Silvertongue’s Demise: Lord Mandelson’s Epstein Problem

by Binoy Kampmark / September 19th, 2025

It was so startlingly obvious that it seemed to snuff out any comment. Lord Peter Mandelson, otherwise known as the sinister Mr Fixit of New Labour from the Blair years, was an intimate of the late convicted paedophile and socially connected financier Jeffrey Epstein. If it was intended as a humorous appointment – Britain’s Epstein-familiar ambassadorial representative to Washington attending the court of an administration with another Epstein-familiar, President Donald Trump – it was not one to last.

It began at the end of last year, when Mandelson, who seemed to specialise in the art of being sacked, was called upon to take up one of British diplomacy’s most important offices: the ambassadorship to the United States. As a result, he was glowing, brightly telling all that President George W. Bush had dubbed him “Silvertongue”. This same tongue had called Trump, in 2019, a “danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and racist”. Chris LaCivita, who co-campaigned the President’s election bid, thought Mandelson “an absolute moron” – high praise indeed.

Mandelson took it all in his stride. He promised the administration that they would “discover I’m not uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.” His remit: to keep Trump onside in terms of staying in Europe for security reasons, forge commercial ties, and limit tariffs on UK exports.

Then came those emails, as reported by Bloomberg. They revealed the extent of Mandelson’s association with Epstein. The Dark Lord was found encouraging Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly after his sentencing to 18 months in prison. He showed signs of infatuation, saying “I think the world of you,” a day before the sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008 commenced.

More material surfaced. From the US House Oversight Committee came the disclosure of a scrapbook made to celebrate the financier’s fiftieth birthday, with the Mandelson effusion “best pal”. (Trump can also count himself a fellow Epstein enthusiast in the collection.)

The scene was set for yet another sacking. The embarrassed British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was again exposed for his flawed judgment. He had already known of Mandelson’s soiled ties, yet remained unmoved. In June 2023, for instance, the Financial Times obtained an internal JPMorgan report that showed the extent of the association, even after Epstein’s imprisonment. In January 2024, when asked at a press conference about Mandelson’s stays at the home of a convicted sex offender in Manhattan, the Labour leader proved implausibly unaware: “I don’t know any more than you, and there’s not really much I can add to what is already out there, I’m afraid.”

The new correspondence, however, was seen as “materially different” from the information available when the new ambassador arrived in Washington. “Had I known then what I know now,” Starmer stated emphatically, “I’d never have appointed him.” Then came that churning feeling of dissatisfaction from Starmer’s own Labour MPs, whose views he occasionally respects. One of them, Andy McDonald, noted “widespread revulsion that we, by association, being in the same party, are being brought under the microscope for something that [Mandelson] has done.”

Mandelson, for his part, expressed a feeling of “tremendous” regret regarding his friendship with Epstein, and a “tremendous sense of sympathy” for the victims, but insisted that he never witnessed or was aware of any wrongdoing when spending time with him. As he told the BBC: “I relied on assurances of [Epstein’s] innocence that turned out later to be horrendously false.” Lawyers representing his best pal “claimed that it was a shake down of him, a criminal conspiracy. I foolishly relied on their word, which I regret to this day.” What fabulous, mountainous mendacity.

Some tried to explain the appointment as a symptom of establishment blindness and insularity. In the Spectator, there was a rather apt observation that Mandelson, at least in Britain, “was part of the furniture – the man you loved to hate. It was everywhere implied that this amoral figure, relic of a subtler age, would be able to ‘run rings’ around the various oik populists – chief among them the 47th president.” A less likely, though equally apposite reading, is that Mandelson’s spotty record was exactly what was needed in a Washington distinctly unmoored from any moral compass. The Trump administration, with its venality, its solipsistic universe, its tendency to muddy and contaminate institutions, would have suited “Petie”, as Epstein liked to call him.

