The Dangerous In-Between: Assassination, Fascism and the Fragile State of Democracy

I heard the news about Charlie Kirk's assassination as I was deeply engrossed in Timothy Snyder's book The Road to Unfreedom. At the time, I was pondering Snyder's statement that "blood is the ink of political fiction."

Snyder, an expert in the history of fascism, was warning us of what happens when political leaders prefer to peddle fictions rather than facts or where incendiary X posts become more important than parliamentary debate.

And then the news hit that Charlie Kirk, a key peddler of incendiary slogans, was murdered.

Online media immediately exploded. There was a time, perhaps when the murder of a man over his political views would have caused people in a democracy to pause and reflect on the need to dial things back.

Not anymore. In the United States, the right have jumped on the Kirk shooting to amp up their war on the progressive middle and left.

Steve Bannon called for mass arrests and taking “blow torches” to universities. Elon Musk stated, “The Left is the party of murder. If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die.” Right-wing nutter Laura Loomer, who seems to have an inordinate influence on Trump, is calling for all-out war:

"It's time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization. We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The left is a national security threat."

And from the White House, Stephen Miller stated that:

"The fate of our children, our society, our civilization hinges on…. [shutting down this] wicked ideology."

The exploitation of the Kirk murder fits a disturbing pattern: extremists need martyrs. It is how they keep the coalition of ragers, grifters and conspiracy haters in the same tent. And the people who would point out that Kirk himself drove the politics of hate? They’re being targeted, doxxed, and in some cases fired.

To be sure, the United States has a long and troubled history of political assassinations — Lincoln, McKinley, JFK, MLK, RFK, Wallace, and Alan Berg. But what we are witnessing now seems more like a tit-for-tat gang war of violence.

Canadians may comfort themselves that we have had very few political murders — Thomas D'Arcy McGee in 1868 and the horrifying kidnapping and murder of Pierre Laporte in 1970. Laporte's murder shocked the nation and resulted in the disintegration of the militant FLQ (Front de Libération du Quebec) and a renewed focus on democratic engagement for the Quebec separatist movement.

But this doesn't mean that Canada is immune.

Over the last four years, we have seen a staggering rise in the level of death threats against public officials. I have lost count of how many have been directed at me. Kirk's murder should be a sign to Canadians not to follow America down the dark hole of MAGA.

And yet Pierre Poilievre couldn't resist exploiting the moment to portray Kirk as a martyr for freedom. His sidekick, Andrew Scheer, went further and used the killing to go after independent journalist Rachel Gilmore.

Gilmore has faced countless death threats for her work shining a light on the far right. Now she fears Scheer has put a target on her back. She's not the only one. In the wake of the Kirk shooting, it’s as if his death has given a license for the haters to target and intimidate.

But at least in Canada, we still have some social and political guardrails in place. But for how long?

---

Since the Trump election, I have been haunted by Antonio Gramsci's statement, "The old world is dying and a new world is struggling to be born. This is the time of monsters.”

Gramsci titled this piece the Interregnum — a term from the Roman Empire that describes the period between two rulers. In that in-between, all things became possible — the possibility for change and the possibility for vicious violence.

The interregnum was a frightening time because the Roman Empire had no credible plan for the transition of power. When one Caesar died, the successor was the one who emerged from the violence and intimidation of various competing factions.

Democracy has endured as a system because it is based on a framework that ensures non-violent succession from one elected ruler to the next. Vladimir Putin blew this up in Russia. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since Russian democracy was a helpless babe born among wolves.

Donald Trump has followed Putin like a north star.

And like Putin, Trump is turning the U.S. into a strongman state. He has done this by waging open war on the legitimacy of non-violent, democratic succession. He lied about his election loss. He promoted a violent insurrection.

Since winning government a second time, him has pressured states to go along with rigging the vote. Those who love shouting dangerous fictions are cheering Trump on.

This has plunged the United States into a dangerous interregnum. And anyone who thinks the Democrats are going to come in at the midterms and clean up the mess needs to give their head a shake.

I recently participated in a talk in Timmins with author and war correspondent Gywnne Dywer. He said that it was doubtful that the United States would actually see another free and open election. Gwynne pointed out that given the direction of Trump, American democracy could soon be reduced to a fake stage play like Putin's Russia, where the game is permanently rigged.

Added to this legitimation crisis is the wholesale war on the independence of the courts. If people no longer have faith that justice will do its job, what’s to stop them from thinking that a gun could solve their problems?

And when people choose guns over debate, we fall from the interregnum into fascism.

So the question remains: will Kirk’s death be just another brutal statistic in a time of spiralling political violence in the United States or will we use this interregnum to push for a restoration of the rule of law?

History teaches that it is better to stand up to fascists when they are in “the in-between”. It is too dangerous to wait until they have become entrenched.

---