Note: this is the second part of a two part series on the murder of Charlie Kirk and the fallout of that event. The first part, which, among other things explained the actually violent nature of his politics, is entitled The murder of Charlie Kirk: myths and reality.

The Trump Vance Miller triumvirate: A growing threat of repression unprecedented in the United States

The Trump/Vance/Stephen Miller triumvirate is using the murder of Charlie Kirk to accelerate and intensify their repressive plans. Here is Trump when asked about the contradiction regarding Trump supporters having said “hate speech is free speech”: Pam Bondi would “probably go after people like you! Because you treat me so unfairly! It’s hate!…. Maybe they’ll come after ABC…. We want everything to be fair. It hasn’t been fair. And the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we are fixing it.” Now, after pressuring CBS to take the late show off of the air, the Trump administration has succeeded in getting Jimmy Kimmel removed. Who is next? Of course, when black comedian Amber Ruffin was cut from the White House Correspondents’ dinner because she’d angered Trump, that went with hardly a notice. As usual, attacks on black people tend to go unnoticed.

Here is Stephen Miller, who is probably the brains behind the outfit, first in canonizing Saint Charlie Kirk: “the last message that Charlie sent me was… We need to have an organized strategy to go after the left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country….” Miller went on about the left: “the organized, doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization,, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messages is designed to trigger, and site violence….” he also claimed that the left: “is a vast domestic terrorist movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of justice, Homeland, security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again…. It will happen and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
We can see it now: new repressive legislation passed under the name of “The Charlie Kirk act”!

Republicans Projecting
In psychology, the phenomenon of projection refers to projecting onto other people thoughts and feelings that you have yourself. You could not get better examples of political projection than these comments of Trump and Miller. But they are more than that. They signal a clear intent to qualitatively step up government repression against not only the socialist left, but even against the Democratic party. This must be seen in light of the Trump administration’s clear intent to overturn the 2026 elections, should they feel that is necessary.

Democratic Party leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries

Democrats’ response
The response of the Democratic Party has been to try to placate Trump. Chuck Schumer, commenting on the murder of Charlie Kirk, said, “The bottom line is this is a day when all Americans should come together…. Coming together is what we ought to be doing.” Schumer’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries took the same position: “this moment requires leadership that brings people together, not trying to further divide us,” he said. “Violence in any form against anyone is unacceptable. And moving forward we have to figure out a way to come together, not as Democrats or Republicans….. not as blacks or whites or Latinos, but as Americans.” Totally lost on both of them is the fact that Charlie Kirk and Trump have done everything they can to crush anybody who opposes their politics. How is it possible to “come together” with the Republicans and their MAGA horde which threatens and uses repression and violence?

Most of the progressive the Democrats was not much better. Senator Bernie Sanders did not differ very much from Schumer and Jeffries. He said “this chilling rise of violence has targeted public figures across the political…” that is hardly the case. The overwhelming majority of the violence and threats of violence has come from Maga. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered a mumbo-jumbo incomprehensible comment.

Jasmine Crockett speaking on CNN

Jasmine Crockett
Of all the prominent public figures the one who is most clear was the ever sharp Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. On. CNN. She was asked whether the critics are right or wrong when they say use of terms like fascist or Nazi is too inflammatory. She responded “They are absolutely wrong. It is a real reality. They don’t want Americans to know any form of history….” She continued in that vein for several minutes, including outlining Trump’s steps towards authoritarianism and the violence and threats of violence for which the Republicans are responsible. See her full comments here.

With the exception of Jasmine Crockett, however, serious comments from prominent figures and sources are few and far between.

Web site of AFL-CIO. Like the rest of the labor movement, they are thunderously silent on the growing political danger.

Unions’ thunderous silence & resulting vacuum
One source that is almost never considered, because it is so thunderous in it’s silence, is the unions and their leadership. Just as was the case when Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC, and threatens to send the guard elsewhere, the unions are silent on this dangerous situation that is unfolding. You can look at the website of any union, from union locals to internationals, and from local labor federations up to the AFL-CIO, and you will not find a single article or comment on who Charlie Kirk was, on what his assassination means, or on the repression that is now unfolding. The result is that at every turn of events, large or small, there is no significant force that puts things from the point of view of the U.S. working class. At times of extreme tensions, tens of millions of people look for extreme explanations. also, we must keep in mind, whole history of the United States, of the tendency to look for simplistic, explanations and conspiracies. 

Update: It gets even worse. Since publishing this article we have been informed that the Ohio Conference of Teamsters, the Ohio State Conference of Plumbers and Pipefitters, the Central Midwest Conference of Carpenters, the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council, and the Northwest Building Trades Council have endorsed the demagogic and lying Vivek Ramaswamy for Ohio governor.

