<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/17/shooting-charlie-kirk-donald-trump-reichstag-fire-european-history-us-president>
"If 2025 was already shaping up to be the worst year of the century for the
post-1945 rules-based world order, the past week has been its most destructive
week yet. Israel deepened its disregard for international conventions by
sending 10 fighter jets to Qatar, bombing a Hamas delegation participating in
ceasefire talks in Doha. The last meaningful forum for diplomatic negotiation
may now have gone up in smoke.
At least 19 Russian drones violated Poland’s airspace. For the first time in
its history, Nato airpower was engaged against enemy targets inside a Nato
country. Whether the incursion was a technical mishap or deliberate probing by
Moscow, as western experts believe, this was “the closest we have been to open
conflict since the second world war,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk,
said.
And then Charlie Kirk, a firebrand conservative activist and close Donald Trump
ally, was shot dead while addressing college students and Maga supporters at a
Utah university. Without evidence of the shooter’s identity or motives, Trump
immediately blamed “those on the radical left,” accusing them of rhetoric
“directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country
today.”
Asked how the divided nation could heal after Kirk’s assassination, Trump said
he “couldn’t care less”. His explanation for that was chilling: “The radicals
on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on
the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically
savvy.” This is how polarisation hardens into tribalism. This is how the spiral
of hatred accelerates toward a point of no return.
In reality, more than three-quarters of all extremist-related killings in the
US over the last 10 years have come from rightwing extremists, with the radical
left responsible for only a fraction of them. Trump condemned political
violence in general the following day – but did not acknowledge the recent
spate of attacks against Democrats, including several killings. To him, the
problem is always “them”, never the “wonderful Americans” who make up his base.
The political and cultural aftershocks of Kirk’s death will no doubt unfold in
the coming weeks, but the biggest danger in a polarised climate is that the
shooting becomes the Reichstag fire of our age. That arson attack on 27
February 1933 marked Germany’s pivot from fragile democracy to outright
dictatorship. Hitler, freshly installed as chancellor, seized the moment to
extinguish the freedoms of the Weimar constitution – expression, press,
association, assembly.
“Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down,” he said, inspecting the
arsoned building. Thousands of communists were jailed, including all 81
Communist deputies in parliament. With the left neutralised, the Nazis swiftly
consolidated power."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
