Charlie Kirk made a lot of people mad, and then he died. The first part almost certainly contributed to the second. But it’s unlikely that right-wing content creators and political commentators will be backing away from this ledge anytime soon. After all, the broader, ragebait-driven Republican apparatus relies on them. On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we discuss the purpose Charlie Kirk served.
This time around, we’re joined by two popular political streamers, MikeFromPA and Denims, to discuss how the far-right social media landscape created and ultimately destroyed Charlie Kirk. How do content creation ecosystems on the right and left differ, and why does the political right uplift – and fund – extreme voices like Kirk while the political left distances itself from outspokenly leftist figures like Hasan Piker, despite their success?
Why is mainstream media trying to convince us that we should feel bad that someone who spent their life regularly advocating for violence against marginalized groups met a violent end? And how, generally, can we combat a right-wing online apparatus rooted in bad faith, that will condemn violence out of one side of its mouth and then cry for vengeance from the other? Finally, the most important (listener-submitted) question: Should the United States break up?
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can become influential enough to prevent Nathan from getting banned on Bluesky again.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Denims: To be clear, there is a large majority of Republicans and people who vote red that are full-blown racists, and there’s no saving those people. If you’re voting for Trump, and you’re like “Yes, I want my white ethnostate,” we’re not saving you. You know what you want, and it’s not good for you either, but whatever. But I think that there are also – More Perfect Union, the work that they do, they show a lot of that stuff – people who voted for Trump that are like “Why is my life worse now? What did I do wrong?”
Or even look at after the CEO of United Healthcare was killed. Ben Shapiro tried, Steven Crowded tried, God-knows-who-else tried to be like “Left wing violence is out of control,” and their comments sections were just filled with right wingers going “No, healthcare is a joke in this country. I’m not for violence, but I’m not gonna cry for the CEO of a healthcare company.” And this is from right wingers, people who voted for Trump.
The idea that we can’t reach anyone is silly. If you can debate one of the people who has the biggest pull for a political influencer online, you can convince some of these people that the methods the Republicans are using are not gonna make their lives better.
MikeFromPA: Something that I say a lot is that the purpose of Charlie Kirk [was] to conceal from the Republican base what their policies actually are – and to distract them with culture war slop. If you look at positions on single-payer healthcare, you’ll see, like, 30 percent support, 25 percent, 35 percent support among Republicans for it. And it’s like, wait, you support a minimum wage increase, you support Medicare For All, you support raising taxes on the rich. Why the fuck are you a Republican?
It’s an understanding that politics is not about people looking at a list of policies and then picking them and going “I took a test online, and it says I should support Bernie Sanders. I’m voting for him!” It is a vibe. It is a social, political, cultural milieu. It is your material interests, whether you have any class consciousness. Are you organized in a union? And even then, people who are unions will vote against their union recommendation because of, like, guns or something.
That is the main project of these right wing debaters and entertainers: to create an uncertainty and a cloud around the Republican party where you fill in the blanks about what you think the Republican party is. They have a few cultural touchstones that they will use, and they’re all, like, abortion, guns, and trans issues. It’s not based on your life or your material interests.
Nathan: Anything that will improve your life, especially.
MikeFromPA: Exactly. And maybe it’ll cut your taxes, because that sounds real to people. We all pay taxes, so if somebody says “I’m gonna cut your taxes,” that feels real to you. But “I’m gonna cut this program in the government,” you may not even know that’s actually something you rely on. That takes a certain extremely high level of political knowledge to get. That is kind of what Charlie Kirk functioned as: covering everything up with a fart cloud so nobody is paying attention to their wallet getting picked. They’re too busy pinching their nose.
