Charlie Hebdo to Charlie Kirk – in a blink

September 15, 2025

Every faltering cause needs a martyr. Charlie Kirk is Trump’s Maga Movement sacrificial goat. The incandescent rage and the irrational response to Kirk’s assassination is not unexpected, but no less disturbing. While stifling public debate on criticism of Kirk’s aggressively expounded and controversial views is another step down the path of authoritarianism in the land of the free, extending visa bans on “foreigners” who may have expressed an adverse opinion to Kirk’s seems ludicrous, paranoiac even.

While this shift from the America we grew up with seems relatively recent, in 1986 the controversial rock musician, Frank Zappa, said, during a televised debate, “The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it’s moving America towards a fascist theocracy”.

With our own national debate between the secular state and the rights of the religious still simmering from the Morrison years, we would do well to recall Zappa’s words of 40 years ago and measure his warning against the United Sates of today.