Tag / maga cult

by Edward Champion

Charlie Kirk Was Not a Hero

Many leading figures on the left and the right are falsely claiming that the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk was some kind of hero. Kirk was anything but a hero. And his legacy of hate, racism, and white supremacy must be denounced with the same vigor as the political violence that ended his life.

Charlie Kirk was not a hero. He was little more than a dimebag demagogue who thought of nobody other than himself. He was a vile and meretricious purveyor of lies, conspiracy theories, Christian nationalism, bigotry, and white supremacy. He was an unremarkable mouthbreather who was about as intellectual as a nocturnal loris staying motionless in the trees to evade predators. Should he have been assassinated? Absolutely not. On the other hand, the world is a lot better without him. Much like Rush Limbaugh before him, there will come a time not long from now in which nobody will evoke his name.

To all the right-wing recidivist basement dwellers with prognathous jaws who will call my position here “disrespectful” and who spent much of last night hitting me with nine death threats on social media (“I will find out where you live and end you” read one such unsolicited DM sent to me), I feel compelled to remind you hopelessly feckless fuckheads that it was Charlie Kirk who, shortly after Paul Pelosi was attacked, spread baseless conspiracy theories that Pelosi was involved with a sex worker and who called for some “amazing patriot” to bail out Pelosi’s attacker. Thus, any sentiments I have to tender here are clearly mild by comparison.

Because Charlie Kirk was not a hero. He was a disgusting blot on the political landscape. And instead of responding to his assassination with peace, grace, and reflection, the alt-right chowderheads have instead brayed for leftist blood to flow in the streets. Even towards people like me who oppose violence and who have never fired a gun in their lives.

Charlie Kirk was a useless, baleful, and now quite dead alt-right gasbag who adopted the loris’s lazy and facile temperament as he publicly inveighed against trans people not long before his last ugly gasps. Yesterday, he permanently collapsed on a Utah Valley University stage, shot in the carotid by an expert marksman perched two hundred yards away who remained at large as of this morning.

And yet people, even those who claim to be on the left, have falsely declared that Charie Kirk was a hero, when he was certainly not. Noted antitrans and antithomeless neoliberal grifter Gavin Newsom performed an odious and obsequious rim job in the immediate wake that seemed unthinkable for any Democratic lawmaker only last year. And because Newsom’s agile felching of a prominent and extremely malevolent bigot has inexplicably become a form of “reaching across the aisle” for the dopiest of registered Democrats to celebrate, it has become necessary for me to reiterate quite strongly that Charlie Kirk was not a hero.

Charlie Kirk was not a hero because he died doing exactly what he loved: spreading hate, fear, and intolerance to a dull and unthinking audience of highly gullible hayseeds looking to blame and detest marginalized people because this hateful horde lacks the ability to take control or responsibility of their miserable lives.

In the end, Charlie Kirk’s hatemongering survival strategy didn’t work out for him or the wife and two children that he leaves behind. But don’t worry too much about his widow Erika Frantze. I am certain that the next guy she hitches her saddle with will be a far more “loving husband and father” than Charlie Kirk ever could be. After all, Kirk once asserted that women over thirty “aren’t attractive in the dating pool.” Kirk himself was not immune from the consequences of his hideous rhetoric. His stunningly sociopathic statement from April 3, 2025 had him declaring that “some gun deaths” were necessary to protect “God-given rights.” This is merely another case of Charlie Kirk inviting the myth of American exceptionalism to rear its ugly head.

Charlie Kirk’s hideous political positions made him the very embodiment of MAGA: a depraved and dangerous cult of selfish and illiterate sociopaths who have singlehandledly pooled their hateful resources to abdicate their humanity and deracinate the remaining dregs of American democracy. And none of this made him a hero. To declare Charlie Kirk a “hero” is akin to suggesting that Hitler’s lust for eugenics and genocide could be overlooked because he was fond of dogs. Heroes are the people who selflessly rush to the aid of others. A hero offers the shirt off his back to a starving man who has just lost everything and who does not seek public validation for being a decent human being. Heroes recognize others who are struggling and who are in need of dignity and they usually stop everything to ensure that the bedraggled have a little fortitude to fight another day.

