Charlie Kirk, influential right-wing commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated on September 10th. Since then, he has been made into a martyr on the right, and the Trump administration has vowed to crack down on the left, despite details about the shooter’s motivation remaining hazy. Among liberals, there has been a baffling rush to hold Kirk up as a paragon of democracy—despite his participation in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election—and to demonstrate their own grief at his death. In this episode, editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, contributing editor David Klion, assistant editor Maya Rosen, and contributor Ben Lorber, a researcher of antisemitism and white nationalism, discuss reactions to Kirk’s assassination across the political landscape, the mostly imagined specter of left violence versus the reality, the meaning of Kirk’s deification in Israel, and the ways reactions to his death have become a proxy for conversations about the genocide in Gaza.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Articles Mentioned and Further Reading

“Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” Ezra Klein, The New York Times

“How to mourn in our polarized age,” Rachel Cohen Booth, Vox

“Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster,” Ben Burgis and Meagan Day, Jacobin

“JD Vance threatens crackdown on ‘far-left’ groups after Charlie Kirk shooting,” Rachel Leingang, The Guardian

Sarah Schulman on the sublimation of the Palestinian genocide into mourning for Charlie Kirk on X

“Light Among the Nations,” Suzanne Schneider, Jewish Currents

“The Group Forging a ‘Judeo-Christian’ Zionism for the New MAGA Age,” Ben Lorber, Jewish Currents

“A Jewish clothing brand is making Charlie Kirk yarmulkes,” PJ Grisar, The Forward

“In Israel, public tributes to Charlie Kirk include a street naming, a mural and a missile in Gaza,” Grace Gilson, JTA

“The Measure of the World,” Claire Schwartz, Jewish Currents

“Since the Hamas attack, Israelis have begun arming themselves the American way,” Jonathan M. Metzel, The Los Angeles Times

Transcript forthcoming.

In this episode, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart interviews the philosopher, activist, author, and educator Angela Davis, whose writing and organizing have shaped Black liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss how Jews shaped Davis’s formative years, analyze the Jewish role in the civil rights movement, compare the campus activism of the 1960s to today’s college protests, and explore why Palestine is central to the global left.

This conversation first appeared in The Beinart Notebook on Substack.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Angela Davis

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Angela Davis

“How the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements Split on Israel,” Michael R. Fishbach, Mondoweiss

The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon

In this episode, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, editor-at-large Peter Beinart, associate editor Mari Cohen, and senior editor Nathan Goldman answer reader questions. They discuss the challenge of sustaining Jewish social reproduction outside of Zionism; the attachment to putting out a print magazine; the difficulties of comparing genocides; the discomforts of subscribing to the free Jewish children’s book service PJ Library; and the perils of regarding Zionism as a singular, unparalleled evil.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

“Reclaiming a Minor Literature,” Maya Rosen, Jewish Currents

“We Need New Jewish Institutions,” Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents

“What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Intermarriage,’” Jewish Currents staff roundtable, Jewish Currents

The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance by Shaul Magid

The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto by Daniel Boyarin

“Against Analogy,” Ben Ratskoff, Jewish Currents

“The Law Cannot Let Itself See the Nakba,” Joshua Abramson Cohen’s interview with Rabea Eghbariah, Jewish Currents

“Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors,” Sara Roy, Institute for Palestine Studies

“Can Genocide Studies Survive a Genocide in Gaza?”, Mari Cohen, Jewish Currents

Sammy Spider’s First Yom Kippur by Sylvia Rouss

“Tell PJ Library: Zionism is Not Judaism!” petition

“Rhetoric Without Reckoning,” Simone Zimmerman, Jewish Currents

“History Lesson,” Laleh Khalili, Jewish Currents

“A Logic of Elimination,” Abe Silberstein’s interview with Lorenzo Veracini on settler colonialism, Jewish Currents