The Left’s Manson Family Values Meet Jihad

A Short Take On Charlie Manson, Charlie Hebdo, and Charlie Kirk.

The Left has been edging ever so closely to something that looks a lot like the Manson Family for a while now. I’ve been writing about it as kind of a joke. I remember being a kid, just four years old, when the Manson story broke. I lived in Topanga, so it was in the neighborhood.

I remember how everything changed after that. It was like society suddenly realized we needed seatbelts because things were spiraling out of control in ways we couldn’t even imagine. 1969, they say, ended the ’60s, but a long decade followed before Ronald Reagan arrived and America was transformed.

But something different is emerging now. It’s not just wild-eyed, crazy women. There’s rising violence. There’s talk of Sharia law. There’s a newly emboldened masculine force filling a vacuum.

The embodiment of both might be Hasan Piker, who has the charisma of Charles Manson and is building a cult of freaks who love how he mocked the death of Charlie Kirk with the song “We Are Charlie Kirk.” In this compilation video of the freaks on TikTok, you can see how often they echo his viral moment.

There is something eerily familiar and unsettling about making fun of a horrific murder that reminds me of the Manson Family, how they slaughtered all of those people and laughed about it. Manson conditioned them to dehumanize their enemies, so killing them was as easy as cutting through a watermelon.

Things have changed. Watching Republicans like Ted Cruz speak of Sharia law and jihad feels like he’s talking about how things used to be, not how they are now, where entire generations don’t even know to be afraid of it.

Back in 2015, radical jihadists burst into the Parisian newspaper Charlie Hebdo and massacred 17 people in all, including those they killed on the street. Why? Because the satirical cartoons mocked Muhammad, and that was, to them, blasphemy worthy of death.

Even though the act of terrorism was condemned widely on the Left and the Right back then, it didn’t become something we talked about. 9/11 was way in the past. It was a new day, and criticizing terrorists was seen as “Islamophobic.” There were even some who sympathized with the terrorists because of their beliefs.

The brats on YouTube celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk certainly don’t remember Charlie Hebdo, the Manson murders, or even 9/11. They’ve been told only to fear Donald Trump for most of their young lives.

They were raised to believe that this country’s racist infestation prevents all of their sacred groups from fair representation. They run around saying “Queers for Palestine” and acting like Islam isn’t a backward religion that oppresses speech, women’s rights, and barely educates young people. Not every country, of course, but enough of them to pay attention to what might happen here.

I just wonder, did you ever think it would come to this? I didn’t. I remember the vacant, zombie-like stare of the Manson girls and I thought I’d never see it again. Until now.