Demons and Demonization | The American Spectator

It was late October, less than two weeks before Election Day, and the vice president of the United States was in a televised town hall appearance from a studio 20 miles south of Philadelphia. CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Kamala Harris a direct question: “Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” Harris answered: “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.” Then, as is her habit, Kamala wandered off into word-salad territory for a while before speaking of “a legitimate fear, based on Donald Trump’s words and actions, that he will not obey an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

How many times have Democrats called Trump and his supporters fascists? Might as well ask how many stars are in the sky, and the same can be said of Democrats labelling Trump a threat to “our democracy.” Campaigning in Iowa in June 2019, Joe Biden called Trump “literally an existential threat to America … a genuine threat to our core values.” That certainly wasn’t the only time Biden made such remarks. After an assassin’s bullet came within a fraction of an inch of killing Trump in July 2024, someone on Biden’s staff deleted many of his previous online reiterations of this theme, but not before they were screenshotted: “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country,” was one of the deleted tweets, while another called Trump “a threat to our freedom … a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.” Not to mimic Joe’s habit of using the word “literally,” but it was literally the day before the assassination attempt against Trump that Biden told a crowd at a Michigan rally: “Most importantly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Trump is a threat to this nation.”

Say these things often enough — as Democrats have been doing for years — and sooner or later, someone might take you literally (sorry, Joe) and act to eliminate what you have repeatedly called a fascist threat to democracy. Such was apparently the case with 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, the gunman whose bullets nicked Trump’s ear, killed Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounded two other Trump supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania. And evidence indicates that similar beliefs about the threat of fascism also inspired 22-year-old Tyler Robinson to murder Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.

Beyond the heartbreaking tragedy of Kirk’s death, there is also the profound irony that Kirk — who began organizing student conservative activists as a teenager — was always willing to debate even his most vociferous enemies, and did so with such calm and cheerful good humor that some of those enemies became allies. Charlie Kirk was winning the debate “in the public square,” and it was arguably his effectiveness at that task that put him in an assassin’s crosshairs. (RELATED:  It’s Charlie Kirk’s America Now)

In the wake of his murder, however, many grassroots Democrats took to social media to express their happiness that Charlie Kirk had been killed — and thereby lost their jobs, as their words (and dancing TikTok videos) were quickly sent to their employers. Perhaps most prominent of the newly unemployed was MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd, who got axed after seemingly blaming Kirk’s “awful words” for his death. Many professors and teachers were among those who lost jobs for celebrating Kirk’s death, offenses which NBC News euphemistically dubbed “sharing opinions on social media.” The number of these expressions of pro-assassination sentiment was large enough to shock veteran journalist Mark Halperin:

For the first day, I refused to believe that anyone was actually going on social media to celebrate Charlie’s murder. Then I realized there was in fact some of it, but I assumed it was a very small amount. Now I see how naive I was. What is wrong with someone who would do that?

What’s wrong with them, sir, is that these Democratic voters take seriously what Democrats tell them. Many of us conservatives have grown accustomed to being smeared as “fascists,” etc., and recall what George Orwell wrote in 1946: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” Words lose their meaning when accusations of being “Literally Hitler” are so promiscuously cast around, and one doubts there is any Republican alive who has not yet been accused of racism, misogyny, homophobia, or some other Thought Crime. We shrug it off and laugh, yet it is evident that many Democratic voters — including not just TikTok dancers, but also gun-wielding maniacs — take this rhetoric at face value.

Notice my use of the category “Democratic voters,” which is deliberate. Others may speak of “liberals,” or “progressives,” or “the Left,” but after years of observing politics, I’ve concluded that it is not ideology, but mere partisanship, which best explains most of America’s problems of this nature. In our two-party system, each party assembles a coalition and, by casting their votes, citizens effectively choose to be members of one or the other party. This is why the red/blue maps of the United States showing voting patterns don’t change much from one election to another: The two partisan coalitions are fairly stable, with Democrats dominating major urban areas and Republicans more prevalent in suburbia and small-town flyover country. So it is more useful to speak of “Democratic voters” than to use any ideological descriptor when discussing, for example, people who upload social media videos of themselves celebrating the murder of a 31-year-old father in front of his wife and children.

Democratic voters are telling us who they are — literally, as Joe Biden might say — and if they don’t like being exposed as such, whose problem is that? DeVory Darkins commented: “When they tell you who they are, believe them.”

