Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck while addressing students in Utah on 10 September; a 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged and motives remain unclear. Far-right leaders across Europe seized on the killing to accuse the left of fostering a climate of hate and intolerance, citing alleged dehumanising rhetoric and censorship. Political figures including Viktor Orban, Santiago Abascal, Jordan Bardella and Alice Weidel framed the death as evidence of left-wing hostility. The far right aims to politicise the death, construct a martyr narrative, legitimize its positions and damage left-wing credibility.
"Kirk, a rising star of Donald Trump's Maga movement, was hit in the neck by a single bullet as he addressed students in Utah on 10 September. A 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged, but his alleged motives remain unclear. But that has not stopped far-right figureheads from across the continent seizing on the killing to attack the left, presenting Kirk's death as the logical conclusion of what they portray as a long-running hate campaign aimed at silencing them."
"We must stop the hate-mongering left! said Hungary's illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban. Santiago Abascal of Spain's Vox went further: Censorship isn't enough for them so they resort to murder. For Jordan Bardella of France's far-right National Rally (RN), the dehumanising rhetoric of the left and its intolerance fuels political violence. Alice Weidel of Germany's AfD said Kirk had been shot by a fanatic who hates our way of life."
"The objective, experts say, is to raise Kirk to the status of a martyr to the conservative cause, and a victim of liberal-progressive persecution simultaneously lending greater legitimacy to the right's positions, and inflicting damage on the left. Martyrdom is a social operation to transform a morally and socially unacceptable act of violence into a narrative, historian Pierre-Marie Delpu told Le Monde."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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