Charlie’s Devils

 Charlie’s Devils

Jim Kavanagh

Charlie, Angel

I did not and do not give one whit about, or want to waste one ounce of intellectual energy on, Charlie Kirk.

I confess that—like, I bet, most of the people (certainly the politicians) now gnashing their teeth and attending prayer vigils—I was blissfully unaware of exactly who Charlie Kirk was, until last week when I suddenly saw him receiving the most ridiculously inflated veneration since Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. I now know that he was a mediocre right-wing podcaster and wannabe intellectual.

This is the guy for whom there’s a massive, coordinated, multi-media campaign to turn him into a martyred national hero on a par with Lincoln and JFK? Lying in state? Really? I don't believe that even most people who liked Kirk thought he was that important a week ago.

Now, the politically dominant right-wing really—they say it openly—wants to cancel everyone who does not participate in the canonization of Charlie Kirk. You must join in the gala of national mourning and sanctification, or be removed from social media, publicly shamed, and fired from your job, if not rounded up.

Whatever the facts of his assassination turn out to be (Don’t even start!), the speed, thoroughness, and level of state-mandated adamance with which this Charlie canonization campaign took hold smacks of something prepared and organized in advance.

Because it was, and it’s not about Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was the occasion for activating an aggressive campaign of Zionist and right-wing repression that was waiting for an excuse. He—actually, his ghost—is now nothing but an instrument of that campaign, wielded by people who care as much about the real Charlie Kirk as I do.

Here is Charlie Kirk today:

What in the unholy algorithm did I just watch 😱

AI slop of Charlie Kirk in heaven defending Israel from Greta & Hamas 🤣 is making the rounds, and Evangelical influencer is weeping on camera over it pic.twitter.com/DtBG5i8guO

— Abier (@abierkhatib) September 15, 2025

https://twitter.com/i/status/1967602291697209472

This is what it's about: the sanctification of Charlie as a conjoined angelic twin of Israel and the demonization of any dissenters. The purpose of sanctifying Kirk is not to preach his gospel, but to recruit the Republican/MAGA base to a program of repression, destroying the First Amendment rights of expression, dissent, and protest in order to: 1)immediately, prop up falling support for Israel among “America First” young Americans who were attracted go Kirk and whose dissatisfaction with Israel he was listening to;  2) proactively, instigate an even nastier conflict between culture-war “left-right” factions that will divert the populace from the real left vs. right, 99%-vs.-the oligarchy, socio-economic civil war the US capitalist oligarchs rightly fear is coming; and 3)  justify the intensified police-state policies needed to crush it if/when it does come—whether or not any of this has anything to do with Charlie Kirk’s actual message when he was living.

I want to stress that the defense of Israel and Zionism is the immediate, urgent task of those promoting the canonization of Kirk. They certainly are right-wing defenders of capitalist oligarchy, and definitely want to pre-emptively repress any real left that would influence or lead any hint of anti-capitalist uprising. But that threat is not imminent, and they presume their ability to avoid and/or control it. They are also committed Zionists, who at this moment know that Israel and the Zionist project, which has lost all legitimacy in the world, cannot survive without the support of the U.S. government, and they are terrified of the imminent threat that the American populace—including the Republican/MAGA base—will turn decisively against that support.

Which is happening. Influential right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Thomas Massie are going hard on an America-First rupture with Israel’s aggressions, with effect.  We’ve reached a point where only 22% of younger (18-34) Republicans think Israeli actions in Gaza are justified.  

That’s an amazing, and fast, reversal of Zionist fortune in the American public—crucially, in the younger demographic that Kirk affected most. And the Zionist establishment cannot allow it to continue.

In this precarious context for Zionist support in the U.S, we also have Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil’s Grayzone articles, based on “Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle.” According to that source, Kirk had refused Netanyahu’s offer of “a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA,” had come to “loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a ‘bully,’” and “was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.” The Grayzone source also says Kirk was “frightened” by the pressure he was receiving from Zionist donors, while Trump supporter, Harrison Smith, said he was told by “someone close to Charlie Kirk that Kirk thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against Israel.”  

I make no claim that Charlie Kirk was on the verge of renouncing Zionism, or that he was assassinated by Israel. I do know that, because he had platformed Israeli critics like Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith, he had been declared anathema by the same people who are now sanctifying, and insisting that you must worship, him.

https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1944540088400281688

My point is not to adjudicate Charlie Kirk’s “real” position on Israel. My point is this: The people behind this canonization campaign do not really care about Charlie Kirk or think he's all that. They are using his ghost to prop up the sanctity of Zionism, to gin up a "right-left" fight to forestall the "right-left" unity that has been coalescing in opposition to Israel and Zionism. It’s a reasonable discussion and potential alliance between leftists and right-populists over Israel—like this Tim Dillon-Max Blunenthal interview—that Israeli and American Zionists are terrified of.

We’re in an unprecedented—and for the Zionists, unacceptable—situation where people on the MAGA “right”—perhaps even more than those on the liberal “left”—are concluding that Israel might have assassinated Charlie Kirk and was likely involved in the JFK assassination, that Jeffrey Epstein was running a Mossad op that may have entrapped Trump, and that the country wasted its blood and treasure in a succession of regime-change wars in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel.