What has happened over the past decade is that Democratic voters have twice suffered the humiliation of political defeat by Donald Trump (and as some of my MAGA friends would be swift to point out, it is a matter of dispute whether Joe Biden actually got 81 million votes in 2020, but let’s set that aside for now). Two relatively easy wins by Barack Obama in 2008 and  2012 had accustomed Democratic voters to believe they were on “the right side of history,” and the success of Trump was a direct refutation of that belief. It is false to say Trump is an “existential threat to our democracy,” unless what you mean by the phrase “our democracy” is permanent rule by the Democratic Party. Yet the people who voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris seem to lack the self-awareness necessary to make that kind of distinction, and they don’t want to question the core assumptions implicit in their party’s rhetoric.

Consider, for example, the issue of transgenderism — which is only a political issue because Democrats decided they could exploit it by accusing Republicans of “transphobia.” For decades, confusion about one’s gender identity was regarded as a psychiatric condition called gender dysphoria. How transgenderism made the leap from being a mental health problem to being a political movement is a tale too complex to be summarized briefly, but here we are in 2025, and Charlie Kirk is dead because he criticized the transgender movement.

This angle emerged slowly over the weekend after we learned that the accused assassin, Tyler Robinson, was involved in what Axios politely termed a “romantic relationship” with another young man named Lance Twiggs, who “is transitioning from male to female,” as the New York Post reported. Although the connection between that relationship and the assassination of Kirk has not yet been made entirely clear, several of those who have been poking around the story have begun to suspect that Robinson and Twiggs were perhaps part of a larger conspiracy among transgender militants. This involves the weird nexus of transgenderism and anti-fascism that Andy Ngo refers to as “Trantifa.”

So, a mental illness becomes a political movement, aligns itself with the Democratic Party, demonizes its opponents as “fascists,” and the not-exactly-surprising consequence is that people start getting killed by transgender lunatics. The death of Charlie Kirk was not the first such murder. You could investigate the so-called “Zizian” cult, or recent school shootings by Robert “Robin” Westman and Audrey “Aiden” Hale. This was, in fact, the subject that Charlie Kirk was answering questions about when he was shot to death during his appearance last week on a university campus in Utah.

Threats of violence from transgender activists are nothing new. In 2015, former Los Angeles TV reporter Bob Tur — who underwent sex-change procedures and began calling himself “Zoey” — was on a panel discussion that included conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. After insulting Shapiro for not being “educated on genetics,” Tur became offended by something Shapiro said, grabbed him by the neck, and threatened Shapiro: “You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance.” Not very lady-like, if you ask me, but I guess I’m not an expert on genetics like Bob/“Zoey” Tur.

Among the many dubious claims made by transgender activists is that they are being unfairly “demonized” by their opponents. Seeing themselves as victims of prejudice, they accuse their critics of being “bigots” who promote “hate,” and this then becomes their rationalization for justifying violence against their opponents. Inside the online echo-chambers where transgender activists reinforce each other’s beliefs, there can be no dissent from this viewpoint. To be transgender is to be the hero (or heroine, as the case may be) of the dramatic saga, and all opponents are villains who must be defeated.

Charlie Kirk was a devout Christian, and as such knew that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). This is a war against Satan and his demons — literally, borrowing Biden’s favorite adverb yet again. (RELATED: The Blood of the Martyrs: Charlie Kirk’s Witness and Movement)

To speak of demonic influence in human affairs is to invite ridicule in 21st-century America, but those who have been face-to-face with evil do not doubt the reality of what they have seen. Some years ago, when my pious Catholic friend Pete Da Tech Guy and I were visiting D.C., he insisted on attending mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. As a Protestant myself, I skipped the service and wandered over to the Basilica’s bookstore, where I purchased a copy of An Exorcist Explains the Demonic, by Father Gabriele Amorth, who was often called the Vatican’s chief exorcist. Among his observations:

Diabolical obsessions are disturbances or extremely strong hallucinations that the demon imposes, often invincibly, on the mind of the victim. In these cases, the person is no longer a master of his own thoughts. … The objects of these hallucinations can be manifested as visions, as voices … as monstrous figures, horrifying animals, or devils. In other cases it can be an impulse to commit suicide or to do evil to others and, particularly in the young, it can lead to confusion about one’s gender.” [Emphasis added.]

You can believe that or not, but doubters might wish to examine the manifestos and journals of some recent killers before dismissing the possibility of “diabolical obsessions.” Just a few snips from the diary of Audrey “Adrian” Hale: “At one point, Hale refers to herself as a ‘white nothingness’ … ‘Too bad I am a sad boy born w/a puny vagina.’ … It is a ‘major blow to girls: I am a boy that has no penis,’ she writes.” You could say she was a lunatic in need of psychiatric therapy, or you could say she was demon-possessed and needed an exorcist. What you cannot say is that Hale, who killed three nine‑year‑old children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, was a helpless victim of prejudice. She was a perpetrator of evil, the monster in a horror tale. (RELATED: Transgender Mass Murderers: The Drugs and Demons That Drive Them)

Yet the narrative of transgender victimhood persists. Writing for the left-wing site Common Dreams, Stephen Prager reported that the Wall Street Journal was “facing harsh criticism for spreading an unverified report that has further fueled the right’s demonization of transgender Americans.” There we go again, see? Instead of this being an inquiry into the motives of an assassin, instead it’s about “demonization” of transgender people, merely because some people dare to speak about an observable pattern of which Tyler Robinson may very well be a dot on the scatter plot.

This narrative of Republicans as oppressive villains, and various constituencies of the Democratic Party being victims of GOP oppression, so controls the news media’s coverage of events that it’s possible that most Democrats don’t even recognize this framework as the partisan construction it actually is. When Nancy Pelosi was asked if her party’s rhetoric might have inspired the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there was zero self-awareness in her reply: “People don’t have any intention of saying something that’s going to lead to something dangerous, but we cannot take responsibility for the minds that are out there and how they hear it.”

This is the same Pelosi who launched an impeachment against Trump, accusing him of having incited an “insurrection” at the Capitol in January 2021. Democrats “cannot take responsibility,” Pelosi now insists, if some of their more fervent supporters actually believe their rhetoric and act as if it were true. Democrats keep shouting about Republicans as “fascists,” and then when a murderer inscribes his bullets with slogans like, “Hey, fascist – catch,” we’re supposed to believe Democrats as they disclaim responsibility. Believing what Democrats say requires a level of cognitive dissonance that’s not good for your mental health, but how would they ever win elections if not for the loyal support of crazy people?

Some of my dearest friends and relatives are, alas, Democratic voters, and perhaps readers also have friends and family members in that category. If so, you know the futility of discussing politics with people whose sense of identity is invested in the belief that the Democratic Party is the repository of all virtue, and who consequently believe that Republicans are active and conscious agents of oppression. Such a belief system has consequences.

“Our politics has become so mean, so petty, so personal, so negative, so partisan, so angry, and so unproductive,” as someone said a few years ago. “Instead of debating our opponents, we demonize them. Instead of questioning judgments, we question their motives. Instead of listening, we shout. Instead of looking for solutions, we look to score political points.”

Those words were spoken in Philadelphia by Joe Biden at his official campaign launch in May 2019. Barely three years later, in September 2022, Biden returned to Philadelphia and denounced in no uncertain terms the 74 million Americans who had voted in 2020 to re-elect Donald Trump:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. … MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. … MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards … [T]hey fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.

Well, so much for “debating our opponents,” eh? Deliberately insulting Republican voters — who “do not respect the Constitution” — Biden’s implicit message was: “Vote for Democrats, or you are a threat.”

Of course, Joe Biden was already far gone in mental decline by then, and the words he read from the teleprompter were written by others, although no staffer or adviser has yet stepped forward to take credit (or blame) for that 2022 speech.

It is foolish to think that the addlebrained Biden — who probably couldn’t remember what he’d had for breakfast — was aware of how the blanket condemnation of Trump voters contradicted what he’d said in launching his campaign three years earlier. His speechwriters obviously didn’t care about the contradiction, and not until he melted down on live TV in the June 2024 debate did they begin to realize that they couldn’t drag old Joe across the finish line. Kamala was then shoved in as the Democratic alternative to Trump, whom she declared to be a “fascist,” only to have the electorate choose this alleged “threat to our democracy” over her by a margin of 4 million votes.

Here we are, then, nearly eight months into Trump’s second term, and Charlie Kirk is dead because somehow “the flames of political violence” got fanned — by whom? Democrats in public office deny responsibility, even as their deranged supporters circulate online lists of which conservative personalities should be the next target for assassination. Ben Shapiro, J.K. Rowling, and Matt Walsh are among the favorites on these fantasy death lists. If you won’t accept that as evidence of widespread “diabolical obsession,” what would suffice?

In modern times, we are expected to scoff at any suggestion of demonic influences at work in the world, but Charlie Kirk was a Bible-believing Christian. Therefore, again we return to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where in the fifth chapter, after condemning such sins as fornication and covetousness, the Apostle warns the church: “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. … See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

Evil days, indeed.

READ MORE from Robert Stacy McCain:

The Historic Roots of Russiagate

‘Accountability’ for RussiaGate? Don’t Bet on It

CNN’s Credibility? Totally Obliterated!