Charlie Kirk never did anything like that. He was constitutionally incapable of kindness and he went out of his way to oppose basic human decency. On an October 22, 2022 episode of his show, he claimed that empathy was a “made up New Age term that does a lot of damage.” Never mind that the word “empathy” has its roots in the German word Einfühlung, which originated from the Greek word empatheia. It was an American psychologist by the name of Edward Bradford Titchener who first used “empathy” in English in 1908. (The term “New Age,” as we know it today, was popularized in the 1970s, although a case can be made that “New Age” originated with the journal edited by Alfred Orange and Holbrook Jackson. All this had nothing to do with Titchener.)

Kirk had neither intelligence nor compassion. He described universities hoping to bolster both noble qualities in young minds as “islands of totalitarianism.” He spread lies on social media about COVID vaccines and human trafficking, often inventing statistics from his diseased and ornery-fueled mind. He regularly demeaned and disrespected Black people, whether they were pilots with unimpeachable flight records or noble figures in history books. He falsely claimed that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and he went out of his way to bus more than 80 “patriots” into DC the day before the January 6, 2021 insurrection. So this made Charlie Kirk a seditionist and an antidemocratic traitor on top of his prolific track record as a detestable hate merchant.

All this is is the “work” that Gavin Newsom wants us to “continue” with. This is the “great man” being propped up by bloodthirsty conservatives all across the nation. Yes, political violence is abhorrent and Charlie Kirk should not have been assassinated. Yes, Charlie Kirk was protected by the First Amendment and had every right to blather these repugnant and inhuman sentiments to every atavistic and inbred rube crawling with venomous voracity from their squalid caves. But to lionize or to martyr Charlie Kirk in any way is to operate on the same obscene level as the sniper.

For Charlie Kirk was not a hero. He was a scumbag unfit to stand with the rest of us. He used every spare moment to summon the worst qualities out of people. He should not have been killed. On the other hand, I’ll sleep much better knowing that Kirk is no longer around to spew his ugly enmity to permanently empty vessels. It is indeed possible for two things to be true at once.

by Edward Champion

A Proud Member of the Intolerant Left

Every belief structure contains a line in which you do not cross. The MAGA Cult has now crossed a line and have become more vocal as they have been disinvited from holiday gatherings. As they learn that their actions have consequences, don’t listen to their desperate cries of “another member of the tolerant left.” The “tolerant left” is a conservative invention. Resist by holding these uncomprehending jackanapes accountable for their hate.

We’ll probably never have a completely accurate tally of how many MAGA Cultists have been cut off and left in the cold this Thanksgiving, but we do know that a vast throng of fascists — including the hubris-fueled, dumb-as-rocks propagandist Jesse Watters — has been disinvited and told in no uncertain terms not to come home this week. And now these hateful morons are starting to lose what little of their minds they still possess. Speaking for myself, I refused to attend the Thanksgiving dinner for which I had planned to cook many tasty and hearty side dishes (homemade sourdough stuffing, my four cheese mac and cheese, corn bread casserole, and numerous other delicacies that have made many guests ranging in age from six to sixty-six squeal with delight), once I had learned that a Trump voter had been invited. I was specifically trying to honor one of the sensitive guests — an extremely kind, endearing, and very shy seventeen-year-old (son of a friend) who asked me very politely to refrain from talking politics. Had the entire guest list been comprised of people who stand for democracy, this would have been effortless. It’s the MAGA fuckwads, after all, who want to keep dragging up politics and who hope to “own the libs” with their deranged fantasy football stylings. (Less easy for me is refraining from saying “fuck” for long periods of time. The longest I made it was three hours at a Xmas gathering before I slipped. And after my loose lips betrayed the blunt truth of my ship, my friend hugged me and said that she was very proud of me for managing to make it that long. What can I say? I’m a profane yet erudite motherfucker who tries to atone for his inveterate NC-17 vernacular by dropping as many arcane ten cent words into a colloquy as I can through blind instinct. But I digress.)

