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Episode 95 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- If Books Could Kill Crossover: The Murder of Charlie Kirk (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-18 21:15:14
Imported:
2026-09

Downloads

Content

"Moira!" "Adrian!" "What do you know about the killing of Charlie Kirk?" "All I know is I'm glad we're now hearing from the people who have been most consistent in condemning political violence."

In this special emergency crossover episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri of If Books Could Kill to dissect and analyze the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025. Well before the identity of the shooter became clear, the right seized on the assassination as an excuse for an increasingly broad crackdown on speech and groups they didn't like -- including (shortly after we finished taping this) late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Why are mainstream publications furiously retconning who Charlie Kirk was? Why are conservatives describing the moment as their "Reichstag Fire"? How did trans people end up (yet again) at the center of this news cycle?

Comments

Heidi Vee

These are exactly all the people I’ve wanted to hear talk about this!

Kai

As a trans person who has been exhaustingly and unfortunately glued to the news about this, can't wait to hear all my favorite comfort podcasters talk about it

Josie Fear

This is my dream collab. Maybe just add Matt Bernstein into the mix next time too.

Michael Pezzulo

I read that the "Hey, Fascist, catch this!" was not anti-fascist, but a reference to a video game wherin the line denotes nuking a fascist, yes, but the player is also in the role of some other kind of fascist. Will try to dig up a link.

Cara

Have truly been waiting for this. Thank you all for your service!!

catalina neacsu

This week has been insane, thank you for this <3

SPUM

Only cowards bleep themselves behind a paywall!

Vivienne Joy

Was actively listening to IBWTR when the news broke and nearly immediately thought “well, I hope they cover this.” have had some crazy conversations in my personal life on the topic and am interested to hear your analysis

Ames Wilson

I get that We Live in a Society, and We’d All Like to Stay Employed, but I was kind of surprised this episode stopped at an “employment law” analysis, and didn’t dig into the gender/race angles around Gretchen Felker-Martin and Karen Attiah’s firings, vs Matthew Dowd.

David in Brooklyn

It's weird for the Right to call this their "Reichstag fire" moment. For them to say that is to identify themselves directly with the NSDAP, no? It seems to indicate either massive historical ignorance, a guilty conscience, or both. Also, there's some evidence that members of the SA provided the kerosene for the fire, perhaps even set it off themselves, placed van der Lubbe in the building (he'd been in an infirmary), then got out before the police arrived. Based on what he told the police, van der Lubbe didn't even realize what building he'd been in--he seemed to think it was a cathedral or a church. Certainly not all historians agree that the SA was involved, but the evidence is more than mere speculation, and some major names in the field such as the late William Shirer and Benjamin Carter Hett have written that the "lone arsonist" theory shouldn't be so easily believed. [edited later to add: I wrote the above before hearing the episode. I didn't expect you to support the view that the fire was set by, or at least with substantial help from, the Nazis, since most published accounts of the fire don't take that position. Some of the evidence for it has emerged relatively recently and there is probably more to be discovered. It may seem strange, but even with the enormous amount of research and writing that has been done on the Nazi era, previously unknown information continues to turn up, and even something this important isn't settled yet.] [and now that I have heard the episode, many thanks for it! What the four of you had to say really helped, unlike a lot of other "takes" I've heard this past week.]

Greg

Yeah, it's a Helldivers 2 reference.

Sally

This is like Traitors but for my favorite podcasts

Lyss

Oh the sweet relief of sanity! Thank you all!

Cheyenne Montgomery

I think Ezra Klein is just working really hard to make it into the - if books could kill worst takes of 2025 episode. So much competition

Heidi Vee

Bleeping the credits at the end was very funny

Zee G

i regret to inform you that while bluesky may have been serious and respectful, over on tumblr we were posting crab rave 😔

Lauren Weinberg

As many have pointed out, DC Comics is still selling titles by Neil Gaiman and other cis men who have engaged in violent *behavior*!