DSA: They are tied at the hip to the “progressive” union bureaucracy.

DSA and “revolutionary” left
Given the vacuum that exist, one would think that working class reception to a serious socialist voice would have some real potential. The only socialist group of any significance is democratic socialist of America. (DSA). Their national co-chairs, Megan Romer and Aashik Saddique, issued a self-serving statement a week or so after Charlie Kirk was murdered and Trump and company started on there repressive rampage. While giving recognition to Trump’s repressive measures, it nowhere near gave sufficient recognition to the serious threat that this represents. Nor did it, of course, even giving a mention of the criminal failure of the union leadership. In fact, it tended to do just the opposite. And, of course, it did nothing to counter the canonization of Charlie Kirk and explain the violence that he represented and will live on in his absence. The theme of their article was self-congratulation for DSA and how it is moving forward.

As far as the supposedly revolutionary groups, if they hadn’t already done so years earlier, they condemned themselves at best to irrelevance a year ago, when almost all of them in effect supported the election of Trump. They did that by directing all of their fire against the Democrats while hardly giving a single word of warning about what Trump and MAGA would do if Trump were elected, or even if he were not elected. This, of course, came after years of apologizing for the number one centralizer and leader of world reaction, even including outright fascism: Vladimir Putin. Because they live in perpetual terror of appearing to support the Democrats, as of this writing most of these so-called revolutionary socialist groups have been silent on the murder of Charlie Kirk.

The right wing Candace Owens, who proposed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding the murder of Charlie Kirk. Note that while she said Kirk was her “best friend”, Kirk himself constantly disparaged the intelligence of black people.

Right wing anti-semitic conspiracy theories
As a result, an antisemitic “explanation” of the Charlie Kirk murder, is gaining purchase. This is exactly what our article Anti-Semitism is a growing danger, but not in the way you think in effect predicted. What the reactionary anti-semites such as Candace Owens are claiming is that Charlie Kirk was murdered by some Israeli organized conspiracy. She has nearly 5 million subscribers. These extreme right wing antisemites are joined by the pro-Putin forces who hide behind left-wing rhetoric. An example of this is Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone. Now these forces are finding their way into the left liberal voices. We see Kyle Kulinski, who has nearly two million subscribers, repeating the antisemitic conspiracy claims spouted by the likes of Candace Owens and Grayzone.

Charlemagne Tha God
Special mention should be made here of Charlemagne Tha God who often times has very thoughtful things to say. In this case, however, he repeated the mainstream Democratic Party line when he said “both sides need to tone down the rhetoric”. It is not a matter of “toning down the rhetoric”. It is a matter of explaining clearly and openly first what Charlie Kirk really stood for, which was political violence, and also explaining clearly and openly the serious danger of Trump’s authoritarian moves.

Perspectives
How might things develop from here? Recently, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled What Corporate CEOs really think of Trump . In it, they reported on a private meeting of some of the top corporate CEOs in which they expressed their dissatisfaction with Trump. But they all allowed themselves to be bullied into silence or even worse in public. Neither they nor the rest of the capitalist institutions, such as major universities, major corporate law firms, and the mainstream TV channels stand up to Trump. Meanwhile, we see the likelihood of stagflation developing. I remember those days back in the late 70s and early 1980s when unemployment was high but prices continued to rise. This was what led to Ronald Reagan’s election. Stagflation will increase the dissatisfaction amongst tens of millions of people in the United States. Also it seems the Epstein scandal will not go away. And then, in an election that has potentially national significance, it still seems that Mamdani will be elected mayor of New York City. All of this means that the Trump triumvirate may overreach itself, for example by sending the National Guard and ICE into New York City where they are likely, for example, to start to rounding up Haitian immigrants. This would spill over onto native born black Americans in general and would start to create a furor in black communities across the nation.

Meanwhile, a federal government shut down, seems to be in the offing.

How to prepare
One way or another, the role of the unions is central, or to put it more accurately in the current time the absence of a role of the unions. That is why it is important to explain today the central role that unions can play. That includes bringing any movement in the streets into the workplace. Explaining that, and finding the ones in twos of union members and working class youth who are prepared to start to raise a discussion about this amongst union members can be an important first step. In the absence of a concerted campaign aimed at the unions and the working class in general, there remains the danger of senseless acts of property destruction or even assaults on individuals. Such actions could be carried out either by the ultra left or by actual provocateurs and they would only heighten the repression of Trump and company.

Coming soon:
No illusions: neither Zionism nor state can be reformed! By Yorgos Mitralias. This article will explain the historically reactionary nature of Zionism itself. Make sure not to miss it and future articles on US politics and world events. Subscribe to oaklandsocialist.com. It is free, and your contact information does not get passed on to anybody else.

The Trump Vance Miller triumvirate: A growing threat of repression unprecedented in the United States