German state media have systematically slandered Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination

This woman is Dunja Hayali. She is known to millions of Germans as the anchor for the ZDF public news programme heute (“today”). The day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Hayali glossed the story by conceding that “there is no justification for those groups celebrating [Kirk’s] death,” before deploring without any specific reference or citation “his often abhorrent, racist, sexist and misanthropic statements.” She proceeded to call Kirk a “radical religious conspiracy theorist” who nevertheless “struck a chord with many people,” given his large following and his “well-attended” events.

Later, Hayali appeared on a state media podcast, where she again with no evidence attacked Kirk as “too radical, too racist, misanthropic and misogynistic” and “simply inhumane.” She said that while “violence cannot be a solution,” “you don’t have to feel sympathy or pity” in connection to his violent death. Instead of offering condolences or regret for his murder, she advised that it would be better to “just shut up for a moment and perhaps not say anything at all.”

Following a massive public outcry, Hayali has declared herself the victim of a right-wing hate mob and said she will take a few days off.

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This man is Elmar Theveßen. He is the Washington D.C. correspondent also for the state media broadcaster ZDF, and he is routinely presented to the German public as an expert on all things American.

The day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Theveßen appeared on Markus Lanz’s eponymous political talkshow before a nationwide audience to peddle a series of lies about the recently deceased:

Theveßen: [Kirk] has very, very strong right-wing convictions. Let me give you a few examples. For example, he said that homosexuals should be stoned to death (...). He said that black people are taking jobs away from white people because of the policies of the Democrats in recent years. He said that if you’re sitting in an aeroplane with a black pilot, you should be afraid.

Lanz: Have I understood you correctly, he said homosexuals should be stoned?

Theveßen: Yes, of course he’s referring to the Bible, when he says that Christianity should be taken literally. He’s not applied this to modern times, which is actually, um, largely, well of course. But you can say these are racist statements, these are anti-minority statements, and it’s also true, clearly, he belongs to the right-wing radicals in the USA...

Theveßen repeated the notorious falsehood that Kirk advocated stoning homosexuals to death in two other podcast appearances on 11 September. This was not an isolated slip-up. As everyone now knows, of course, Kirk had merely insisted Old Testament exhortations to love one’s neighbour do not imply any biblical endorsement of homosexuality because they stand alongside much harsher provisions, like that at Leviticus 20:13. Theveßen’s other statements are also crude mischaracterisations of Kirk’s opposition to minority hiring preferences and his criticism of the Federal Aviation Administration’s efforts to relax merit-based hiring standards for Air Traffic Control in favour of a (more minority-friendly) “Biographical Questionnaire.”

Were Charlie Kirk still alive, he could request that charges be brought against Theveßen for slander, and his widow could probably still file a complaint under section 189 of the German criminal code, which prohibits “Defiling the memory of the dead.” Of course, nobody thinks this will happen, which is why Theveßen has decided to trifle with the truth in this case.

In response to inquiries from BILD, Theveßen said that he “regrets not having been more detailed,” but naturally he stopped short of apologising. After I and others brought Theveßen’s remarks to the attention of the U.S. State Department (along with another podcast appearance in which Theveßen implied that Stephen Miller was a neo-Nazi), Richard Grenell called for authorities to revoke his work visa …

… and the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau replied with this ominous image:

Mysteriously, the ordinarily voluble Theveßen has gone silent.

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This woman is Caren Miosga; she hosts a popular Sunday evening political talkshow for ARD, another German state media broadcaster. This past Sunday, Miosga interviewed the leading Left Party politician (and TikTok star) Heidi Reichinnek:

Among other things, the two women discussed Charlie Kirk’s assassination, at which point this exchange occurred:

Miosga: Let’s also talk about what happened this week. In the US, ultra-right activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk was shot dead this week. Afterwards, your personal assistant posted a so-called meme, a photo with the caption. Let’s take a look …

Miosga: He then deleted this post, saying that right-wing extremists had put it in the wrong context. Did he tell you what the proper context was?

Reichinnek: On the very same day, there was another school massacre.¹ And that was a very cynical way – but unfortunately also a very fitting way – to say, with this school massacre, you just move past it.

But I thought it was really good that you also described [Kirk] as ultra-right-wing, because others call him a “right-wing conservative” and that’s simply not true. He was a white supremacist, he was against the right to [sex/gender] self-determination. He said he would force his ten-year-old daughter to give birth were she to be raped. He is a racist.

