September 16, 2025 • 18 mins
In the days since the assassination of prominent right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, the White House ordered flags flown at half-staff and memorials were organised in Washington, DC and Arizona.
But what followed wasn’t just mourning. The Trump administration is urging people to report anyone who criticised or mocked Kirk’s death, and has pledged to use federal power to uproot and dismantle left-leaning groups it says foment political violence.
Today, host of the independent media podcast Lamestream, Osman Faruqi, on how Kirk’s death is being used to crack down on the administration’s enemies – and to justify a further slide towards authoritarianism.
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Guest: Journalist and host of the Lamestream podcast, Osman Faruqi
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. In
the days since the assassination of prominent right wing activist
Charlie Kirk, the White House has ordered flags flown at
half staff, and memorials have been organized in Washington, DC
and Arizona. But what's followed hasn't just been mourning. The
(00:24):
Trump administration is urging people to report anyone who's criticized
or mocked Kirk's death, and has pledged to uproot and
dismantle left leaning groups they've accused of fomenting political violence. Today,
host of the independent media podcast Lamestream Osmond Ferruki on
how Charlie Kirk's death is being used to crack down
on the Trump administration's enemies and to justify sliding further
(00:47):
towards authoritarianism. It's Wednesday, September seventeen, so Oz, welcome back
to seven AM.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Thank you, Ruby. It's a real pleasure to come back
on the show with you.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's great to have you. So last week, right wing
American activist Charlie Kirk was killed. The suspect in his murder,
a twenty two year old called Tyler Robinson, is currently
in police custody. To begin with, though, can you just
tell me a bit about Charlie Kirk, about his beliefs
and his influence.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So the story of Charlie Kirk, it really begins back
in twenty twelve when he was eighteen, and back then Ruby,
the political landscape in the US was very, very different
to what it is right now. Barack Obama was about
to be re elected. The Republicans and the right kind
of more generally were feeling very marginalized and like they
were losing the big social and cultural and political debates.
(01:46):
Progressives were comprehensively winning the battle on social media as well.
Back then, Kirk was this young conservative Republican aligned activist,
and he ended up teaming up with some prominent Republican
donors to start this organization Turning Point USA.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
We're acting in about fifteen campuses, and we're growing very
very quickly. And keep in mind, this is not just
a flash and the Pan movement. We're going to become
an institution to give them.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The idea was to start the fight back against this
kind of progressive dominance, to convince young people back to
conservative ideas, and to create content for social media that
would help mobilize young people, and he ended up mobilizing
lots of them in real life on rallies on campuses
all around the country as well.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Suck.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
A lot of his ideas, particularly early on, were pretty
standard right wing Republican conservative beliefs. You know, he is
an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That we allow the massacre of a million and a
half babies a year under the guise of woman reproductive health.
It is never right to justify the mass elimination or
termination of people under the guys of saying they're unwanted.
That's how we get Oschwitz.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
He was a strong defender of gun rise.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately
some gun deaths every single year so that we can
have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
And he was very, very, very staunchly pro Israel.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
If you, as a gay person, would go to Gaza,
they'd throw you off at tall buildings. Right now, they
don't have any tall buildings left.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Sell out, don't. When you mess with the ball, you
get the horns.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Is that too soon? I'm sorry, Maybe you shouldn't killed Jews,
stupid Muslims.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
His positions on race and migration were more extreme.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Don't call them immigrants, they're line cutters and border jumpers.
Immigrants are people that wait in line and fill out
the forums and come here correctly. Don't conflate the two
that don't conflate.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
He was a proponent of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory,
This idea that left wing governments are trying to reduce
white populations in Western countries and replace them with migrants
from the developing world. This is the theory that motivated
the christ Church shooter. For example, he opposed the Civil
Rights Act. He was very critical of Martin Luther King
and civil rights activism, and the.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Civil Rights Act thought, let's be clear, created a beast,
and that beast has now turned into an anti white weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
This he made multiple disparaging comments about black Americans.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Blacks are thirteen percent of the population and they commit
fifty eight percent of all the murders. That's not a
war on drugs, that's a culture problem.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And he said about Muslims, Islam is the sword the
left is using to slit the throat of America. So
his views on race, migration, religion quite extreme right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And tell me about how close he's been with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Kirk campaigned for Trump in twenty sixteen, and when Trump
was elected, he became very very close to the Trump
family and he bragged about visiting the White House one
hundred times. During Trump's first presidency, Kirk and his organization
Turning Point were considered pretty critical to the way that
the Trump campaign successfully managed to woo ya younger people,
particularly younger men, on university campuses, and really helped secure
(05:04):
Trump's second presidency the twenty twenty election. A lot of
that was possible because of Kirk's profile on social media,
the way that he would hold these debates on university campuses,
they would be filmed, they would attract millions and millions
of views on YouTube as well. His podcast had over
half a million listeners a day, and he was immensely
popular among younger Americans, especially those on the far right,
(05:28):
and also conservatives all over the world, including here in Australia.
