If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes. These places amplify and feed upon themselves, and can lead you to a dark place where you’d glorify this kind of death.
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
> If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
> The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
I think its interesting he basically does no rallies these days. In the first admin he was always doing rallies. Have we seen the end of Trump rallies?
I’m not sure there’s much use to “staying abreast of current events” for most people. Media (social/traditional) focuses on amping up your anxiety and putting your side against there’s. Rather than a balanced view of the details. Alarmist headlines and hand wringing tweets are engineered to anger and outrage you. It’s very hard to keep up with news while keeping your rational brain engaged.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
> If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens
Sure but I live in a few and democratic country and like to think I also have some hand in shaping the direction of society. That's gone if I live a purely reactive life.
Have never been able to believe they called a communications app Discord. It didn't hurt them but that seems like a very negative word to use as your brand.
Howard Stern noted once how people who disliked him spent more time listening to him than those who liked him.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
The point of debate is not to change the other person's mind. That's very rarely going to happen, and even less commonly immediately. The point of debate is to provide context and information that somebody may not have been aware of. The reason for this is that the views we decide to adopt are not entirely conscious. They're driven by a large number of issues that coalesce on a subconscious level, but that takes time to change.
For instance people trend more conservative as they age, but there's no real simple point where you wake up one day and like 'ok, I now officially love guns, babies, and 'Merica.' It's a very gradual process that's driven by things like life experience and the accumulation of knowledge, all processed on a subconscious level. As you age you'll find that you often will think the 'you' of 10 years ago was a naive idiot, and this never really seems to stop. Yet if the 'you' of 10 years from now talked to you today, it's unlikely he could change your mind on a single thing, even though he is literally you.
When people are young we naturally have this confidence that the views we hold must be true and just, because we are absolutely certain that they are. And so we if we just had the time and attention, we could convince anybody of their correctness, so long as they remained logical. But over time, one learns that people who may believe the exact opposite of you think the exact same thing, and it's not necessarily the case that one side must be wrong. People, no less intelligent than one another, can see the same evidence and simply come to different conclusions.
Well then his death proved Stern wrong. Soooo many people in my feeds out of seemingly nowhere talking about much they liked his videos, and that aligns with reports of how much money he made at it.
> I got flagged here on HN for stating (right as the news was breaking) that the shooter could just as likely be right wing as left
I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd. It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder. False flags really aren't that common, in general. This is the same kind of conspiratorial thinking behind Alex Jones' "crisis actors".
Also, your comment was off-topic to the sub-thread. People were discussing whether Kirk would be seen as a martyr. The ideology of the shooter has quite little to do with that.
> (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
Commentary like this is inherently obnoxious, and tends towards self-fulfilling prophecy.
> It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder.
Is the likelihood lower or higher if it already happened (at least) once last year?
Is it lower or higher if you’re aware of the hostile dynamics between TPU and at least one popular very much violence-encouraging even-farther-right influencer? Nb this group has opposed Trump for being too timidly white supremacist. Would that shift your guess at the odds?
Safe bet if you’ve been paying attention to this stuff for a few decades was about equal odds right or left winger, and maybe somewhat higher right, if the target’s a right winger (almost certainly the attacker is, if relevantly affiliated, right-affiliated if the target’s a Democrat or otherwise left) or else (in either case of political affiliation of the target) there’s fair odds of apolitical notoriety-seeking or straight up lunacy without a strong political motivation.
[edit] nb I’m not saying 100% that the guy won’t turn out to be coming from the left, but I think if you’re playing the odds on something like this and go “must be a leftist” you’ve misread the situation in this country.
It doesn't sound conspiratorial to me. It seems a lot of shooters are right wing, I guess because they like guns and the right tends to be more pro gun.
The conspiratorial thinking is jumping to an assumption of a high probability of a "false flag". In reality, the base rate of such attacks is low.
> It seems a lot of shooters are right wing
Many right-wingers would dispute the methodology behind these statistics, but that's beside the point. This information, however, is more or less rendered irrelevant by the circumstantial evidence that this was a political assassination, combined with the fact that the victim was right-wing.
> Also "just as likely be" <> "equal probability".
