Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
US Attorney General Pam Bondi just said on a podcast that “hate speech” directed at conservatives was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and that people who utter such speech will be prosecuted by the Trump administration.
Bondi’s comments came after the podcast’s host Katie Miller (wife of Trump henchman Stephen Miller) bizarrely suggested that Kirk’s murder at a university was a symptom of university campuses being too tolerant of mistreatment of people with conservative views.
Here’s a transcript:
Miller: “These universities are complicit in allowing conservatives to be harassed on campus. And what happens when you allow a university to harass conservatives and don’t expel or don’t take action is what happened last week.”
Bondi: “It is, and you know, on a broader level, the antisemitism that’s been happening at college campuses around this country is disgusting. It’s despicable. And we’ve been fighting that. We’ve been fighting these universities left and right, and we’re not going to stop. There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society.”
Miller: “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action?”
Bondi: “We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that’s across the aisle.”
At the same time, Miller’s husband Stephen circulated the baseless claim that an “organized campaign” by left wing “terrorist networks” led to Kirk’s murder, and that the Trump administration is going to “dismantle and destroy” these networks.
Appearing on the late Kirk’s podcast which was being guest hosted by Vice President JD Vance, Miller stated the following:
“We are going to channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks … The organized doxxing campaigns. The organized riots. The organized street violence. The organized campaigns of of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses. Combining that with messaging designed to trigger and incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
On the same show, Vance urged American conservatives to report anyone who celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk to their employer in order to get them fired.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer,” Vance said, adding, “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
If the Biden administration had been saying these things about right wingers, Trump supporters would’ve shrieked their lungs out. But because Trump supporters are mindless unprincipled NPCs, they’re perfectly fine with using authoritarian speech suppression and cancel culture against the other side.
One of the many naive mistakes I made when I first started this commentary gig was taking Trump supporters at their word when they said they support things like free speech, ending wars, and dismantling the deep state. I thought they can’t be all bad, because they’re saying they’re on the same side as me with many important issues that I care about.
This wishful thinking quickly fell apart as I watched them defend every single one of Trump’s acts of warmongering and authoritarianism and advancements of longstanding deep state agendas throughout his first term. Even actions which should have gone against their own basic partisan ideological biases like imprisoning Julian Assange were excused, justified, or spun as some kind of 4-D chess maneuver to actually rescue Assange. I stayed in dialogue with them the entire time, and they stood by literally every last bit of Trump’s warmongering, authoritarianism, and assaults on free speech.
Every once in a while you’d see one of them go “This is the final straw for me! I don’t support Trump anymore!” But then their disdain for Democrats would pull them right back into the fold and they’d be toeing the Republican Party line just the same as before.
And it became clear to me that these people do not actually oppose the terrible abuses they claim to oppose, they just oppose them when the other party is doing them. They don’t oppose assaults on free speech, they just oppose assaults on their own speech. They don’t oppose war, they just oppose wars that they perceive as being started by Democrats. They don’t oppose the unelected power structure which runs the US empire, they just oppose the aspects of that power structure which they perceive as hostile to Trump.
And they’ve been demonstrating this even more clearly during Trump’s second term. They’ve defended every single one of their president’s genocidal, warmongering, tyrannical abuses. They stood by him when he deliberately torched the ceasefire with Hamas and the truce with the Houthis and reignited the bloodshed in Gaza and Yemen. They stood by him as he worked to stomp out free speech in the United States with moves intended to silence criticism of Israel. They stood by him when he announced his ethnic cleansing plans for the Gaza Strip. They stood by him when he bombed Iran. They’re standing by him as he expands his warmongering to Venezuela. Whatever authoritarian measures Washington decides to surf on the tide of the Charlie Kirk assassination will surely be complied with too.
They’re a bunch of worthless, power-worshipping bootlickers who support everything they claim to oppose. They’re garden variety Republican empire simps posing as populist revolutionaries, just as devoted to the imperial murder machine as the Democrats they despise.
Eventually you learn that anyone who aligns themselves with either mainstream party in any way is someone you can just dismiss as a compliant empire stooge. They might say “No no I’m this new special kind of Republican that opposes the war machine and fights for liberty,” or “No no I’m this new special kind of Democrat who opposes the oligarchy and works for peace,” but they’re lying. It’s a play. A performance. They’re just trying to herd people into the two mainstream imperial parties whose entire purpose is to protect and promote the interests of the empire.
They’re all part of the swamp, and you cannot use the swamp to drain the swamp.
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Feature image is a screen grab from The Katie Miller Show (Fair Use).
I have always rejected the excuse that poverty, struggle, or alienation somehow cause people to become racist, hateful, or violent. That narrative has always served one purpose: to absolve bad people of responsibility for their choices. It paints them as victims instead of what they are, namely adults making conscious decisions, including the decision to hate.
There are millions of people who are economically devastated, disenfranchised, shut out of opportunity, working two jobs and still unable to pay rent or provide a future for their kids. And you know what? They don’t turn into bigots. They don’t fetishize cruelty. They don’t salivate at the idea of crushing the most vulnerable people in society or buying alligator alcatraz merch so that they fantasize about immigrants escaping the swamp to be torn to shreds.
I myself am angry at Obama's betrayal of the working class, and I am not taking it out onm black people.
But the fact that so many others are, and that this gave rise to MAGA, makes something crystal clear: these people didn’t become racist and hateful. They always were. They just finally felt permission to show it. MAGA didn’t radicalize them, it unmasked them.
And yet people keep making excuses. Many on the Left insist on casting MAGA as some kind of victim class. That is a dangerous lie. These people are not confused. They are not misled. They are going into this eyes wide open, because they ultimately like the message and agree with it. They admire the hatred, they agree with the racism, the cruelty, the authoritarianism, and yes even the open, sleazy misogyny. They don’t just tolerate it. They cheer it.
People do what they wanna do and act how they want to. No one is making them.
"One of the many naive mistakes I made when I first started this commentary gig was taking Trump supporters at their word when they said they support things like free speech, ending wars, and dismantling the deep state. I thought they can’t be all bad, because they’re saying they’re on the same side as me with many important issues that I care about."
Oh, Caitlin, I love you to death but you were oh so naive! :)
As a Canadian who has observed the US media and political landscape quite intensely since I was a news-obsessed teenager, I can tell you that going back all the way to at least 1995 (when Newt Gingrich came onto the scene), all Republicans lie, cheat, and steal.
And let's not forget their golden rule: Every accusation is a confession.
From McCarthyism to "Freedom Fries".
From "Mission Accomplished" to fighting "anti-semitism".
I always compared the Republicans more to the Taliban, actually.
Democrats are no saints, obviously, but they don't have that quite powerful culture war card to play. Plus, as I've mentioned before, right-wingers, seem to get a pass if they lie, cheat, or steal. There are basically no consequences for their terrible actions.
The Republicans are very good at screaming bloody murder and getting enough attention from the media to give their manufactured outrage legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Democrats have AIPAC-funded Zionists and "liberal" commentators like the NYT's Ezra Klein who wrote that "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way".
Once again I have to ask, how the fuck does this nightmare end?