And I think it's fair to say by the time
he was killed, he was probably one of the most
prominent faces of the MAGA movement and it was.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
At one of those campus debates that he was shot.
And since his death, a lot of people have grappled
with how to respond to the shooting of someone who
is a right wing figure, someone who has, as you say,
these extreme views, and who had publicly endorsed the very
idea of political violence. So tell me what you observed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I think the first thing to say about the reaction
to Kirk's death, and this is whether it's from the
left or the right, I think it needs to be
understood in the context of the current political situation in
the US. And there's a couple of things that I
think are really important. The first is just rising political
violence generally, whether that's the execution of a healthcare CEO
or the murder of Democratic politicians in Minnesota just in
(06:19):
June this year. There is now a volume of politically
motivated murders and assassinations of the kind the US hasn't
really seen since the sixties, you know, since the assassinations
of JFK, his brother, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X.
The other thing I think that's really important to understand
is how extreme and volatile the political situation is in
America right now. The Trump government is acting in an
(06:42):
increasingly authoritarian manner. It's very reminiscent of fascist regimes in
the twentieth century, whether that's like the deportation of migrants,
crack down on universities, attempts to coerce the media, all
these sorts of things are really worrying signs for the
direction that the US is heading in. So when Kirk
was killed, a lot of the response from progressives was
this feeling of indifference. You know, there was this common
(07:04):
feeling that because Kirk was a supporter of far right policies,
and he defended gun rights, and he supported Israel's genocide
in Gaza, there was this sense that even though the
death was very shocking, it wasn't one that they particularly
wanted to mourn or express a lot of sympathy towards
on the right. The reaction was significant. It was actually
like an extraordinary, extraordinary outpouring of grief, sympathy, and I
(07:26):
guess the restatement of the kinds of political beliefs that
Kirk himself espoused. Kirk was effectively treated as a martyr.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Today because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become
bigger and grander than ever before. And it's not even close.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You know, Donald Trump demanded that US flags flat half
mast across the country.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And we want to show you the flag at the
White House at half staff today again, President Trump ordering
all flags to be flown at half staff until sunset.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
On, which is very, very unusual for someone who isn't
in the military or a publicly elected official. Advance, the
Vice President canceled a nine to eleven memorial to personally
fly Charlie Kirks coffin from Utah, where he was shot,
back to Arizona, his home state. And I think, perhaps
most concerningly, Ruby, the right was already deciding who was
(08:15):
to blame for Kirk's shooting. Donald Trump, in his comments
made just hours after Kirk was shot to death, said
the radical left was directly to blame for the assassination.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people
and taken too many lives. Tonight, they ask all Americans
to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie
Kirk lived and died.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right wing activists in the media were already blaming left
wing groups and people who opposed Trump for allegedly encouraging
the kind of political violence that led to Kirk's assassination.
So in an already divided and very tense America, you
could see these very specific fault lines in response to
Kirk's death already emerging.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It seems like a very cohesive narrative is being built
up here.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, that's right, and it was a very i think
coordinated and clear attempt from the right to set the
terms of this discussion into the future.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Coming up how the far right is using the death
of Charlie Kirk to advance some more authoritarian agenda. Oz.
Charlie Kirk is not an elected politician, and I think
for a lot of people in Australia up until his death,
(09:33):
he may not necessarily have been a household name. Yet
we have heard senior Australian politicians being asked about Kirk,
asked to speak to his death. How unusual is that?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, so it is pretty unusual for Australian politicians to
weigh in on US politics like this. And for example,
that was very little reaction from Australian politicians and Australian
media to the shooting of those Minnesota Democratic politicians that
I mentioned. But in Australian response to Kirk's death, we
saw the acting Prime Minister, the Defensive Minister Richard Miles.