The greatest insult of all, and one that Trump inspires on most occasions, is the feigned (or genuine) ignorance of a person he has known or had an acquaintance with. Trump has selective amnesia for those he professes fondness for; he has an elephantine memory for those he hates. As both the President and Starmer were drooling and slobbering over the Anglo-American “special” alliance in a press conference during the President’s UK visit, Mandelson’s name did come up. Trump claimed to have never known the fellow, suggesting that Starmer was better placed to answer. Starmer, exploiting the situation, walked it on with his now conditioned response: Mandelson was sacked once new information surfaced about the Epstein link. Mr Fixit was, at least in the metaphorical sense, dead and buried.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Launching Silent Courier: MI6 Goes WikiLeaks

by Binoy Kampmark / September 24th, 2025

There is night and day between an entity such as WikiLeaks, a daring publisher of classified government documents extraordinaire, and the dour, secretive intelligence service of any country. But it seems that, just as the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk, some of them are learning a few lessons. For one thing, the British foreign intelligence service, M16, has decided to take to the World Wide Web, especially its dark version, to lure recruits and secrets. How close, then, to the practices of Julian Assange and the publishing organisation that made him infamous and the subject of much abomination in intelligence circles.

The intended platform is to have the name Silent Courier. “As the world changes and threats multiply, we must stay ahead of our adversaries,”stated Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. “Our intelligence agencies work tirelessly to keep British people safe, and this cutting-edge technology will help M16 recruit new agents, including in Russia and beyond.” Given the extensive historical record of deep penetration of the British intelligence services by Russians, this is bound to have induced a bored yawn.

The official announcement came from Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing M16 chief who decided to use Istanbul as the place to make it. “Today, we’re asking those with sensitive information on global instability, international terrorism, or hostile state activity to contact MI6 securely online.” With paternal assurance, he promised that, “Our virtual door is open to you.”

The recruitment approach is not dissimilar to the campaigns used by the US Central Intelligence Agency. In 2022 and 2023, the organisation employed such platforms as Telegram, Facebook, X (previously X) and Instagram to net potential recruits from Russia. Instructions were also released on how to contact the agency on the dark web. The CIA, being convinced of the efficacy of these moves, released a video last year on Telegram titled “Why I contacted the CIA: the motherland” urging Russians to target Russia’s real enemies: the country’s leadership. “Our leaders sell out the country,” moralises the fictional officer of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, “for palaces and yachts while our soldiers chew rotten potatoes and fire ancient weapons.”

An uncharitable reading of such moves suggest that the US spy outfit, being incapable of building human networks with human agents in Russia, requires the services of social media to secure contacts. While we are not sure about the extent of how successful these moves have been, the standard of efficacy, if we are to believe a CIA spokesperson, is taken to be the number of viewings of the various posts. Troubling, if true.

This month, a partnership with Google Cloud between the UK and US was minted, an agreement that again shows the insatiable appetite on the part of governments to secure the services of Big Tech. “The partnership,”states the September 12 press release from the Ministry of Defence, “means that the latest technology developed by Google Cloud, including AI, data analytics, and cyber security, will be used by defence intelligence and national security specialists to share secure information between our partners and outcompete our adversaries.”

These agencies, it would seem, have been seduced by the very world hated by government bureaucrats and the secrecy mongers: the use of the dark web, the incitement to steal information, and using an encrypted platform that echoes the WikiLeaks model for securing information from leakers and whistleblowers.

For some, the world of clandestine meetings and the exchange of envelopes has become a bit fusty and mothballed, though there is something more profound about those personal ties in the recruitment process. The use of technology, however, has become irresistible, even a fetish, and agencies have come to realise that secure platforms enabling foreign agents or those in foreign employ to communicate classified material is a worthwhile endeavour.

The MI6 platform makes use of the Tor network, a facility that, while strong, is not impervious. The agency advises that potential contacts resort to VPNs to access the platform, supplying a dedicated email address for communications. Also encouraged is the use of private browsing with devices equipped with updated security and eschewing the use of credit cards.

The dark web, while attractive, is not an impenetrable jungle. The resourceful and persistent will find a way. Beijing’s Ministry of State Security has, for instance, previously succeeded in penetrating encrypted CIA platforms with spectacular success. Between 2010 and 2012, according to the New York Times, some 20 CIA informants were either killed or imprisoned by the Chinese authorities. The theories offered are conventional: traditional, old-school exposure of the sources by virtue of a well-placed mole within the American agency, or the ability of the country’s cyber platoons to break the channels of secure communication. And never, of course, rule out simple negligence.

