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Trump’s Shock Doctrine: Exploiting Kirk’s Killing to Crush the Left and the Media [1]
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Date: 2025-09-19
In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and his allies are insisting — without a shred of evidence — that a vast left-wing conspiracy are plotting violent attacks in this country. Naomi Klein, in her book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” popularized the term “shock doctrine” -- based on the economic term “shock therapy” -- theorized that in times of war, political turmoil, natural disasters, and one might add, assassinations, right wing forces will push forward their agenda, regardless of how unpopular it may be.
After 9/11, for instance, the Bush administration launched a perpetual War on Terror; after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans lost public schools and hospitals while tens of thousands of Black residents were displaced. Trump’s narrative now risks becoming another such shock, weaponized to expand repression under the guise of security.
The overwhelming evidence about the initiation of violent acts, tells a different story. The vast majority of violent incidents in this country are spearheaded by right wing extremists. Instead of dealing with this fact, Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice quickly removed a study that documented that far-right attacks outpace all other forms of terrorism and extremist violence. The cover-up is itself proof that the administration is more interested in weaponizing fear than facing reality.
According to The Daily Beast’s Julia Ornedo. “A June 2024 study on domestic extremism by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency under the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, began by noting that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States.” (
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doj-quietly-scrubs-study-on-far-right-attacks-after-kirk-shooting/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email).
A piece at the Zeteo Substack was headlined “Vance Says It’s a ‘Statistical Fact’ the Left Commits Most Political Violence. The Actual Stats Show He’s Lying” (
https://zeteo.com/p/jd-vance-political-violence?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2325511&post_id=173795246&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=13nl8&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email).
According to Trump, in order to prevent further violent attacks, the left, liberals and the Democratic Party need to be investigated, prosecuted and destroyed. The administration is in the process of gearing up for a major crackdown on left-wing dissent; naming names, and labeling enemies domestic terrorists, with the intention of prosecuting them.
In a story on her Substack headlined "A Vast Domestic Terror Movement: Trump Prepares to Dismantle the Left,” Laura Jedeed pointed out that the administration’s intentions were expressed unequivocally during “three media events the Trump administration participated in the past few days: JD Vance took over as host for the Charlie Kirk show (
https://www.youtube.com/live/ngofqx9EfcM?t=3040s. Trump answered questions in the Oval Office after sending the National Guard to Memphis (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_LtxihxBAc). And Pam Bondi made an hour-ling appearance on Katie Miller’s new podcast” (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LRPHxSrLTE&t=2178s).
Jedeed noted that “Quotes from all three of these appearances are circulating around the Internet, and any single one could be mistaken for yet another out-of-pocket threat that will be forgotten by tomorrow. Taken together, however, the messages appear both clear and coordinated: they are saying the same thing using similar words in response to similar questions. To say that message is grim would be an understatement. We are in a new kind of danger, and once that danger arrives it is likely to move fast.”
As Naomi Klein observed in a 2017 interview with The Progressive magazine, Trump functioned as “a rolling shock,” manufacturing daily outrages to keep the nation reeling. In May of this year, Klein writing with Astra Taylor in The Guardian piece headlined, “The rise of end times fascism,” warned that “The governing ideology of the far-right in our age of escalating disasters, has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.”
In a May interview with Rolling Stone, Klein pointed out that “The shocks are not surprises anymore. The shocks come continuously.”
In order for the Trump to thrive, it must tamp down or completely eliminate opposition voices. The murder of Charlie Kirk has opened up the field to new and vituperative attacks on the left, liberals and the Democratic Party. These moves are not about healing the country or stemming political violence, they are about sowing fear, silencing opposition voices, and consolidating power, the very pattern Klein has long warned would accompany every new shock.
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