Video of STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis dedicating a performance of his solo single “Am I The Only One” to Charlie Kirk during his October 16 concert at The Factory in Chesterfield, Missouri can be seen below.<\/p>\n
Prior to launching into the track, Aaron told the audience: “\u200aThey took someone very special away from us. He was a father, he was a husband, he was a patriot. He truly believed in the word of God. They thought they silenced a voice. They awakened a fucking army. I dedicate this song tonight in memory of Mr. Charlie Kirk.”<\/p>\n
A right-wing American activist and influencer, Charlie was shot and killed in early September at a Utah college event in what has been called a political assassination.<\/p>\n
While U.S. president Donald Trump hailed Kirk as a “great American hero” and “martyr” during a speech at a memorial service in Arizona, Charlie was often criticized for his fiery, combative style. He was a strong supporter of gun rights, vehemently opposed abortion, was critical of transgender rights and famously said empathy was “a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage”.<\/p>\n
Kirk’s suspected killer is Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old who grew up in a Utah suburb and briefly attended Utah State University before dropping out and enrolling in an electrical apprenticeship program. Robinson is registered as unaffiliated with a political party and is listed as “inactive”, meaning he did not vote in either of the last two general elections. No evidence has emerged connecting Robinson with any outside group.<\/p>\n
Lewis, who is widely considered to be one of the most politically conservative musicians in rock, made headlines in September 2021 when he urged his fans to chant “Fuck Joe Biden” during a STAIND concert in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Aaron told the Anchorage Press in a January 2020 interview that he considered the first Donald Trump impeachment by the House Of Representatives as the clearest representation of what’s wrong with America these days.<\/p>\n
Lewis was a staunch critic of President Barack Obama, telling a crowd at one of his solo concerts in 2016: “Barack Obama should have been impeached a long fucking time ago. Every fucking decision he makes is against the Constitution, it’s against what’s good for our fucking country, and he is truly the worst fucking president that we have ever had in the history of this fucking country.”<\/p>\n
That same year, Lewis told Billboard that he would support Trump in the U.S. presidential race, even though he was “disappointed” by the real estate mogul “with the bickering and the name-calling.” Lewis added that he voted for Senator Ted Cruz, Trump’s closest competitor in the Republican nomination race, in the Massachusetts primary.<\/p>\n
In June 2021, Lewis made headlines when he accused the U.S. Democratic Party of fighting against every major civil rights initiative and of having a long history of discrimination.<\/p>\n
In March 2022, Lewis told the Los Angeles Times that he doesn’t blindly listen to information that is delivered by the mainstream media.<\/p>\n
“I’m not uneducated; I’m actually really smart, and I look for myself. I seek other options of information,” he said. “I refuse to believe that a huge, gigantic corporation has our best interest in mind.”<\/p>\n
Asked where he gets his news, Lewis said: “I have news feeds and people that I follow on Telegram. Dan Ball. Andrew Wilkow. Mark Levin. If I’m gonna watch any sort of news source on television, it’s Tucker Carlson.”<\/p>\n