“God-Given Signal”: Charlie Kirk’s Murder as American Reichstag

How Trump is trying to use political violence as a pretext for one-party rule

Marinus van der Lubbe

On February 27th, 1933, a fire broke out in multiple locations at the German parliament, the Reichstag. An unemployed former communist Dutch bricklayer, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested on the scene with incendiary materials. He allegedly confessed to starting the fire.

Within hours, and without evidence, Hitler and Hermann Göring publicly blamed a communist conspiracy. Hitler reportedly told his aides that it was a “God-given signal” to destroy the communist movement once and for all. The next day, Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree (formally the “Decree for the Protection of People and State”), suspending freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and allowing detention without trial. This became the legal foundation for Nazi one-party rule.

Within months, Hitler’s two main opposition parties, the Communists (KPD) and the Social Democrats (SPD) had been shut down, along with party newspapers. Thousands of KPD and SPD members were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

God-Given Signal

Yesterday Charlie Kirk, a radical, theocratic MAGA personality and the leader of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was murdered during a TPUSA event in Orem, UT.

“I think it's worth it to have a cost of some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” —Charlie Kirk

The video of the event is gruesome but here are the last words spoken by Kirk before being shot in the jugular—from a building almost 200 yards away.

AUDIENCE: “So, do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”

KIRK: “Too many.”

AUDIENCE: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

KIRK: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

Within hours, while covering up his bruised hand, Donald Trump blamed Kirk’s murder on a conspiracy of the “radical left,” which I contrast below with Kirk’s recent tweets.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murders and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.

There are multiple signals from Trump of deep concern. First, there is no evidence that the murderer was from “the left.” Despite a number of false claims from FBI Director Kash Patel of an arrest, the killer is still at large. Photos of the murderer have been released, along with an absolute explosion of rage and hatred from MAGA.

The killer is wearing a “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” t-shirt.

Second, Trump’s claim that he’s going to “find” all the “organizations that fund and support” “terrorism” from the “radical left”—which he ties to people “going after” government officials—shows an unmistakeable plan to remove the Democratic Party as a roadblock to dictatorship.

Third, Trump’s direct reference to “Nazis” while giving a near-perfect imitation of a speech by Hitler is projection of the highest order. It is what he, and Stephen Miller, always do to cloak their own plans.

Reichstag, Mirrored

Trump’s martyrization of Charlie Kirk and his goal of using it as a new Reichstag Fire has been heard loud and clear across MAGA and the wider radicalized right. White supremacist Matt Forney made perhaps the clearest argument for a new Reichstag Fire, even before Trump gave his speech.

“Every Democratic politician must be arrested and the party banned under RICO” is a precise American echo of what Hitler did in Weimar Germany.

Forney was hardly alone in his reaction. Elon Musk immediately blamed the left and told his 225 million followers that to save “Western Civilization” they must “fight or die.”

Musk went on to share dehumanizing and violent rhetoric alleging “the party of the Left” are “sick” and “evil” and want murder.

This eliminationist, genocidal rhetoric by one of the richest and most influential people on the planet, and the President of the United States, along with their violent scapegoating of a caricature of Democrats, is being mirrored across the entire MAGA influencer ecosystem. [h/t Meidas Touch]

While there is, unfortunately, nothing terribly unusual about MAGA or Musk yelling for “civil war,” the specific circumstances here are different. A clearly political assassination of a popular regime figure, regardless of its motivation, is the perfect inciting event for a crackdown; Trump is deeply in trouble with his own base over Epstein; both Ukraine and Gaza have spiraled under his feckless leadership; and Poland invoked Article 4. He needs a rallying cry for his base—and his ego.

Will It Work? It Can.

In 1934, Sergei Kirov, a top Communist leader, was shot in the back of the head in Leningrad. The gunman, a disgruntled Communist Party member, Leonid Nikolaev, was arrested on the spot. Within hours, Stalin arrived from Moscow and claimed the killing was a conspiracy by his main rival Leon Trotsky. A week later, despite evidence showing that the Soviet secret police (NKVD) had been complicit, Nikolaev was convicted and executed.

