One of these is the need for martyrs by both parties.
The Nazis found theirs in Horst Wessel (October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930).
As a teenager growing up in the Weimar Republic of Germany, he joined the Viking Liga (“Viking League”), a Right-wing paramilitary group. Its goal, wrote Wessel, was “the “establishment of a national dictatorship.”
Wessel soon became a local leader, engaging in street battles with rival Leftist groups such as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD). In 1926, he joined the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (“Storm Detachment” or SA) of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party.
Horst Wessel
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-043-14 / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
His unit had a reputation as “a band of thugs, a brutal squad.” One of his men described the way they fought against the Communists: “Horst made Adolf Hitler’s principle his own: Terror can be destroyed only by counterterror.”
In September 1929, Wessel met Erna Jänicke, a 23-year-old ex-prostitute, in a tavern. Some sources claim Wessel acted as Jänicke’s pimp. She soon moved into his room.
Wessel’s landlady, Elisabeth Salm, wanted Jänicke to leave. But Jänicke refused to do so.
Salm appealed to Communist friends of her late husband to evict Jänicke, They agreed to beat Wessel up and evict him from Salm’s flat.
On February 23, 1930, Albrecht Höhler, an armed pimp and petty criminal, knocked at Wessel’s door. When Wessel opened it, Höhler shot him dead.
He was 22 when he died.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels quickly turned Wessel into a Nazi martyr. Wessel had written the lyrics for a new Nazi fight song: “The Unknown SA-Man.” It later became known as “Raise the Flag” and finally the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
Its opening stanza.
Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA marches with calm, steady step.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
“The Horst Wessel Lied” became the official anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945.
Fast forward to September 10, 2025—when the Republican Party got its own martyr: Charlie Kirk.
Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025) was an American Right-wing political activist, entrepreneur and media personality.
He co-founded the organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012 and was its executive director. He published a range of books and hosted a talk radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show.
Charlie Kirk
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Kirk opposed gun control, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and abortion. Asked if he would support abortion for his 10-year-old daughter if she were raped, he said: “The baby would be delivered.”
Kirk spread misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and related public health measures during the pandemic. As a result, he was at least partially responsible for untold numbers of the 400,000 Americans who died of COVID during 2020, Trump’s final year in office.
He was a major promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory—that white populations in Western countries are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants, with the complicity of liberal governments.
Kirk accepted wholesale Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him by massive voter fraud. And he played a pivotal role in re-electing the 34-times convicted felon in 2024.
Donald Trump
On September 10, 2025, Kirk was shot by a sniper while speaking at a Turning Point USA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah.
The Republican party responded with outrage comparable to that expressed by the Nazis upon the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1042.
In an Oval Office address the same day as the shooting, Trump blamed the “radical Left,” even as the killer’s identity and motivation remained unknown. Totally ignored in his speech was his own role in fomenting politically motivated violence.
Trump’s high-ranking political appointees uttered similar threatening statements:
On September 15, his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, vowed to attack those who engaged in “hate speech” following Kirk’s assassination: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that is across the aisle.”
Pam Bondi
On September 15—five days after Kirk’s death–-Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast: “So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk’s death, calling that domestic terrorism:
“We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom.”
Donald Trump is clearly seeking to turn Charlie Kirk’s murder into the equivalent of that of Horst Wessel.
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THE REPUBLICANS’ LATEST HORST WESSEL
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 24, 2025 at 12:06 amLegitimate similarities abound between the tactics—and often the goals—of yesterday’s Nazis and today’s Republicans.
One of these is the need for martyrs by both parties.
The Nazis found theirs in Horst Wessel (October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930).
As a teenager growing up in the Weimar Republic of Germany, he joined the Viking Liga (“Viking League”), a Right-wing paramilitary group. Its goal, wrote Wessel, was “the “establishment of a national dictatorship.”
Wessel soon became a local leader, engaging in street battles with rival Leftist groups such as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD). In 1926, he joined the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (“Storm Detachment” or SA) of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party.
Horst Wessel
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-043-14 / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
His unit had a reputation as “a band of thugs, a brutal squad.” One of his men described the way they fought against the Communists: “Horst made Adolf Hitler’s principle his own: Terror can be destroyed only by counterterror.”
In September 1929, Wessel met Erna Jänicke, a 23-year-old ex-prostitute, in a tavern. Some sources claim Wessel acted as Jänicke’s pimp. She soon moved into his room.
Wessel’s landlady, Elisabeth Salm, wanted Jänicke to leave. But Jänicke refused to do so.
Salm appealed to Communist friends of her late husband to evict Jänicke, They agreed to beat Wessel up and evict him from Salm’s flat.
On February 23, 1930, Albrecht Höhler, an armed pimp and petty criminal, knocked at Wessel’s door. When Wessel opened it, Höhler shot him dead.
He was 22 when he died.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels quickly turned Wessel into a Nazi martyr. Wessel had written the lyrics for a new Nazi fight song: “The Unknown SA-Man.” It later became known as “Raise the Flag” and finally the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
Its opening stanza.
Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA marches with calm, steady step.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
“The Horst Wessel Lied” became the official anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945.
Fast forward to September 10, 2025—when the Republican Party got its own martyr: Charlie Kirk.
Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025) was an American Right-wing political activist, entrepreneur and media personality.
He co-founded the organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012 and was its executive director. He published a range of books and hosted a talk radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show.
Charlie Kirk
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Kirk opposed gun control, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and abortion. Asked if he would support abortion for his 10-year-old daughter if she were raped, he said: “The baby would be delivered.”
Kirk spread misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and related public health measures during the pandemic. As a result, he was at least partially responsible for untold numbers of the 400,000 Americans who died of COVID during 2020, Trump’s final year in office.
He was a major promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory—that white populations in Western countries are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants, with the complicity of liberal governments.
Kirk accepted wholesale Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him by massive voter fraud. And he played a pivotal role in re-electing the 34-times convicted felon in 2024.
Donald Trump
On September 10, 2025, Kirk was shot by a sniper while speaking at a Turning Point USA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah.
The Republican party responded with outrage comparable to that expressed by the Nazis upon the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1042.
In an Oval Office address the same day as the shooting, Trump blamed the “radical Left,” even as the killer’s identity and motivation remained unknown. Totally ignored in his speech was his own role in fomenting politically motivated violence.
Trump’s high-ranking political appointees uttered similar threatening statements:
On September 15, his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, vowed to attack those who engaged in “hate speech” following Kirk’s assassination: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie—in our society.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that is across the aisle.”
Pam Bondi
On September 15—five days after Kirk’s death–-Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast: “So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk’s death, calling that domestic terrorism:
“We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom.”
Donald Trump is clearly seeking to turn Charlie Kirk’s murder into the equivalent of that of Horst Wessel.
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