The fascist right (i.e., the right), is already calling for it:
One numbnuts (see second video) is encouraging his fellow fascists (including presumably the Fascist in Chief) to use the killing of Kirk as the right’s “Reichstag fire.” Others are saying that all Democrats should be rounded up and the party banned. These guys aren’t being subtle about it.
But will something like this happen, which, in my view would immediately plunge the US into a civil war or some sort of schism or breakup? Let’s look at the factors pro and con for the chances that this will happen and the chances for its success.
Pro
The fascist right is pretty much unified in its desire for vengeance and destruction of the left. The iron is red-hot; a strike right now could would take advantage of this before it cools.
Trump is already incrementally attempting to take total power by invading US cities, etc. He is likely to see this as his best chance to skip incrementalism and go for it all (but that doesn’t mean he will see his best chance as a good chance).
Trump can see that the Epstein scandal has legs and is gradually weakening his grip on the base and his appeal to “independents.” Attempting to take total power now is a chance to make the scandal irrelevant.
Trump can also see that his fascist/mercantilist program is failing. Striking now could make his approval ratings, etc., irrelevant.
The Democrats are in a weak position. We are still playing by the rules against a fascist insurgency in democracy drag. Striking against the enemy at his weakest is strategy 101.
Con
Trump loves being president and all the attention it gets him. Making any big move, whether successful or not, will completely take him out of this comfortable template. If he had his druthers, he would rules as a dictator while still being a “real president.”
Trump is very sick, and he’s old and tired. Really going for it means really going for it. Managing a civil war would tax the stamina of even a much younger man.
A strike could easily fail. Thus far, Trump has proven at least somewhat risk averse when it comes to his depredations, endeavoring to keep them just this side of the line. Throughout his career, he’s always been a master of a sort of plausible deniability. Making the strike means leaving behind such a posture for good, while if the strike fails, Trump knows that he and all his fascist allies will go down with it or, in the event of a national schism, be personae non gratae in the other half of the country. In short, Trump doesn’t seem to me to be, in essence, an all-or-nothing kind of player.
Speaking of risk-averseness, Trump knows that an actual civil war would put himself and those he “cares” about in a different position than they are now: they would go from theoretical political actors and their loved ones to something not that.
A strike would plunge the US into every type of chaos imaginable. Look at what these dipshits did when they sicced ice on the Koreans of Hyundai. How’s that gonna work out for the US economy? Well, multiply that by a number bigger than 1,000. All foreign investment, all tourism, gone overnight. Nazi McMusk may be dumb enough to want that (he just called the Democrats the “party of murder”), but do the rest of the oligarchs, etc.?
Even a successful strike would turn the US into a pariah state. We’ve already achievement-unlocked “junior pariah state” status, and it’s been really bad for US tourism, etc. Which brings us back to point No. 1: does Trump really want to be the ruler of such a thing?
Hence my conclusion: Trump isn’t going to use Kirk’s death as a Reichstag fire event, but, of course, he and his fascist allies will continue to use it as best they can in their smaller-scale depredations.
That doesn’t mean, however, that US hasn’t become even more of a powder keg than it was before the assassination. It has. We are in a very unpredictable situation, and the US could break up even without Trump making some much bigger move. I think we’re definitely on the path to some sort of revolutionary change in this country, and things could happen very fast indeed.
He’s far too unimportant to set off something so huge. It’s most likely that, just a week from now, his killing won’t even be in the forefront of the news or people’s minds all that much anymore, especially if his shooter is apprehended.
Objectively speaking, he was a very important figure in the fascist ecosystem. The point, however, is less about how important he was and more about whether his murder can serve to prime the base for a fascist takeover.
What if they gave a civil war and nobody came? 249 years later, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” translates in real terms to “I got my own fucking problems.”
A fistfight between two girls in the Big Brother House would blow Charlie Kirk’s murder out of 90% of the national consciousness.
I had never heard of him. But now I know he was your basic MAGAt. It is possible that a disgruntled MAGAt killed him. I don’t really care though.
Trump is killing thousands, and RFK jr. is trying to better that number. If the MAGAt’s want a war, bring it on. They will find that Democrats are not going to hide in their basements.
It’s not his importance; it is how much the far right media can inflame it into a cause célèbre. Kirk has a powerful following among the disaffected Far Right (especially angry young and middle aged white men) but I doubt that really translates into some kind of fear to the general public, even among hardline MAGA Republicans who aren’t already radicalized. Turning Point USA, Kirk’s NPO, was primarily funded by Foster Friess with some additional support from conservative funders like Bernard Marcuss and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein; it was basically popular by dint of being promoted and propped up, and Kirk’s ability at argumentation. It should also be noted that it issued a ‘watchlist’ of professors that was essentially a hit list, and that Kirk often celebrated political violence against liberal politicians, which is not really that popular among voters of either party.
What this will serve as it an excuse for further constraining civil liberties in the service of public safety. But then, that has been going on for the last quarter century.
The shit that is coming has been coming for a while. The two political parties and their bases can’t compromise, and that can’t end well in the long term. One’s fighting evil, and one’s fighting for democracy and to govern based on reality and science. Neither can give in, and so something’s gotta give.
Kirk’s murder won’t cause a civil war or breakup any more than any other excuse to come down the road. That’s not to say his murder won’t be used as a rallying cry/excuse for fascist lockdowns, it’s just that it was always gonna happen one way or another.
Pretty much, yep. About the only thing that can stop it at this point is the oligarchs and other TPTB coming together to quell it, based on the understanding that it’s not in their interest, as it is not.
I don’t believe in evil. What sensible person does? They believe it though, I’ve heard democrats called evil many times, and people don’t compromise with evil. I should have wrote, “evil”, I suppose.
The Civil War won’t be the government vs the Democratic Party. It will be increasingly bad incursions like we’ve seen in LA and DC, and the MAGAs will use Kirk’s death as the excuse to not do anything about that.
It will also be free-range civil war. MAGA types attacking the left, and again using Kirk as an excuse. The government will help with this by largely ignoring these attacks, refusing to charge anyone if there’s even a fig leaf of an excuse to say it was “self defense” or something.
I think @Horatius is most correct, as is @Aeschines comment immediately after.
Even if TPTB want to take things more slowly and preserve the figleaf, individuals and small groups are likely to increasingly take steps into their own hands. Which means the issues can easily get outside of control, and move us outside the scope of control or MAGA planning before they’ve finished their preparations for an illiberal state.
IMHO, those in power don’t want a Civil War or Breakup, they want the entire ball of Wax (after scrubing out the “impurities”). Some of the MAGA base on the other hand, want war. I won’t try to describe the percentage this time, but it’s certainly a very vocal percentage!
