Jimmy Kimmel, Charlie Kirk and the Fall of America
Sep 19, 2025
How easily they crumbled. The universities. The courts. The independent government agencies. And the media. Sorting out the ones that were complicit in the right-wing takeover of the nation and those who were simply intimidated will be the work of historians.
But the one unalterable fact about the fall of the American century is how easy it happened. The nation that was once the arsenal of democracy, the country that defined the global economy, and drove the agenda of the West for 80 years, folded in the face of grifters, race-haters and conspiracy nutters.
Pick your moment when the collapse of the American ideal became obvious. Let's talk about the firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
A year ago, it would have been inconceivable that the most popular hosts on American television – Steven Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel could be fired because the President of the United States didn't like them.
Free speech. Independence of the media. The First Amendment. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. But Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist, and he hated these men for poking at him.
The rotted-out institutions that once had the job of ensuring the public interest were quick to appease him. FCC chair Brendan Carr overstepped his role with a blatant threat, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."
And that was it: ABC crumbled, Kimmel was fired.
The excuse was Kimmel's commentary on the response to the death of Charlie Kirk. Hardly incendiary stuff, but it was enough for the far right to pounce.
In death, Kirk is proving much more useful to MAGA than he was in life, when he acted as one of many provocateurs of white supremacy and far-right rage politics.
He has been made into a MAGA martyr. Earlier this month, Trump attempted to create another martyr by providing a military funeral to Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot as she tried to kick her way into the hall of Congress to stop a democratic election. As a galvanizing symbol, Babbitt, the crazed insurrectionist, just didn't cut it.
In June, we witnessed the horrific assassinations of Democratic legislators in Minnesota. Trump and the MAGA right wing shrugged it off or made jokes.
The response to Kirk's death is on a whole other level. He has been canonized as a martyr. This has allowed the right to ramp up their language of war and retribution on political enemies.
Kirk is the ideal MAGA martyr – a man who died for the "free" speech rights of white supremacists, anti-LBGTQ haters and Muslim baiters. Those who point out his record have been targeted for "hate" speech, threats and firing.
When pressed with hard questions from an ABC journalist, Trump accused the reporter of having hate in their heart. He suggested that it might be time to go after the journalist.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Kirk's death was a reason to go after "hate speech" of anyone who challenges Conservatives.
Extremist ideologies require martyrs. Especially MAGA. This is far from a disciplined movement. In reality, it is like a very unstable nuclear atom, barely holding it together from the competing and conflicting forces within the MAGA circle.
Kirk was one of many competing voices on the far right looking to establish their brand amidst the conspirituality grifters, the race war proponents, and nutters like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer. Kirk's nemesis wasn't young activists on the progressive left, but from youth who were even more extreme on the spectrum.
This was a group of youth who called themselves "groypers" and backed youth activist Nick Fuentes. He encouraged his groyper army to follow Kirk to his various town halls to bait and argue with him. They represent a wing of far-right and deeply antisemitic youth who see Kirk as a middle-of-the-road sellout.
Kirk as martyr provides a unifying narrative to an unstable movement. As martyr, he gives a justification for MAGA extremists in going after their enemies.
What stabilizes their chaotic rage storm is the willingness of middle-of-the-road and progressives to treat their rage as a legitimate grievance.
Consider the responses in Canada.
A University of Toronto professor was forced on leave after engaging with trolls over the reaction to Kirk's death as compared to recent deaths in Gaza. The University of Toronto, one of the top-ranked universities in the world, immediately caved to the rage baiting from the Toronto Sun and pulled the professor from her job.
That made the university even more of a focus for the rage mob and death threats of those who are using Kirk's death to drive the politics of division.
And then there was the Canadian parliament standing on both sides of the house to give a standing ovation over a speech on Kirk's death and the need to defend "free speech." Kirk's death is a tragedy. An American tragedy. In what possible world does it justify the Parliament of Canada giving him a standing ovation?
When I shared a post on the standing ovation from journalist Rachel Gilmore (who has received multiple death threats in the wake of the Kirk killing), I received a number of angry messages that I was being divisive. Not fair to the government. One woman wrote to me that the standing ovation wasn't for Kirk, it was for free speech and building bridges.
Here's the thing: when you build bridges for extremists, you need to know that they will use the bridge to cross over and take your ground. This is a key lesson in dealing with fascism: there is no ceding ground, because they will take it.
But now back to Jimmy Kimmel.
His firing is an absolute provocation. It is a test. So far, America is failing the test. If a man like Kimmel can be taken down, anyone can. That is the point. Trump and MAGA have always gone after the big prizes – the universities, the Smithsonian, 60 Minutes. If they can be forced to bend, then there are no longer any guardrails holding back authoritarianism.
Where we go from here isn't clear. The fascist playbook, however, gives us a pretty good idea. This means that resistance to the intimidation and the martyr cult is more important than ever. As Indira Gandhi warned, "martyrdom does not end something, it is only a beginning."