The last of my month’s worth of columns touching on the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk begins with the first question he was purportedly asked at a contentious meeting of his donors weeks before he died.
According to his widow, Erika Kirk (previously the tramp-stamped hot chick in a country music video, for those keeping track, not that there’s anything at all wrong with that),
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtQ7TXvZOPI]) a mid-August gathering of donors to their organization Turning Point USA, already anxious over Charlie’s mounting criticisms of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, began with someone asking what would become of the organization if Kirk were to disappear.
Erika recounted that moment in a recent onstage interview with Megyn Kelly without drawing any nefarious conclusions, merely observing as a widow that the death you ponder one moment may someday soon come to pass—which could mean she’s admirably immune to leaping to conclusions or that she’s doing a much more canny job of hinting at alternative theories about who killed Kirk than her recent critics are likely to give her credit for.
Charlie, for good or ill, was apparently less cautious and reportedly told people after the donors meeting that he now feared Israeli interests were planning to kill him for his apostasy. This isn’t just post hoc narrative-building: Harrison H. Smith mentioned Charlie’s fear in a post on August 13, right after the donors meeting and less than a month before the murder.
I don’t know if Charlie’s fears were well-founded or just ironically timed, but this much is certain: You are absolutely doomed to be condemned by one faction or another if you so much as recount contentious events of this sort, even if you bear no ill will toward any of the parties being discussed.
I was reminded how hopelessly contentious topics surrounding Israel and its foes are about 15 years ago when, as part of the years-long series of public debates I’d been organizing, I approached a potential pro-Israel debater and a potential pro-Palestinian debater about debating some generic, brevity-respecting, catch-all topic like “Who’s Right: the Israelis or the Palestinians?” and each of the potential debaters independently accused me of structuring the debate topic to favor the other side. They can’t both be right unless I was nth-dimensionally unfair. On some topics, if you’re the moderate—or just a moderator—you can’t win.
Leftist writer Eric Alterman, though himself the author of the book We Are Not One about how contentious the topic of Israel has long been in American politics, spent part of his Christmas morning last week making multiple Facebook posts about Charlie, calling him an anti-Semite for saying some Jewish activists are so left-wing they end up harming Jews in general, and adding that Kirk was a racist to boot for saying affirmative action has the (unfortunate but inevitable and perfectly logical) side effect of making people wonder if blacks in prominent positions are less qualified to be there than their competitors.
Has Alterman really not noticed how tricky it has become for even the most well-meaning activist to make it through the obstacle course of topics this complex without offending someone, or does he just enjoy attacking the dead?
By the end of Christmas day, in what might be seen as a bit of justice, Alterman was fending off an online flurry of inevitable, intersectional follow-up questions from his own associates: Is it morally acceptable to the intelligent leftist to be pro-Zionist but ardently anti-Netanyahu, etc., etc.? Call me a callous outsider, but on many topics, I think the default reaction to thorniness should be for everyone to calm down and cut others ample slack. See: abortion, aesthetics, etc.
Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League probably ought to be cautious about implying Megyn Kelly is an anti-Semite or closet Nazi merely because she warned that overly zealous defense of Israel could stoke anti-Semitism, which the ADL says is a classic anti-Semitic tactic/trope. Maybe she’s evil to the core (I slammed her just weeks ago for reveling in the attacks on Venezuela, after all), but surely there’s some irony in the fact that if you’re her (or some other blonde right-winger) and you warn that pro-Israeli militarism can undermine the broader cause of supporting Jewish people, you get condemned as a roundabout anti-Semite, whereas if you’re a leftist like, say, Alterman, and you similarly warn that pro-Israeli militarism can undermine the broader cause of supporting Jewish people, you’re assumed to be thoughtful and humane.
Caitlin Flanagan (who became a prominent voice by writing about philosophically rich topics like “loving and loathing our inner housewives,” defending “girls,” and sticking up for Sen. Diane Feinstein) ominously states that she’s seen warning signs of Naziism like those Megyn Kelly now emits as they arose in other cultures. Did fascism ever really lead with giving Jews sympathetic P.R. or military advice, though? Really?
Lord only knows how people inclined to slam me will twist this column’s meaning into some sort of crypto-Nazi or Palestinian-bashing screed, depending on their agendas. Is there any winning move besides not playing? Can you really blame most sane, moderate Americans, when faced with some topics, for issuing risk-averse statements that sound roughly like “Boy, people are really fighting a lot on this one, better check in on them later”?
Meanwhile, Trump-hating (and Jewish) Matt Drudge leaves an image of Team Trump on a toboggan atop his site for days during Christmas week with zero explanation of why the one Jewish person in the image is depicted with subtle vampire fangs (likely no one including Drudge noticed). Being anti-Trump means never having to say you’re sorry, though, apparently.
Drudge also prominently linked to a piece by Cameron Adams that mocks Trump for wishing Americans Merry Christmas “prematurely” because he did so 24 hours before the 25th. I don’t know what culture produced Cameron Adams, but in ours, people traditionally wish each other Merry Christmas for weeks. Adams is lucky to be among them. And I genuinely and probably futilely say: good will to all, and please resolve to hear each other out in the new year.
—Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey