The Right's New Thought Police

White "Christian" nationalists - i.e., like those behind Project 2025 - have long sought to impose their beliefs on all of American society and to attack and demonize those who oppose their agenda.  With the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Felon and political prostitutes within today's GOP and a host of far right talking heads and "influencers" are taking that silencing of opponents to new extremes and are pushing to police the thoughts and free speech anyone they depict as would be domestic "terrorists."  True to form, criticism of and accurate descriptions of ugly messages coming from the far right are labeled "hate speech" while the often vile screeds from right wing operatives and some Republican office holders gets a free pass or is described as exercising free speech rights. Similarly, the reality that  political violence against deemed adversaries is far more prevalent on the political right is utterly ignored. Indeed, the Felon has stated he "could care less" about violence by right wing extremists.  Now, Kirk's death appears to be being utilized as an excuse to justify a quasi-police state where voicing thoughts could cost one their job, if not their physical safety. In some ways it's yet another example of the Felon's and his sycophants' use of manufactured emergencies to justify ignore the law and/or civil rights of others.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this dangerous effort:

[The Felon] President Trump and his allies are capitalizing on the assassination of Charlie Kirk to open up fresh attacks on liberal institutions, donors and foundations. They seek to portray many on the left as traitors.

Appearing on Kirk’s podcast on Monday, less than a week after Kirks death, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, denounced The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that’s designed to trigger, incite violence in the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement.

Trump and his allies has long exploited “emergencies” to push divisive measures. Now he claims that left-wing terrorism is a greater threat than terror perpetrated by the right, a demonstrably false assertion.

Over the last three years, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Cato Institute and the International Center for Counter Terrorism, have amassed evidence showing that right-wing violence is more prevalent than violence from the left.

Within hours of the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk, Trump placed the blame for political violence squarely on “the radical left” in televised remarks that night . . . On Sept. 12, Trump went beyond dismissing the threat posed by right-wing political violence to arguing that right-wing extremists are in fact justified. Asked about violence perpetrated by those on the right, Trump didn’t hold back during an appearance on the Fox and Friends television show: I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.

Trump and his MAGA followers have not just turned Kirk’s murder into a political weapon; they are trying, with some success, to use it to build a national movement to publicly out everyone who criticized Kirk on social media after his death. They are also trying to persuade their employers to fire them.

“A campaign by public officials and others on the right has led just days after the conservative activist’s death to the firing or punishment of teachers, government workers, a TV pundit and the expectation of more dismissals coming,” The Associated Press reported on Sept. 14.

In their article “Trump Escalates Attacks on Political Opponents After Charlie Kirk’s Killing,” my Times colleagues Tyler Pager and Nick Corasaniti reported that Trump and his supporters have initiated “a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning institutions.”

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, Pager and Corasaniti wrote, warned “that his agency was closely tracking any military personnel who celebrated or mocked Mr. Kirk’s death, and Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, suggested the administration would strip visas from individuals who celebrated Mr. Kirk’s death.”

On Capitol Hill, Pager and Corasaniti continued, Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, said he would use his congressional authority to seek immediate bans for life from social media platforms for anyone who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” adding in a posting on X “I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked out from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I’m starting that today.”

Trump and Miller have claimed that the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations are financing violence on the left.

Sam Jackson, a professor of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at SUNY-Albany, emailed a response to my questions: Trump, Loomer and many others are using this event to justify crackdowns on political opponents, broadly described as “the left.” The political right in the United States has long tried to argue that the political left is responsible for more violence than the political right. That simply hasn’t been true for decades.

In recent years, the study found: Violent far-right extremist have been responsible for 94 of the 108 terrorism fatalities (87 percent) in the United States in the past five years. This included 2022, when 18 of the 19 fatalities occurred during far-right terrorist attacks.

Since the early 1990s, Kleinfeld continued, “actual violence has risen, largely from the right. While it has grown somewhat from the left . . . . the numbers are just not comparable.”

The response to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Kleinfeld argued, poses significant risks: “What is most dangerous is when violence starts to get framed as defensive — because that is when more normal people start engaging. The concern with Charlie Kirk’s murder is that it may push the United States over that edge.”

At 7 p.m. on Sept. 10, the day Kirk was killed, Laura Loomer posted on X: Charlie Kirk’s death will not be in vain. I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death. I’m going to make you wish you never opened your mouth.

If Trump, Vance, Miller and Loomer have their way, America will take another step toward becoming a McCarthyite state with the ever-present danger that your colleagues and friends will report your offhand quick-reaction social media posts to government authorities.

As terrible as the killing of Charlie Kirk was, this way of honoring it is repellent.