He was asked about this non stop on Thursday, the
(10:07):
day of the shooting. His comments were expressing thoughts and
sympathies for Charlie Kirk's family. Australia's ambassador to the US,
Kevin Rudd, in a statement published in social media, said
the thoughts of all Australians were with Kirk's family and
loved ones, so already he was seeing a level of
significance placed on Kirk's death by Australian figures that was
pretty unusual and pretty rare for an incident like this.
(10:30):
Some Australian politicians took things even further. The Liberal senator
Mchaley Cash posit a photo on Instagram of Kirk with
the caption I am Charlie Kirk and on social media
you had one Nation and Pauline Hanson explicitly refer to
Kirk as a martyr for the right wing movement globally.
And I think what this shows is really just how
much the US, and in particular Trump and the far
(10:53):
right in the US, as setting the tempo for how
politics is played in the rest of the world, including
here in Australia. I think the federal government wants to
be seen to be as close to the Trump government
as possible, So there was this sense of how do
we echo Trump's mourning of Charlie Kirk's death in Australia.
On the right here, I think there is actually something
(11:13):
a bit more insidious going on. I think there's this
attempt to use Charlie Kirk's death to really push forward
their agenda and to retaliate against their enemies, especially those
who were critical of Kirk and the extreme far right
positions that he took.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Let's talk a bit more about that, because there has
been this outrage that's been directed at people who haven't
been seen to mourn Kirk's death in the way that
Trump's administration has. So to tell me what we're seeing, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I think one of the most concerning things that we've
seen in the aftermath of Kirk's death is how quickly
the far right and mobilized to docs harassm and kind
of essentially removed from public life people that they thought
weren't respectful enough of Kirk in his death. And that
includes some of the people who are celebrating Kirk's death
on social media, but also it includes people who were
just like suggesting that Kirk's endorsement of gun rights and
(12:05):
his political ideology had contributed to the kind of extreme
tense position that America had found itself in, and in
some other instances it was just people who were sharing
things Kirk himself said that was deemed by the far
right to not be respectful. In the aftermath of his shooting,
some on the right in America have set up this
website where individuals deemed to have posted inappropriately about Kirk
(12:26):
are having their photos, their jobs, personal details about themselves
published online for everyone to see. More than a dozen
people in America have already been fired because of these
coordinated harassment and doxing campaigns. That includes journalists, including journalists
at MSNBC. In the Washington Post.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
MSNBC president Rebecca Cutler apologized, Matthew Dowd made comments that
were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements,
as has he there is no place for violence in America,
political or otherwise, and then she fired him.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Ludes, academics, they're being investigated and suspended for posting things
like I can't muster much sympathy. People are going to argue,
here's a family. Here's a wife and kids. What about
all the kids, all the broken families from the two
hundred and fifty eight school shootings from twenty twenty to now.
So gives you an example of just like what is
being deemed inappropriate and unacceptable by the right in America.
(13:22):
And I think what's particularly concerning is that all of
this is being encouraged by the Trump administration. Like there
are reports that the FBI is actively monitoring what people
post on social media about Kirk. On Tuesday this week,
Jadie Vans, the Vice President, asked supporters of the government
to monitor social media for statements that weren't respectful enough
of Kirk, and for people to notify the employers of
(13:44):
those people making those statements.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them
out and hell, call their employer. We don't believe in
political violence, but we do believe in civility.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's actually going even further though. Stephen Miller, who's the
White House Deputy Chief of Staff. He went on Kirk's
former podcast with JD.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Mans this week, Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
This is Vice President Jade Vance joining me. Now is
Steven Miller, White Hell's deputy chief of staff, dear friend
of mine and dear friend of Charlie Kirks. And before
I get into the and.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
He said that the government was going to go after
NGOs and left wing organizations with a quote righteous anger
and use that to dismantle opposition to the Trump ragam.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
We are going to channel all of the anger that
we have over the organized campaign that led to this
assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So and how effective do you think it is in
terms of silencing people.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I think it's been extremely effective so far. The far
right have basically got total control of this narrative. The
handful of people who've decided to say, hey, obviously the
shooting was quite bad, but let's take a moment and
think about how the radical right is playing a role
in this cycle of political violence. Let's look at how
Trump is attacking his Democrat opponents as communists and as
(15:03):
of insiders who are running a campaign to sort of
secretly subvert the kind of politics and the democracy of
the US. Even people like that are being banished from
public life. And I think you're seeing this real significant
chilling effect in politics in the media that I think
is quite spooky in terms of who gets to speak
up in the United States. And when you have an
(15:24):
authoritarian government introducing policies that are very radical, very extreme,
if you don't have resistance to that, and that resistance
is being diminished, it's a really really concerning sign for
the future structory of the US.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So how do you think we should respond to this
moment in time?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think at the moment there's a lot of people
on the progressive side of politics who are kind of
busy debating Charlie Kirk's legacy and grappling with how to
deal with his death. But I think because what we're
seeing right now is so much bigger and so much
more significant than that, I'm not sure that that is
like the best use of time and energy. Sure, the
faright are trying to cat and is Kirk right now,
but what they're doing is systemically trying to tear down
(16:04):
their opponents. That is to me much more significant and
much more serious. And there's this idea amongst some progressives
and some liberals that the US is so this like
quote unquote normal country. You know, Trump is this bad
right wing President. There is this reluctance I think right
now Ruby to really reckon with just how authoritarian his
regime has become. And I think right now what we're
(16:26):
seeing should be a wake up call, and I think
it shouldn't just be a wake up call for Americans.
We are seeing the spread of this kind of ideology
in these kinds of tactics all over Europe. The most
popular party in that kingdom right now is the far
right Reform Party, which takes a lot of its cues
from Donald Trump. Australia is also not immune from these
kinds of forces. I think there needs to be a
(16:47):
much greater acknowledgment in the US, around the world, but
also here in Australia just how extreme and precarious the
situation is. And I think having a clearer understanding of
how the far right is using the death of Charlie
Kirk to push forward their agenda is like vital because
without that understanding, there is basically no hope of stopping
(17:07):
what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Well, Oz, thank you for your.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Time, Ruby, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Also in the news today, US President Donald Trump says
he'll file a US fifteen billion dollar defamation and libel
lawsuit against The New York Times. President Trump last week
threatened to sue The Times for its reporting related to
a suggestive note and drawing allegedly given to convicted sex
offender Jeffrey Epstein, which mister Trump denies. Writing in a
post on truth Social the US President accused New York
(17:52):
Times of becoming a virtual mouthpiece for the radical left
Democratic Party and Australia and Papua New ca Uni will
agree to defend each other in the event of a
military attack as part of a landmark defense agreement due
to be signed on the sidelines of celebrations to commemorate
the country's independence. Designed to push back against China's interest
(18:13):
in the region. The deal is the latest negotiated by
the Aberenese government with the regional neighbors. I'm Ruby Jones.
This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. In
the days since the assassination of prominent right wing activist
Charlie Kirk, the White House has ordered flags flown at
half staff, and memorials have been organized in Washington, DC
and Arizona. But what's followed hasn't just been mourning. The
(00:24):
Trump administration is urging people to report anyone who's criticized
or mocked Kirk's death, and has pledged to uproot and
dismantle left leaning groups they've accused of fomenting political violence. Today,
host of the independent media podcast Lamestream Osmond Ferruki on
how Charlie Kirk's death is being used to crack down
on the Trump administration's enemies and to justify sliding further
(00:47):
towards authoritarianism. It's Wednesday, September seventeen, so Oz, welcome back
to seven AM.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Thank you, Ruby. It's a real pleasure to come back
on the show with you.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's great to have you. So last week, right wing
American activist Charlie Kirk was killed. The suspect in his murder,
a twenty two year old called Tyler Robinson, is currently
in police custody. To begin with, though, can you just
tell me a bit about Charlie Kirk, about his beliefs
and his influence.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So the story of Charlie Kirk, it really begins back
in twenty twelve when he was eighteen, and back then Ruby,
the political landscape in the US was very, very different
to what it is right now. Barack Obama was about
to be re elected. The Republicans and the right kind
of more generally were feeling very marginalized and like they
were losing the big social and cultural and political debates.
(01:46):
Progressives were comprehensively winning the battle on social media as well.
Back then, Kirk was this young conservative Republican aligned activist,
and he ended up teaming up with some prominent Republican
donors to start this organization Turning Point USA.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
We're acting in about fifteen campuses, and we're growing very
very quickly. And keep in mind, this is not just
a flash and the Pan movement. We're going to become
an institution to give them.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The idea was to start the fight back against this
kind of progressive dominance, to convince young people back to
conservative ideas, and to create content for social media that
would help mobilize young people, and he ended up mobilizing
lots of them in real life on rallies on campuses
all around the country as well.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Suck.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
A lot of his ideas, particularly early on, were pretty
standard right wing Republican conservative beliefs. You know, he is
an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That we allow the massacre of a million and a
half babies a year under the guise of woman reproductive health.
