A pastor on German state media has compared those critical of the media portrayals of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk to the “Devil”.
Since the assassination of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University earlier this month, German media has been awash in negative and often fabricated depictions of the 31-year-old free speech campaigner. This has included public broadcaster ZDF branding Kirk’s positions as “racist” and “misogynistic”, all without providing evidence for such claims.
The deeply biased depictions of Kirk in the German press have drawn heavy criticism at both home and abroad, and could potentially result in the revocation of ZDF journalist Elmar Theveßen’s visa to the United States after he falsely claimed that Kirk wanted to stone gay people to death and accused White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller of having views akin to Nazi Germany.
Rather than admonish those in the press for spreading demonstrably false or biased interpretations about Kirk, prominent protestant pastor Annette Behnken focussed on people who have criticised the media after Kirk’s killing.
Behnken, who hosts the Wort zum Sonntag (Word on Sunday) Christian series on the ARD public television network, lamented that the world is full of “poison”. This poison, she said, has spread throughout everyday life and “is called hate, incitement, and lies.”
She said that one manifestation of this poison is when “a right-wing radical racist is trivialised as a conservative who has inspired the youth.”
“And now it becomes even more absurd,” the pastor continued: “just saying what is, leads to the insinuation that one justifies a murder. This is the total twist. Diabolos. That’s what the Bible calls the Devil.”
The heated rhetoric against Kirk was not contained to the ARD airwaves on Sunday. Indeed, German news magazine Der Spiegel characterised the memorial as a “funeral service for a right-wing extremist”.
Meanwhile, Bibiana Barth, a presenter for the public Tagesschau 24 tv station, suggested that Kirk was responsible for his own death because he advocated for gun rights in the United States.
Commenting on the negative coverage of the Kirk memorial, former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell said: “The European media has failed the people for decades with their constant Left wing propaganda. America has beaten the radical Left media by exposing them. It’s time for Europeans to wake up and do the same.”
Die Welt columnist Harald Martenstein also condemned the press coverage of of Kirk’s killing, writing: “The murder of Charlie Kirk reveals a deep moral depravity among certain left-wing journalists: They spread lies to somehow justify the crime. They show compassion only for their own kind and for those whose suffering can be exploited for political gain.”
“Anyone who cannot forget political differences for a while even in the face of death and react humanely is morally bankrupt. Among other things, Kirk was attacked by violent fantasies against homosexuals. Anyone who even throws invented slander at murdered persons in order to make the murder somehow seem justified (for what else?), is no longer far from complicity,” he added.
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