M16, in going WikiLeaks, has acknowledged, at the very least, the value of having avenues of disclosure that do cast light on rough, inscrutable terrain drawn from sources of value. The legacy of WikiLeaks speaks to exposing the secretive information that should be known to the public, exposing those venal types in power to withering scrutiny. MI6 intends to perform the same function, with one crucial difference: those secrets will be intended for minimal circulation among the anointed elite in order to advance the agenda of His Majesty’s Government. That, at least, is the intention.

After Five Decades, It Comes to This: The PNG-Australia Pukpuk Treaty

by Binoy Kampmark / September 16th, 2025

It’s clearer than ever: the Albanese government is continuing its efforts to shut out China in wooing and seducing island states across vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Bilateral security treaties are being pursued as a matter of urgency. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has, for instance, stated that he is open to closer defence ties with Fiji, which “could range from increased interoperability, the sort of training that we are seeing with the Pacific Policing Initiative, being expanded to increased engagement between our defence forces”.

The template, however, would seem to be the Pukpuk Treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea (pukpuk being the pidgin word for “crocodile”). It was reported on September 15 that the PNG cabinet had, despite a few procedural hiccups, approved the pact, with a PNG cabinet submission observing that the treaty is intended “to prepare our militaries to be battle-ready and for a very bad day”. With exaggeration, the document also envisages a treaty with the bite of a crocodile in linking the militaries of the two countries.

While the contents of the treaty have yet to be published – the Albanese government is showing itself increasingly secretive – the Australian national broadcaster has seen a copy. There are also clues about what is expected. PNG Defence Minister Billy Joseph has said that a provision much like Article 4 in NATO’s founding treaty, obliging member states to consult when any one feels a threat to their territorial integrity, political independence or security, is in the offing. The existing 1977 Status of Forces framework will be modernised to include a mutual defence obligation, a hefty expenditure on weapons and equipment for PNG while permitting unimpeded access of Australian Defence Forces to facilities in PNG. PNG nationals will also be able to be recruited into the ADF, as will Australians wishing to be recruited into the PNG Defence Forces.

Despite celebrating five decades of independence, PNG has decided to throw a good bit of it away by surrendering the complete autonomy of its armed forces to Australian influence and control. Such arrangements are always advertised as ostensible exercises of “interoperability”, consultation and equality, with various domestic processes needing to be observed. In truth, this gives Canberra greater say over what Port Moresby will do with its armed forces and, by implication, its foreign policy.

Such greater say also risks involving Australia in a range of security concerns. Don Rothwell, an international law authority based at the Australian National University, sees the prospect of Canberra being snagged in PNG-Indonesia border issues arising from West Papua, and dirtying itself with “an active independence movement in Bougainville, which raises issues of PNG’s ‘political independence or security’.”

With the attraction of a pathway to Australian citizenship and the prospect of equal rates of pay as earned by members of the ADF, there is a genuine chance that PNG will see its own forces depleted while swelling the ranks of the ADF. In terms of planning, this looks like a fantastic instance of self-harm and diminishment.

International relations commentary rarely does a good line in ironic reflection. A piece in The Conversation by Ian Kemish does not disappoint, flecked with platitudes on “deep roots in shared history”, Australia being the “most trusted partner” to PNG, and sentimental guff about “partnership and equality”. Port Moresby had evidently felt that the relationship with Canberra was “unique – the only one that combines proximity, capability and an enduring sense of shared history.” Michael Shoebridge of the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank, described the pact as “a pretty big step”, with PNG saying “‘Yes we agree, you actually are our security partner of choice, and we mean it enough to put it into a treaty’.”

Australian self-interest, ever jittery about China’s regional influence, shines so brightly in these arrangements as to make such remarks feeble. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, often circuitous and waffly at press conferences, was candid in admitting that “PNG is obviously on our northern flank. It really matters that we have the very best relationship we have with PNG in a security sense. And I’m really excited about the fact that this agreement is going to give expression to that.”