The upshot is that I am not going to walk on eggshells anymore. There has always been a line in the sand. I’ll never break bread with a fascist. I am simply not going to tolerate anyone who stands against women’s rights, for mass deportation, for unmitigated restrictions on marginalized groups, for the erosion of education funding, for tariffs and economic devastation that will hurt the most vulnerable members of our nation and line the coffers of the plutocrats, and for restrictions on free speech and the intimidation of alternative voices. No. Fuck off. I’ve urged people to cut the bastards off and I mean it. If you are a fascist, I will denounce you with the most devastating vitriol I can summon and ostracize you loudly.

I can name four friends who are in a similar boat. And we’re all regrouping, gathering for some quiet moments of camaraderie. A time of peace and good eating should not be sullied by these evil goons. If you stand for an ideology that wishes the people I love and me dead, then why on earth would you ever think I could be civil with you in any way? You stand against humanism. You are my sworn enemy.

One would think that the MAGA fuckwits would be happy about this state of affairs. But it’s clear by their vociferous pipsqueaking on my social media feeds and, closer to home, by their desperate attempts to get back into my good graces that they’re not. Now that they realize that the only company they will have for the holidays will entail hateful, humorless, miserable, and uneducated jackanapes, they’re starting to understand just what they’ve lost. Well, tough titty. Don’t look at me. I voted for the centrist democracy-friendly candidate, despite the fact that it involved a lot of compromise of my leftist principles. You voted for the authoritarian strongman and you won everything. Why aren’t you happy about that? Go and consort with your fellow white supremacists and fuck off until the end of time. I mean, come on, aren’t you living the dream?

Well, their “dream” involves us, whether we like it or not. They are so obdurately wretched that they are trying to follow us like rats fleeing a sinking ship. And they are surprised when their feeble minds and flaccid bodies collide into a glue trap. You see, it’s not enough for them to win. What they want is to make us their subservient little bitches. What they are interested in is establishing a new pecking order in which they are on top. They try to taunt us and “expose our hypocrisy” with such hacky zingers as “Another member of the tolerant left.” But as Andy Khori wisely pointed out, the “tolerant left” idea is an invented term of art by the right. It’s designed to inoculate these uncomprehending lemurs from criticism. They’ll never answer to their own complicity in supporting a deranged ideology in which more women die, more families are torn apart because some of them weren’t born on the mainland, and in which LGBTQIA people live in great fear for their future. But they will try to use “tolerant left” as a gotcha point when the truth of the matter is that every political ideology and every form of morality does possess a hard limit on what is considered acceptable.

And now that these dimwitted and entitled little dipshits are starting to learn that we do have boundaries, they’re stunned to learn that they can’t get away with their platitudes and their FOX News mimesis anymore. They’re learning very swiftly that we’ve always been intolerant of any baleful force or figure standing in the way of education, democratic possibility, and human rights. And they’re also learning that we can fight just as dirty as they can, starting with the punishment of social isolation and, if they get more hot and heavy, a peremptory declaration that they are no longer a part of our universe.

“Can’t we just agree to disagree?”

Nope. Talk to the hand. You were eager to usher in a world in which boys are now threatening girls with the phrase “Your body, my choice.” And, as far as I’m concerned, we now no longer have anything in common. For what is the point of a belief structure if we don’t turn our backs when those wildly arrogant Icaruses insist on flying too close to the sun?

But, oh, how they need us! Oh, how these idiots chirrup with half-baked incoherence and small dick energy in the replies! And they can’t own who they are and the disgusting values they represent. They know that they’re now going to have to consort among themselves, without our wit, bonhomie, and all-around decency (and, in my case, my kickass cooking). They know that the only company they will keep will be braindead red baseball cap-wearing zombies who are equally unpleasant.

So call me a proud member of the intolerant Left. If you’re a fascist, you won’t get an invite to my happy life. If you’re drowning in debt after the tariffs kick in, I’ll watch you suffer from afar and not lift a single finger to help you. Because you crossed the point of no return. These fools are now squirming within a nadir of cruelty and insensitivity for which there can be no Venn diagram. They are a hostile threat to all of the human values I hold dear. They have nothing but hate, intimidation, and threats. They have no original thoughts or real ideas. They are completely incapable of understanding historical patterns. And they know deep down that they lack resilience and resourcefulness, two vital qualities for surviving the upcoming dark age that we have and they don’t.

