Fucking Elly Schlein

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Morning of September 13.

They caught the killer of Charlie Kirk, the young ultraconservative, ultra-Trumpian activist assassinated by a sniper’s bullet while hosting a public debate at the University of Utah. His name is Tyler Robinson, he’s 22, and he used bullets on which he had carved phrases like: “Hey fascist! Catch!”, “If you’re reading this, you’re gay”, and above all, “Bella ciao”.

“We’re fucked,” I think, “he wrote Bella ciao on the murder bullet.”

I don’t even bother with the American right-wing media: I already know what I’ll find there. To get a sense of the atmosphere, Steve Bannon’s words are more than enough — “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country” — or, if you prefer, the “measured” remarks of President Trump: “There are some radical left lunatics out there and we just need to kick their asses.”

I steer clear of socials — especially X — which, as everyone knows, are open sewers where a horde of deranged idiots, stripped of both inhibitions and brain cells, vomit illiterate, toxic sludge. I turn instead to newspapers, which are supposed to be more sober and reflective: sure, they stick to the headlines, but at least in theory they should also dig deeper, offer their readers a thread of reasoning.

Il Giornale, blunt: “The partisan assassin.”

Il Tempo, a bit more elaborate: “They got Charlie’s killer. That bullet with Bella ciao was aimed at the Right — and the lefties are celebrating.”

“Fuck,” I tell myself, “the lefties are throwing a party over a murder.”

Libero: “The killer’s signature: Bella ciao. And the Left pretends this has nothing to do with their propaganda.”

I’m doubtful: “The Left says… but which Left? Kamala Harris? Bernie Sanders? Or maybe Elly Schlein and Toni Servillo are the masterminds?”La Verità, going for the grand finale: “Gunned down to the tune of Bella ciao.”

I think back to the latest OECD report on skills and education, which says Italy ranks dead last out of 38 countries for percentage of college graduates (fewer than Costa Rica, just so we’re clear) and that 1 in 6 Italians (that’s 37% of the population!) is a functional illiterate, able to grasp only short texts written with the vocabulary of a five-year-old. “Dirty communist, killer of young Americans,” for instance, is a neat little sentence perfectly within reach of any functional illiterate.

I picture the reader of those papers, skimming the headlines before flipping to crime stories and soccer transfers, and I do the math: at least one in six, tonight, when wrapping still-unripe melons in the newspaper, will be utterly convinced that: Charlie Kirk’s killer is a leftist, probably a buddy or relative of some old partisan; the Italian Left is cheering because a guy got gunned down in Utah just for being right-wing; and, on top of that, the masterminds of the crime must be found among the Leoncavallo activists, with a little help from Italia Viva — a party which, according to the Minister for Parliamentary Relations, is on par with the Red Brigades (let’s just hope nobody in the Red Brigades takes offense and sues the minister).

To be honest, up until 48 hours ago, I had no idea who this Charlie Kirk even was — the victim, I mean.

Like: “Carneades, who the hell was he?” 

I read that they took him out and, instinctively, I empathize, I feel sad, I sympatize.“Bastards, killers of young sprouts, champions of free thought,” I think. “It doesn’t matter what ideas he had, it doesn’t matter what he said or how he said it. No, it doesn’t matter. Nobody deserves to drop dead in a Utah campus!”

Bold mental associations pop into my head with Martin Luther King (it even sounds good: Martin Luther Kirk): two martyrs of democracy, one Black and one white. What an image!

Then I decide I want to know more and I ask Google: “Who the fuck was this Charlie Kirk?”

Charlie Kirk, born in 1993, a lanky fundamentalist Christian, no degree, married to Erika, an influencer and former Miss Arizona, two kids aged three and one. At just eighteen he founded Turning Point USA to push conservative thought in schools and universities; in 2019 he set up the Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty (the name says it all); since 2020 he’d been hosting The Charlie Kirk Show on the radio; and he specialized in campus debates, where he went to dismantle the so-called Marxist, atheist, woke ideologies supposedly ruling there.

“Goodness gracious,” I tell myself, “a rather spirited fellow this Kirk!” 

That impression only grows stronger when I read about his decisive role in Trump’s re-election and find out he even had a hand in picking the key figures of the presidential cabinet.

“A true son of the American Dream,” I mutter, somewhere between admiration and envy.

I leave Wikipedia behind and move on to The Guardian, which serves me a fine bouquet of Kirk-thought, complete with quotes.

I’m disappointed to discover that the Kirk–King duo never even got off the ground: Charlie Kirk couldn’t stand Martin Luther King. He never went so far as to say they were right to kill him — no, not that. But it almost sounds as if Charlie thought Martin had kind of brought it on himself. After all, the Reverend King was, in Charlie’s words, “a man most people hated when he was alive.”

A little shiver runs down my spine, and I dig deeper.

I realize there’s nothing personal between Charlie Kirk and Martin Luther King. No: Charlie just can’t stand Black people, starting with George Floyd, whom he matter-of-factly described as “a piece of shit.”

