The murder of U.S. far right political advocate Charlie Kirk has seen a divisive, contentious debate erupt around around his conduct. Halfway around the world, politicians in New Zealand are advocating remembering Mr Kirk, despite him having nothing to do with our politics or society.
Mr Kirk’s death, has generated the inevitable hell fire and brimstone accusatory arguments that flare up all too frequently in U.S. political circles. The hard right are calling him a patriot, a man of honour who was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech. They quite readily ignore his incandescent rhetoric about Haiti migrants eating cats and dogs. Free speech absolutists who champion any kind of rhetoric even when it is demonstrably harming communities, ignore his open contempt for empathetic values. Even when Mr Kirk justified gun violence in the United States as an excuse to maintain the 2nd Amendment, there was no push back.
The danger with such baseless and incendiary rhetoric is, if repeated enough, other people start to believe it – and within days of it being initially mentioned U.S. President Donald Trump was repeating Mr Kirk’s claim about Haitian migrants.
In New Zealand, A.C.T. leader David Seymour has been quick to call on Parliament to hold a minute of silence and acknowledge Mr Kirk’s passing. This act is quite incredible, because aside from Mr Kirk having had nothing – to the absolute best of my knowledge – to do with New Zealand, the highly damaging rhetoric he espouses is potentially harmful to our migrant and refugee communities.
This is an example of a New Zealand politician trying to import a culture war – I think that is what you can call the ruckus in the U.S. now over his death – that did not originate in New Zealand and get us to take a position on it.
Another example is the importation of the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. culture war, which members of New Zealand First including 2023 candidates Lee Donoghue, and Kirsten Murfitt openly espouse. The promotion of negativity by politicians has seen a significant uptick in anti-L.G.B.T.Q. activity here highlighted by the increasingly aggressive approach of Destiny Church (including and especially Brian Tamaki), Family First and individuals such as Family First leader Bob McCoskrie.
The war on transpeople – which is what it has effectively become in the southern U.S. – is backed by some powerful influences on social media, some of whom have tried to import it to New Zealand. They include Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshul, the Governors of Florida and Texas, as well as politicians in various southern states. The campaign particularly focuses on the transgender community, which in the United States has been under sustained attack from Republicans across all states, including a refusal to recognise any other gender than that which was assigned at birth; the idea – with little or no proof at all that trans people are the culprits – that transpeople are child molesters; that women and girls should be scared about a transwoman using a toilet.
Unfortunately New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters and several of the party’s Members of Parliament have taken an aggressive tone against the transgender community in New Zealand, including the suggestion that their genitals be policed going into womens toilets. This is part of a broader attack on “wokeness”, the act of being aware of and proactively against socially discriminatory behaviour.
So, I end this by saying I have great empathy for his wife and his children. These must be terrible days for his wife having lost her forever person who would look after her, protect her and be the best Dad he could be to their children. These same days must be equally awful to the children, who now have to grow up in a world without Dad to play with them, cook meals and take them to sport. To be a Dad who would help with homework and be a father figure that they could hopefully be proud of.
They have to navigate this world now in the increasingly stormy seas that are U.S. domestic politics. They have to do so with the knowledge that political activists on all sides will probably use his death to further whatever agenda they have.
Charlie Kirk rejected empathy profoundly. But let us not be two-faced hypocrites ourselves by not showing his devastated family and friends that empathy now. In a bunch of lessons to learn from this, learning that empathy is not the devilish thing that the right think it is, might be the biggest lesson of them all.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 