00:02:17.340So I wanted to talk a little bit about what is going on with Charlie Kirk.
00:02:22.440So I'll tell you the broad strokes of what's happening, and then I want to get into my main point,
00:02:26.960which is what the reaction has been like and what I think it says about where we're at as a culture.
00:02:33.020So in case you have not heard, this week, 31-year-old conservative right-wing activist Charlie Kirk,
00:02:40.320huge Trump ally, was shot and killed during a campus debate at Utah Valley University in Utah.
00:02:46.800Law enforcement initially released some pretty, like, unhelpful videos and images of a suspect.
00:02:53.340But because, notably, everybody who might have known what they're doing at the FBI was systematically pushed out of the FBI.
00:03:00.800People like Matab Syed, who was pushed out of the Utah FBI in July because she was not a good fit, along with a bunch of other FBI officials as part of a purge.
00:03:09.160Because of all that, the FBI and law enforcement in Utah were basically like, yeah, we have no leads whatsoever.
00:03:16.220We have no helpful information. We're just looking for a white guy in Utah, which, yeah, if you've been to Utah, not the most helpful.
00:03:23.520Just this morning, as I was sitting down to record, I saw news that they do have the suspect in custody.
00:03:29.920Our FBI director, Kash Patel, attended a press conference but did not speak.
00:03:34.440Frankly, he just looked very much in over his head.
00:03:38.200There is this video I saw of him kind of silently skulking around the sidelines of the press conference.
00:03:43.700And I almost thought, you know, even if you don't really know what you're doing or you're overwhelmed, you could always just thank people for their hard work, call out some names.
00:03:51.280That's always a good thing to do at a press conference if you don't know what else to say.
00:03:54.620I'll put the video of him in the show notes, but I know that look.
00:03:58.740It is the look of somebody who was in way over their head.
00:04:01.620Honestly, it is the look of a podcaster who was just put in charge of a very high profile murder investigation.
00:04:07.020Honestly, I would probably have the same look.
00:04:10.580The whole thing just did not inspire confidence.
00:04:13.580Patel also was posting updates on social media that that ended up being wrong.
00:04:17.740At first, they said that he had apprehended a suspect, but then that was a mistake and that man had been released.
00:04:22.840And then Patel said the investigation was ongoing.0.61
00:04:25.040So if you listen to the episode that we did with our producer, Joey Pat, about how trans folks are baselessly blamed for instances of violence, that is absolutely what happened in this situation.
00:04:36.460I just took a search on Twitter, and it is filled with verified blue check accounts sharing images of people that they, one, say are trans, and two, have been named as the suspect, just like clockwork.
00:04:48.960It should go without saying that none of that is true.
00:04:51.420Early reports from The Wall Street Journal indicated that ammunition was found inscribed with, quote, transgender and anti-fascist ideology.
00:04:59.480And I was thinking, what the hell does transgender and anti-fascist ideology mean?
00:05:03.880The Trans Journalist Association helpfully cautioned against media outlets repeating this without actually knowing more and just generally reminded that, quote,
00:05:13.080Transgender ideology is a term coined for and used in anti-trans political messaging to falsely equate identity with politics, which is a way to frame trans identity as a political choice rather than an innate identity.
00:05:25.820as it is often unclear what actions or political positions the phrases actually refer to,
00:05:31.700not unlike how the homosexual agenda is an amorphous term that has no real definition.
00:05:37.600Reporters, they said, should be careful about using this term.
00:05:40.680It is exclusively used to attack a minority group for political gain.
00:05:44.840So the Wall Street Journal said that this ammunition had transgender and anti-fascist ideology written on it.
00:05:49.400But soon thereafter, the New York Times reported that a senior law enforcement official
00:05:52.640with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that those reports had not been
00:05:56.420verified by ATF analysis and did not match other summaries of the evidence and might
00:06:01.280turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.
00:06:04.140And then just a few hours later, The Wall Street Journal walked back that story, stopping
00:06:10.120And what is so annoying about that is that it was already posted everywhere, headline
00:06:14.300after headline, that trans ideology was found written on the ammunition.
00:06:18.560But I have seen a lot less reporting of the fact that Wall Street Journal has now clarified
00:06:22.620that these are just preliminary reports, and cautioned folks against taking them at face value.
00:06:27.760And that makes sense because we now know there was no trans ideology written on that ammunition.