The need to keep PNG close to Australia’s military interests is also of ongoing interest to such anti-China hawks as the sacked and disgraced former secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo. For some reason, press outlets think his predictable views matter. To The Australian Financial Review, he explained rather banally that “PNG would be in peril were it to be attacked by a foreign power.” He advised that Australia “for the first time in our bilateral relationship, commit to coming to PNG’s assistance in the event of it being attacked by a foreign power.” Any agreement that did not codify such an undertaking “would be, while useful, not reflective of our deep strategic interdependence.”

With each utterance on sovereignty from Canberra, officials in Port Moresby would do well to consider the implications of the pact. PNG may have existed as a nominally independent state for fifty years, but that independence is set to come to an end.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

It’s Revolution or Death

Part 3: Reclaiming the World Wherever We Stand

by subMedia / September 23rd, 2025

The third and final installment of the series seeks to bring the lessons learned in the first two episodes home. This segment features an interview with Peter Gelderloos in which he describes his experience working to build transformative infrastructure in Catalunya.

Not all of us are so lucky to live near a large and organized movement like those described in part two, and that’s ok. For us to be truly organized as a global community, we need do work wherever we are. As Neto reminds us in part two, “We need to start from where we’re standing and from a reality that we recognize.” There are no answers, only strategies. This video seeks to provide guidance to anarchists just getting started organizing around the climate crisis. Different strategies work in different locales, social conditions and contexts.

Peter shares three urgent suggestions for those looking to organize around these issues:

Urgent Suggestion #1: A complete and Total Rejection of All the Institutions Responsible for This Disaster

Relying on those responsible for this crisis to save us is the worst thing we can do. It’s time to act collectively outside of the state and capital’s stranglehold over our lives to try to carve out spaces and networks that will give us the best possible chances of survival. Relying on nonprofits, elections, or authoritarian left movements has failed time and time again. We cannot afford to continue to misplace our trust in institutions that will not save us.

Urgent Suggestion #2: Pick a Project of Transformative Survival

The hour is seriously late. The sooner we get involved in organizing for survival, the better. If people in the territories you reside in are already working towards similar goals, it may be better to join them than to try and build a movement from the ground up. Sometimes we need to create new projects where there is a need for them and people willing to get them going. Building our collective autonomy may not appear to be directly related to our chances at surviving the climate crises, but it is! Any time we build our collective power outside of the state and capital we build power that is combative to the institutions that created this disaster, and that gives us the means to survive it.

Urgent Suggestion #3: Connect your project to a revolutionary web of solidarity 

The climate crisis is a worldwide issue. We need to have a global response. Networks of people organizing around these issues exist all over around the world. We need to build an international web of solidarity and the more connections a web has, the stronger it will be.

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SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

Faux Messianism and the Twilight of the West

Civil war isn’t looming — it’s already live-streaming, orchestrated by oligarchs who feed rage while dismantling sovereignty.

by Mathew Maavak / September 20th, 2025

For years, independent geopolitical observers, including myself, have warned that the West is veering toward civil war or, at minimum, a prolonged paralysis of governance. This conviction has underpinned my decade-long advocacy for a “Greater Eurasian” autarky, based on the premise that a destabilized West poses the biggest threat to humanity in the near future. Even Donald J. Trump’s tariff mania reflects this reality. It is the desperate last card of a fading empire, signaling that “if we are going down, we’re taking the whole planet with us.”

The root causes of the West’s looming disintegration are too numerous to be enumerated but they include oligarchic funding of far-left and far-right movements, unchecked immigration, erosion of national identities, runaway inflation, deepening poverty, collapsing infrastructure, and engineered corrosion of traditional institutions. This spectacle grows more surreal as the same Western governments are willing to pour hundreds of billions into foreign wars from Ukraine to Israel while turning a blind eye to the critical welfare needs of their own citizens.

Strip away the noise and two primary drivers appear in this drama. First, runaway wealth concentration, where a microscopic oligarchy effectively owns nations as designated proxies of their respective deep states. Second, the obliteration of the political middle ground, leaving no space for rational debate or nuanced critique of the hypocrisies plaguing both left and right.