Don Olmstead

Missed opportunity to open with “Adrian” “Moira. What do you know about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Then bleep the answer. Great episode

Jimjam

I’m also seeing quite a lot of ‘baking’ that the texts discord etc are made up by fbi becuase they read weird. Mainly on tumblr which tbh is all where i see most of the strange takes that Luigi isn’t the real killer etc

Jimjam

Slightly ashamed to admit that I hadn’t realised the alleged shooter is actually vaguely liberal… have been somewhat avoiding mainstream news articles about it because I rly don’t wanna see people pretending this guy was anything other than basically a facist but has left me kinda out of the loop as to what the actual known facts are. So thanks for doing this episode

abortland

Feeling personally victimized as a leftist meathead 🏋️‍♀️ (also, I’ve been subbed here for a while but the discord link I received forever ago was broken—does anyone have the link?)

Lillian McGuire

I think GFM's case is a little different because she has made her name as a Twitter provocateur and edgelord for years (e g. praising bin laden for doing 9/11). Likely she was already on thin ice with DC.

Ames Wilson

I re-listened today, and have to double down on my disappointment with how this segment handled Gretchen Felker-Martin’s firing. It wasn’t just lacking a substantive gender analysis, it failed to even name her gender. The segment never used pronouns for Gretchen, or mentioned that she’s trans. And that joke about “keep [these kinds of hot takes] on your phone…where you keep your child pornography” — was that meant to satirize the common transphobic trope linking trans people to predatory behavior? Meanwhile, the architects of Project 2025 are openly calling for the FBI to designate opposition to anti-trans policies as domestic terrorism. Ken Klippenstein is reporting that sources in the FBI say they’re poised to do just that. People who hate trans people (particularly trans femmes) are weaponizing Kirk’s murder to advance their long-standing goal of eliminating trans people from public life. I know this pod has been outspoken about trans rights, so I’m assuming these omissions were not intentional. But, to quote Adrian in the first Project 1933 episode: “the regime does not require your cooperation at this point. It just requires you to do nothing.”

Ames Wilson

I would argue that makes her firing over less incendiary comments even more noteworthy

Ellis

I'm disappointed by this episode. I think it's wrong and unhelpful to say people who are glad that Kirk is dead are sociopaths. That's just not true and flattens a complex emotional reaction. Many people who Kirk was tormenting and calling for violence against understandably feel relief knowing he's no longer here. That's not being a sociopath, and if you can't see that, you're really lacking empathy for the marginalised people he attacked. You mention Goebbels, which I think is a reasonable comparison. If he had been assassinated, and you were telling us about it, like in one of the Project 1933 episodes or something, would you surround it with "obviously he didn't deserve that and anyone who's glad that Goebbels was killed is a bad person"? To me, that's what it felt like you were saying at times in this episode. I'm sorry to be so critical. I'm usually a big fan, of both IBWTR and IBCK, but I just feel this episode was dismissive of the reasonable feelings of people on the sharp end of Kirk's hate.

Brian

This is an important omission and thank you for bringing it up! I would like to say that the child porn joke was clearly (to me) a reference to the guy who was arrested (covered at the start of the episode) who told the feds he had stuff on his phone, and they found child porn, which Michael joked about then. An unfortunate coincidence that I assume Michael would undo if he could. Oh no, so many commas and parenthesis in that. Am I turning into TCW? At least I’m not getting paid for this poor writing.

JanaKat

Good on Moira for speaking openly about the asymmetry of permission - that's a term I will remember. As a trans person in the US it's hard to express how grim things are right now. Most of us who cannot leave expect institutionalization, imprisonment, even death - we're just waiting for the hammer to come down. Even in blue states a lot of governors have shown willingness to throw minorities under the bus. And with so many Democrats and liberal institutional voices now lauding or defending Charlie Kirk, it's hard to imagine anyone caring enough to save us. There are 2.5 million of us in the entire US - a perfectly Holocaust sized number, if the Republicans decided to go full Hitler. Who will stand up for us when we don't have the numbers, let alone the wealth or influence? How will we survive without support from public officials, when even our supposed allies fawn over someone who wished us dead?