00:06:34.240People spent however long demonizing trans folks for no reason and lying about trans folks for no
00:06:39.940reason and did not even follow back up with the correct information. So let's talk about how
00:06:47.040people are responding to this murder. I obviously am not supportive of violence. Frankly, I think
00:06:54.100this is a really dangerous development, which could likely lead to more violence and further
00:06:58.540increase the fear that so many trans and queer and marginalized people are already living with0.99
00:07:03.180every goddamn day. So that is where I stand. But I also need to make clear that there is a world0.99
00:07:08.820of difference between cheering violence against somebody and completely lying about and whitewashing
00:07:14.880somebody's entire career, what they did, what they said, and what they actually stood for.0.98
00:07:20.020And I feel like I am losing my goddamn mind watching people do that this week. We do not0.96
00:07:25.380have to make Charlie Kirk into a hero or a martyr to wish his family well or to express condolences
00:07:31.880to his wife and kids. We do not have to divorce Charlie Kirk from what it was he was doing and
00:07:37.600literally, quite literally, the things that he was saying when he was killed. We can actually
00:07:42.940tell the truth about those things. I almost think that we have gotten to a point where that if you
00:07:47.380just read Charlie Kirk's actual recent words in public that he said, you would be told that you
00:07:54.140were being disrespectful to the dead. Because you'll notice that nobody is actually pointing
00:07:59.220to any words or quotes or videos of him saying things that they found profound or whatever
00:08:05.260after his death. Friggin' Kristen Chenoweth from Wicked posted, quote,
00:08:09.880I'm so upset. I didn't always agree, but I appreciated some perspectives, and I would absolutely love to know which perspectives specifically she appreciated from Charlie Kirk.
00:08:21.000Online, they are comparing Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King. I'm not kidding.
00:08:26.420Representative Anna Paulina Luna circulated a draft letter asking for a statue of Kirk to be placed in the U.S. Capitol.
00:08:32.660Representative Andrew Clyde supported that, saying, quote, we have a statue of MLK in the Capitol, don't we?
00:08:38.300basically saying that Kirk and MLK should be similarly honored.
00:08:42.580Mind you, this is how I know these people don't even know what they're talking about
00:08:45.940and they don't even know what Kirk actually did or stood for or said or felt
00:08:49.900because Charlie Kirk did not even like Martin Luther King.
00:08:53.780This time last year, what was Charlie Kirk doing?
00:08:56.760He said that he was going to start dedicating his podcast to discrediting Martin Luther King's legacy.
00:09:01.960So this just lets me understand that these people have no idea about the actual attitudes
00:09:06.100and positions of the person that they are lionizing in death.
00:09:09.440The Trump administration ordered flags at half-mast around the country
00:09:12.560at the Yankees game and did a tribute to Kirk.
00:09:14.900There was a moment of silence at the NFL game.
00:09:17.260This, after all that hand-winging about not bringing politics into sports
00:09:21.200when people were kneeling for the anthem, remember that?
00:09:23.600So Charlie Kirk was a private citizen, a podcaster,
00:09:27.160who did not have any role within the administration or in government,
00:09:30.300and yet his body was transported on Air Force Two
00:09:33.780with the vice president at taxpayer expense.
00:12:28.720If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:12:34.660This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:12:41.080pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:12:47.120I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:12:54.240I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:12:57.720From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:13:03.760It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:13:11.240Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:13:20.840Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:56.280all I want for Christmas is white genocide. Now, he told the Washington Post that the tweet was0.62
00:16:01.080meant to be satirical, poking fun at this idea of white genocide as, quote, an imaginary concept
00:16:06.580used by the far right to scare people. But that got him added to this list. And after he was
00:16:11.500included on it, he reported an avalanche of violent threats leading to his eventual resignation in
00:16:16.5802017. After a year of harassment by right-wing white supremacist media outlets and internet
00:16:21.520mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed at me and my family,
00:16:24.880My situation has become unsustainable, he wrote in a statement on Facebook.
00:16:29.420There's also Tommy Curry, a Black velocity professor formerly at Texas A&M University who specialized in race theory.
00:16:35.520In an episode of a radio show, Curry, who is supportive of gun ownership, was talking about the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained.
00:16:42.800If you haven't seen that movie, it's a formerly enslaved person gets revenge on his enslaver.
00:16:46.840The Guardian reports that he talked about how uneasy white people are with the idea of Black people talking about gun ownership and using them to combat racist forces.0.98
00:16:55.920But when a recording of the talk resurfaced, people thought that he was telling Black people to kill white people.
00:17:01.660This idea, the Guardian reports, swept through conservative media and into the fever swamps of Reddit forums and racist message boards, and the threats followed.0.87
00:17:09.580So that particular instance did not start on the professor watchlist, but the watchlist amplified it, and Curry faced sustained harassment and death threats.
00:17:18.380Robin D'Angelo, best known for her book White Fragility, was included on the watchlist for promoting, quote, anti-white bias in her scholarship and teachings on systemic racism.
00:17:27.140And I think that her case really illustrates what the watchlist is really about, which is punishing and silencing scholarship that names and calls out and critiques inequality.
