Don’t Be Fooled: America Hates These Toxic Right-Wing Gasbags

Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and Erika Kirk get lots of attention. But America hates them. And increasingly, they hate each other.

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September, Christian nationalists were expected to unite for their martyr. Indeed, the global right wept. Argentinian President Javier Milei, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Hungarian P.M. Viktor Orbán, and an Afrikaner lobbying group all sent condolences.

Netanyahu called Kirk a “lion-hearted friend of Israel.” Right-wingers variously blamed the “progressive-liberal left” (Milei) and “radical Islamists” (Netanyahu) for his death. Donations poured in to Turning Point USA, Kirk’s right-wing youth organization. The small-donor support excited MAGA leadership. For 13 years, only elite megadonors—libertarians, Birchers, the Heritage Foundation—had kept TPUSA in business. Finally it had popular support from young conservatives, whom it purported to speak for and who, now, would surely support Trump.

In The New York Times, Ezra Klein helped canonize Kirk for a more moderate audience, admitting to having “envied” him as “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”

On it went. Flags were hung at half-mast. First Amendment protections were even suspended in Kirk’s honor. Hundreds of enemies of Kirk’s Christian nationalism, including Jimmy Kimmel, were censored, suspended, or fired for telling jokes or for grieving insufficiently.

And there was that moving pop dirge: We are Charlie Kirk, his courage our own / Together unbroken, we’ll make........

© New Republic