What writing about true crime has taught me about the news… Or let’s talk about Charlie Kirk

Two days ago I heard the news about far right wing political commentator Charlie Kirk being shot in the neck at a debate event he was holding at Utah Valley University. My friend and I were messaging each other on Facebook and all of a sudden he told me that Charlie Kirk was shot.

I was on my divan researching and writing the next true crime book, all about celebrity trials. I was like oh come on, is this some South Park episode? But I went on social media and I saw the video of the bullet going right through his neck, blood gushing out everywhere. It was like something straight out of a horror movie. I thought this had to have been AI, but no, this was real. The poor audience are going to have PTSD from this and Charlie Kirk’s wife will no doubt have PTSD from this too. I’ve had PTSD from traumatic things that happened to me as a teenager and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. As The Zombies described it in “Butcher’s Tale”, “I can’t stop shaking, my hands won’t stop shaking, my arms won’t stop shaking, my mind won’t stop shaking.”

Just hours later Netanyahu and Trump announced the death of Charlie Kirk. That same day just one state over, there was a school shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado. The shooter is dead, three students were injured and no doubt they and many others are traumatised. All over social media I saw outpourings of grief for Kirk, but none for the innocent children in Colorado or for the civilians in Gaza. It really made me think a lot and I have a lot of thoughts to unpack.

Some people bring happiness wherever they go, some people bring happiness whenever they go

I do not celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk and I do not condone any violence of any sort. However, I will not shed a single tear for Charlie Kirk, a man who hated people like me. I do not use the word Nazi lightly, but his views align very closely with the Nazis, as you’ll see in the links in the next paragraph. There are people calling him a moderate and just some guy, but if he were just some guy, he certainly wouldn’t have had his body in casket flown back home in the VP’s plane.

As I said in an earlier blog post, my great great grandfather Avraham (age 78), his wife, and three of his daughters were all killed by the Nazis in 1940 when they raided their town. I will not mourn the death of people whose ideology has caused so much harm to not just Jewish people, but also LGBT people, immigrants, women, and non-white and mixed people. If you are not part of those groups, I kindly request that you do not tone police people who are directly affected by such hateful rhetoric. I don’t expect a black person to mourn a klansman’s death or a trans person to mourn a transphobe’s death. These are not the views of a moderate. If you think prejudice is moderate politics, then it’s a clear sign that the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that we’re cooked. If Charlie Kirk was a moderate, what’s a far-right winger then? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Stop falling for civility politics. Hatefulness is not just shouting and waving your arms around like Hitler, it can also be said in a calm voice with a smile. Just like racists aren’t just people in Ku Klux Klan hoods, they’re also ordinary people in your community. Making bigots into cartoon villains helps no one, just like portraying all murderers as cartoon villains helps no one. I’ve been into true crime for over 20 years and I know very well that the most dangerous people are the ones you’d never suspect. They’re often the most ordinary, even charming people.

Charlie Kirk was not someone who brought joy. He brought hatred, division, and intolerance wherever he went. His rhetoric has only made this world more divisive and hateful. This is not someone to idolise or mourn. Remember, he was the one who said that he hated empathy and thought it was a made up new age term. By not showing him empathy, you are respecting his wishes. Not enough to convince you? Remember what he said about George Floyd?

You get what you put out into the world. If you’re a bad person, why do you expect people to be kind to you and call you an angel when you die? Let’s actually be honest. Not all who die are angels. Some people are bad. That’s reality. It costs nothing to be kind and make this world a better place.

In a nutshell what I think of Charlie Kirk’s death is that it could have been prevented if we had gun control. Call me a Eurocuck, but that’s the truth. I want gun control not just to protect my loved ones, but also everyone. How can anyone accuse me, a socialist, of being violent? I don’t even eat meat or animal products! So how could I be violent?

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple… Or Why I hate the 24 hour news cycle

One of the problems with the coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk is the 24 hour news cycle, a phenomenon that has existed for decades thanks to cable TV, but has only gotten worse thanks to the internet and social media. It’s something I’ll be covering in the book I’m working on.

