TJRS Extras: The right is always angry, but never at the people doing the violence (because it's their own...)

It be your own angry people

The right is angry. They’re always angry. They’ve been angry since anyone can remember. They were angry when the Union won the Civil War and they had to give up their slaves. They were angry when Reconstruction gave their former slaves the right to vote. They were angry when Black soldiers came home from World War I and World War II and insisted on being treated with dignity, having fought for their country. They were angry about jazz music becoming more popular, and then about rock and roll. They were angry when Black children tried to integrate schools. The whole history of the American right, whether they called themselves Democrats, Dixiecrats, or Republicans, is a history of rage.

And even having “taken back their country” by putting Donald Trump back in the White House and unleashing Project 2025 on all of us — deleting affirmative action, DEI, Black history, Black scholarships, Black-held jobs in the federal government; having driven women out of military leadership and ended everything from farm subsidies to foreign aid… while getting away with an actual insurrection, scott free… they’re somehow still angry.

And their young people are angry too. So angry, apparently one of their own killed the right’s “MLK” … sorry that’s their take not mine … right wing “debater” on things like Black inherent inferiority and other maga beliefs … Charlie Kirk, who was cut down by a white gunman in very, very white, pro gun, uber religious Utah on the anniversary of 9/11.

His killer, rather than being a left wing ANTIFA or a Democrat, a “tranny” or a “ tranny sympathiser” as ridiculous troll Nancy Mace and this Republican congressman

ridiculously tried to claim, was instead, this 22-year-old white Utah man from a good, clean, Trump-lovin’ conservative family:

As to his ideology, besides writing video game copy on his bullets, it seems that he is of the right, and maybe even a Groyper.

So what did Charlie Kirk believe that could have caused a 22-year-old to hate him that much? Here are some of his most famous quotes, courtesy of Zeteo News:

Civil rights

• “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.” (source)

The death penalty

• "[The death penalty] should be public, should be quick, should be televised… I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation… At what age should you start to see public executions?" (source)

Democrats

• “The Democrat Party supports everything that God hates.” (source)

Empathy

• "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage." (source)

Feminism

• “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge." (source)

Gay people

• “You might want to crack open that Bible of yours. In a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture, is in Leviticus 18 is that, ‘thou shalt lay with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just sayin’! So Miss Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19… the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” (source)

George Floyd

• “This guy was a scumbag.” (source)

Great Replacement Theory

• “It's not a Great Replacement Theory, it's a Great Replacement Reality. Just this year, 3.6 million foreigners will invade America. 10-15 million will enter by the end of Joe Biden's term. Each will probably have 3-5 kids on average while native born Americans have 1.5 per couple. You are being replaced, by design.” (source)

Guns

• “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” (source)

Jews

• “Jewish donors have been the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews and now it’s coming for Jews, and they're like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ And it's not just the colleges. It's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it.” (source)

Martin Luther King Jr.

• “MLK was awful. He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe.” (source)

Muslims

• “They aren’t even hiding their intentions. Muslims plan to conquer Europe by demographic replacement. Will Europe wake up in time?” (source)

Palestine

• “I don’t think the place exists.” (source)

Transgender people

• “You’re an abomination to God.” (source.)

A super-cut:

So who helped Charlie Kirk build his massive media organization, Turning Point USA? A 72-year-old man named Bill Montgomery, who met the then 18-year-old and became his mentor, convincing him to drop out of junior college and start the pro-free market conservative, right wing organization instead.

Montgomery was so committed to the bit, he died from COVID complications in 2020 after watching TP USA coffers balloon during the pandemic due mainly to ten anonymous donors:

Turning Point USA, the conservative organization that parlayed culture war activism on college campuses into major influence in U.S. politics, enjoyed a financial windfall during the pandemic, according to newly filed tax records.

The nonprofit organization reported $55 million in revenue in its 2020 fiscal year (June 2020 through June 2021), a 40% increase over the previous year. Contributions to its political arm, Turning Point Action, increased from $2 million to $11 million over the same period.

Turning Point USA, which received just $8 million in contributions in 2016, has raised $138 million over the last five years, according to the organization’s Form 990, a tax document filed by nonprofit groups. And while the organization’s reach continues to grow, its funding base remains relatively small. Roughly half of its 2020 income came from 10 anonymous donors.

The money has made TPUSA, as it is commonly known, into one of the most active political organizations in the U.S.

