What they’re not saying in Europe’s emotional response to Charlie Kirk death
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ. CC BY-SA 2.0
The immediate effects of Charlie Kirk’s murder beyond America were obvious but the reason was less clear and no one seemed to want to mention it. (Hint: it starts with ‘D’.)
Sober messages were quickly issued by European leaders ranging from Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to Britain’s Keir Starmer.
In a statement, France’s foreign ministry recorded the country’s “deep emotion”.
The European right went for the jugular and savaged the left though there had been nothing thus far to show any left-wing involvement or motive. Even so, Hungary’s Viktor Orban decried “the international hate campaign waged by the progressive-liberal left” and France’s far-right National Rally leader Jordan Bardella condemned the “dehumanising rhetoric of the left and its intolerance”.
European ructions over Kirk’s death were most clearly evident when the European parliament denied a request from its far right bloc to have a moment of silence. When the motion failed, the Swedish Democrat MEP who backed it lamented the lopsidedness of life and death by pointing out the European parliament’s response to news of George Floyd’s passing at the hands of a police officer five years ago. Then, a resolution had been passed, condemning police brutality.
Eloquent reasons have been offered to explain Europe’s emotional response to Kirk’s murder.
That Kirk was shot dead while engaged in discussion and that too on a college campus was regarded as an assault on the free society, wrote one analyst.
Many said that it was a sign of the extent to which politics has been internationalised by social media.
Others noted the degree to which it betrayed ideological convergence between the American and European right.
There is an element of truth in all of the above. But in my view, more powerful, by far, is Donald Trump’s determination to continue to push his own prejudices, preoccupations (and yes, henchmen) as the right thing, the only thing, for the whole world to get behind.
This US president meddles shamelessly in the political and legal workings of other countries, ranting against diverse public servants such as the mayor of London and a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, demanding the end of lawsuits and/or wind farms and openly offering support to overseas opposition leaders.
In his first term, he met with Nigel Farage, leader of a then-minor UK opposition political party, and has subsequently hosted him in the Oval Office. Trump stayed silent when his vice-president J D Vance endorsed Germany’s far right AfD party before a key election in that country and met its leader.
And he demanded, on pain of massive tariffs, that Brazil drop a lawsuit against its former president for an attempted coup.
More than anything else, the apparent outpouring of emotion over Kirk may be a fawning attempt to curry favour with the Big Don.
