Is Charlie Kirk the Horst Wessel for MAGA?

First, let me say clearly that I think the murder of Charlie Kirk is abominable and tragic.  There is no justification for this type of political assassination.  But the reaction of Trump, Vance and the rest of the MAGA world is frightening and incredibly cynical and manipulative.

 

Horst Wessel was a middle-class university student who reveled in the masculine subculture of the Sturmabteilung (SA) of the late 1920’s. He became a leader of a street cell that courted violent encounters with communists in Berlin.  He was shot by a communist thug over a lodging dispute and died later in the hospital from sepsis.

 

Josef Goebbels, at that time the Gauleiter of Berlin, had been looking for a martyr to use for propaganda purposes.  Horst Wessel was perfect for the role.  As the Nazi party became ever more powerful and the storm troopers grew in numbers and violence, Horst Wessel became an icon.  A song that Wessel had composed became the SA anthem and ultimately the Nazi party anthem and was known as the Horst Wessel Lied (Song).  To this day it is illegal to perform this song in Germany and both the lyrics and tune are banned.

 

There are strong parallels between the history of the Horst Wessel martyrdom and the current MAGA efforts to make Charlie Kirk into a noble hero cut down by evil leftists.  In both cases, rather than lamenting the violence that pervades society and calling for calm, the events were used for political vengeance and initiating draconian witch hunts for so-called co-conspirators. 

 

Ignoring the complex nature of violence in the USA, which has touched all sides of the political spectrum and is often more a question of mental illness and alienation than of political motivation, is profoundly deceitful.  And publicly shaming, threatening, suspending or firing people who express opinions that are critical of Kirk or that minimize his assassination are clear violations of free speech.  It is a very slippery path to a police state mentality.

 

There may indeed be wrenching sorrow in the MAGA ranks over the death of Kirk, but using his death as a way to limit political discourse and target political foes is clearly an authoritarian move that endangers the most basic rights of our country.  The proper way to honor Kirk would be to make a strong appeal for reconciliation and harmony.  We may not be able to cease vilifying one another in the short term, but using Kirk’s death to ratchet up the tension in our fragile democracy is courting disaster.