{"id":149545,"date":"2025-09-17T10:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/149545\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T10:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:43:08","slug":"we-must-not-let-the-shooting-of-charlie-kirk-become-trumps-reichstag-fire-david-van-reybrouck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/149545\/","title":{"rendered":"We must not let the shooting of Charlie Kirk become Trump\u2019s Reichstag fire | David Van Reybrouck"},"content":{"rendered":"

If 2025 was already shaping up to be the worst year of the century for the post-1945 rules-based world order, the past week has been its most destructive week yet. Israel deepened its disregard for international conventions by sending 10 fighter jets to Qatar<\/a>, bombing a Hamas delegation participating in ceasefire talks in Doha. The last meaningful forum for diplomatic negotiation may now have gone up in smoke.<\/p>\n

At least 19 Russian drones violated Poland\u2019s airspace. For the first time in its history, Nato airpower was engaged against enemy targets inside a Nato country. Whether the incursion<\/a> was a technical mishap or deliberate probing by Moscow, as western experts believe, this was \u201cthe closest we have been to open conflict since the second world war,\u201d Poland\u2019s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said.<\/p>\n

And then Charlie Kirk, a firebrand conservative activist and close Donald Trump ally, was shot dead<\/a> while addressing college students and Maga supporters at a Utah university. Without evidence of the shooter\u2019s identity or motives, Trump immediately blamed \u201cthose on the radical left<\/a>,\u201d accusing them of rhetoric \u201cdirectly responsible for the terrorism that we\u2019re seeing in our country today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how the divided nation could heal after Kirk\u2019s assassination, Trump said he \u201ccouldn\u2019t care less<\/a>\u201d. His explanation for that was chilling: \u201cThe radicals on the right are radical because they don\u2019t want to see crime \u2026 The radicals on the left are the problem \u2013 and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.\u201d This is how polarisation hardens into tribalism. This is how the spiral of hatred accelerates toward a point of no return.<\/p>\n

In reality, more than three-quarters of all extremist-related killings in the US over the last 10 years have come from rightwing extremists<\/a>, with the radical left responsible for only a fraction of them. Trump condemned political violence in general the following day \u2013 but did not acknowledge the recent spate of attacks<\/a> against Democrats, including several killings. To him, the problem is always \u201cthem\u201d, never the \u201cwonderful Americans\u201d who make up his base.<\/p>\n

The political and cultural aftershocks of Kirk\u2019s death will no doubt unfold in the coming weeks, but the biggest danger in a polarised climate is that the shooting becomes the Reichstag fire of our age. That arson attack on 27 February 1933 marked Germany\u2019s pivot from fragile democracy to outright dictatorship. Hitler, freshly installed as chancellor, seized the moment to extinguish the freedoms of the Weimar constitution \u2013 expression, press, association, assembly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who stands in our way will be cut down,\u201d he said<\/a>, inspecting the arsoned building. Thousands of communists were jailed, including all 81 Communist deputies in parliament. With the left neutralised, the Nazis swiftly consolidated power.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s US, Kirk\u2019s death has gripped the country, galvanising the Maga movement and Trump\u2019s supporters, and he knows it. The white supremacist Matt Forney clamoured for the arrest of every Democratic politician, openly claiming the killing as the movement\u2019s Reichstag fire moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 was seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The reality is that here is the event that could rescue an increasingly unpopular presidency scarred by a sharp drop in employment figures, a weakening dollar, and a housing crisis. Trump mourned Kirk as though he were family, but the rhetoric suggested this would be as much about pursuing Trump\u2019s enemies as justice. Right after the assassination, Trump promised to go after \u201ceach and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity \u2026 including the organisations that fund and support it.\u201d He singled out George Soros, the American-Hungarian philanthropist and Democrat donor. \u201cHe\u2019s a bad guy<\/a>,\u201d Trump told NBC News, he \u201cshould be put in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

The motive behind Kirk\u2019s killing remains unclear. The political views of the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, appear as muddled as those of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20 year old who attempted to assassinate<\/a> Trump in Pennsylvania. Is this truly the radical left attacking the radical right \u2013 or is it the strange, chaotic subculture of online niches spilling into the real world? The slogans etched on to the bullet casings<\/a> in Utah read less like an ideological manifesto than a crude bricolage of puerile memes and gaming references.<\/p>\n

But it is hard not to fear that the repression of \u201cunwilling\u201d academics, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, military officers, and judges in the US will intensify. Already, reactions on social media have led to a wave of<\/a> <\/a>sackings<\/a> and US state department officials have warned foreign nationals<\/a> not to praise or make light of Kirk\u2019s assassination, instructing consulates to take \u201cappropriate action\u201d against any foreigners who do.<\/p>\n

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Trump has long thrived on chaos and disorder. Where real crises do not exist, he fabricates them \u2013 including imagined crime pandemics in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Chicago. Fake chaos fuels his power grab. Now he has been handed chaos on a silver platter. No wonder he couldn\u2019t care less if the nation comes together.<\/p>\n

The shooting provides the perfect pretext for tightening his grip, silencing dissent, and concentrating power \u2013 so that his successors may inherit full state control, regardless of charisma, merit or mandate. After all, any autocratic system has to be built first; once entrenched, it becomes far easier to maintain.<\/p>\n

Liberal democracy and the rules-based global order are far from perfect, but they have delivered peace, progress and prosperity \u2013 the very opposite of authoritarianism. To suggest that the US, the architect of the postwar order, could soon slide into full-blown autocracy, its leaders thinking like Nazis in 1933, may seem far-fetched.<\/p>\n

But from another vantage point, it is not far-fetched at all. Totalitarianism was still within living memory when many of us, even at the heart of \u200bmodern democratic Europe<\/a>, were growing up. From Belgium to Bulgaria, most families have some history of the death, destruction, hatred and destitution that authoritarianism leaves behind. If Americans want to save their near future, they may want to consult our recent past.<\/p>\n

David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, and Congo: The Epic History of a People<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If 2025 was already shaping up to be the worst year of the century for the post-1945 rules-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-149545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}