The news never sleeps and it’s just as much a race to the bottom as it is a race to break the story first. These two races go hand in hand. The race to break the story first means that we don’t always have all the facts and we make quick judgements and jump to conclusions, which is really bad and dangerous in serious situations like this. The quality of journalism suffers and pay being stagnant or dwindling contributes to this. I’ve seen innocent people be accused of shooting Charlie Kirk, their faces shown to the world before his body has gone cold. There are a lot of whackos out there and who knows what that irresponsible reporting could do to these innocent people? What if someone wanted to avenge Charlie Kirk and they kill some innocent guy? First off, nothing can bring back someone who’s dead, which is the main reason I’m against the death penalty. Second, they’re innocent so congratulations you’ve created another victim. There already have been threats against HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) and where are the right wingers calling that out?

I have an MA in journalism and I can confidently say that there are a lot of issues with the 24 hour news cycle. It’s been a disaster for our society and has only increased division. It’s important to wait for the facts before coming to a conclusion about something and to remember that there’s almost always more to the story than what the news is telling us. Not everyone’s voice is being heard. As always, follow the money.

When you’re reading a news story you should read beyond the headline and think critically. Ask yourself questions and check in with yourself as you’re reading the news. Whose points of view are being represented and why? Whose voices are being excluded and why? Is this important? Who is getting paid? Who is benefitting? Do we have evidence and data? Who was behind the research study? Who is being cited as a source? How trustworthy is that source? What tone of voice is the news story written in? Does somebody have an agenda? Is it a fact or an opinion? Is there anything that indicates sensationalism?

It’s quite obvious the far-right and other authoritarians are afraid of critical thought. I see many parallels between MAGA and cults. Questions are not encouraged. Thinking for yourself is bad. Straying from the dogma is bad. Books are banned and seen as bad, but as knee jerk responses without any informed opinion. They prey on the downtrodden and give them a sense of “community” even if it’s a fake one. It also doesn’t help that third places are dying and often one of the few places one can find community without having to spend ridiculous amounts is church or political activism. That’s why I believe religion is growing in popularity once again. People are lonely, people feel uncertain, and religion can soothe people. People just like explanations and simplicity, and that’s how humanity has always been.

Many right wingers were quick to make assumptions that Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist even before pictures of the suspect have come out. Some thought that the shooter was trans and made all sorts of assumptions about their identity, as if that’s the most important thing about them. Turns out the shooter was a 22 year old named Tyler Robinson and he looked like any other white zoomer American. Speculation is not helpful or productive. Once again, wait for investigations to be conducted and wait for more developments. Be patient.

Besides, the only people responsible for a murder are the person who pulled the trigger and those involved in planning. No one else. Treat people as individuals. Just like Muslims as a whole were not responsible for 9/11 or Jews as a whole are not responsible for what’s going on in Palestine, a whole group of people are not responsible for shootings.

We do not yet know Tyler’s motivations for shooting Charlie Kirk, but this will come out soon in the news. But I want you to think of this one quote “the truth is rarely pure and never simple”. It came up in my research for the first chapter of my next book. That quote is from the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest. Let’s just take this quote in isolation. It is indeed true that the truth isn’t pure or simple and that’s because people are complicated. People aren’t always logical (in fact, I find people do things out of emotion). People contain multitudes. People contradict themselves. People say one thing and do another. Situations are complicated and aren’t always cut and dried. People prone to violence are especially not logical. If anything, explanations for things are simple in hindsight, with a lot of distance from the event so you’ve decompressed, but beware of biases.

I wrote about the Reagan assassination in my book and Hinckley’s motivation had nothing to do with politics. It had everything to do with his obsession with Jodie Foster. Squeaky Fromme wasn’t some socialist trying to kill President Ford, she was ultimately trying to impress cult leader Charles Manson, although the environment did have a role. Thinking about John Lennon, his killer was certainly not logical when he said that he killed him because of Catcher in the Rye.

Recently I was writing about the Black Sox scandal and that’s another truth is not pure or simple situation. According to popular legend, all thanks to Elliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out book, people believe that eight of the White Sox threw the 1919 World Series because Comiskey was a cheapskate and they were bitter and angry for being underpaid. That is not true. The book and the film adaptation twisted the narrative into something made for a good movie and Comiskey’s family had to fight really hard to dispel the myths. If we bring it back to classic rock, how many times have you watched a biopic and the director clearly took some artistic licence and made situations more dramatic than they really were, switched around the order of events, made up drama, all for a plotline. It’s a cheap trick!

