A person can quickly grow tired of rain! Fortunately I managed to go for a run this morning before the rain started. However, by the time I was considering hanging washing out to dry the rain had started. We are lulled into a false sense of security by the intervals of sunshine but we are not really fooled: autumn has arrived!
My Spanish sister posted a quotation from the poet Antonio Machado: «El arma más destructiva que utiliza el fascismo es la mentira». “The most destructive arm used by fascism is the lie”. Once a lie is out there in the public eye, it is very hard to counteract it.
One such is that Charlie Kirk was killed by a left-wing activist or fanatic. It turns out that the suspect (still only a suspect but already named in the press) was a republican boy, obsessed with guns. Quite why he shot Charlie Kirk has not been explained.
Charlie Kirk meanwhile was apparently a good guy. According to his widow Erika Kirk, speaking from her husband’s Turning Point USA office on Friday evening, Charlie was killed because “he preached a message of patriotism, faith and of God’s merciful love”. No mention of misogyny, racism, promoting violence.
Somehow the Christian idea that ‘God is Love’ has got lost along the way.
People have been losing their jobs in the USA for making the wrong sort of comments about his death, which can’t be justified, whatever his political stance. Among those to have been fired, suspended or censured in recent days for their opinions include teachers, firefighters, journalists, politicians, a secret service employee and a worker for a prominent NFL team. And Mr Trump’s administration has promised to to take action against foreign nationals in the USA it deems to be “praising or making light of” the killing. Kirk himself it seems was a fervent free speech advocate. Free speech only goes so far: Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has ordered staff “to find and identify military members, and any individual associated with the Pentagon, who have mocked or appeared to condone Charlie Kirk’s murder”, NBC News reported yesterday.
Here in the UK the flag-wavers are out in London for a far right “unite the kingdom” march. Tommy Robinson, Steve Bannon (Donald Trump’s former chief strategist), Ant Middleton (a former UK special forces soldier who has increasingly used far-right rhetoric.), an MP for Germany’s far-right AfD party and a far-right Polish MEP are all supposed to be addressing the expected multitude. And the death Charlie Kirk is a rallying call it seems.
But right-wing radicals are not the problem according to Mr Trump: “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.”
The rally in London is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
Let’s hope it doesn’t get violent.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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