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As I watch the MAGA Right rewrite Charlie Kirk’s life and death in real time -- with some help from legacy media -- I can’t help but think about my own family and a strange quirk of how they grieve. Some of my extended family are practicing evangelicals or a variation of that branch of Christianity. These are folks who believe you can’t go to heaven unless you accept Jesus Christ as your savior. The problem is that most of the family doesn’t subscribe to this, and when someone we love dies, there’s often a disconnect. How do you deal with the idea that someone you love won’t see you in heaven because they didn’t share your beliefs?
The way these folks in my family deal with it is by making stuff up and presenting fiction as truth at funerals. My Grandmother supposedly was saved on her deathbed with the help of a hospital chaplain. (Possible but unlikely.) My father was on life support, but apparently, a family member praying at his bedside got word from God that Dad had somehow accepted Jesus as his savior while unconscious. (Funny for several reasons, including that, as longtime readers know, my Dad believed in the Chariots of the Gods conspiracy theory.)
But my Grandfather, whose views on organized religion were well known, got the most bizarre treatment of all. My family member couldn’t credibly pretend a last-minute conversion had taken place, so he simply told mourners that he knew once Papaw met Jesus in heaven, he’d of course accept him as his savior. Apparently, you don’t even need to be saved to be saved! Anything to fit the narrative.
I’m amused rather than annoyed when this happens. Funerals are more for the living anyway, and grief messes you up. As long as it doesn’t harm me, I don’t care what people believe. But as I watch some of these same folks publicly grieve Charlie Kirk on their Facebook pages, their actions at our funerals don’t seem so innocuous anymore. It’s the same culture that encourages creating your own reality through mythology, and using it to sow distrust and impose control over others.
(To be clear, practicing Christians or people of faith aren’t the problem. Plenty of believers have worked out the complexities of reason and faith and keep their faith without losing touch with reality.)
Before we knew anything about Charlie Kirk’s shooter, before Kirk’s body was cold, the Trump Regime went to work canonizing him and turning him into a martyr. As NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny reports, Kirk devoted his own life to creating and amplifying false conspiracies and alternate narratives. She writes, “It is fitting, maybe, that so many conspiracy theories have engulfed Kirk upon his death.”
I obviously didn’t know Kirk personally, but it does seem that this is precisely what he would have wanted. To become a martyr via viral content. For the people Kirk devoted his life to put into power, using every privilege available to them to exploit his tragic death as a way to crush dissent and punish MAGA’s perceived enemies. An army of online trolls avenging Kirk’s death by doxing and harassing anyone who has negative things to say about him. To cause further harm to already vulnerable communities and individuals. More incitement leading to more violence. All in service of MAGA.
It’s no longer enough for MAGA to have its own cinematic universe. Now they’re insisting we accept their version of reality as well. And they’re more than willing to use force; they’re hungry for it.
The micro version of this shows how ridiculous it is. I’m trying to imagine one of my relatives insisting that their version of my father’s death is the correct one and threatening me with physical violence if I disagree. I wouldn’t take them or the threat seriously. When the White House makes the same demands, backed by an army of trolls, a ridiculous scenario becomes absolutely terrifying.
I remember attending the memorial service for a college friend. He regularly mocked and otherwise stayed clear of organized religion of any kind. That didn’t stop his evangelical preacher/brother in law from totally rewriting history. All of us who knew him knew they were rewriting history and Brian would have hated it.