It quite literally means the same thing. If I flip a coin, the result is (ignoring all the standard gotchas) just as likely to be heads as tails. If I flip a coin, the probability of a heads result (ignoring all the standard gotchas) is equal to the probability of a tails result. The information content of the previous two sentences is the same.
You may be underestimating how much the Nick Fuentes aligned segment of the far-right hates the Charlie Kirk aligned segment of the far right. The recent split over the Epstein files coverup has exacerbated this.
The sine qua non of “groyperism” as it’s come to be known is total ineffectuality if not self defeatism as a political stance. How many groyper shootings have we had now? Fuentes is permitted to do his thing, unlike others who have been taken down (thank goodness!) for what seem to me to be very clear reasons.
But politically-motivated assassinations in the US are very rare, and almost exclusively lone actors (not part of a movement).
The assassination attempts (whether successful or failed) on prominent political figures in this country have almost all been carried out by people with personal reasons to want to kill them, not politically motivated killers killing people they don't agree with.
Two right-wingers can disagree with one another to pretty extreme degrees.
This is like thinking Christian-on-Christian violence over religion is implausible and claiming someone suggesting it’s in-fact plausible is being “disingenuous”—surely it can only be someone from a different faith entirely.
I would (no joke) appreciate any pointer the actual evidence for this. I’ve seen only extremely vague hearsay and a screencap of using a filter to look like a video-gameish woman so far.
[edit] I’m not setting a trap, I actually would like to see it if there’s more than that, I’m not prepping to pounce on anyone who tries to help me out here.
If you're sincere, how would you comprehensively describe the background of the shooter and his modus operandi? What sources have you used to gather this information to this point?
Here's the thing: you're posting from an eight-day-old account. Maybe you're an alt of someone I've already been speaking with. Maybe you're a cocksure but confused college student. I have no idea. But you've made an appeal and I'm not cynical. You're asking me to do your work for free, and not doing so is my prerogative, as is your ability to say what you want about me. I think if you write for a bit about this situation I'll be able to see where it's going, and if I still think you're sincere we can go from there.
I've tried to figure out what the evidence is for this and come up with extremely little. I've tried, and can't find it. A lot of people seem really confident in it. I want to read what they're reading, and I cannot find it.
[EDIT] FWIW I've yet to see anything that makes me confident enough to assign any strong and specific guess about the guy's motivations. I'm confident in "he was very online" and "he played Helldivers a lot, or at least spent a lot of time communicating with people who do" and that's about all I'd feel comfortable confidently asserting if someone asked me for the "TL;DR" on where we're at on that.
The totality of the engravings on the bullet casings is the evidence.
The only "evidence" that has connected Robinson to the left is a now-deleted Guardian article that has been parroted as evidence long after it was retracted.
What is the point of voting when gerrymandering decides the outcome? We don't have a functional voting system by any stretch of the imagination. If we did, gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing, and we'd be using ranked-choice or range-voting. So many of the right-wing states have banned these superior voting methods because they're so afraid the ones in power will lose immediately. Granted, it's true that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, but note that voting rights have unfairly been denied to many citizens, especially in right-wing states, so was it really an honest win?
Gerrymandering has no effect on votes for president or senate, and ranked choice/range voting has no impact on gerrymandering. To eliminate gerrymandering you'd need to have an at-large/seat based voting system instead of district based. In other words - instead of voting for a representative, you'd vote for a party - and the party would then fill the seats they won at their discretion. Another option is multi-member districts which is a 'softer' version of the same idea.
So was your issue with hyperbolic use of the word "literally", or are you rejecting the premise all together, because you would have to try really hard to deny that there has been an unrelenting crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in the name of "anti-semitism"?
I did not downvote you. I think people who did disagree with your claim that literally every Israel protest is banned. BTW, it is hard to understand what does "Israel protest" even means. Does it mean it is a pro Israel protest? Pro Palestinian?
I think formulating your claims better could have avoided the downvotes, and allowed others to understand what you mean exactly.
Huh? The link you posted shows that Trump condemned the shooting, calling it "horrific" and saying the shooter will prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. You're equating not flying flags at half mast, despite condemning the violence, to gloating over murder. You're trying to justify the gloating and celebration of violence and it's disgusting.