In other words, it’s not just natural growth due to the popularity of their and Kirk’s ideas. It’s a whole lot of money from anonymous rich people fueling the growth. A it more:

“They started out here as a grassroots recruitment tool to recruit precinct committeemen into being involved in the Republican Party,” said Chuck Coughlin, founder and president of HighGround Inc. and an Arizona Republican consultant. “That has evolved to a full takeover of the Republican Party.”

Turning Point USA surged while other well-established conservative nonprofit organizations struggled in 2020, including The Heritage Foundation, which recorded a 44% decrease in contributions and grants in 2020. Others, including the American Enterprise Institute, reported stagnant or declining revenue. Part of Turning Point USA’s success is due to its touring and fundraisers during the pandemic.

“Turning Point USA chose to invest and push forward while much of the rest of the country locked down and businesses shuttered,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, said in the emailed statement. “The organization was rewarded for seeing the moment for what it was, an opportunity to double down on its mission, advocating for opening America back up, and for medical and bodily autonomy, especially for students.” (To argue their positions against vaccine and mask mandates, Turning Point USA has co-opted language like “bodily autonomy” long used by feminist and reproductive rights movements.)

And this:

In the early years, Turning Point USA’s activities were focused on colleges: speaking at campus events, provoking progressives on campus and online, running a “Professor Watchlist” that claimed to expose leftist educators, and helping conservatives win student leadership positions.

It now claims in promotional materials to have a presence on more than 3,000 college and high school campuses.

“One of the reasons that TPUSA is getting so much money is because conservative donors can see that it’s working,” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor who studies right-wing movements and media at the University of Alabama, citing the conservative news and conversations surrounding topics like critical race theory and LGBTQ school debates. “Donors rightly see that as intervening in the discourse in a way that boosts them.”

Noting Turning Point USA’s tactics, including messaging that denies the existence of transgender people, and campaigns that attack diversity initiatives and invite students to record and expose professors’ liberal ideologies, Bauer said the group has been particularly successful at moving conservatives further to the right.

“Turning Point USA is about provocations that shift the discourse, specifically on issues that have long been seen as losing positions for the conservative movement,” Bauer said.

“They’re reintroducing homophobia and trying to reintroduce sexism and anti-feminism into popular discourse,” Bauer said.

Kolvet, the Turning Point USA spokesperson, disputed this characterization and said in the emailed statement that Turning Point USA “stands up for everyday, grassroots Americans that don’t recognize the country they’re living in anymore.”

It’s likely that not a lot of young men would have listened to Bill Montgomery had he delivered those messages. But in Kirk’s voice and visage, it took off.

Kirk was not the only pet project of right wing billionaires. Here’s the story of Ben Shapiro’s rise to very similar fame, three years later…

The Right Wing Billionaires’ Youth gambit

The Daily Wire was founded in 2015 by the then-31-year-old Breitbart editor, syndicated radio host, Harvard trained lawyer and right wing columnist Ben Shapiro … whose parents are a Hollywood executive and a composer, and Jeremy Boreing, a veteran of the late Andrew Breitbart’s right wing Hollywood thirst website Big Hollywood … with initial funding from billionaire Farris Wilks.

Here’s what to know about Wilks and his fellow billionaire brother:

Two billionaire Texas brothers whose fortunes derive from oil and gas fracking have pumped millions of dollars into rightwing media outfits that have promoted climate-crisis denialism and sent more big checks to back an array of evangelical projects and conservative Texas politicians.

The fracking billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks have each doled out millions of dollars through separate foundations over the last decade to a number of high-profile conservative and religious groups including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.

“Thanks to their incredible wealth and largesse, the country as well as the [Republican] party are now feeling the effects of their aggressive brand of religiously-charged political activism,” said Darren Dochuk, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of Anointed with Oil.

Farris Wilks and his wife control the Thirteen Foundation, while Dan Wilks and his wife lead the Heavenly Fathers Foundation, both of which have been funded with proceeds from the 2011 sale of their majority stake in Frac Tech Services for $3.2bn.

Since they created their foundations, six- and seven-figure checks from the Wilks brothers have bolstered numerous pro-fossil fuel and evangelical projects.

The Wilks brothers, for instance, have poured millions of dollars into PragerU and the Daily Wire, two rightwing media outlets that have promoted wide-ranging conservative agendas, including climate crisis denialism to school-age kids and adults via short videos, articles and other materials.