This Hegelian theme was crystallized by former U.S. President George W. Bush in the wake of the still-contentious September 11, 2001 attacks: “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” Since then, the formula has metastasized into “you’re either with the patriots or with the globalists; you’re either with Israel or you’re an anti-Semite” — ad nauseam.

While the two primary drivers explain the root causes of the West’s terminal decline, two cinematic metaphors vividly foreshadow its future, namely The Purge and The Hunger Games.

For the uninitiated, The Purge depicts a near-future America marked annually by a 12-hour orgy of lawlessness where murder is legalized. Marketed as a cathartic “pressure valve,” it is nothing but social Darwinism in its purest form — an elite-orchestrated culling of the poor and marginalized to preserve control and inequality.

The Hunger Games thrusts us into Panem, which literally means “bread” in Latin. Here, a post-apocalyptic dystopia is fractured into twelve subjugated districts ruled by the opulent Capitol. Submission is enforced through annual televised death matches where child tributes are forced to kill or be killed, a spectacle that is equal parts entertainment and grotesque ritual of dominance over starving masses. The imagery is unmistakably reminiscent of ancient Rome’s social control strategy of bread and circuses (panem et circenses) as well as the shedding of blood. Christians being thrown to lions before roaring crowds in the Coliseum is the epitome of this stratagem.

Today, the formula endures in subtler forms via mass mediated spectacles, endless political tirades and the relentless quest for new bogeymen. The herd needs to be kept at “peak rage” while their overlords plot their demise.

Combustible Ironies

The West has been smouldering for years, but the recent deaths of American podcaster Charlie Kirk and Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska — alongside a wave of far-right rallies from the United States to the United Kingdom to Australia — have thrown fresh accelerants onto an already raging fire.

In London, 110,000 flag-waving zealots chanted “Unite the Kingdom” as they torched effigies and brawled with police when they were not feasting on onion bhajis and samosas hawked by South Asian immigrants. The ghost of Kirk turbocharged this crowd who canonized him like a fallen messiah. U.S. Congressman Troy Nehls even declared that if Kirk had “lived in Biblical times, he’d have been the 13th disciple.” Yes, and I suspect that if that were the case, Judas would have never betrayed his Lord as the 13th member would have performed the deed.

Another catalyst in this religion-tinged drama was Zarutska, who was knifed to death on a North Carolina train, with her American Dream bleeding out thanks to a random, hate-motivated assault.

For some perspective, consider these inconvenient questions: Wouldn’t Zarutska be safer in Moscow or Nizhny Novgorod? Since the protracted conflict began in 2022, how many Ukrainians have been knifed to death on Russian soil compared to the supposed sanctuary of the West?

With Kirk’s death hoisted as a lightning rod at uber-patriotic rallies, one thing is certain — civil war may not be merely looming; it is already being live-streamed on X. Adding fuel to the fire, Elon Musk himself fanned Britain’s right-wing fury with a blunt warning: “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”

That is right. Let’s take law and order into our own hands to settle grievances, just as Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin did!

Make no mistake: it is not the pitchfork peasants who are driving this farce, but oligarchs pulling strings from their tax-haven bunkers. Can anyone seriously imagine Musk leading a personal charge against left-wing radicals in the streets of London or Sydney? What commonality does Musk share with the street rabble? This guy has rubbed shoulders with far-left politicians and oligarchs at technocratic assemblies such as the World Economic Forum. And now, he is their Christ-first messiah?

I wonder if the governments of the United Kingdom, the European Union, or Australia would charge Musk for inciting violence. I seriously doubt it. They will posture, perhaps wag a finger, but they will not act as these same governments are dependent on the very platforms, capital flows, and technologies that men like Musk control. To challenge him is to risk severing their lifelines.

Coronapsychosis Reality Check

The herd, as I have noted in a recent interview, is senseless, gullible and hopelessly amnesiac. They have always worshipped hierarchy and will follow any leader who can peddle dangerous  delusions. The outrage manifested across the Western world today is routinely calibrated like a pressure valve.

Just where were these self-proclaimed patriots and “Christian Nationalists” when Western security forces were punching, pummeling, and arresting ordinary citizens who dared oppose senseless lockdowns and mandates during the pandemic? Remember the time when even a Facebook post or “like” — contrary to the Ministry of Truth’s narrative on the pandemic — landed you in handcuffs? Even pregnant women with little children were not spared.

