If you’re interested in a quai-real time discussion about Kirk, Fuentes, and Groyperism, you might want to skim the Talk page on the Wikipedia article: “Killing of Charlie Kirk”. In the middle of it (after a long discussion of whether the article should be moved to “Assassination of Charlie Kirk”; Wikipedia at its pedantic best!), there’s a section on Fuentes and Groyperism, and how the markings on the bullets should be interpreted:
(Link to specific topic included to spare you from having to wade through the killing v assassination debate.)
That and, “I know about it, therefore it must be important.”
Everybody has to do their own calculus about the extent to which they want to inundate themselves with information that enrages and terrifies them. I’m more sensitive than most, just “knowing” certain things causes me to lose sleep at night and distracts me from my job. The day Charlie Kirk was shot, I was so upset I was unable to get any work done.
I think a lot of people confuse knowing something with having control over it. And I think they very frequently cross the line between knowing about something and ruminating pointlessly about it.
As a friend of mine said after the Haiti earthquake: “Write a cheque, send it to disaster relief, and try to forget about it. Some other terrible thing will be along soon.”
Among those not steeped in Conservative media, I think Miller is probably better known, due to him being one of Trump’s top lieutenants since the first term, being the chief architect of his immigration policy, and looking like he came straight out of central casting for “evil henchman.”
Anyway, I had heard of Charlie Kirk before, and had even heard some of his more infamous quotes, though prior to last week I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you who specifically said those quotes, only that it was some MAGA chud. I also doubt I would have been able to pick him out of a line-up before the shooting.
I also want to point out the rotating cast of characters that have always been around Trump and who eventually get fired or resigned. The turnover is so high, it’s hard for me to keep up with them all. Maybe a memory problem.
I had heard of Charlie Kirk, but didn’t really know anything specific about him. He was mentally filed away in the same “Pay No Attention To” folder as Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Steve Doocy, and other right-wing media christian-conservative blowhards that I don’t follow.
I was visiting my parents last week. When it came on the news, we all looked at each other. I broke the silence with “who the hell is Charlie Kirk?” My parents both shrugged.
I had heard of him, but he has such a generic name that it never stuck. Had someone posted about Charlie Kirk and what he said on his right wing podcast, I would be like “Yep, that sounds about right, I sort of remember that name”, but had you told me that he was a liberal TV opinion anchor, I would not have disagreed with that, either.
Not so for a lot of other names in the same space that are more distinctive. For instance, I definitely know who Nick Fuentes is. Although possibly that’s cheating because one of the reasons I remember is because I always misread his name at first as Vic Fuentes, lead singer of Pierce the Veil.