights group fire found that censorship and punishment of professors skyrocketed between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three in part because of efforts of the Professor watch List. So we need to really keep it real that the Professor watch List is not just a catalog of liberal professors. It is a tool designed to intimidate and silence people who challenged entrenched power structures by disproportionately targeting marginalized scholars, trans and queer scholars, black women, and anybody who did work around inequality and critical voices. It really underscores the stakes of this never ending harassment campaign that people like Kirk disingenuously call the free speech debate. It is not about protecting open inquiry but about suppressing descent pretty clearly, and it's all about silencing critics of the right.
00:17:54
Speaker 2: And Charlie Kirk got to do this work of.
00:17:57
Speaker 1: Silencing people and bullying people into silence and making people fear for their lives for what they said, while simultaneously branding himself a warrior and protector of free speech on college campuses while he himself was going to college campuses to get paid big money for talking about how black women like me lacked the brain processing power to be taken seriously.
00:18:18
Speaker 4: But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. They're coming out and they're saying I'm only here because of affirmative action. Yeah, we know you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.
00:18:37
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk's whole thing was about setting a double standard where he got to say whatever he wanted and his opponents were forced into silence, Like I get to say whatever I want and it's free speech, but if you have anything to say about it, you will line up on my watch list for it and get fired. And it's the exact same culture that we're contending with right now, where Charlie Kirk openly talked about how he hated empathy, and yet anybody who was deemed not being empathetic enough about Kirk's death winds up on a list.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Literally.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: Wired has a great piece called right wing activists or targeting people for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, all about how far right influencers and violent extremists are posting identifying details about people that they view as celebrating or glorifying Charlie Kirk's death. The campaign has been swift and widespread, and has already led to at least one person losing their job and others receiving death threats. There is already a website, Charlie murderers dot com that Wired reports is a quote central hub of this activity, which was registered in the early evening on the day Kirk was shot, and is revealing certain personal information such as social media usernames and email addresses of individuals that the operators believe were celebrating his horrific murder. One of the first names on the list is journalist Rachel Gilmore. She posted that she was terrified to think of how far right fans of Kirk aching for more violence could very well turn this into an even more radicalizing moment. Will they now believe their fears have been proven right and feel they have to retaliate, regardless of who actually was behind the initial shooting. So after she was put on this list, she told Wired that the website has made her genuinely afraid for her safety. I feel awful for anyone whose name was on it. It's clear that purpose of the website is to do exactly what the posts that landed me on their warn Kirk supporters might want to do retaliate, and obviously she is not wrong. Rachel got death threats and rape threats and dms from people promising to find out where she lives, and importantly, Wired reports that just like Rachel, a lot of the people who got on that list did not glorify violence or really even celebrate Kirk's death. Some of the posts are just apathetic tweets, things like posting the news of Kirk's death and writing and the world keep spitting. But that apathy, not even outright celebrating or condoning or glorifying his death, was enough for them to be included on this list. Libs of TikTok's Chaia Rachik highlighted that the assistant dean at the Office of Student Care and Conduct at Middletonnessee State University wrote on her Facebook page that she had zero sympathy for Charlie Kirk, and she was fired within hours. The university put up a statement saying an MTSU employee today offered inappropriate and callous comments on social media concerning the horrific and tragic murder of Charlie Kirk. The comments by this employee, who worked in a position of trust directly with students, were inconsistent with our values and have undermined the university's credibility and reputation with our students, faculty, staff, and community at large. This employee has been fired effective immediately. Variety even reported that Comcast, the parent company of NBC, MSNBC, Bravo, etc. Sent out an all staff memo warning staffers not to say the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk. So this was after MSNBC swiftly fired Matthew Dowd, who had been working as an MSNBC contributor, after he said on air that Kirk was a divisive figure who pushed hate speed. The Comcast memo said that that coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue and being willing to listen to the points of view of those who have differing opinions. We should be able to disagree robustly and passionately, but ultimately with respect. We need to do better. So you really see how mainstream media is doing the work of whitewashing Kirk's actual words and attitudes and also setting the agenda that stepping out of the norm of how people are deciding to talk about that in his death will not be tolerated. It doesn't stop there, because Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins says that he's going to seek to have social media companies place lifetime bands on users that he deems as having glorified or celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. He says, I'm going to use congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Mind you, this is the same representative Clay Higgins who threatened to put Twitter executives in prison because of what he's claimed was unfair censorship of content about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: So we again see the.