00:17:38.060Same thing with Kiyanga Yamada-Taylor at Princeton University,
00:17:41.860a leading Black feminist scholar who writes about race and housing inequality.
00:17:45.900She was added to the professor watch list after criticizing Trump in a commencement speech
00:17:49.960and basically had to pull out of her public appearances afterward because of public threats.
00:17:55.280In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Professor Stacey Patton,
00:17:58.740another Black woman professor targeted by Kirk for harassment, had this to say on Facebook.
00:18:03.640It is a little long, but I do think people should hear what she had to say.
00:18:06.540And just a heads up that her post includes some slurs, and you will hear those in this segment.
00:18:36.540bit venom at me through the phone. Bitch, cunt, nigger. They threatened all manner of violence.1.00
00:18:42.400They overwhelmed the university's PR lines and the president's office with calls demanding that I be
00:18:47.320fired. The flood was so relentless that the head of campus security reached out to offer me an
00:18:52.140escort because they feared one of these keyboard soldiers might step out of his basement and do me
00:18:57.240harm. And I am not unique. Kirk's watch list has terrorized lesions of professors across this
00:19:03.180country. Women, Black faculty, queer scholars, basically anyone who challenged white supremacy,1.00
00:19:08.580gun culture, or Christian nationalism, suddenly found themselves the target of coordinated abuse.
00:19:14.040Some received threats. Some had their jobs threatened. Some left academia entirely.
00:19:19.160Kirk sent the loud message to us, speak the truth and we will unleash the mob.
00:19:24.160That is the culture of violence that Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence, he curated it,
00:19:28.880monetized it, and sicked it on anyone who dared puncture his movement's lies.
00:19:32.440And now, in the wake of his shooting, there is all this national outpouring of mourning, moments of silence, yellow prayer hands, and tributes painting him as a civil debater.
00:19:41.640But the truth is, Kirk and his foot soldiers spent years terrorizing educators trying to silence us with harassment and fear.
00:19:48.260And now, the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle.
00:19:51.680But what I find especially jarring is the dissonance in public mourning for a smug white man whose life work was actively hostile to certain groups.
00:19:59.860Kirk spent years demonizing LGBTQ people,0.95
00:20:02.800mocking gun survivors, spewing racism about Black folks,0.70
00:20:05.480and pushing policies that literally shorten lives.0.95
00:20:08.140It is so revolting to watch a bipartisan wave of grief0.98
00:29:11.560If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:29:17.500This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:29:23.920pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:29:29.960I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:29:37.080I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:29:40.560From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:29:46.600It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:29:54.080Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:30:03.680Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:31:21.800The Trump administration warned that they could even look at revoking existing visas or denying them to applicants if they were deemed to have been making light of Charlie Kirk's death.
00:31:32.980Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landube posted on X saying that he's directed consular officials to undertake appropriate action, saying,
00:31:40.320I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing or making light of the event and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action.
00:31:48.540Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the State Department can protect the American people.
00:31:54.900Like, protect the American people from what? Expressing apathy about a podcaster you all liked?
00:32:00.100Now, keep in mind that as of recording this, on September 12th, we do not yet know much about the suspect's motives.
00:32:07.660But that has not stopped right wing figures from essentially using Kirk's death to call for war and retribution, I guess, against leftists or liberals or Democrats or queer folks or trans folks or people of color or anybody they've decided is against them because they are not white, straight men pushing that party line.
00:32:26.920The Congressional Black Caucus is calling for an investigation after a spate of bomb threats at historically black colleges and universities, which just makes me wonder since the suspect is white and Charlie Kirk is white and it happened in a mostly white state.
00:32:39.620Like, why are we in it? But you know what? I don't even really have to ask because I know why.
00:32:44.240This is a war. This is a war, said Alex Jones.
00:32:47.120Steve Bannon said, we have to have steely resolve. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.
00:32:53.740And of course, our old pal Elon Musk had this to say.
00:32:56.920If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.
00:33:00.680You probably saw Trump's weird, probably AI video where he said,
00:33:05.240For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis
00:33:10.040and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
00:33:13.140This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in the country today.
00:33:17.720What's also so wild to me about this is the fact that the left,
00:33:21.920save for some, like, random people on social media,
00:33:24.960have all condemned what happened to Charlie Kirk.
00:35:57.120I don't want LaQuisha James flying the plane or a Black lesbian operating on me at the hospital.1.00
00:36:02.760How is that an honest disagreement?1.00
00:36:04.880Do we really need to treat this as spirited discourse and not what it is?
00:36:08.640A refusal to see entire groups of people as fully human or capable.
00:36:13.360Calling that debate doesn't just sanitize his rhetoric.
00:36:16.400It erases the real harm that it causes and the dangerous worldview that it promotes.
00:36:20.780And worse, it sets the people up that he targeted with this kind of rhetoric to just have to swallow it and call it ice cream.
