{"id":26072,"date":"2025-09-18T20:16:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T17:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=26072"},"modified":"2025-09-18T20:16:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T17:16:53","slug":"martyrs-of-freedom-of-speech-from-nazi-horst-wessel-to-far-right-charlie-kirk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=26072","title":{"rendered":"Martyrs of Freedom of Speech: From Nazi Horst Wessel to Far-Right Charlie Kirk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old far-right MAGA influencer in the US, was shot dead on Wednesday during a speech at a university in Utah, the backlash was immediate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Donald Trump, a close ally of his, ordered flags to be flown at half-staff, radical pastors called him \u201ca modern-day Martin Luther King,\u201d and an Orthodox rabbi called him \u201cthe Abraham of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in many corners of the internet, a different name appeared: that of Nazi Horst Wessel. Within hours of Kirk\u2019s death, some began comparing him to Wessel, a shadowy figure still worshipped by neo-Nazis today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wessel was a member of the Brownshirts and known for his violence. His life, which ended prematurely in 1930, was the subject of propaganda by Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party, who portrayed him as a “martyr” of Nazi propaganda even though the murder was likely the result of a feud between the Nazi Wessel and his landlady – who, faced with the threat of losing her home, turned to local communists for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wessel’s death was instrumentalized by Adolf Hitler and his party to justify violence against their political opponents, with his supposed “canonization” rallying new devotees around the Third Reich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparisons between the two (Kirk and Wessel) came from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Some on the far left have warned that Trump could use Kirk\u2019s death to consolidate his power, just as Hitler did with Wessel\u2019s. At the same time, Wessel\u2019s name remains revered in neo-Nazi circles, where his invocation has a darker meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wessel, the son of a pastor, was born in 1907 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was the eldest of three children and joined a right-wing youth group in his teens. At 19, he enrolled in university to study law, but a few years later he dropped out to devote himself to the Nazi machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201ccharismatic member\u201d of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, according to Daniel Siemens, professor of European History at Newcastle University and author of The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Wessel became famous for persuading workers to join the Nazi Party. \u201cHe was essentially a good \u2018mediator\u2019 between the traditional conservative leaders and the theoretic Nazis,\u201d said Siemens. \u201cAnd that made him particularly useful after his death, as someone who could unite and bring people together even from the grave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The circumstances of his death in 1930, at the age of 22, are not entirely clear, but according to Siemens, it is confirmed that he was probably killed by a group of communists after a dispute over unpaid rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his murder, Wessel was declared a Nazi propaganda martyr. His public funeral gathered 30,000 people who collectively mourned the loss of the Nazi, while a poem he had published in the newspaper Der Angriff (page 38, Berlin, September 23, 1929, publisher Joseph Goebbels), Die Fahne hoch (High the Flag), was set to music to become the first Nazi march to be released on record (1930), and countless arrangements were made, including a quartet for mandolin, solo guitar, harmonica, accordion, and many arrangements for vocal ensembles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song became so popular that it became the second anthem of Germany since 1933, along with the first verse of the German anthem, and the anthem of the Assault Battalions – with the fall of the Nazi regime and to this day, the recitation and melody of the song have been banned in Germany and Austria, while various variations and foreign versions have emerged in European countries, such as the Greek version of Golden Dawn, the English, the French and the Italian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wessel\u2019s life was made into a movie, books were published about his \u201cmyth,\u201d and his murder was used by Hitler and the Nazi party to launch even more brutal policies of extermination of their opponents. In fact, Wessel proved to be more useful to Nazi ideology dead than alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Kirk is not described as a Nazi but as a hard-line Christian who defended a pure, White America, there is concern that his death could be politicized by Trump in the same way that Wessel\u2019s death was instrumentalized by Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concern is that Trump could present Kirk as evidence that conservative Christians are under attack, just as Hitler used Wessel\u2019s story to rally his Nazi base. Already, pastors and politicians have called Kirk a MAGA martyr. One Oklahoma pastor said, \u201cCharlie died for what he believed in. He died for something bigger than himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a videotaped address from the Oval Office, Trump accused liberal rhetoric of fueling violence, saying that some \u201chave compared great Americans like Charlie to Nazis,\u201d which he called \u201cdirectly responsible for the terrorism we see in our country today.\u201d Trump then vowed to target groups that fund or support such attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the far right, Wessel is a name that today\u2019s neo-Nazis know all too well. In these circles, Wessel is considered a \u201cgood Nazi.\u201d For them, he is a figure who glorifies and elevates Nazi ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The similarities are not so much in the men themselves but in how their deaths are used<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wessel was comfortable with violence and organized an attack on the local Communist Party offices that injured four people. Whereas Kirk\u2019s rhetoric, while aggressive\u2014he denounced immigrants, \u201cgender ideology,\u201d and \u201cglobal elites\u201d\u2014operated within a democratic system and advocated \u201cpolitical confrontation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there are similarities, not so much in the men themselves, but in how their deaths are used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that more Americans seem to be familiar with Wessel now tells us indirectly that there is a growing admiration for these figures, and perhaps even for the entire Nazi ideology as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hasty invocation of Wessel reflects two realities. On the Right, there is a dangerous willingness among some extremists to glorify Nazi symbols. On the Left, there is a fear that Kirk’s death will be used to erode civil liberties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our advice is that every American should stay away from such phenomena. They should only engage in political discussions and dialogue, and not in this mixture of political radicalism that activates violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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