Where were they when churches were padlocked under the virus mania? Who coerced a hesitant populace into taking experimental mRNA vaccines? How many have died prematurely since taking the shots? And who continues to bury the data on side effects to this very day? If there was ever a cause worth rallying for, this is it. As someone who has suffered from a past vaccine injury, I would far rather see answers to these questions than salacious exposes over Brigitte Macron’s alleged gender.

But that’s what the multi-millionaire berserkers on the left and right are paid to do: to distract you from asking questions like these. And what have they really achieved? The Jeffrey Epstein files are now reduced to a nothingburger, with both left and right blaming each other for concocting them.

The “coronapsychosis” therefore was not an aberration but a rehearsal. The lockdowns, the mandates, the mediated fear porn were all meant to test how far the sheeple could be controlled, divided, and pacified under a fog of crisis. What follows now is merely the sequel, a post-pandemic purge within nations.

Rage is only permitted when it serves power. When truckers occupied Ottawa, they were smeared as terrorists. When parents questioned school closures or Drag Queen story hours, they were branded extremists. Yet now, like starved hogs suddenly released from their pens, the “patriots” are free to unleash their fury — so long as it is aimed at the bogeymen of the day, handpicked and curated by their masters.

‘Christ is King’?

As for those feverishly chanting “Christ is King” while waving Israeli flags, I would question their knowledge of the Bible. The flag itself features the so-called Star of David — a hexagram composed of six points, six triangles, and six sides within its inner structure. I hardly need to remind the reader what three sixes signify in Christian tradition. And when it comes to nationalism, what did Christ Himself say to the representative of the empire in His day? Simply this: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

I doubt the emotionally-charged “Christ is King” herd could even identify a Bible, let alone find that verse. And if they did, they might be startled to realize that the very flag they idolize would, for other theological reasons, be an anathema to the faith they so casually invoke. They should also research who is weaponizing Muslim immigrants as the “broom of the West.”

These mobs need to pick a lane. Either they call for a return to traditional national values and identity — a perfectly legitimate aspiration — or they should renounce their citizenship and openly fight for the Zionist cause. But when they howl about split immigrant loyalties while simultaneously pledging allegiance to a foreign power, it smacks of clinical schizophrenia.

Dark Days Ahead

The nationalist rage erupting across the West is not hypocrisy born out of desperation; it is a deliberate top-down strategy.

Manufactured chaos is the last resort of a civilization in decline. By stoking fury against immigrants, minorities, and phantom enemies, elites divert scrutiny from themselves. Every rally, every clash, and every viral slogan functions as a pressure valve, ensuring the masses expend their fury on each other rather than uniting against their taskmasters.

But what happens when the riots spiral beyond control? Martial law is one obvious outcome, but it cannot endure without new scapegoats. That is why a steady diet of demonized villains — Russia, China, Iran and to some extent, India — must be sustained through a carousel of manufactured crises and false-flag spectacles.

For the BRICS nations, the warning is clear. They must insulate themselves from the West’s unraveling by fortifying supply chains, diversifying trade grids, and cultivating self-sufficiency. Continuity in the face of chaos will be their greatest weapon in the dark days ahead.

Dr Mathew Maavak is a regular commentator on risk-related geostrategic issues. Read other articles by Mathew.

Charlie Kirk Becomes Alive

by Dan Lieberman / September 21st, 2025

On Wednesday, September 10, a shot was fired at a Utah college event, and Charlie Kirk became alive. Relatively unknown to the public outside of the Right Wing fringe that gains shekels and adoration from the misinformed, miscalculating, and mistaken cadre of misplaced Americans, Charlie Kirk became a household name; more than that, Charlie Kirk achieved immortality. Flags at half-mast, Medal of Freedom, statues planned, all for a young man who used the principles of establishing megachurches and planting their orators and turned college campuses into megacampuses, with him as the orator.