00:36:27.780I saw this post from a lawyer named Cheryl Weichel last night, and I think it really makes the point well.
00:36:32.960Open debate is for economic policy and whether we should charge for public transportation.
00:36:36.940Open debate is not whether some human beings are lesser than others.
00:36:40.160Like in Gavin Newsom's mind, how would I even debate that?
00:36:43.380How would I even have a spirited discourse about whether or not I am a less than human being than somebody like Charlie Kirk because I'm a black woman?
00:36:50.940And furthermore, I just have to push back on the idea that Newsom raises here that I've seen repeated, like it's repeated in the Ezra Klein piece called Charlie Kirk did politics the right way, that basically posits that Kirk was good and virtuous because he was willing to engage in debate.
00:37:06.720Let's set aside for a moment that always wanting to debate others isn't an inherently moral or virtuous stance.
00:37:12.920And like the most annoying people, you know, probably are like, oh, I love to debate.
00:37:16.740But also, Charlie Kirk was a grown man whose bread and butter was going to college campuses and debating students, teenagers.
00:37:27.620His whole thing was not standing toe to toe with experts or peers or people with the same access and resources he had.
00:37:34.740He built his brand on picking fights with kids who are still figuring out who they were and parading those interactions online as if he had scored some great intellectual victory to personally enrich himself.
00:37:47.340Why do we then have to pretend that that is moral and noble?
00:37:50.740And that's why I think this moment is such a dizzying one for me.
00:37:54.220I know I've been all over the place in this conversation because genuinely I am I am something is broken inside of me.
00:37:59.240I think we're seeing all these people and institutions lionizing Kirk, and I'm not even saying that they shouldn't mourn if that's what they feel they have to do, but lionizing him and whitewashing his hateful rhetoric and reckless tactics that hurt people really makes clear how much these mainstream institutions were not really put off by the kind of life that he actually lived and the kinds of things that he actually said and stood for.
00:38:21.520And it's a reminder that these systems around us will always celebrate power and spectacle and influence over accountability and that they will reward people who harm others if they do it loudly enough or strategically enough or they do it while they're like young and have kids and a family.
00:38:36.440But for the rest of us, the ones who, I don't know, want to call out harm or inequality, it feels like the rules are entirely different.0.99
00:38:44.380You know, these are the same people that have spent the last decade saying fuck your feelings as a rallying cry.0.98
00:38:49.060And I saw a great tweet that put it very well that said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You misunderstood. I said, fuck your feelings. My feelings are very important and must be handled gently like a tiny baby hummingbird. And that is exactly what's going on here, I think. It's fuck our feelings, but their feelings have to be treated with respect or else. Our deaths are political. Theirs are national tragedies.0.99
00:39:12.100It's their free speech rights to say whatever they want about us.
00:39:15.380But if we verbalize a problem with it, we end up on a list.
00:39:19.560Our heroes will be removed from history books and government websites.
00:39:23.340But we will be forced to mourn their heroes or else.
00:39:27.040As I'm recording this, the police have just announced that they have an alleged shooter in custody.
00:39:31.200So far, all I know right now is that he's a young man who lives in Utah, not far from campus.
00:39:36.340And he was turned in by his father after he confessed.
00:39:39.180So the FBI, it sounds like, did not really play a huge role here.
00:39:42.780I'm sure that we will learn more, but as of right now, we don't know a ton.
00:39:46.620We don't know why he pulled the trigger or even if it was really him.
00:39:49.660And I just have to say that this is one of those times that I genuinely fear that our country is heading down an increasingly violent path.
00:39:56.680And this feels like another big step in that violent direction.
00:40:00.160The way that people so quickly galvanized around lionizing Charlie Kirk, lying about Charlie Kirk, using his death as a way to bash trans people and further target and surveil and harass them, use their death to call for war, all of that.
00:40:16.400It just really I'm quite unnerved in this moment.
00:40:19.320And now that we know that the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, we're watching so many people who were talking tough about wanting to start a war with the left and trans people and this and that and Democrats basically walk that back without any kind of public accountability of why they rushed to say stuff like that when we didn't know anything about what happened yet.
00:40:41.880For all the hand-wringing about trans people, the suspect is a white guy from a Republican family.
00:40:47.280So we're already seeing how those same voices who were calling for blood
00:40:50.900when they suspected the suspect could have been a trans person have now totally changed their tune.
00:40:56.040Here's what Nancy Mace said before we knew any information about the killer whatsoever.
00:41:00.340Is there a problem with political violence across the spectrum?
00:41:03.860Yeah, we're talking about Charlie Crook right now.
00:41:06.060That's the subject of this that we're talking about right now.
00:41:10.420And now that it turns out the killer is a white guy from a Republican family, she says, we all know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ.