Before we begin, let’s be clear about my mission as Devil’s Advocate. The official description of the office initially created by Pope Sixtus V states that my official duty is “to suggest natural explanations for alleged miracles, and even to bring forward human and selfish motives for deeds that have been accounted heroic virtues.” In other words, my current diabolical mission on Fair Observer’s platform is to deflate overblown claims of exceptional virtue attributed to persons or ideas in the news.

Though nominally employed in the service of the interests of the archfiend, whose mission is to make as big a mess of things as possible, I retain the liberty to celebrate idealism and moral virtue whenever I believe it is justified. My solemn duty, however, is to expose the selfish motives that may lie behind acts proclaimed to be virtuous. In the real world, most would agree that virtuous acts and perhaps even miracles exist, but some, upon examination, may conceal a dominant presence of “selfish motives.”

Where in our day and age do we find mention of the “miracles” and “heroic virtues” mentioned in my job description? The most obvious answer is in practically every “official narrative” promulgated by our exemplary democratic governments and our impeccably independent media. But all the important narratives — those that concern where and when to wage war, how to run the economy or whom to vote for — may at times distort the truth in the interest of some more noble cause. They are quickly echoed and amplified by media skilled at masquerading the fact that many of these narratives are carried out in the name of self-interest. The fact that our culture has elevated assertiveness and acquisitiveness to the status of moral virtues makes obfuscation an easier task for the media. My job, when I’m allowed to hold forth, is to pull back the curtain on the worst cases and hope the best cases will pass.

Dossiers for canonization at the Vatican are rare these days. The profile of a recognizable saint has lost some of its former luster. Today’s authentic saints — and there are many — will more likely be exiled, silenced or simply forgotten if they don’t have a regular podcast and the charisma that will make them bonafide influencers.

When am I likely to receive Charlie Kirk’s canonization dossier for inspection?

This brings us to the latest case of proposed canonization that has emerged in the past few days. I’m referring to the case of Charlie Kirk. There is no more sure-fire way to accelerate a claim to sanctity than becoming a martyr. Because of the radicality and especially the drama of its life-or-death logic, martyrdom represents the shortest path to sainthood. Kirk’s case, however, appears to be even more than that.

The right-wing activist’s brutal extermination has not just inspired outpourings of love and devotion. Some see a deeper historical significance. They may even compare his murder to the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 that marked the official first act of the American Civil War. Or perhaps a more appropriate comparison from the same period would be the trial and execution of John Brown. The abolitionist who led what he hoped would be an insurrection mobilizing the thousands of slaves he wished to liberate was roundly defeated by the defenders of slavery, duly tried and hanged. His memory, however, lived on, and his martyrdom both presaged the war itself that broke out a year later and encapsulated the symbolism of the war’s outcome: the formal abolition of slavery.

Kirk’s sudden and unexpected killing may have a more immediate impact than Brown’s martyrdom. Things move much faster in our digital age. We can already see indications that one side in the civil war has already begun to mobilize its troops. Steve Bannon, a loyalist of US President Donald Trump, called the murder of media influencer Kirk an “assassination,” a term traditionally reserved for political figures, not public entertainers. “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the political war,” Bannon insisted. “We are at war in this country and you have to have steely resolve.”

Trump immediately made the case for secular canonization, calling Kirk “Great, and even Legendary,” who was “loved and admired by ALL,” having in his possession “the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America.” Trump also called him a “martyr for truth and freedom.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson celebrated Charlie Kirk as a “happy warrior” and “a man of deep faith and conviction.” From his perspective, Kirk was not just a secular saint, but a Christian one as well, since “he was motivated by love” and “believed in the words of scripture. He identified himself to be a Christ follower.”

Because Kirk’s fans identified their martyr as the voice of a movement willing to display its carefully calibrated xenophobic and mildly white supremacist credentials, former South African citizen Elon Musk, an infant of Apartheid, refused to let the opportunity pass. The man designated by The New York Times as likely to become our first trillionaire joined the mob of Kirk’s mourners in denouncing the true culprits. According to ABC News, Musk concluded that it wasn’t Tyler Robinson, but a chimeric cabal known as “the Left” that conspired to murder the right-wing hero and saint. Not to be outdone, Bannon offered some further clarity, explaining that “the Left is the party of murder.”

In predigital times, civil wars were traditionally fomented by what the US Constitution’s Second Amendment terms a “well regulated Militia” that rises up to oppose an established government. Today’s emerging civil war seems to embrace a new paradigm.  It doesn’t require armed combatants but hopes they will emerge spontaneously, like Tyler Robinson himself. At the purely organizational level, even financial professionals can (and probably must) join the fight. The ABC News article quotes venture capitalist and Musk ally Shaun Maguire who proclaimed: “We’re not supposed to say this but the truth is we’re at War.”

The civil war might not even involve combat but take place behind desks and computers. Conservative Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for ”a peaceful national divorce.” Given that the United States, at the conception, was simply a collection of 13 united states, she wants to see a country divided neatly in two but apparently still kind of living with a common identity. As she describes it, the national divorce will “separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.” What could possibly go wrong with such an equal and equitable division?

Is Tyler Robinson the standard-bearer of the Left?