Simply put, it’s foolish to take pride in others’ accomplishments just because they’re part of the same group as you and it’s equally foolish to take the blame for things others have done just because they have something in common with you. All I’m saying is wait for the facts to come out. It’s okay to say I don’t know or I need more information. Spreading ignorance and misinformation does a lot more harm than saying I don’t know or let’s wait for all the facts. We need to be comfortable with not knowing everything.

“This isn’t who we are” is historical revisionism

I’ve seen a lot of people condemning what happened to Charlie Kirk saying this isn’t who we are as a country. To that I say you’re wrong. But I don’t individualise the problem. Right wingers want to gut education to dumb us down as a population so they can oppress us without us questioning the system. This happens in authoritarian regimes around the world. They’re afraid of us thinking for ourselves and knowing our history.

America was founded on violence and especially political violence. Is the genocide of Native Americans not political violence? Is the trafficking and enslaving of black people not political violence? Was the Boston Tea Party not political violence? Was the Revolutionary War not political violence? Are lynchings not political violence?

You cannot look at the killings of Emmett Till, Fred Hampton, Harvey Milk, and Matthew Shepard and tell me that it wasn’t political. There are many beautiful things about America, but the ugliest thing is all the hatred and violence in American history. Rock and roll is very American, but so is violence and imperialism. By hiding and sweeping it under the rug we are doing ourselves a disservice. Remember that every country has skeletons in its closet so the US is not unique in this.

Whose stories are being told?

This story about Charlie Kirk made me think a lot about the message of my next book. I’ve been feeling discouraged as a writer lately and I feel like I’m no good at it and this next idea is just terrible, like who wants to read about a bunch of dead celebrities anyway? But the truth is this book isn’t really about these dead celebrities. There’s a bigger story than that. I’m using their stories to make a bigger point about this world, that many people’s stories go untold. Remember that question about whose voices are being heard and not being heard and why?

As a true crime enthusiast, I know all about missing white woman syndrome, where the big stories of missing and murdered women are all beautiful white women. If you go missing or if you’re killed and you’re not white or you’re not good looking, your story is forgotten about and people don’t rally behind you. It’s a sad thing about this world. It’s so unfair and prejudiced.

In my book I talk about timely topics like the criminalisation of homosexuality and censorship. To illustrate this point about the ridiculousness of these laws, I must talk about celebrity trials, an entire phenomenon of its own and how it’s evolved over the decades. The first chapter is of course about the first celebrity trial of the modern era, that of Oscar Wilde. I make it very clear in the intro of the chapter that I want the reader to think of the thousands of others just like him whose stories we don’t know. We only know a handful of the stories of gay and bisexual men who were criminalised and that’s because they were famous. And I think that’s a message he would have co-signed, because he once said in jail that “we are all suffering equally” when a fellow inmate said he must be suffering more than them because of that fall from grace. There’s more and more of these stories every day because it’s still illegal to be gay in many countries around the world. And even in places where it’s legal, people still experience hate and oppression. Ordinary people’s stories get forgotten about unless there’s something extraordinary in there. When it comes to censorship, I’ll be talking about Mae West, Lenny Bruce, Pete Seeger, and George Carlin, but it’s not just about them. It’s about freedom. It’s about people being free to speak their minds. It’s about being principled. How many others have been silenced, but we don’t know their stories? I want you to think about that now and as you read my next book.

Frankly, I have doubts that these far right wingers actually do believe in Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. I think they just use religion as a façade and to virtue signal, as explained in this brilliant video below. I also highly recommend watching the satirical cartoon Morel Orel, which beautifully satirises the hypocrisy behind fundies and evangelicals:

Liked this blog post and want to support independent classic rock journalism? Donate to The Diversity of Classic Rock on Patreon or Paypal or follow me on Facebook, Bluesky, or Instagram, buy my book Crime of the Century, click the follow button on my website, leave a nice comment, send your music or classic rock related books for review, or donate your art and writing talents to the blog.

If you donate any amount to my Patreon or PayPal, you’ll get a Crime of the Century ebook, so it’s pay what you can! The best deal you’ll get on the book and you won’t find this deal anywhere else! I just want to give back to my readers and say thank you for your support.