Guest post: They really do consider us traitors
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Imbalance.
As someone who knows people on the same list of targets as the Hortmans and the Hoffmans, I do find this dispiriting, and the national government response of a half-mast flag at the Federal Buildings is a reminder of the lack of concern that the President had, choosing to golf rather than attend the funeral or even to visit when Melissa Hortman was lying in state, to be a reminder that the government is in the hands of people whose grief is dependent on the dead’s political persuasion. The RW conspiracy mongers who claimed that the murders were a result of Hortman voting for a budget deal that Republicans also voted for, and the governor ordered a “hit” on her, have never apologized or acknowledged that the murderer was a right wing crusader who had decided to be a John Brown.
And while there were a number of lefties who celebrated the death of Kirk, it’s a reminder that there are assholes everywhere and it’s not dependent on what your political views are. I have seen a whole bunch of righties declare that this sample is proof that the left are terrorists who want to kill people for their political views.
He did not espouse “Free Speech,” he espoused “Me Speech,” as Thomas Zimmer notes in this article:
The signature “contribution” of Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded as a teenager, is the “Professor Watchlist,” a website TPUSA runs. It serves to enable a McCarthyist hunt for “leftists” so that they can be publicly disparaged; once a professor is on the list, harassment, intimidation, and threat are guaranteed to follow. Kirk existed in a rightwing media and online eco system that runs on anger and monetizes outrage. And he was very good at his job, constantly telling his audience what new devious plot “the Left” was pursuing to take America away from “real Americans.” In the process, he propagated basically any rightwing conspiracy theory that has emerged over the past few years: the Big Lie about the 2020 election, Covid disinformation, Great Replacement… all combined with a hefty dose of bigoted white grievance. How much of what he preached did he *actually* believe, about the leftist conspiracies and dangerous “woke” domination? It’s unlikely even he knew. In significant ways, Kirk was the face of a New Right that is not “conservative,” certainly not in the colloquial sense, but devoted to permanent radical culture war.
And there is this undeniable set of observations by Zimmer:
All strands of the Right – Republican elected officials, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base – have been embracing rightwing vigilante violence in an increasingly aggressive fashion. They have openly encouraged white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with “the Left” by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence coded as rightwing – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma, or the Daniel Perry dogma, or the Daniel Penny dogma, or the Ashli Babbitt dogma. The fundamental reality of American politics is that anyone who opposes Trump – politicians, judges, election officials, anyone – faces an avalanche of violent threat.
There is simply no equivalent to this among leaders of the Democratic Party or the influential circles of the institutionalized Left. It has become dogma on the Right to view the Democratic Party as a fundamentally illegitimate faction that must not be allowed to govern; that a nefarious, radically anti-American “Left” has taken over all the institutions of American life and desires to destroy the nation; that there is no room for restraint or compromise with the “enemy within”; that all measures, regardless of how extreme, are justified and indeed necessary in this struggle for the very survival of “real America.” That is what Donald Trump and the leaders of the Republican Party have been propagating relentlessly. That is how rightwing intellectuals have been portraying the political conflict. And that is also what rightwing media activists like Charlie Kirk have been telling their audience.
They really do consider us to be traitors, and while the Democrats do have this inexplicable devotion to trans ideology, there is nothing on the scale of hatred towards us that can be considered an equivalent from the Democrats. A government that honors Ashli Babbit and gives her family $5 million for wrongful death is not the friend of freedom nor liberty, and Kirk was a driver of that ideology. We are talking about someone who wanted single-party rule, not free speech.
Kash Patel in a speech while claiming credit for the capture of Charlie Kirk’s killer: “To my friend Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I’ll see you at Valhalla.”
The use of “Valhalla” is connected with the obsession on the extreme right with the “warrior ethos”, as Secretary of “War” Hegseth calls it. Like a lot of stuff you find on alt-right websites, it derives from fascist writers of the early 20th century like Ernst Jünger, who has become a particular favourite in recent years, along with Carl Schmitt & Julius Evola. Here is Jünger in his treatise “The Worker” of 1932:
“It is, however, an error, an alien idea, that the dying man leaves his body — rather his form enters a new order inaccessible to any spatial, temporal, or causal determination. From this knowledge derived our ancestors’ view according to which, at the moment of death, the warrior was led to Walhalla — but not just as a soul, rather in a radiating corporeality resembling the hero’s body in battle.”