It is never right to justify the mass elimination or
termination of people under the guys of saying they're unwanted.
That's how we get Oschwitz.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
He was a strong defender of gun rise.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately
some gun deaths every single year so that we can
have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
And he was very, very, very staunchly pro Israel.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
If you, as a gay person, would go to Gaza,
they'd throw you off at tall buildings. Right now, they
don't have any tall buildings left.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Sell out, don't. When you mess with the ball, you
get the horns.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Is that too soon? I'm sorry, Maybe you shouldn't killed Jews,
stupid Muslims.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
His positions on race and migration were more extreme.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Don't call them immigrants, they're line cutters and border jumpers.
Immigrants are people that wait in line and fill out
the forums and come here correctly. Don't conflate the two
that don't conflate.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
He was a proponent of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory,
This idea that left wing governments are trying to reduce
white populations in Western countries and replace them with migrants
from the developing world. This is the theory that motivated
the christ Church shooter. For example, he opposed the Civil
Rights Act. He was very critical of Martin Luther King
and civil rights activism, and the.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Civil Rights Act thought, let's be clear, created a beast,
and that beast has now turned into an anti white weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
This he made multiple disparaging comments about black Americans.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Blacks are thirteen percent of the population and they commit
fifty eight percent of all the murders. That's not a
war on drugs, that's a culture problem.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And he said about Muslims, Islam is the sword the
left is using to slit the throat of America. So
his views on race, migration, religion quite extreme right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And tell me about how close he's been with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Kirk campaigned for Trump in twenty sixteen, and when Trump
was elected, he became very very close to the Trump
family and he bragged about visiting the White House one
hundred times. During Trump's first presidency, Kirk and his organization
Turning Point were considered pretty critical to the way that
the Trump campaign successfully managed to woo ya younger people,
particularly younger men, on university campuses, and really helped secure
(05:04):
Trump's second presidency the twenty twenty election. A lot of
that was possible because of Kirk's profile on social media,
the way that he would hold these debates on university campuses,
they would be filmed, they would attract millions and millions
of views on YouTube as well. His podcast had over
half a million listeners a day, and he was immensely
popular among younger Americans, especially those on the far right,
(05:28):
and also conservatives all over the world, including here in Australia.
And I think it's fair to say by the time
he was killed, he was probably one of the most
prominent faces of the MAGA movement and it was.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
At one of those campus debates that he was shot.
And since his death, a lot of people have grappled
with how to respond to the shooting of someone who
is a right wing figure, someone who has, as you say,
these extreme views, and who had publicly endorsed the very
idea of political violence. So tell me what you observed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I think the first thing to say about the reaction
to Kirk's death, and this is whether it's from the
left or the right, I think it needs to be
understood in the context of the current political situation in
the US. And there's a couple of things that I
think are really important. The first is just rising political
violence generally, whether that's the execution of a healthcare CEO
or the murder of Democratic politicians in Minnesota just in
(06:19):
June this year. There is now a volume of politically
motivated murders and assassinations of the kind the US hasn't
really seen since the sixties, you know, since the assassinations
of JFK, his brother, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X.
The other thing I think that's really important to understand
is how extreme and volatile the political situation is in
America right now. The Trump government is acting in an
(06:42):
increasingly authoritarian manner. It's very reminiscent of fascist regimes in
the twentieth century, whether that's like the deportation of migrants,
crack down on universities, attempts to coerce the media, all
these sorts of things are really worrying signs for the
direction that the US is heading in. So when Kirk
was killed, a lot of the response from progressives was
this feeling of indifference. You know, there was this common
(07:04):
feeling that because Kirk was a supporter of far right policies,
and he defended gun rights, and he supported Israel's genocide
in Gaza, there was this sense that even though the
death was very shocking, it wasn't one that they particularly
wanted to mourn or express a lot of sympathy towards
on the right. The reaction was significant. It was actually
like an extraordinary, extraordinary outpouring of grief, sympathy, and I
(07:26):
guess the restatement of the kinds of political beliefs that
Kirk himself espoused. Kirk was effectively treated as a martyr.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Today because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become
bigger and grander than ever before. And it's not even close.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You know, Donald Trump demanded that US flags flat half
mast across the country.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And we want to show you the flag at the
White House at half staff today again, President Trump ordering
all flags to be flown at half staff until sunset.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
On, which is very, very unusual for someone who isn't
in the military or a publicly elected official. Advance, the
Vice President canceled a nine to eleven memorial to personally
fly Charlie Kirks coffin from Utah, where he was shot,
back to Arizona, his home state. And I think, perhaps
most concerningly, Ruby, the right was already deciding who was
(08:15):
to blame for Kirk's shooting. Donald Trump, in his comments
made just hours after Kirk was shot to death, said
the radical left was directly to blame for the assassination.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people
and taken too many lives. Tonight, they ask all Americans
to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie
Kirk lived and died.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right wing activists in the media were already blaming left
wing groups and people who opposed Trump for allegedly encouraging
the kind of political violence that led to Kirk's assassination.
So in an already divided and very tense America, you
could see these very specific fault lines in response to
Kirk's death already emerging.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It seems like a very cohesive narrative is being built
up here.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, that's right, and it was a very i think
coordinated and clear attempt from the right to set the
terms of this discussion into the future.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Coming up how the far right is using the death
of Charlie Kirk to advance some more authoritarian agenda. Oz.
Charlie Kirk is not an elected politician, and I think
for a lot of people in Australia up until his death,
(09:33):
he may not necessarily have been a household name. Yet
we have heard senior Australian politicians being asked about Kirk,
asked to speak to his death. How unusual is that?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, so it is pretty unusual for Australian politicians to
weigh in on US politics like this. And for example,
that was very little reaction from Australian politicians and Australian
media to the shooting of those Minnesota Democratic politicians that
I mentioned. But in Australian response to Kirk's death, we
saw the acting Prime Minister, the Defensive Minister Richard Miles.
He was asked about this non stop on Thursday, the
(10:07):
day of the shooting. His comments were expressing thoughts and
sympathies for Charlie Kirk's family. Australia's ambassador to the US,
Kevin Rudd, in a statement published in social media, said
the thoughts of all Australians were with Kirk's family and
loved ones, so already he was seeing a level of
significance placed on Kirk's death by Australian figures that was
pretty unusual and pretty rare for an incident like this.
(10:30):
Some Australian politicians took things even further. The Liberal senator
Mchaley Cash posit a photo on Instagram of Kirk with
the caption I am Charlie Kirk and on social media
you had one Nation and Pauline Hanson explicitly refer to
Kirk as a martyr for the right wing movement globally.
And I think what this shows is really just how
much the US, and in particular Trump and the far
(10:53):
right in the US, as setting the tempo for how
politics is played in the rest of the world, including
here in Australia. I think the federal government wants to
be seen to be as close to the Trump government
as possible, So there was this sense of how do
we echo Trump's mourning of Charlie Kirk's death in Australia.
On the right here, I think there is actually something
(11:13):
a bit more insidious going on. I think there's this
attempt to use Charlie Kirk's death to really push forward
their agenda and to retaliate against their enemies, especially those
who were critical of Kirk and the extreme far right
positions that he took.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Let's talk a bit more about that, because there has
been this outrage that's been directed at people who haven't
been seen to mourn Kirk's death in the way that
Trump's administration has. So to tell me what we're seeing, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I think one of the most concerning things that we've
seen in the aftermath of Kirk's death is how quickly
the far right and mobilized to docs harassm and kind
of essentially removed from public life people that they thought
weren't respectful enough of Kirk in his death. And that
includes some of the people who are celebrating Kirk's death
on social media, but also it includes people who were
just like suggesting that Kirk's endorsement of gun rights and
(12:05):
his political ideology had contributed to the kind of extreme
tense position that America had found itself in, and in
some other instances it was just people who were sharing
things Kirk himself said that was deemed by the far
right to not be respectful. In the aftermath of his shooting,
some on the right in America have set up this
website where individuals deemed to have posted inappropriately about Kirk
(12:26):
are having their photos, their jobs, personal details about themselves
published online for everyone to see. More than a dozen
people in America have already been fired because of these
coordinated harassment and doxing campaigns. That includes journalists, including journalists
at MSNBC. In the Washington Post.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
MSNBC president Rebecca Cutler apologized, Matthew Dowd made comments that
were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements,
as has he there is no place for violence in America,
political or otherwise, and then she fired him.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Ludes, academics, they're being investigated and suspended for posting things
like I can't muster much sympathy. People are going to argue,
here's a family. Here's a wife and kids. What about
all the kids, all the broken families from the two
hundred and fifty eight school shootings from twenty twenty to now.
So gives you an example of just like what is
being deemed inappropriate and unacceptable by the right in America.
(13:22):
And I think what's particularly concerning is that all of
this is being encouraged by the Trump administration. Like there
are reports that the FBI is actively monitoring what people
post on social media about Kirk. On Tuesday this week,
Jadie Vans, the Vice President, asked supporters of the government
to monitor social media for statements that weren't respectful enough
of Kirk, and for people to notify the employers of
(13:44):
those people making those statements.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them
out and hell, call their employer. We don't believe in
political violence, but we do believe in civility.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's actually going even further though. Stephen Miller, who's the
White House Deputy Chief of Staff. He went on Kirk's
former podcast with JD.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Mans this week, Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
This is Vice President Jade Vance joining me. Now is
Steven Miller, White Hell's deputy chief of staff, dear friend
of mine and dear friend of Charlie Kirks. And before
I get into the and.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
He said that the government was going to go after
NGOs and left wing organizations with a quote righteous anger
and use that to dismantle opposition to the Trump ragam.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
We are going to channel all of the anger that
we have over the organized campaign that led to this
assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So and how effective do you think it is in
terms of silencing people.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I think it's been extremely effective so far. The far
right have basically got total control of this narrative. The
handful of people who've decided to say, hey, obviously the
shooting was quite bad, but let's take a moment and
think about how the radical right is playing a role
in this cycle of political violence. Let's look at how
Trump is attacking his Democrat opponents as communists and as
(15:03):
of insiders who are running a campaign to sort of
secretly subvert the kind of politics and the democracy of
the US. Even people like that are being banished from
public life. And I think you're seeing this real significant
chilling effect in politics in the media that I think
is quite spooky in terms of who gets to speak
up in the United States. And when you have an
(15:24):
authoritarian government introducing policies that are very radical, very extreme,
if you don't have resistance to that, and that resistance
is being diminished, it's a really really concerning sign for
the future structory of the US.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So how do you think we should respond to this
moment in time?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think at the moment there's a lot of people
on the progressive side of politics who are kind of
busy debating Charlie Kirk's legacy and grappling with how to
deal with his death. But I think because what we're
seeing right now is so much bigger and so much
more significant than that, I'm not sure that that is
like the best use of time and energy. Sure, the
faright are trying to cat and is Kirk right now,
but what they're doing is systemically trying to tear down
(16:04):
their opponents. That is to me much more significant and
much more serious. And there's this idea amongst some progressives
and some liberals that the US is so this like
quote unquote normal country. You know, Trump is this bad
right wing President. There is this reluctance I think right
now Ruby to really reckon with just how authoritarian his
regime has become. And I think right now what we're
(16:26):
seeing should be a wake up call, and I think
it shouldn't just be a wake up call for Americans.
We are seeing the spread of this kind of ideology
in these kinds of tactics all over Europe. The most
popular party in that kingdom right now is the far
right Reform Party, which takes a lot of its cues
from Donald Trump. Australia is also not immune from these
kinds of forces. I think there needs to be a
(16:47):
much greater acknowledgment in the US, around the world, but
also here in Australia just how extreme and precarious the
situation is. And I think having a clearer understanding of
how the far right is using the death of Charlie
Kirk to push forward their agenda is like vital because
without that understanding, there is basically no hope of stopping
(17:07):
what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Well, Oz, thank you for your.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Time, Ruby, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Also in the news today, US President Donald Trump says
he'll file a US fifteen billion dollar defamation and libel
lawsuit against The New York Times. President Trump last week
threatened to sue The Times for its reporting related to
a suggestive note and drawing allegedly given to convicted sex
offender Jeffrey Epstein, which mister Trump denies. Writing in a
post on truth Social the US President accused New York
(17:52):
Times of becoming a virtual mouthpiece for the radical left
Democratic Party and Australia and Papua New ca Uni will
agree to defend each other in the event of a
military attack as part of a landmark defense agreement due
to be signed on the sidelines of celebrations to commemorate
the country's independence. Designed to push back against China's interest
(18:13):
in the region. The deal is the latest negotiated by
the Aberenese government with the regional neighbors. I'm Ruby Jones.
This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
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