Charlie never graduated, but he “knows things”: he called the Civil Rights Act — the 1964 federal law that ended racial segregation — “a huge mistake,” and he doesn’t trust it if the pilot flying his plane happens to be Black. The whole flight, he keeps thinking: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.” Word of The Guardian.

Truth be told, by this point, my level of human solidarity had dropped quite a bit, but I pull myself together: I summon the Voltairian side of me, set the racial question aside, and dive into Charlie Kirk’s religious world.

“There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction.”

And indeed, Church and State walk hand in hand in many parts of the world, and, in Trump’s America, they’re practically on honeymoon. We all remember the images from his first cabinet meeting: the newly elected president surrounded by preachers and pastors laying their hands on him, calling down divine blessings. Medieval stuff in a digital age.

The point is that these so-called “servants of God” are the champions of the so-called prosperity gospel, which in plain terms means: God is happy if you’re rich, healthy, and successful. Chase your American Dream at any cost, because that’s His will. Social inequalities? Necessary, divinely ordained. And if you’re poor? Well, that’s your fault — you’re a worthless nobody, and God even holds a personal grudge against you. So, step aside and don’t get in the way of the producers of wealth and holiness.

So much for Jesus Christ, Don Milani, Pope Francis, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Anyway, back to Charlie Kirk: religion is fine, sure — but only as long as it’s his. Other faiths can’t be outright banned (unfortunately) — damn that pesky First Amendment! — but still, this is America, land of free speech. So, out come the insults against Islam, which for him is nothing more than “the sword the Left is using to slit the throat of America.” And right then, in my mind, pops up the image of the oh-so-Catholic, wobbly Joe Biden brandishing an Islamic scimitar to strike down the Fatherland.

I decide to skip over the Great Replacement theory because, yes, I’ve got a strong stomach, but it’s not made of iron. Just to be clear: we’re talking about the far-right conspiracy — very trendy in our parts too — claiming that global elites are pushing mass immigration to “replace” white Christian populations with other ethnic groups, erasing their identity and political power. Basically, a world run by some kind of Spectre hell-bent on sending Ahmed the kebab guy right to our doorstep.

I move on to civil rights, thinking: “Oh, this should be a laugh.” And sure enough.

“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge,” — addressed to pop star Taylor Swift.And then, when asked what he’d do if his ten-year-old daughter were raped and got pregnant: “The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered. Abortion is worse than the Holocaust.”

At this point, I can’t help but feel a flicker of solidarity and human sympathy for Charlie’s wife and daughter — with an immediate sigh of relief: the little one is only three, so it’s unlikely some monster will rape her and get her pregnant. I barely have time to catch my breath before another slash comes down on LGBT rights: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately!”

I’m knocked out. By now, I loathe Charlie Kirk with every fiber of my being. I picture him on his provocative college tours, hell-bent on demolishing any dissent with his dazzling rhetoric and those smug “prove me wrong” stunts. I think he’s a white supremacist, just short of a Nazi: a repugnant, dangerous figure, a peddler of lies, a sower of hate. And I’m no longer so sure that, as Voltaire supposedly said, I’d give my life for him to be able to speak his mind. I even think things — ugly things, so ugly that I blush with shame as they cross my mind.

Then I take a breath. Luckily, the sickly germ of woke do-goodery, political correctness, and radical chic has taken firm root in me. I wavered, yes, and for a moment my Mr. Hyde poked his head out — but now I’m myself again: an aging, tolerant lady of the left, all liberté, égalité, fraternité… and champagne.

And I repeat it to myself like a mantra: “Charlie Kirk is an innocent victim. No one has the right to snuff out a life and silence a voice.”

But then comes the final blow, the one you can’t recover from: Charlie’s take on guns. “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

And then I explode: “You brought this on yourself, Charlie! For fuck’s sake! You’re the living—no, the dead—proof of your own preaching. A collateral victim, a secondary casualty, just another name in the stats, a grain of sand that must not, cannot, jam the holy mechanism of the Second Amendment. Amen!”

So in the end, they were right: it was the Left that killed Charlie Kirk. Drowned in hatred and propaganda, we armed the hand of a 22-year-old nutjob in Utah. Tyler was holed up all alone in his bedroom, playing PlayStation and hating Charlie Kirk; he didn’t have the faintest clue what being antifascist really meant or why people belt out Bella ciao—but he’d seen it, picked it up, and learned it from video games.

And so, one day, he grabbed a rifle from the family arsenal. Or, more prosaically, he just walked into a store and said:“Good afternoon, Sir, I’d like a bolt-action Mauser rifle, caliber .30-06. With a telescopic sight, please — make sure it’s a good one. And I’ll also need a few boxes of cartridges. I’ll pay by card. Very kind of you, thank you, and until next time”

Then he set up, pulled the trigger. Bang: goodbye, Charlie Kirk.

And the blame, of course, lies with the Left.

Fucking Elly Schlein.