I just randomly clicked one of the professors in that list:
- "Shaviro has been suspended after he posted on Facebook that it would be better for people to kill their political opponents than to protest them. In a now-deleted post, Shaviro wrote:"
- “So here is what I think about free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”
That's straight from the website, which may or may not be accurate or true. The way it looks, is still about the way it looks given the larger context of the rest of its post.
It's particularly relevant given the recent events.
This is exactly right. People get fired over social media posts all of the time. The 1st amendment absolutely gives people the right to boycott these employers if they see fit though.
I’m not trying to make a point. I was trying to understand if it’s legal to sack someone in the US if you don’t like their views and I didn’t read your comment carefully enough.
No, you can't fire someone for their views. That's 100% illegal, but given the track record of our current Supreme Court, I don't see that being the case for long.
Yes, in general a private employer can legally fire an employee for their political views. There are exceptions in some states, including California, New York, Colorado, North Dakota, that have protections for firing by political affiliation or activities, but that's the exception to the rule. Another exception applies to any public employee, since the first amendment applies to their employer.
The default employment rule is at-will, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited. Political affiliation is not a federally protected category.
> The default employment rule is at-will employment, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited.
Even then, in practice they can fire people for prohibited reasons, as long as it can't be proven that those reasons were used. Which in practice could be very difficult.
> no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
And what does your article — which basically just establishes "Trump doesn't like Tim Walz and didn't consider Hortman's case as important" — have to do with that?
If you're referring to Senator Mike Lee's comment, I don't think it's anything of the sort. It comes across to me that Lee was speculating that the murderer was a "Marxist" (i.e., anyone he would consider more radical than Hortman). Political football, and offensive, sure. But not the same kind of thing. Besides which, can Senators be "fired"?
> Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
Well, gee, it sorta seems like that kind of behavior would be more prevalent when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Did Melissa Hortman say such things?
Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Because if she didn't say stuff like that, then it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
"Great Replacement Theory" is an inherently racist ideology that ignores (in the context of the US) multiple centuries of history in favor of an idea that there's an "other" that is going to replace "real Americans." It is, perhaps, a stretch to claim that the organization he founded promoted bigotry, hate, or the superiority of a particular race... But it's not much of a stretch when the organization's founder and leader is making easily-verified racist statements such as this one.
> Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
In general, I haven't seen people making the hard assertion online that his words justified his death and I would agree with you. But I have seen plenty of "I don't think Charlie Kirk should have died, but the philosophy Charlie Kirk espoused shouldn't care if Charlie Kirk died" and I don't think I can argue with that assessment of the legacy of his work.
> "Great Replacement Theory" is an inherently racist ideology
No, it is neither racist (edit: as described by Kirk) nor an ideology.
It's an accusation about the intentions of others, in a "the purpose of a system is what it does" kind of way (faulty logic — as I've argued on HN before — but not bigoted), based on observing demographic trends, the rate of immigration etc.
It is deeply conspiratorial thinking, but it does not claim that the people being "replaced" are inherently superior. Thus it is not racist even if we establish that the ingroup-outgroup distinction is racial, which already requires a quite broad conception of "race". (And Americans really are strange about that, in my opinion. There have been multiple occasions where I have been told that Americans generally consider a specific person to be "black" and I have deeply struggled to understand how that could be.)
It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that the existing population of a country has a greater right to continue to exist on that land, and for their offspring to live there, than those who are petitioning from abroad to live there. In fact, it's hard to argue that a legitimate nation exists, in a place that lacks a government trusted to determine questions of citizenship. Besides which, one individual's use of a term does not necessarily carry every other user's intent.
In brief, Kirk never argued that someone should be extradited, or lose citizenship, on the basis of race. Nor does that argument follow from anything he said.
And note that you have not at all addressed the point about "words that support killing people".
> In general, I haven't seen people making the hard assertion online that his words justified his death
I have been shown many people outright celebrating. This is not something that can be feasibly done by someone who has normal psychological aversion to death and doesn't consider the death justified.