Pretty well all of the “ideas” the alt-right propounds can be traced back to the early 20th century. There is nothing original about them, which, alas, does not make them any less dangerous.
If we are now in the realms of mythology, then perhaps we need to name the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Kennedy, Pestilence?
Hegseth, War?
Trump, Famine?
Vance, Death?
Any better ideas?
Before I realized that I just didn’t believe in any kind of gods, I was exploring the religion of Asatru. It’s the modern pagan adaptation of worship of the Norse gods. While I was interested in the Eddas, and found the stories great fun to read, I soon discovered that it was a religion in its modern form that was favored by white power racists. In Europe, for a time, the Minnesota Vikings’ memorabilia was more popular than any other NFL team because of this association.
I backed away slowly, and shortly thereafter had an experience that convinced me that any sort of religious ecstasy is based on biological response to stimulus and realized that I am an atheist. (That’s a sidenote and the entirety of my atheist testimony.)
The idea of Walhalla is that to be allowed in, a warrior must be in active battle, to die with honor. Charlie Kirk was not in battle, so to Hel with him.
I remember as a young student studying history, wondering how the good people of Germany in the 1930s could have let fascism grow to take hold of their nation. What did it feel like? What were they thinking, that it would blow over? I hadn’t given it much thought during the intervening decades.
I’m beginning to understand now. Because I think this is what it felt like. I don’t quite have the words yet to describe the malaise, the fearful desperation, the appearance (or reality?) of powerlessness.
These are dark times, indeed.
Yes.
To me, watching on the Eastern side of the Atlantic, the modern US resembles Spain in the early 1930s – a bitterly polarised society where civil society has almost collapsed.
I’m worried about my family members in the United States now.
Mike Haubrich #3
Yes, I was, and remain, fascinated by the Eddas & the Icelandic Sagas. They form one of the great glories of mediaeval European literature. But they were also taken up by the Nazis — here is something from the Reykjavik Grapevine website:
‘The Nazi leadership had identified the Icelandic nation as a pure and brave “Aryan nation.” Dr. Gerlach became, however, extremely disappointed with Iceland and its inhabitants, which he deemed to be pathetic. “There is nothing left of the noble nation and its pride, but servility, lack of decency, toadying and humiliation,” he writes in his memorandum.
‘Iceland had been looked upon as a Germanic paradise of pure racial stock by the fanatical pseudo-intellectual circles inside the Nazi party in the 1930s. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and a leading party member, was very interested in mysticism and idolised the Vikings, who he thought were symbolic of the alleged racial superiority of the Nordic race. Dr. Bernard Kummel, a scholar close to Himmler, wrote a book on the ™spiritual treasures∫ of the Icelandic people and encouraged Germans to seek these in Iceland.’
The link to the whole thing is here: https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2014/03/06/a-nazis-disappointment-with-iceland/
No, there is nothing new in the alt-right obsession with Iceland, Vikings, Norse mythology, etc. The alt-right’s obsession with Jünger’s writings is shared by that disgusting individual Alexandr Dugin whom the alt-right also admires, an advocate of Russian expansionism and a fervent supporter of both Putin and, for obvious and cynical reasons, Donald J. Trump. In an essay that will be published in Britain in October, I write that “For too many readers (almost entirely male), [Jünger’s] appeal lies, essentially, in those readers’ narcissism, in their desire to feel themselves as belonging to an élite made up of individuals who see themselves as noble, heroic and contemptuous of lesser beings as they fancy their hero to have been.”
“But they (The Eddas) were taken up by the Nazis”
And how should we respond to that?
I rather like this response to something being taken up by the Nazis.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario
During World War II, the provincial government removed the Swastika sign and replaced it with a sign renaming the town “Winston”. The residents removed the Winston sign and replaced it with a Swastika sign with the message “To hell with Hitler, we had the swastika first.”