Nikolaev; Kirov; Stalin

Stalin used Kirov’s assassination, which many historians believe Stalin himself enabled, as the pretext for the Great Purge, which resulted in millions being imprisoned and hundreds of thousands executed over the next several years with Kirov’s assassination used as a rationale. People who didn’t support Stalin were labeled “terrorists,” given show trials and thrown in a gulag or executed.

In an echo of Stalin’s playbook, last night after Trump’s speech, the right-wing publication “The Federalist” published an article called “The Democrat Party Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization” and cited the fact that Democrats sometimes call people like Charlie Kirk “Nazis” as the reason to do exactly what both Stalin and the Nazis did.

The author, the “White House correspondent” for the Federalist, closes with this:

In the world we live in now, there is no time to try to convince the left to “tone down” their extreme rhetoric. They need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.

Kash In Charge

As of this writing, Charlie Kirk’s murderer has not been found, and FBI Director Kash Patel is en route to Utah to take charge of the situation.

From personal experience and five years of observation, Kash Patel will do everything in his power to ensure that the results of the investigation yield to Donald Trump’s reality, rather than the actual facts on the ground. While my hope is that the agents in the field will do honest work, Kash Patel replaced the Special Agent in Charge in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago, as part of his illegal political purge of FBI leadership.

Kash Patel is also, notably, along with Pam Bondi, one of the people responsible for withholding the Epstein files. His complicity with the regime, and his willingness to engage in promoting false narratives for Donald Trump makes anything we hear from the government suspect.

Escalation Patterns

Regardless of the objective facts, the Trump regime will continue to push the narrative that “the left” is responsible. Trump used the word “martyr” in his speech for a reason. Kirk’s murder will be weaponized to generate further violence.

As an example of how the rhetoric will continue to worsen, Representative Bob Onder (R-MO) gave a 30-second floor speech today that crystallizes the full-blown eliminationist direction we’re heading.

“Well, what for us? Well, everything has changed. If we didn't know it already, there is no longer any middle ground. Some of them American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people. But their ideology is pure evil. They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false, and the ugly. And they literally will kill those with whom they disagree just as their predecessor leftists Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro did. We must know that.”

The next phase, which seems highly likely, will be to legalize the scapegoating of Democrats, and begin the process of trying to disassemble the opposition party as both Hitler and Stalin did to consolidate their dictatorships. If Trump follows through on his threat to investigate the “organizations” that he labels as responsible for speech violations under RICO, every Democratic politician, media figure or funder is at risk.

The final move, and the official end of the republic, would come if Trump uses this event, or any violence that follows, as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would, in theory allow him to declare martial law and suspend the liberties of every American.

Fascism Needs War

Trump’s transient obsession with a Nobel Peace Prize has been replaced with an obsession to wage war. He renamed the Defense Department; he declared “Chicopalypse Now” on a US city; he’s trying to create a war in Venezuela; and he’s allowing Putin’s war to expand in Europe.

Charlie Kirk’s murder gives Trump, Musk and their MAGA co-conspirators an even better target for war—the entire Democratic Party. The Reichstag Fire and the Great Purge are not cautionary tales for them, but success stories.

What is not clear yet is if the Democratic Party and the broader non-cult majority of the American people will see this blatant plagiarizing of history, come to our senses, and face down this regime before it follows through.

“When they tell you who they are, believe them.”

If you are able to help me continue my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It really means a lot. Thank you!

Here are a few benefits to upgrading:

• Live Zoom call each Sunday

• Ability to comment and access all content

• Wonderful, supportive community

• Helping independent journalism fill in the gaps for our failing media

Thank you for reading and sharing my work. Grateful for your support.

If you’d like to help me with expenses, here is my DonorBox. 💙

If you’d like to help with my legal fees: stopmikeflynn.com.

My podcast is @radicalizedpod & YouTube — Livestream is Thursdays at 4PM PT.

Bluesky 🦋: jim-stewartson

Threads: jimstewartson