> But I have seen plenty of "I don't think Charlie Kirk should have died, but the philosophy Charlie Kirk espoused shouldn't care if Charlie Kirk died"
I've seen plenty of messages that included the second part without the first part. But regardless, this reflects a plain misunderstanding of that philosophy.
Again, no pro-killing ideology here, outside of e.g. support for potentially-lethal police force to apprehend criminals in the act.
Kirk didn't advocate for merely an armed police force; he advocated for an armed citizenry. And he made clear his belief that the purpose of arming that citizenry is to fight the police if they try to impose tyranny. "The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government."
We don't yet know the motives of his killer, but it may be worth observing that it is an unfortunate consequence of Kirk's philosophy of liberty that, since nobody controls who the citizens define as part of the "tyranny," a so-armed individual can, of their own free will, conclude that the man who (by his own claims) was instrumental in electing a tyrant, supports that tyrant, is clearly in the inner circle of that tyrant (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33r4kjez6no)... Is someone who needs to die.
Personally, I think that's repugnant and I hope the person who took the law into their own hands is constrained from further harming this society indefinitely. But I don't agree with Kirk's philosophy on the purpose, origins, or nature of the Second Amendment.
> And he made clear his belief that the purpose of arming that citizenry is to fight the police if they try to impose tyranny. "The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government."
(emphasis mine)
Well, yes. Those are not "words that support killing people". You might as well say that countries that own nuclear weapons thereby demonstrate intent to eradicate life on Earth. The intended deterrence game theory is much the same.
> nobody controls who the citizens define as part of the "tyranny,"
This line of argumentation proves far too much. All definitions are subjective in this manner.
> But I don't agree with Kirk's philosophy on the purpose, origins, or nature of the Second Amendment.
To my understanding (I quickly searched up https://govfacts.org/history/the-history-behind-the-second-a... and by a quick read it seems to align with what I understood of the history) this is not simply "Kirk's philosophy", but something the Founders (and other political thinkers of the time) were explicit about.
GRT is racist because it's essential premise is that America belongs to white people, who are not the "existing population of [the] country" in any objective sense independent of racist ideology. GRTs do not care how long you have been in the US; they only care if you are white. (So people with indigenous ancestry and the great great grandchildren of slaves can go take a hike.)
Murder and political assassination are deeply wrong, but are you sure you really want to go down the rabbit hole of GRT apologism to make your point about that?
> GRT is racist because it's essential premise is that America belongs to white people, who are not the "existing population of [the] country" in any objective sense independent of racist ideology. GRTs do not care how long you have been in the US; they only care if you are white. (So people with indigenous ancestry and the great great grandchildren of slaves can go take a hike.)
Feel free to show me the part where Kirk macro-expanded the thought and asserted anything about whiteness having anything to do with a legitimate claim to residency.
I don't think he has said anything like that.
Part of the reason I don't think he has is that I was literally just watching an extended clip in which he directly addressed a legal Mexican immigrant and asserted unequivocally that the distinction he intended to draw was not based on race or nationality, but on following the immigration rules.
> are you sure you really want to go down the rabbit hole of GRT apologism
The large majority of people I have seen labelled as subscribing to this theory had, upon examination, views like Kirk's, and not ones consistent with racial supremacy. If you're going to say that the theory requires such an attitude, then you are not working with the same definitions as the person ascribing the theory to Kirk, assuming intellectual honesty. I responded to a person using a definition compatible with Kirk's ideology, using arguments compatible with what the evidence says about Kirk's ideology. To conflate this is to commit the "worst argument in the world" i.e. the noncentral fallacy (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...).
Edit: I find it rather amazing that someone managed to downvote me in less time than it would have taken to read and properly understand the comment. My understanding is that downvotes are not available downthread when you're having a back-and-forth, so this must have come from a third party that somehow happened to come across this immediately, 8 comments deep.
@zahlman your responses here are amazing and really articulate. I sincerely appreciate the effort. Thanks!
Most people around the world who are criticizing Charlie’s philosophy and beliefs have never watched a long form interview with him. Probably picked up a few sound bites or clips from here and there. Also there are many who are blinded by hatred towards him, to the point that they are drawing comparisons between him and Hitler. So it is hard to get through to such people.
As someone with Jewish ancestry it is difficult and saddening to see this dilution.