JanaKat

I kind of have to agree with this unfortunately. I think the CSAM joke was a reference back to the guy who got arrested right after the Kirk shooting, but it still felt pretty inappropriate. Re Felker-Martin herself... I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan's death when I was a kid. I was on some forum and posted something generic about how I disagreed with him on everything politically but he still deserved respect as a former President. Someone immediately replied to the effect that victims of the Contras would probably disagree. I think a lot about that these days. It just feels like the Kirk shooting has set us back a couple decades on civility discourse, you know? Also worth mentioning: DC Comics didn't just cancel Felker-Martin's series, they removed it from online stores and completely stopped printing or selling it. What they have not done so for are any of Neil Gaiman's works, despite Gaiman being a literal serial rapist. There's our asymmetry of permission again.

Kate Falvey

in agreement with this, one should not celebrate the fact that *Kirk was politically murdered,* for all the obvious reasons. But there is nothing wrong with celebrating the fact that, as Ellis put it, *Kirk is no longer here,* for the reasons Ellis cites.

Adasah Sagol

Holy hell, the handling of Gretchen Felker-Martin's comment was NOT okay and SO FAR below the standard I've come to expect of this show. no discussion of queerness AT ALL, let alone that she's one of the *most celebrated voices* amongst trans women with modern media success?? The child porn joke was an *insane* follow-up that needed to be edited out. that was incredibly offensive. I understand what the child porn joke was referencing, but maybe recognize what the impact is of making jokes about child pornography adjacent to a trans woman getting fired for her comments against someone who directly harmed her community. Us trans women have to fight off groomer accusations CONSTANTLY. Please, please do better. I've often felt like the T/GNC angle on this podcast was lacking but I mostly accepted it. I can't take another episode like this without bailing.

Vivienne Joy

After listening I will say this- I think the groyper angle is somewhat complex in that to me and people in the shooter’s immediate age range it is much more plausible/less of a leap to assume these acts of political violence are from ppl radicalized online into very heavy alt-right meme culture. I am a year older than him, and probably everyone I know knows at least one person from HS/on our college campuses who went deep into these spaces online during lockdown/online schooling when there was so little oversight of online activity, a lot of teens kind of sat at home online alone while their parents had to re-enter the work force, etc.

Vanessa Vieites

Charlie Kirk didn’t encourage healthy debate; he perverted it

Ella L

The phrase was "that this happened" - I take it to mean not just his removal from this planet, but the way it was done, and everyone that it had affected including all 3000 people who were there, and, yes, even you and what you are writing about *right now*. Just because you haven't heard from those voices that speak this way - on the *left* might I add - does not mean they don't exist. Maybe you're just not in those spaces.

Jimjam

Yeah initially I thought it was in poor taste/ bad timing but with context okayish, but seeing more comments from people and having a few more days to reflect, I think it really shouldn’t have been left in. I don’t believe Michael was being malicious but knowing from other podcasts he’s on that he is fairly well read on trans stuff, it’s disappointing.

Jimjam

Yeah a bit less contextualising and maybe a bit more, it’s completely fine to *not* feel bad this particular person dying. I get like someone else says below, more people are affected than just the one killed- and I do feel some sympathy for like people on campus sucked into this- but I think people are capable of holding both those things together you know? They’re not mutually exclusive in my mind.

rock dove

I'm late to this but I strongly agree with you. Gretchen has said elsewhere that she will never sacrifice her politics for a job. Even if people found her comments distasteful they were principled. She didn't take the easy road and put out some generic ass tweet about political violence which *might* not have gotten her fired (although her being a trans woman I think would have meant she was under more scrutiny and she possibly would've gotten fired no matter what she said). And I definitely agree with you that there was a lack of analysis on this episode on why she said what she did. I get that DC is like a huge company and wasn't going to not fire her over those comments but that doesn't mean she was in the wrong.

Katherine

Would love to hear a part 2 on Charlie Kirk, 6 months later

Leo

fuck “hes googling evocative camus quotes so he can weigh in” about chatterton williams is soooo funny