That's why they're going much harder with this ridiculous mythification of Kirk as Israel’s angel than they did even with Trump after his assassination attempts. Not because the person is more important to them, but because the historical moment is—a moment in which Israel is going full indefensible “final solution” in Gaza and dragging the U.S. into another wasteful war with Iran, and most people in the world and in the United States are sick of it. In this moment, the narrative managers don't give a damn about Charlie Kirk; they're concerned about defending and preserving indispensable American support for Israel and Zionism.

So, to argue about Charlie Kirk is to miss the point. It’s like arguing about the hostages in Gaza. The people pushing this campaign care no more about him than Netanyahu does about them. One might say that he, or his ghost, is effectively now their hostage.

J.D. Vance and the Republican leadership no more think Charlie Kirk is really some historic American saint and moral and intellectual giant than John Brennan and the Democratic leadership really thought Donald Trump was a spy for Vladimir Putin. The factions that spin these tales do so to corral their constituents into an ideological and political pen they can control, rather than have them wandering into forbidden places. If you thought Russiagate was about exposing Trump as a Russian agent, you were being played. If you think this narrative is about establishing the sainthood of Charlie Kirk, you are being played. If the words “left” and “right” keep you from seeing that, you are being played. The factions that spin these tales are contemptuous of you for believing them.

What I find upsetting and depressing is how quickly and thoroughly these tales saturate the political and media environment, making it virtually impossible for most people not to ingest and regurgitate them.

Do the people who liked Charlie Kirk because he presented as a free-speech warrior not see what's going on here? What they are being recruited into? It’s really not hard.

And, yes, it's a mirror version of what the liberal Democrats did during Biden—embracing expansive and malleable concepts of “terrorism” and “domestic terrorism,” “misinformation,” protest as “sedition,” “political violence,” speech as violence, etc.—to justify censorship, cancellation, and RICO prosecution. Some of us warned constantly about the precedents being set and the tools put in place that would inevitably be used against those so smugly wielding them. It was not hard to see how pernicious and stupid the Dems use of those tools were, and it was not hard to see—I did—how pernicious and stupid the Trump administration was going to be. Because neither faction really believes in the principles, or saints, they claim to revere.

It's extraordinarily depressing to see how easy it is to manipulate different groups of people with their shiny trinket.  We did succeed in preventing the Disinformation Governance Board. It’s a different administration, but the same Deep State, which now wants (because his work overall lends to this) to fold mandatory Charlie-worship in with mandatory Zionism-worship. We—everyone who wants to challenge that Deep State—better not let them get the “We'll take your social media if you criticize Charlie Kirk” Law, or any of its "We'll take your passport if you criticize Israel" affiliates.

As the man sings, “Everybody plays the fool sometime. There's no exception to the rule.” But time has run out on the American merry-go-round of tomfoolery.

When will enough people wake the fuck up?

___________________________________

Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

 Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

Jim Kavanagh

So, Donald Trump dropped this fierce speech, promising to “reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans,” prompting an ecstatically joyful reaction from Elon Musk and from RFK, Jr.  who says it makes Trump one of “the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln.”

This alone puts DJT in company with the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln. The globalist project has laid siege to democracy and freedom across the globe. The USA is the final redoubt. President Trump just launched freedom’s counterattack. https://t.co/2brXEjTByg

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 9, 2024

 Sorry, it’s a long and necessary quote:

If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that. if this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and Liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one they'll go down.

That's why, today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And “reclaim” is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away. In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of Deep-State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital Information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.

And here is my plan: First, within hours of my inauguration I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.

Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new unlined censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified—these include possible violations of federal civil-rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses. To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters—and we have to do this right now—to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.

Third, upon my inauguration as president. I will ask Congress to send bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business from now on. Digital platform should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

Fourth. we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation. The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university has discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more. We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their first fourth and fifth amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote. And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your borders, like we have, you no longer have a country.  Furthermore, to confront problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former deep-staters and intelligence officials, there should be a seven-year cooling-off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of U.S. user data.

Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter. Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned, or otherwise restricted—no matter what name they use—they should have the right to be informed that it's happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why. and the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose. The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America, and for the survival of Western Civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left.a By restoring free speech, we’ll begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation. Thank you, and God bless America.

Though I’m dismayed by the idea that they are “left-wing” political actors, I agree that the Biden administration has engaged in an assault on free speech and the unique protection offered to free speech by the First Amendment. It’s arguably the worst such assault since the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-8.[1] I agree that the Biden administration and the bulk of the Democratic Party and its allied media created a public-private “censorship cartel,” much as Trump describes, that  “must be dismantled and destroyed,” much as Trump describes.

Except, just one little thing my Colombo-Spidey senses notice: “We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism,”

Excuse me while I fire up my eighteen-wheeler to drive through that loophole.

