Well, it’s very interesting to watch the Republicans tie themselves into knots trying to blame the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Democrats. At the outset it should be noted that agree with him or disagree with him — and I disagreed with him on almost everything — Charlie Kirk is exactly the kind of guy who should not have been assassinated, if we want to have any kind of civil discourse. Kirk put himself squarely into the civic debate, daring people to prove him wrong. And that is the forum in which he should have been (and often was) defeated. Not by shooting him in the neck.

It should also be noted that of the two people who tried to take out Trump last summer and the guy who did take out Charlie Kirk, none of them was a Democrat. 

• Thomas Matthew Crooks is a registered Republican; 
• Ryan Wesley Routh is “unaffiliated” although he has sometimes voted in Democratic primaries; and now,
• Tyler Robinson is the son of a Mormon family all of whom were Trump-supporting MAGAs. Robinson was also registered to vote as “unaffiliated,” although there is no evidence that he ever voted.

So none of them are Democrats.

All of that did not keep Elon Musk from exclaiming on X that “The Left is the party of murder.” Ignoring for the moment that the left is not a “party,” it is also, of course, factually untrue. 

And then we got these kind of posts on X:

Oh boy.

I will say that I was impressed with the use of the word “stochastic” here, although it wasn’t quite used properly.

But the American Reichstag fire?

For those of you who don’t know, the Reichstag fire is universally regarded as the event that precipitated the changeover in the early NAZI regime from an arguably legitimate regime into a clearly illegitimate regime. The Reichstag fire occurred on February 27, 1933, when a 24 year old Dutch communist set a fire in the German parliamentary building, doing significant damage. Although the best evidence is that Marinus van der Lubbe acted alone, the NAZI’s blamed the communists as an organization, which precipitated the signing of the Reichstag Fire Decree a couple of weeks later. That was the beginning of the end for civil liberties under the new regime.

In other words, the Reichstag fire is not the kind of event I would be touting as what is needed in the United States of America in order for us to move forward politically.

Actually, the way that the killing of Charlie Kirk is much more likely to be used is the way that the NAZI’s used Horst Wessel. Wessel was a young man who was an early supporter of the NAZI party. Aside from being a militant street fighter, Wessel also wrote a song entitled “Die Fahne hoch” (“Raise the Flag”), which later became known as the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

In any case, on January 14, 1930, Wessel was shot in his Berlin apartment by Albrecht Höhler, a member of the Communist Party, during a dispute reportedly linked to both politics and personal entanglements involving his landlady and a former prostitute. Höhler had been brought in as “muscle” to help evict Wessel and his companion. Although he was shot at the beginning of 1930, Wessel did not actually die until February 23, after he contracted sepsis while in hospital.

The Nazis quickly turned his death into propaganda. Wessel was elevated as a symbol of youthful sacrifice for the Nazi cause, and his song became central to the movement’s identity.  The “Horst-Wessel-Lied” eventually became mandatory at Nazi ceremonies and was often paired with the national anthem.

That is the political danger that I’d be on the lookout for. Mythmaking for Charlie Kirk that is completely disproportionate to his actual character and accomplishments.