You can also call me an elitist. I don’t care. Although I should point out that the bar for entry into my world is astonishingly low and easy: if you don’t know something, ask a question. That’s it. I’m never going to call your question stupid, even if everyone else in the room knows the answer. You asked. And that counts for something in a world increasingly hostile to facts and checkered by anti-intellectualism. But the fascists cannot even summon the basic grace to do even that. They are incapable of respect, curiosity, humility, or broadening their minds or their empathy. They really believe that they can go about living in this nation, under this wildly dangerous and narcissistic authoritarian, without ever comprehending the impact of vital institutions, once untouchable, permanently dismantled by nihilistic fascists who hope to obliterate decades of progress.

I’m a member of the intolerant Left because I love what used to pass for my country. If we become two Americas because half the hateful rubes wanted to blow up the bridge, then so be it. My side is smarter, pluckier, and more inclined to survive, especially if we keep resisting hard. I have no qualms about transforming the stupidest and most callous members of our nation into braying pariahs. Much in the way that I show no remorse in cutting off a toxic “friend” from my life. The MAGA Cult are abusive addicts who have demonstrated that they fall below the baseline for decency. And now they’re going to learn about what the criminologist John Braithwaite called reintegrative shaming. In his studies, Braithwaite found that ostracized criminals showed a higher probability to fall into recidivism. And that’s what we’re seeing from these red state hayseeds: recidivism. Through death threats and calling me “soyboy” and attempting to belittle everything about life that is fun and joyful. It would be one thing if some members of the MAGA Cult were to prostrate themselves at our feet and beg for forgiveness and ask us for help so that they can better understand the impact of their uninformed vote, perhaps even joining us in the fight against despotism. But they have demonstrated no such inclinations. They would rather double down on their xenophobia and their belittling of anyone who isn’t white, male, hetero, and cis. That’s a line that I refuse to cross. And if it makes me “intolerant,” well calling me a member of the “tolerant Left” isn’t the flex you think it is.

by Edward Champion

The One Way to Hurt the MAGA Cult: Cut the Bastards Off

There is one guaranteed way to inflict a lot of damage to the MAGA Cult right now and it involves cutting the bastards off. Start doing it today. They don’t deserve to break bread with you during the holidays.

After four days of being hit with death threats, pledges of violence directed towards me, one incident of doxxing, and outright hate from hundreds of MAGA cultists, I’ve noticed that they have started to make attempts to cozy up with me this weekend — as if telling me only a few days ago “Why don’t you kill yourself, you bald Commie?” (one of dozens of threats) never happened. These monsters are trying to squirm their way into our good graces and pretend as if everything is normal.

Well, I am here to say: FUCK NO.

We live in a new nation. A nation in which there is now a permanent divide between those who support democracy and those who want to kill off the rest of us.

Cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. Even family and close friends who voted for Trump. Cut them off. All of these evil motherfuckers. Cut them off even if they share your blood. Do not go home for the holidays. That’s one thing you can do this month. Say no to Thanksgiving. Have a fun time with your true friends and family. (If you need Thanksgiving recipes, I’m happy to share. Email me.) Say no to FOX News-Watching Uncle Harry’s Turkey Day fiesta and Aunt Matilda’s covertly misogynistic Xmas party. Leave the fascists off your invite lists. Cut them out of your life. Tell them that they are not welcome because they do not stand for basic humanity. Cut them off because they stand for hate, violence, and intimidation.

Cut the bastards off.

Let them suffer the crippling loneliness of social isolation and of not having your majestic presence in their life. Because it will hurt them. It will hurt them when they are not invited to your wedding or your baby shower. It will hurt them when they fully understand that they are missing out on the most amazing moments of your life. They are not deserving of that. So cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. Let them know that you fully understand that they do not love you. Because if they did love you, they would never have voted for a maniac who has made everything extremely unsafe for you and so many others. Let them understand that their vote had far more of a consequence than they understood.

This is one real act of protest you can do right now. The MAGA cultists may be full of bluster and arrogance as they take their weirdly spiteful victory lap, but they will feel pain if you ostracize and condemn them and you tell them that they are no longer a part of your life. I mean, remember the pain you felt when you came out to your right-wing parents and they told you that you were no longer welcome? Well, payback’s a bitch, isn’t it? Cut the bastards off. Because their only purpose in life is to cause pain and spawn hate. They literally have nothing else. So cut the bastards off.