Don’t intend to demean his life and ridicule his death. I perceived Charlie Kirk to be a charlatan, who twisted facts and reality to pursue an agenda that suited his pocket, who deserved condemnation, and maybe a few years in purgatory, but did not deserve a fatal bullet that silenced his rhetoric and amplified his message. His family members merit regrets for the act and sympathies for their loss.

Objectives that Charlie Kirk’s divisive rhetoric intended to achieve in life — cancel the Woke and disable the Left — have found their yellow brick road, and the Trump administration is set to stroll down that road, with the help of the jingoist and sanguine media. All reports I have read categorize the killing as a political act and predict “tit for tat” killings leading to a possible civil war. Trump’s initial response urges that to happen. To the question, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” the US president replied, “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. 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. They want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders. The worst thing that happened to this country.”

At this September 15 writing, I find no evidence that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, had any political motivation in the killing. Recitations of “the frightening rise in political violence in the United States,” (what is new in violent America?) hides and distracts from the frightening rise in dangerous and hysterical political discourse. Motivation in the killing of Charlie Kirk leans to a personal grudge in a personal situation — Kirk had disturbed Robinson, who had an intimate relationship with another male who was trans gendering to female. An extreme reaction, but disturb the disturbed and the outcome is often extremely disturbing — murdering the lawyer in a divorce case, murdering a judge after harm by a verdict, murdering a swindler who caused grief to others. Motivation in this case has not been defined, so why eagerly insinuate a political motive that is certain to cause havoc and arouse the public? Why not be calm and favor a motive that is more plausible, prevents havoc, and calms the public?

Not one voice for peace and order; megaphones for violence and disorder; the way of those who lead our society. If Harry Truman and his Democratic Party had not approved United Nations Resolution 181 for political reasons, there would be no Israel and no genocide of the Palestinian people; if the leaders of the Democratic Party had nominated sure winner, Joe Biden, instead of friend and sure loser, Hillary Clinton, there would no Donald Trump in the presidency; if the Democratic Party had not soothed Joe Biden’s feelings and realized their commitment to the American public by allowing more reliable candidates to enter the race at an earlier date, there would have been no return of Donald Trump and changing of the presidency to ruling autocracy. These small thoughts of personal gain engineered huge losses for the world.

Keeping Charlie Kirk alive advances ignorance and violence in the 50 states. The idolized man pedaled half-truths, clichés, and simplified arguments to a simplified audience who could not engage in an erudite dialogue and espoused clichés. He found a niche with college Republicans who were clipped by more outspoken students. To his credit as a political organizer, he gathered Republican college students into a more meaningful political force and accomplished much for the Republican Party, but successful political organizers do not warrant the accolades he is receiving and the future monuments that are being designated for him, especially when the efforts have been self-serving.

Kirk was not proceeding well until “he and others adopted a more edgy and confrontational style of engagement, [and] people started paying attention, including deep-pocketed donors and political strategists.” Kirk learned that deceit and Faustian bargains are a route to successful politics and living a comfortable life. The Trump administration has greatly lowered the bar on what is determined to be greatness.

Jesus Christ’s described life was similar to most apocalyptic preachers. Death and resurrection gave him fame. So it is with Charlie Kirk, but doubtful that it will be as long lasting. In with a blast and out with a whimper. One advice to his family ─ if they want him to be properly remembered, they will inform the Israeli authorities not to proceed with canonizing him by having a street named for him in the city of Netanya, a mural painted in Ashdod, and a missile inscribed “In memory of Charlie Kirk.” Identifying him with the genocidal Israelis will change his remembrance from the sweet “accomplishments in the political firmament, “ to an aggravating “enemy of mankind.”

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

Kirkwashing: Right Sanitizing Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

Kirkwashing: Right Sanitizing Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

by Bill Berkowitz / September 17th, 2025

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, right-wing politicians, Christian evangelical leaders, podcasters, and conservative media outlets are casting him as a martyr for free speech, for truth, and for Christian values. President Donald Trump called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom,” praising him as someone who “fought for liberty, democracy, justice and the American people.” Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, called him “America’s greatest martyr to the freedom of speech he so adored.”

At a prayer vigil that drew hundreds to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night,

House Speaker Mike Johnson told the crowd that Kirk’s “movement was a ministry,” rooted in the belief that “our rights do not derive from the state or a king. They come from the King of Kings.”