So these statements he makes are really extreme. And I think you should never rejoice over anyone’s death. But you also don’t have to feel pity or respect for a person like this … Kirk, who was shot, said that some casualties are simply something we have to endure for the freedom to bear arms.

And [my aide] used this meme satirically, to point out that this focus [on political violence] is completely absent when it comes to other areas. For example, it was absent in the case of the murdered Democrats. … And I’m always very surprised that it is precisely this ultra-right-wing nationalist who is now being mourned so widely. I’m rather annoyed that the Junge Union [the youth wing of the CDU], for example, posted their condolences, when you consider what kind of person Kirk was. They didn’t do that for the murdered Democrats a while ago. So that’s also a question that needs to be asked.

Miosga: But he was murdered.

Reichinnek: Yes, by another Republican. And that’s problematic.

Miosga: And you’re surprised that people want to mourn someone who was murdered?

Reichinnek: I don’t know if this is the kind of person you would say was such a good person and just a right-wing conservative. No, he was very problematic. And as I said, you have to be aware of whom you’re platforming.

Reichinnek’s lies are partly of her own making, and partly elaborated from the media mythology that the German press have created around Kirk’s shooting. This mythology includes the dishonest speculation that Tyler Robinson, the shooter, had some connection to “far-right” groups and the American right-wing activist Nick Fuentes, “who has criticised Charlie Kirk in the past for his allegedly moderate stance.” In fact everything we know about the shooter, who was in a relationship with a trans woman, suggests he was a simply a leftist who despised Kirk’s politics. Various social media accounts connected to the transgender community appear to have had foreknowledge of Kirk’s assassination.

Neither Miosga nor Reichinnek have issued any clarifications or corrections, nor have they apologised.

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I originally planned a much broader piece on the reaction to Kirk’s assassination, but the loathsome celebrations of social media activists are now well-trodden territory, so I have confined myself here only to the most mainstream, accepted, and establishment-friendly press personalities and media outlets in Germany.

We have before us here a systematic campaign, too coordinated and consistent to be an accident. The aim of this campaign is twofold. On the hand, our press hopes to portray Kirk as an unhinged and dangerous fascist, but to stop just short of blaming him for his own death – the sin for which MSNBC fired their “analyst” Matthew Dowd. On the other hand, they want to cast his assassination as very far from regrettable, while leaving any open celebration to the foul activist circles in their milieu.

Before 10 September, most Germans had never heard of Charlie Kirk, and so there was no reason for our press to denounce his politics and lie about him in this way. They could’ve reported this story much differently – perhaps as yet another crazy campus shooting in the gun-crazed United States (a favourite if tiresome trope of German media elites, however inapplicable in this case), or simply as the regrettable murder of a prominent American activist with connections to the MAGA movement.

Instead they have chosen the path of deceit and slander, because they are hysterical and desperate lunatics who have cultivated a political discourse that is so deranged as to be nearly beyond comprehension. If this were a German story about the murder of a prominent AfD activist, our journalists would report on it as sparingly as possible and condemn the AfD for playing the victim, while activists would stage a new round of demonstrations “against the right.” But this is an American story, and because the headlines from the United States have made Kirk’s assassination unavoidable, they have instead chosen this shameful path. They think they can get away with it, because German journalism is a highly insular and incestuous world, and language barriers ordinarily prevent lies of this nature from traveling very far beyond our own borders.

UPDATE: A twitter friend has just brought a further case to my notice, even more egregious than the others here. Today, the WDR political satirist Florian Schroeder had the following to say in his godforsaken podcast:

Some media outlets described Charlie Kirk as a conservative. Unfortunately, that’s pretty stupid. Many true conservatives still haven’t realised that they would be the first victims of extremists like Kirk. These world-weary conservatives come across as people who probably would’ve cried if Stauffenberg’s assassination plot had succeeded. Their argument is that the victim was someone who inspired young people; and besides, Kirk at least discussed things with his opponents, so he can’t have been a right-wing extremist. But that’s exactly why he is. Because extremists discuss things too. By pretending to talk to those they disagree with and spouting the same old tired arguments, they can then present themselves as champions of freedom of expression.

So, Kirk is Hitler, his assassin is a successful Claus von Stauffenberg, who has saved these tiresome “conservatives” from being Kirk’s “first victims.” All this nonsense just openly propagated by a German state media broadcasting operation.

1. Reichinnek appears to be referencing the 10 September shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado, which left two students wounded and the shooter, Desmond Holly, dead by suicide. While regrettable, this crime would not meet any reasonable definition of a “massacre.”