Do not socialize with them. Do not be friends with them. If you have doubts, remember that they will soon sell you out to save their skin. So cut the bastards off.

Do not get into a relationship with them. Close your legs if they want to take you home. Before you go on a date with them, ask them who they voted for (along with some followup questions to determine if they are lying through their teeth) and if they say Trump, immediately block them and do not associate with them. Let them suffer in the same way that they are making us suffer. Cut them off and watch them from afar on social media as they are reduced to a puling and braying mess. In the same way that you are probably quietly feeling right now.

Cut the bastards off. These mouthbreathing motherfuckers are unworthy of you. You’re special. They’re not. They mindlessly bob their heads up and down and sputter a 24/7 froth of dehumanizing hate. So cut the bastards off.

A bartender cuts off a drunk who has one too many at a bar, right? Well, why should fascism any different? Cut the bastards off. They’ve had too much of Trump’s repugnant swill and I’m telling you that they are never ever coming back.

Cut these evil fuckwits off. Tell them that they no longer exist in your universe.

Cut the bastards off. Let them feel the wincing pain of standing on the side of hate. Let them know that they signed up for a new world in which high school boys are now telling high school girls, “Your body, my choice.” That’s unacceptable and unthinkable to anyone with a moral compass. So why would you want these sociopaths in your life? Cut the bastards off.

Let them know that suicide hotlines for LGBTQIA people have hit unprecedented levels and that they made this happen. And there is no coming back from that. It shows that your moral values and theirs do not align, even if they profess to be Christian.

Cut the bastards off. They stood against human rights. They signed up for unhinged harassment and violence, even after they won everything. Would we have done that? Fuck no. So cut the bastards off. Cut the bastards off because make no mistake: win or lose, the MAGA cult will always call for our dehumanization. So cut the bastards off.

Boycott their businesses. Why should they get to profit in any way when they have just ensured that prices next year will be higher than any inflation falsely ascribed to Biden? Cut them off before the tariffs and the boycotts from other nations kick in. Don’t buy any book written by a fascist. Do not support them. Do not show up to their events. Cancel your subscriptions to the Washington Post and The New York Times. Delete your X account. Cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. By cutting them off, you will condemn them to a life in which they will only hear the tedious mantras of fascism and white supremacy. You will deny them the very civility that we believe in, but that is completely beyond them. And they will not have our humor, our kindness, our creativity, or our smarts. They will lose access to all of that and it will slowly destroy them. And they deserve it. So cut the bastards off. If they voted for Trump after being “on the fence,” they will swiftly understand that they are dead to us and that they are doomed and that they crossed a line which is unforgivable.

Cut the bastards off.

Unfortunately, you will have to consort with some of them. Particularly the fascists at your workplace. Well, give them nothing but the bare minimum. Cut the bastards off. Say nothing about your lives. Because they will use any and all details as weapons against you. But you can also cut them off without them actually knowing that you have cut them off by significantly reducing how much you are willing to share about yourself. Because they’re not very bright.

Cut the bastards off.

You do not need this drama in your life right now. You do not need additional people who will prevent you from being who you are. Because being authentic is going to be very difficult starting next year — especially when the arrests start. So why should they get even a second of what makes you special?

Cut the bastards off. I know it’s going to be difficult. I know you’re going to have to say no to a lot of people you presently love. But if you do this now, you’ll save yourself a lot of hurt in the long run when they start ratting you out. If you cut them off right now — while we have ten weeks until the Orange Monster becomes President — then you’ll get the pain out of the way now and save yourself a truly unsettling plot twist of Cousin Jim reporting you to the New Gestapo.

Cut the bastards off. Because we need you strong so that we can all fight and resist. We need you to be you. We need you to be authentic. And we will listen to you and provide a supportive ear. Because we’ve also cut the bastards off. It wasn’t easy for us either and we know how awful this is. But unfortunately this is what American life has come down to.

So cut the bastards off. Because we need you alive. And cutting them off will improve your probability of survival.