00:23:03
Speaker 1: Double standard where censorship of me is bad, but censorship of my opponents is virtuous and patriotic. There is no principle here other than oppression, so Higgins continued. If they ran their mouths with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a constitution, those profiles must come down. He said. He plans to lobby big tech to have zero tolerance for violent political hate content. I'm also going after their business licenses and permitting their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively. They should be kicked out of every school, and their driver's license should be revoked. He added, I'm basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: I'm starting that today. That is all.
00:23:56
Speaker 1: More, after a quick break, Let's get right back into it. The Trump administration warned that they could even look at revoking existing visas or denying them to applicants if they were deemed to have been making light of Charlie Kirk's death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landue posted on x saying that he's directed consular officials to undertake appropriate action, saying, I've been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the State Department can protect the American people, like protect the American people from what Expressing apathy about a podcaster you all liked. Now, keep in mind that as of recording this on September twelfth, we do not yet know much about the suspects.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: Motive. Stuff is starting to trickle in.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: That is not stopped right wing figures from essentially using Kirk's death to call for war and retribution.
00:25:06
Speaker 2: I guess against.
00:25:06
Speaker 1: Leftists or liberals or Democrats, or queer folks or trans folks or people of color or anybody they've decided is against them because they are not white straight men. Pushing that party line, the Congressional Black Caucus is calling for an investigation after a spate of bomb threats at historically black colleges and universities, Which just makes me wonder since the suspect is white, and Charlie Kirk is white, and it happened in a mostly white state, Like why are we in it? But you know what, I don't even really have to ask, because I know why.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: This is a war.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: This is a war, said Alex Jones. Steve Bannon said, we have to have Steely resolved. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are, and of course our old pal Elon Musk had this to say, if they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die. You probably saw Trump's weird probably AI video where he said for years, those on the radical left have compared wonder full of 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 the country today. What's also so wild to me about this is the fact that the left, save for some like random people on social media, have all condemned what happened to Charlie Kirk. They are not celebrating it. But that's the thing. It genuinely does not matter really what is said or what even really happened. Actually, what matters is this big narrative that is clearly being weaponized. His death is being turned into a tool, a way to justify harassment and threats and censorship of anybody who disagrees the content of our words, what we actually say, the nuance of our positions, None of that seems to matter anymore. What matters is that we are targets were simply existing in a world where we don't really want to make him a murder or erase the reality of the things that he said and did. It's also just a complete rewriting of history.
00:26:56
Speaker 2: Currently we do.
00:26:57
Speaker 1: Not know much about the motive, but let's just say it was political violence. How can you live in a country like the United States and acts like political violence just started this week with the murder of Charlie Kirk. It's like a far right extremist never broke into Nancy Pelosi's home and bashed her elderly husband's head in with a hammer, and you know what people on the right did after that happened. Donald Trump Junior responded with a tweet mocking the attack, saying the Internet remains undefeated, basically implying the whole thing was a joke rather than a serious assault on an elderly old man. Elon Musk shared a link to a false report claiming that Paul Pelosi was involved in a romantic or sexual dispute with a male sex worker, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked. And Clay Higgins, the representative from Louisiana who said that we should have no tolerance for political violence, amplified the same thing. And you know what Charlie Kirk did after that happened. He encouraged his audience to post a bail for Nancy Pelosi's husband's attacker, who he called a patriot. Or what about Melissa Hortman, the Democratic lawmaker who was a fascinated alongside our husband and Doug just a few months ago? Why didn't Trump order national flags that half masked for her? Why no tribute at Yankees games? In a post after Kirk's death, Gavin Newsom said the best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work. Engage with each other across ideology through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good face debate, never through violence. Honest disagreement makes us stronger. Violence only drives us apart and corrodes the values at the heart of this nation. But that is my thing. Let's not pretend like Kirk's whole thing was honest disagreement. It is just so insulting to call his brand of debate honest disagreement.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: He didn't think women should work or vote.
00:28:44
Speaker 1: When asked about whether or not black women could be pilots or doctors, he said, and I quote I don't want Laquisha James flying the plane or a black lesbian operating on me at the hospital. How was that an honest disagreement? Do we really need to treat this as spirited discourse and not what it is? It is a refusal to see entire groups of people as fully human or capable. Calling that debate doesn't just sanitize his rhetoric. It erases the real harm that it causes and the dangerous world view that it promotes. And worse, it sets the people up that he targeted with this kind of rhetoric to just have to swallow it and call it ice cream. I saw this post from a lawyer named Cheryl Weichel last night, and I think it really makes the point well. Open debate is for economic policy and whether we should charge for public transportation. Open debate is not whether some human beings are lesser than others like in Gavin Newsom's mind. How would I even debate that? How would I even have a spirited discourse about whether or not I am a less than human being than somebody like Charlie Kirk because I'm a black woman.
