MAGA Finds Its George Floyd

"During the summer of 2020, when protests convulsed cities around the world, one of the most striking scenes took place outside a library in a wealthy Maryland suburb. Eight days after George Floyd was killed, hundreds of white people-masked yet packed together-assembled in Bethesda with banners that read I can't breathe. Then they thrust their hands to the sky and prayed, vowing to renounce the "white privilege" that marked them like original sin."

"For many on the left, Floyd's asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world's failings and, in so doing, cleared a path to fix them. In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk's assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd's death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk's name to advance illiberal aims"

Large public rituals and memorials followed high-profile deaths, with participants adopting symbolic gestures, ritual clothing, and pilgrimages. George Floyd's death prompted widespread displays of remorse, ritual kneeling, and efforts to sanctify his memory, including elaborate burials and sites of pilgrimage. The left often framed Floyd as a Christlike figure whose death embodied systemic injustice. On the right, Charlie Kirk's assassination triggered parallel martyr-making, with his name used to mobilize supporters and justify illiberal measures. Other killings, such as Iryna Zarutska's, were quickly appropriated for political memorialization and contestation.

Read at The Atlantic