Articles by Frank Chung

World

Seven out of 10’: Rogan warns US sliding towards ‘civil war’ after celebration of Charlie Kirk’s assassination

Speaking to comedian Brian Redban on Wednesday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the host said he had been shocked to see the reaction to the September 10 shooting of the Turning Point USA founder while speaking at a Utah university. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged over the shooting. Police allegedly discovered “anti-fascist” messages engraved on bullet casings left by Robinson, who had embraced “leftist ideology”, according to authorities. “Charlie Kirk gets shot and people are celebrating,” Rogan, 58, said. “Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you want people to die that you disagree with? Like, where are we right now on the scale of one to civil war? Are we at seven? Because I thought we were at five. But after the Charlie Kirk thing, I’m like, oh, we might be like seven. This might be step seven on the way to a bona fide civil war. “As soon as you start seeing regular people celebrating somebody getting murdered in front of their wife and kid on television in front of the whole world, as soon as you celebrate that, like, man, you’re in dark territory. “And if the worst thing you could say about that guy is that he said some things I disagree with, and you’re celebrating that he got shot in the neck in front of the world, whoa. And you work at an insurance company? This is nuts. And you thought that it was OK to say that on Instagram? This is nuts. Like what are you guys on? What is happening here?” Redban, 51, joked, “Oestrogen pills.” After the 31-year-old Trump-aligned political activist’s death, many liberals took to social media to justify or outright celebrate the shooting. Conservatives in turn sought to identify and contact employers of those who had shared offensive posts about Kirk in an attempt to get people fired. Last month the US State Department announced it had cancelled the visas of at least six foreigners who had made similar comments. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws”, the State Department said at the time. “Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau urged social media users to continue alerting him to relevant posts, saying he was “disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalising, or making light of the event” and had “directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action”. The killing of Kirk, while the most high-profile political assassination in decades, was just the latest incident in a disturbing rise in politically motivated violence in the US. Mr Trump, 79, faced two assassination attempts on the campaign trail last year, narrowly surviving being shot in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 in an attack that claimed the life of retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50. Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by US Secret Service snipers at the scene. To this day little has been revealed publicly about his potential motivation or political ideology. In June this year, a would-be assassin targeted two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota in their homes, killing one of them — Melissa Hortman, 55, along with her husband Mark Hortman, 58. Vance Boelter, 57, faces charges of murder, stalking and firearms offences over what the Department of Justice described as “heinous political assassinations”. In April, the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was firebombed in another act of political violence. Cody Balmer, 38, was sentenced last month to between 25 and 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including terrorism, arson, burglary and aggravated assault. Balmer targeted the Democrat, who is Jewish, over his views on the war in Gaza, the suspect said in a call to a 911 operator after the fire, according to search warrants. Governor Shapiro, 52, said after the plea deal that it was important the US not grow “numb” to acts of political violence or accept them as “the normal course of doing business”. In December, UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, 50, was shot in the back and killed while leaving a hotel in Manhattan. Luigi Mangione, 27, currently facing state and federal charges of murder, has also attracted a controversial army of mostly left-wing supporters. Speaking on Wednesday’s podcast, Rogan argued there had been a “rejection” of much of the “woke” ideology that was “rotting people’s brains”. “But the scary part is what we usually do is we do something like that and then we overcorrect,” he said. “And then we go like white nationalists and ‘we’re all Christians, get rid of the Muslims’. Like, it gets scary when there’s hardcore ideological conflict because people push back. That’s what people are doing on the left and the right.” Only around four in 10 US adults are concerned about political violence directed at conservatives or liberals, according to an Associated Press survey last month. The AP poll found younger adults were less concerned about political violence, and that there was a substantial partisan divide, with Republicans and Democrats expressing high concern about violence against their own side but not the other.