Please harken to what President-elect Trump, no free-speech “absolutist,” tells us in the midst of this militant anti-censorship rant: The Trump administration will require platforms—i.e., demand via legal and financial governmental coercion— to increase their suppression of any content “promoting terrorism.”

“Promoting” is a slippery word that was placed in Trump’s speech about free speech quite deliberately. The context of a discussion of social media platforms makes it clear: Trump is not here saying his administration will require suppression of material acts of terrorism but of speech acts promoting terrorism, which he’s defining, along with “child exploitation,” as “unlawful” and outside the realm of free speech.

Is there anybody on planet Earth who does not see exactly what is going to happen? “Promoting terrorism” will replace “misinformation” as the free-speech, First-Amendment exception, the rationale for more government-mandated censorship in the realm of political speech and expression, not less. At least in any of the many corners of the discursive universe where the word “terrorism” might be conjured up. And guess where, above all, that most definitely will be? You have one guess.

Wide-ranging Interview with Kate Frey of We Are Many, They Are Few

On Saturday, June 11, I had a wide-ranging discussion with Kate Frey for her YouTube Channel, We Are Many, They Are Few. (Check out that channel!. This is my fourth interview for the channel over the past few years, so you know it’s got to be good.)

We covered Jan 6th (event and hearings about it), public-private censorship regime, Ukraine-Russia conflict, gun rights, etc.

Here’s the full one-hour and seventeen-minute interview. Below it are shorter videos of three segments she clipped off, on Freedom of Speech, Ukraine, and Gun Rights.

Interview with Jim Kavanagh of the Polemicist:

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Campaign to Deplatorm Joe Rogan is Hypocritical, Reactionary, and a Danger to Society

Watch this clip (If it’s not immediately deleted) and read the whole thread from Glenn Greenwald. Then tell me the campaign to deplatform Joe Rogan is not the culmination of a hypocritical, reactionary drive to prevent any scientific or political conversation that strays outside the establishment-approved narrative. It has nothing to do with the purported reasons for outrage, which are a phony crock of shit.

Anyone who goes along with this campaign is a fooal and a danger to society. This crap is literally destroying the possibility of reasonable social exchange.

This is about 1,000 times more virulent than anything Rogan has dreamed of doing but Howard Stern is now a liberal in good standing -- adores Hillary and Maddow, hates Trump, spouts every DNC piety -- so it's fine. Hillary went on his show, oozed praise:https://t.co/B9DBHIktIk

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 6, 2022

This is why Howard Stern clips like the one from above -- and so many other worse ones from him over many, many years -- don't matter and why nobody is trying to get him off the air. He has the right politics, fitting in perfectly with the NBC/CNN/NYT axis and all their pieties: pic.twitter.com/QLIYzS12Ib

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 6, 2022

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (3/29/2019)

Thousands Held In Deplorable Conditions In Syrian Refugee Camp By US Military

On this episode of The Critical Hour, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Whitney Webb, journalist and staff writer for MintPress News.

It's Friday, that means it is panel time!

Vexed by Vaxxed

“Ideology, after all, is more influential than laws.….[N]o one…would dream of making legislation to force people to read certain books and prevent them from reading others.”¹

--Literary critic H. Bruce Franklin

The treatment of the movie Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe is an astounding example of ideological discipline performed by the American cultural elite.

As everybody knows by now, Robert DeNiro selected Vaxxed for his Tribeca Film Festival. Because he and Grace Hightower have a child with autism, he thought it was important that the issues raised in the film be shown to the public. 

Vaxxed presents a personal admission and documentary evidence from Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist and the lead author of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) study that purported to disprove a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. His evidence indicates that the panel actually found a link—and specifically a 300% increase in risk among African-American boys—and contrived to hide it. The panel’s effort to manipulate the data and destroy evidence in order to bury the link extended an inquiry that was meant to take six months into four years. 

Thompson says that he, his co-authors, and the CDC, “omitted statistically significant information”; that “my supervisors have broken laws”; that they destroyed evidence in a way he “assumed … was illegal and would violate both FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and DOJ [Department of Justice] requests”; that he has stopped lying,” and has “great shame now when I meet families of kids with autism because I have been part of the problem….I was complicit, and I went along with this, we did not report significant findings.” He also describes the atmosphere that reigned in the CDC thusly: “The federal government is hostile to anyone who says anything negative about any industry.”²

That is the crux of the movie. It makes the case that this participant’s stunning statement-against-interest evidence of fraud should be seriously investigated. You’ll be excused if you had no idea this is what the film is about, or if you thought—i.e., if the media coverage of it led you to believe—it was about something else entirely, about making some “anti-vaccination” argument. There is nothing in the film that is “anti-vaccination.” Unless criticizing the side-effects (now acknowledged, but once completely ignored) of Lipitor makes one “anti-drug.” Believe me, there are some voices out there that reject the efficacy and theory of vaccines in general. Neither Vaxxed nor anybody in it is one of them. In fact, the film explicitly supports vaccination, even as it urges more serious attention to the safety of one specific vaccine.  But you’d have to see the movie to know that.  (If you want a good idea of what the film is like beyond the trailer, take a look at this segment from Thom Hartmann’s show.)