00:29:42
Speaker 2: And furthermore, I just have to push back.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: On the idea that newsom raises here that I've seen repeated like it's repeated in the Ezra Cline piece called Charlie Kirkton Politics the Right Way that basically posits that kirk was good and virtuous because he was willing to engage in debate, not set aside for a moment that always wanting to debate others isn't an inherently moral or virtuous stance.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: And like the most.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Annoying people you know probably are like, oh, I love to debate. But also, Charlie kirk was a grown man whose bread and butter was going to college campuses and debating students teenagers.
00:30:17
Speaker 2: That's what he was doing in Utah.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: His whole thing was not standing toe to toe with experts or peers or people with the same access and resources he had. He built his brand on picking fights with kids who are still figuring out who they were, and parading those interactions online as if he had scored some great intellectual victory to personally enrich himself. Why do we then have to pretend that that is moral and noble? And that's why I think this moment is such a dizzying one for me. I know, I've been all over the place in this conversation because genuinely, I'm something is broken inside of me. I think we're seeing all these people and institutions lionizing Kirk. And I'm not even saying that they shouldn't more, and if that's what they feel they have to do, but lionizing him and whitewashing his hateful rhetoric and reckless tactics that hurt people really makes clear how much these mainstream institutions were not really put off by the kind of life that he actually lived and the kinds of things that he actually said and stood for. And it's a reminder that these systems around us will always celebrate power and spectacle and influence over accountability, and that they will reward people who harm others if they do it loudly enough or strategically enough, where they do it while they're like young and have kids and a family. But for the rest of us, the ones who I don't know want to call out harm or inequality, it feels like the rules are entirely different. You know, these are the same people that have spent the last decade saying fuck your feelings as a rally and cry and I saw a great tweet that put it very well, but said no, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: I said, fuck your feelings.
00:31:47
Speaker 1: My feelings are very important and must be handled gently like a tiny baby hummingbird. And that is exactly what's going on here. I think it's fuck our feelings, but their feelings.
00:31:57
Speaker 2: Have to be treated with respect or else.
00:32:00
Speaker 1: How Our deaths are political, their's are national tragedies. It's their free speech rice to say whatever they want about us, but if we verbalize a problem with it, we end up on a list. Our heroes will be removed from history books on government websites, but we will be forced to mourn their heroes or else. As I'm recording this, the police have just announced that they have an alleged shooter in custody. So far, all I know right now is that he's a young man who lives in Utah, not far from campus, and he was turned in by his father after he confessed, So the FBI, it sounds like, did not really play a huge role here. I'm sure that we will learn more, but as of right now, we don't know a ton. We don't know why you pulled the trigger, or even if it was really him. And I just have to say that this is one of those times that I genuinely fear that our country is heading down an increasingly violent path, and this feels like another big step in that violent direction. The way that people so quickly galvanized around lionizing Charlie Kirk, lying about Charlie Kirk, using his death as a way to bash trans people and further target and surveill and harass them, use their death to call for war, all of that.
00:33:08
Speaker 2: It just really I'm quite unnerved in this moment.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: And now that we know that the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, we're watching so many people who were talking tough about wanting to start a war with the left and trans people in this and that, and Democrats basically walk that back without any kind of public accountability of why they rushed to say stuff like that when we didn't know anything about what happened. Yet, for all the handwringing about trans people, the suspect is a white guy from a Republican family. So we're already seeing how those same voices who were calling for blood when they suspected the suspect could have been a trans person have now totally changed their tune. Here's what Nancy May said before we knew any information about the killer whatsoever.
00:33:52
Speaker 2: And I'm kind of a problem with politic political violence across the spectrum. Yeah, we're talking about Charlie Kirk right now. That's the subject of this that we're talking about right now.
00:34:00
Speaker 4: Democrats own this one.
00:34:02
Speaker 1: And now that it turns out the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, she says, we all know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: We will do the same.
00:34:15
Speaker 1: And I say all of this to say that we can condemn violence. We can condemn what happened to Charlie Kirk without rewriting the record of who Kirk was or what he actually stood for. Because violence does not wash hate clean, It does not make bigotry noble, it does not turn cruelty into courage. We have a public record of the things that Kirk stood for, the things that he said, the things that he did. We don't have to forget all of that because it makes it easier for the powers that be. I want to close with the words of poet Lucille Clifton. They ask me to remember that. They want me to remember their memories, and I keep on remembering mine. We do have a news roundup for you all, featuring a very cool guest, co host Ashley Ray of the podcast.
00:35:00
Speaker 2: I say it's a fun one.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: I promise you will hear that next week, so please stick around.
00:35:05
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey pat I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