As The Forward’s Benyamin Cohen reported, “The vigil, which drew Republicans, Trump administration officials and Kirk’s loyal followers, crystallized the narrative that has come to dominate the conservative universe in the days since his assassination: that he was more than a political activist — he was a martyr in an existential struggle between good and evil.”

But no matter how the right spins it, Charlie Kirk was no Martin Luther King, Jr., no Medgar Evers, no Malcolm X. Far from embodying the principles of those leaders. and despite his tragic death, there is no way to hide his record of homophobia, anti-feminism, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, and hostility toward civil rights. He dismissed the separation of church and state, as “a fabrication.” He stood firmly with the gun lobby with his inviolate pro-gun views.

In the rush to canonize Kirk, one should not forget that Kirk embodied division and scapegoating.

At Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Howard-John Wesley countered the right-wing’s narrative, delivering a searing and emotional critique of efforts to sanitize Kirk’s legacy.

“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated,” Wesley said. “But I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land.”

Kirk regularly disparaged the Civil Rights Act,  the landmark 1964 legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Speaking at AmericaFest in December 2023, Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr. “not a good person” and “awful.”

At the same event, Kirk said “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” and “passage … created a ‘permanent DEI-type bureaucracy.’”

He often criticized affirmative action and made inflammatory comments about Black people and other racial minorities, including saying “In urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target White people” on his podcast in 2023.

Wesley criticized people with “selective rage” who condemned Kirk’s killing but not the killing of Minnesota state Sen. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Democrats who were shot dead in their home in June, as well as those who “tell me I oughta have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life.”

“You do not become a hero in your death when you are a weapon of the enemy in your life,” Wesley said to raucous applause.

And that is the deeper truth obscured by the calls of martyrdom: Kirk’s death, while tragic, cannot cleanse his legacy of division, nor should it be used as a rallying cry to sanctify a politics of hate.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. Read other articles by Bill.

Charlie Kirk

by Ted Glick / September 15th, 2025

I knew almost nothing about Charlie Kirk when he was killed on September 10, other than that he was a leading organizer and thought leader for MAGA. One of the first things I saw in my email inbox about him after that misguided, violent act that took his life referenced the fact that he publicly supported dialogue between the Left and the Right. Here’s that quote, prominent on his website: “We heal our divides by talking to people we disagree with… You heal the country when you allow disagreement.”

I agree with these words. To what extent he acted upon these words I do not know.

I do know that he was a huge Trump backer and enabler, and Trump is all about division and hate. I wonder if Kirk ever said a word of criticism about this fact about the man he helped elect President and whose policies he advocated for until he died.

USA Today came out with an article after he died summarizing what can only be called his racist, sexist, homophobic views.

It remains to be seen how many Trump/MAGA supporters follow what Kirk said about healing the country through allowing disagreement and talking to those we disagree with. The Republican Governor of Utah, where the killing took place, seems to have done so, to his credit.

For those of us on the political Left, the Kirk murder and Trump’s efforts to use it to ratchet up attacks on us, using a very broad, hysterical brush, should be just the latest lesson about the importance of nonviolent tactics as we continue to strengthen our resistance movement.

It appears as if Trump’s alleged killer was not a Leftist. His family appears to be very Republican and pro-Trump. Perhaps as he went out on his own he was exposed to ideas and facts he had not known about before, but unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have been exposed to the importance of nonviolence and dialogue in efforts to oppose what is seen as wrong.

I’m not a pacifist. I support people defending themselves, their family and their community as necessary against violence of any kind. But acts like those alleged to have been taken by Tyler Robinson are not self-defense; they are self-defeating and destructive.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed the way forward, with active and militant, mass nonviolence at the center of that way. In his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in NYC in April, 1967, he said this: “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Charlie Kirk did not like King. He said the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake. About King he reportedly said, “MLK was awful. He was not a good person.” I wish Kirk was still alive so that, perhaps, someday, through dialogue with people who disagreed with him, he would have changed his mind.

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Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org. Read other articles by Ted, or visit Ted's website.