In other words, Tyler Robinson has apparently single-handedly given birth to a cause. With a bit of further prodding, it could turn into a new crusade. Utah Governor Spencer Cox was among the first to explain — with no evidence to support the claim — that Tyler Robinson has a “leftist ideology.” It nevertheless seemed to make sense; since Kirk was right-wing, his enemy must be left-wing. And though the governor has been praised for counseling moderation, that clarification concerning Tyler Robinson’s commitments has galvanized many of Kirk’s followers on social media. Even US Attorney General Pam Bondi weighed in. “Who killed Charlie? Left-wing radicals, and they will be held accountable.” Who can now doubt that “the Left” is guilty as charged?

Some may think this is a truly diabolical scenario, if ever there was one. But it isn’t in any way exceptional. It corresponds to a long-standing demonic pattern, an identifiable trend in US political culture. The day after Kirk’s killing was September 11, a date that remains etched in everyone’s memory when 24 years ago, nearly 3,000 Americans died. An older generation with different political sensibilities may even remember another September 11 — back in 1973, when a CIA-sponsored coup engineered by US President Richard Nixon and his accomplice, American diplomat Henry Kissinger, overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile that included the assassination of its president, Salvador Allende. This ushered in a period in which dictatorial military leader Augusto Pinochet murdered, imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands of his compatriots and forced 200,000 into exile. He painted an unforgettable picture of how a modern fascist regime can succeed. Pinochet remained in place as Chile’s dictator for 17 years.

We still don’t know why Tyler Robinson thought it necessary to express his hatred by choosing to play the role of an “unhappy warrior.” He appears to have texted to his gender uncertain roommate and romantic partner who asked him why he had done it: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” That doesn’t really tell us much about his political leanings. Could this be a personality-motivated crime rather than a political murder? Had anyone else encouraged him? Before declaring war on half of the US population, the media as well as politicians would be wise to get a few more details.

No forensic evidence appears to have been produced or cited in the media. We can’t really be sure that Tyler Robinson is the one who fired the fatal shot. We’ve been told that he was a lone gunman, and that could well be true. But we’ve heard that story before. Some of the members of our diabolical coterie remember a similar case some 60 years ago with a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Interviewed by media personality Piers Morgan, actor Charlie Sheen sees Kirk’s murder as “Gen-Z’s JFK moment”… a moment, by the way, that we — and others, including our friend, Jefferson Morley — are still trying to process. At this point, some baby boomers may well be asking: Will we ever know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or even, will Tyler Robinson make it to trial?

The other Robinson across the pond

Is one evil man named Robinson enough for one week? Three days after the murder of Kirk, another Robinson with a somewhat violent reputation in another country made the news by organizing in London what has been called “the biggest right wing march in British history.” Tommy Robinson (who cannot be related to Tyler because his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) became famous more than a decade ago as the founder of the anti-Islam English Defence League. Renouncing the violence associated with that movement, he went on to reinvent himself as an “online propagandist” and “independent journalist.”

Tommy Robinson dubbed the event the “Unite the Kingdom” rally. His recipe for uniting Britain, already united as a collection of former kingdoms, is simply to exclude immigrants. On that score, there was some common ground with Kirk. But what provided the link between a murder and a mass demonstration was less the surname Robinson than the presence, via a video link, of the very same Musk who had called Kirk’s fans to prepare for war. Musk’s message to a country he has never been a citizen of (unlike South Africa, Canada and the US) was to call for a “dissolution of parliament” and a “change of government.” Echoing his prophetic pronouncements for the US, he warned the Brits that “violence is coming” if things continue on their current path. “If the fight comes to you,” he intoned, “you don’t have a choice,” while instructing the crowd that “you either fight back or you die.”

In the course of his 15 minute interview with Tommy Robinson, he clarified the situation at home. “You see how much violence there is on the left, with our friend Charlie Kirk getting murdered in cold blood this week and people on the left celebrating it openly.” It was at this event that Musk proclaimed: “The left is the party of murder and celebrating murder.”

As the Devil’s Advocate, I’ll conclude with one final remark concerning Musk, a man whose extreme wealth qualifies him for sainthood in the eyes of many Americans. In the course of his intervention he evoked “the great replacement theory” so popular among right-wing populists in the West. He complained that “there’s a massive incentive on the left to import voters. If they can’t convince their nation to vote for them they’re going to import people from other nations to vote for them… it’s a strategy that will succeed if it is not stopped.” He complains that this has the effect of “depriving their citizens of democratic power” by “taking your vote away from you.”

This was spoken by a naturalized US citizen who opportunistically took Canadian and then US citizenship after leaving his native South Africa in his youth. Not only is the man born into an Apartheid system “taking [a] vote away from” American citizens, he is using his prestige and wealth to actively intervene in elections in the US and the United Kingdom.

On those grounds alone I use my logic, rather than the authority of my office, to deny any move to declare Musk an American saint, either now or in the distant future. The case of Kirk is still pending.

*[The Devil’s Advocate pursues the tradition Fair Observer began in 2017 with the launch of our “Devil’s Dictionary.” It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself — political and journalistic rhetoric — to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider’s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.