A NYT opinion piece today (not paywalled) by its columnist Ezra Klein praised the recently murdered Charlie Kirk. Kirk was an outspoken 31 year old MAGA demagogue. He was murdered yesterday on a college campus in Utah. The gunman is still being chased and remains unknown. Obviously, all decent Americans abhor and strongly condemn the senseless, morally depraved murder of Charlie Kirk. His murder was wrong, immoral and unjustifiable. None of that is in question. An essay on that point would be perfectly reasonable. However, Klein's opinion piece was not on that point.
Instead, his opinion praises Charlie Kirk for (1) practicing politics in exactly the right way, (2) being one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion, and (3) being on the side of a continued possibility of American politics. One can easily argue that those assertions are either objectively false or shockingly misleading. In my opinion, Klein's opinion is deeply disturbing, discouraging and frankly terrifying.
Mr. Kirk was a radical right authoritarian well-practiced in the art of divisive demagoguery, deceit, lies, and bigotry. PolitiFact and other sources make clear the shameless, chronic mendacity of Kirk's way of practicing politics. Very few people openly admit that being lied to is practicing politics in exactly the right way. It is a fact, not an opinion, that Kirk did not practice politics exactly the right way.
The main reason that Kirk was so effective at persuasion is because, like Trump, he was a smooth, sophisticated demagogue and liar. He worked tirelessly to help build a false MAGA reality grounded in divisive lies, slanders, knowingly flawed reasoning and so forth. Social science research makes clear (e.g., this research, this, and this) the awesome persuasive power of morally rotted demagoguery in the hands of talented demagogues. Not being aware of the social science of demagoguery and lying amounts to inexcusable journalistic malpractice.
Finally, Kirk was not on the side of a continued possibility of American politics, if that means our representative democracy, rule of law and civil liberties surviving Trump and MAGA mostly intact. Kirk was on MAGA's authoritarian side, not democracy's side. MAGA is authoritarian and kleptocratic. An MAGA elite like Kirk knew that. Specifically, Kirk was not just a Christian nationalist theocrat. He publicly supported the radical, theocratic Seven Mountains Mandate. He also publicly lied that church-state separation was a fabrication by secular humanists.
Mr. Kirk was a radical right authoritarian well-practiced in the art of divisive demagoguery, deceit, lies, and bigotry. PolitiFact and other sources make clear the shameless, chronic mendacity of Kirk's way of practicing politics. Very few people openly admit that being lied to is practicing politics in exactly the right way. It is a fact, not an opinion, that Kirk did not practice politics exactly the right way.
The main reason that Kirk was so effective at persuasion is because, like Trump, he was a smooth, sophisticated demagogue and liar. He worked tirelessly to help build a false MAGA reality grounded in divisive lies, slanders, knowingly flawed reasoning and so forth. Social science research makes clear (e.g., this research, this, and this) the awesome persuasive power of morally rotted demagoguery in the hands of talented demagogues. Not being aware of the social science of demagoguery and lying amounts to inexcusable journalistic malpractice.
Finally, Kirk was not on the side of a continued possibility of American politics, if that means our representative democracy, rule of law and civil liberties surviving Trump and MAGA mostly intact. Kirk was on MAGA's authoritarian side, not democracy's side. MAGA is authoritarian and kleptocratic. An MAGA elite like Kirk knew that. Specifically, Kirk was not just a Christian nationalist theocrat. He publicly supported the radical, theocratic Seven Mountains Mandate. He also publicly lied that church-state separation was a fabrication by secular humanists.
Klein's opinion praising Kirk's brand of politics damages democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. It is a huge mistake. It normalizes and morally sanctifies what is cynically mendacious, authoritarian, abnormal, and deeply morally corrupt. That is the kind of politics that Kirk was an elite proponent of. In view of who Kirk was, Klein's opinion failed and betrayed us and our democracy.
Q: Was Klein's failure mostly incompetence, complicity, and/or something else?
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