IT’S the lying that Squinter can’t stand. Or in a more accurate reflection of what he’s been saying to anyone who’ll listen over the past few days, it’s the f***ing lying Squinter can’t stand.
Those in this little corner of Paradise who have been loudly and publicly mourning the murder of Charlie Kirk (yes, we’re looking at you, DUP) know that he was an angry and vengeful man. Was he angry and vengeful just for the huge amount of money being performatively angry and vengeful made him over the course of his short life? In private was his Christianity the kind that saw Jesus in the faces of the hungry and poor and not in the faces of demagogues and wealthy preachers? Squinter doesn’t know. And neither do those who joined in the Lady Di-style keening and weeping. And anyway, if he was in his family life a model Christian, and only performatively and professionally confrontational and divisive, that wouldn’t get him buzzed through the Pearly Gates either.
Then we come to those who viewed the Tommy Robinson march in London on Saturday as a mass expression of those old legitimate concerns©. According to the Met Police’s tried-and-tested aerial analysis count, there were 110 to 150,000 people there, which is a hell of a turn-out. But according to figures quoted by Jamie Bryson, there were three million people there, which coincidentally is exactly the same figure quoted by Tommy Robinson. And since 110,000 is 3% of three million, somebody’s disastrously, toe-curlingly wrong – and it’s unlikely to be the Met drone.
Just as the Charlie Kirk crowd struggle to come to terms with the fact that his message was not exclusively one of hope and charity, so many here find it difficult to accept that the London march was a ‘far-right’ march (yes, we’re looking at you, Loyal Ulster). We’re variously assured that those in attendance were concerned about a wide range of things including immigration, the standard of living, identity and culture. And they may well have been – most probably are, in fact. But the bottom line is that they were issued an invite to a march by the UK’s most famous far-right figure and they RSVPd yes. And if a far-right figure invites Squinter to a march and he says yes, he’s under absolutely no illusion that he’s going to a far-right march. That’s proof enough in and of itself, but the very public attendance of a dreary and depressing litany of far-right provocateurs and agitators – some cancelled, some not – underlined the nature of the event.
In a rather apt display of synchronicity, many attendees at the far-right march expressed their grief/anger/outrage at the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In truth, and hard as it is for Squinter to say this, it was an impressive display of moral consistency: If we’re willing to turn a blind eye to the nature and background of the guy who brought us here, we’re certainly willing to overlook the wealth of evidence that Charlie was not the Christian martyr that Fox News is selling the world. Evidence like:
• Claiming blacks “go around for fun to target white people”.
• Telling us he’s worried if he’s on a flight and the pilot’s black.
• Asking for an “amazing patriot” to step forward and pay the bail of the man who shattered the skull of Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer.
• Opining that black lawmakers are affirmative action picks who lack “brain processing power” and who take jobs off white women.
• Calling for executions to be televised and then debating what age children should be allowed to watch them.
• Ordering Taylor Swift to “submit to your husband”.
• Championing the Great Replacement Theory, which argues that the deep state is deliberately replacing white people with migrants.
• Describing Trans people as an “abomination to God”.
So go ahead and mourn Charlie’s loss. But he helped create an environment in which people were empowered to say difficult things to each other – isn’t that what we’re told? And the difficult thing that needs to be said about Charlie is that he was killed by a world he had a huge hand in moulding and shaping.
Don’t venture online after midnight USA
A PIECE of advice for you. It’s one that Squinter’s learned fairly late in life, but it’s never really too late, is it? And if Squinter can help a brother or sister as he continues along life’s journey he’s more than willing to do so.
Here it is:
If you’re going to tweet about Magamerica, make sure and do so early in the day. Our time.
Thursday evening chez Squinter and he’s thinking of turning in. It’s been a long day at work and he’s spent a while online – quite a while, if he’s being honest – going over the killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah the previous day and the white-hot reaction.
Here's what you gotta know before we go any further. While a lot of people didn’t know who Charlie Kirk was when the story broke, Squinter wasn’t one of them. He’s an avid follower of US politics and he’s done a fair bit of reading on the fascinating and terrifying world of the far-right. And since Kirk was one of the most notable denizens of that world, Squinter’s well acquainted with his work. And so he tweeted about him.
First of all, Squinter had to be waved through the morality checkpoint that the right, both here and across the pond, like to throw up when things like this happen. So he pointed out that he’s sorry Kirk was killed and then added that he feels sorry for the dead man’s young family. And then he pointed out some truths that Kirk’s admirers were signally failing to acknowledge about the 31-year-old’s history of racism and hate speech.
Before hitting the Post button Squinter noticed that it was after midnight. He’s not a fan of late posting, as a high percentage of those still online in Ireland and Britain are, ah, let’s say… well on. But since he intended this to be his last contribution to the debate before climbing the wooden hill, he posted it anyway.
What he hadn’t reckoned for was that while in Belfast it was time to hit the hay, in New York and DC it was early evening; in LA and Salt Lake City it was mid-afternoon. In other words, the US of A was either just starting another evening of posting, or looking forward to it.
Now Squinter’s not exactly unused to death threats. He’s had his sympathy-card warnings, his bullets in the post and his address and car registration bandied around, and while it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, there was a time when it kind of went with the territory. But waking up to learn that you’ve received ten times more death threats in eight hours than you have in your entire life is not something that even a lifetime of incurring the displeasure of Loyal Ulster can prepare you for. No point in going through them all, so the image along with this piece is a representative selection to give you a flavour of how Squinter’s suggestion that Charlie Kirk might not be Mother Teresa went down on US Twitter.
Here's the thing about Twitter: People normally get a lot more love than hate on the site because a majority of the people who follow them do so because they like them – although hate-following is far from uncommon. Certain laughworthy loyalists on Twitter, for example, have a sizeable nationalist/republican following because their accounts are the online version of a sitcom. But generally speaking a person’s Twitter experience is mostly getting praised and petted and occasionally getting monstered and derided.
It is a tribute to the comprehensive manner in which Elon Musk has surrendered Twitter to the mob that at times of great tension or shock, the fascist crazies take over the place. Particularly after midnight. And with Halloween on the horizon, there must be a ghost story in that.
