martyr

He was supposed to be their very own Horst Wessel, the murdered brownshirt the Nazis used as a martyr to rally people to fascism.

Although they had already sought to mythologize in the past the supposedly noble sacrifice of Nazi activists killed in street fighting, Wessel was the first to be elevated to supreme martyr status.

If you see someone as a martyr, then opposition to their movement is not merely disagreement, it is desecration.

Republicans have been using the deplorable way Kirk was killed to rebrand him as a Christian martyr.

"Progressives may wish to paint him as a martyr; but the show goes on," she wrote.