The two brothers have given at least $8m to PragerU, which is unaccredited, according to Texas financial records. In July, Florida approved the use of what PragerU has called its “edutainment” videos and other materials for use in its classrooms, and PragerU has said it is trying to get other states, including Texas, to do likewise.

The two brothers have given at least $8m to PragerU, which is unaccredited, according to Texas financial records. In July, Florida approved the use of what PragerU has called its “edutainment” videos and other materials for use in its classrooms, and PragerU has said it is trying to get other states, including Texas, to do likewise.

In 2015, Farris Wilks gave $4.7m to help launch the Daily Wire and remains an owner of the media company, whose founding editor and co-owner Ben Shapiro has forged ties with Dennis Prager, the PragerU founder and talkshow host. Shapiro and Prager are slated to attend a PragerU “founders’ retreat” in September for donors who give at least $100,000 a year.

Historically, the two brothers have also backed a number of rightwing Texas Republicans including Senator Ted Cruz, whose abortive run for president in 2016 was bolstered by $15m they gave to a pro-Cruz Super Pac.

More recent tax reports from the two foundations underscore their deep pockets.

The Thirteen Foundation donated about $5m in 2021 and ended the year with close to $60m in assets. By contrast, the Heavenly Fathers Foundation gave away just under $11m in fiscal year 2022 and ended the year with about $187m in assets.

The evangelical ties of the Wilks brothers are deep and personal. Farris Wilks is a preacher in Cisco, Texas, a town of approximately 3,000 people, where he leads the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day church, which was founded by his father and interprets the Bible literally while embracing Old and New Testament teachings.

Farris Wilks has railed against homosexuality, which he deems a sin. According to recordings of his sermons, homosexuality is “a perversion tantamount to bestiality, pedophilia and incest”.

Farris Wilks also seems to equate the climate crisis with God’s will. “If [God] wants the polar caps to remain in place, then he will leave them there,” he said to worshippers at a 2013 service.

To promote his evangelical views, Farris Wilks and his brother have donated millions of dollars to several conservative Christian groups including Liberty Counsel, Heartbeat International and Family Talk.

Scholars who have studied the influence of big oil and the US right credit the Wilks brothers with playing a growing role in funding and shaping the conservative and evangelical right in Texas and nationally.

“The Wilks brothers epitomize the new strain of religious-right culture-warring that has taken hold of the GOP. Blending fierce allegiance to free-market economics with equally fierce commitment to social conservatism [and] anti-statist rage with Christian nationalist sentiments, they seek to draw the church itself (not just church folk) into battle for control of the country,” said Dochuk.

“What makes the Wilks’ strain of religious-right politics so potent and impactful is its striking range of priorities, including abortion, gay rights and the broader crusade for traditional family values. Significantly, the Wilks’ big checks are also aimed at influencing the politics of climate and environment, energy and extraction, to protect fossil fuel interests.”

Donald Trump is of course taking full advantage of the situation to continue to stoke the right wing rage that conveniently unites his base against the left…

… getting them to stop talking about the Epstein Files, while he out out the right’s collective rage on Blue cities run by Black people.

And if the shooter was a Groyper … that may explain it — given that Nick Fuentes and his followers have been increasingly anti-Trump and anti-Israel. Which makes it really interesting that Bibi Netanyahu tried to jump in and blame Kirk’s murder on “islamists and radical progressives,” and getting panned mercilessly for the stupidity and desperation of the claim.

Where the danger lies

One last point: while the right claims it’s the left that’s dangerous, the stats don’t lie. It’s not just that they did January 6, keep hurling bomb threats at HBCUs, and their ilk keep shooting up malls, food stores and churches because Brown or Black people are there, just like right wingers used to burn down entire Black towns and lynch people, the numbers show that not much has changed in the demographics of violent people. This from the folks at Contraband Camp:

The numbers don’t lie, American righties. Facts don’t car about your feelings.

But if this call is coming from inside the house — Groypers versus Kirk — is this murder the perfect pivot to cast the blame for this murder on Nick Fuentes?

Kim Iverson thinks so:

And I think Nick Fuentes knows the target is about to be on him…

The drama continues … but it’s all inside the right wing.

See you in Valhalla, Kash...

In case you missed Friday’s two-hour live show, you can watch it here.

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