Andrew Cockburn in Harper’s Magazine:
On a cool evening in October, six weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in full view of thousands at Utah Valley University, I joined a sea of young people lining up outside the auditorium on Indiana University’s sprawling Bloomington campus for an event sponsored by Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA. Kirk himself had been scheduled to headline the event, one stop on a planned tour of colleges across the country. Instead we would hear from Tucker Carlson, once the star of Fox News and now a wildly popular podcast host. The choice was a pointed one given Carlson’s willingness to buck Republican orthodoxy, particularly on matters of foreign policy. He has vehemently denounced American military involvement abroad, including attacks on Iran, support for Ukraine, and most controversially, the U.S.-backed war in Gaza.
The political and religious cast of the crowd in Bloomington was signaled by the street vendors, who were doing brisk business offering red, white, and black make america great again hats, along with caps proclaiming jesus won and sweatshirts emblazoned with freedom and Kirk’s signature. In the center of the plaza outside the venue, hand-lettered signs proclaimed christian values? israel massacres innocents and would jesus ignore this? will you? Pointing to the signs, I asked Dane, a young self-described Christian who declined to give his last name, whether he agreed with their message. “We’ve heard for a few years how the left feels about it,” he told me. “But you’re starting to see a little bit of a change in the right. They’ve spent many, many years trying to get a common consensus belief that Israel is one of our very best allies, and that belief is starting to change. It’s not just a niche thing anymore. I would be quite concerned if I was a politician.”
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