Nevertheless once again I appreciate your responses in this thread!
BTW we don't have @-pings here; I found this reviewing my own comment history. Also, it appears that your comments are being automatically filtered. I don't see especially good reasons for this (although it's clear you've made a throwaway for this specific topic and you're getting a lot of downvotes); consider emailing [email protected] about it.
presumably she implicitly believes in tradeoffs because she hasn't campaigned to remove all motor vehicles from the road. surely, anyone arguing that cars should be allowed on the road when they are one of the leading causes of deaths is irredeemably evil and deserves to be mocked if they have the misfortune of dying in a car accident. Also, if Minnesota executed people for traffic violations then Hortman would not have been killed by Boetler. Surely, this means she is a hypocrite because she would not support such a policy.
Cancel culture in a nutshell. The far-right can say whatever it wants, but if you call it out on it, you'll be removed for creating social disharmony.
Meanwhile, a Fox news anchor has called for the mass murder of homeless people yesterday.
He still has his job, but he did apologize for saying the quiet part out loud. None of the other talking heads behind the table with him even said a word against him.
Well the way this works is, if you're a customer of a company, you get to threaten to stop being a custom of that company. I doubt you're an avid Fox News fan, so unfortunately you don't have much voice in this situation.
I’m starting to think cancel culture isn’t about regulating behavior or speech and is just about abusing power to punish people. Both sides have used it the last 25 years and both sides have complained about it as an abuse of power when they’ve been on the receiving end.
Perhaps we should focus more on learning and growing and healing than punishment?
> I’m starting to think cancel culture isn’t about regulating behavior or speech and is just about abusing power to punish people.
One of the news sites showed a clip of the guy himself expressing support for people to be allowed to say outrageous or egregious things. One would think supporters of what the guy said would be more tolerant, instead, I think you hit closer to the truth of the matter.
The backlash for saying negative things about a guy who spread discord, divisiveness and hate vs the collective "shrug" towards negative things when the same happens to a health care CEO; highlights what it's really about.
Importantly, it isn't even both sides. Social media pushes people towards this sort of "this guy sucks lets hurt him" outcome. Bean Dad getting shit all over on tiktok is the same impulse. In my mind where we do see a difference is in the willingness of politicians within the GOP to advocate for significant legal consequences in these situations.
Stephen King made the mistake of chiming in on X then having to apologize.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
The things is... The things said do have consequences. Stochastic terrorism is real. Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
The statistics are bloodless, when attempting to dismiss them in the abstract. “Bloodless” modified “statistics”. That the real thing is not bloodless ever was the point, I believe.
Agreed the above are not the same thing. Independent of what Kirk was saying at the time, he has also said "I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal." In other words, some people are expendable (for a greater good).
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
I have read one page into your responses in threads on HN and found no clarification as to how my rephrasing misses the point.
I respect your lack of desire to engage on the topic and will not ask it of you, but FWIW: if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)... You are not.
> if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings
He did make that assertion.
> (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)
If the people who will be the "some gun deaths every single year" aren't expendable, what are they? Because it sounds like they're the ones we spend to buy the freedoms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As Kirk said in 2023, "Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty." If you're paying human lives for something, those lives are expendable by definition. Etymology of the word: Latin, expendere, "to pay out, weigh out."
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.
... Yes. That's the "expendable" ones: the people we're willing to sacrifice in exchange for enjoying the benefits of owning cars and household cleaners.
Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
Almost everyone believes that it is just and right that American homeowners can own cars and household cleaners. You would never comment at someone's funeral that the deceased thought that children killed in car accidents or by accidental poisoning were "expendable".
If a city mayor opposed to public transit projects or bike lanes were to get run over by a hitman, I can't fathom that you would be making the same argument.
> Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
No. He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue. This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
For what it's worth, I am actually aware of a funeral where the priest digressed into the idea that the deceased died on a road where people are known to drive recklessly and this is the expected outcome of that behavior, and prayed that the city would take the necessary steps to make that road safer so that we had fewer funerals like this one. It did not go over well with the congregation. ;) Mourners usually want to focus on the individual, not how that individual fits into a larger societal structure.
> He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue.
Right, you get it.
> This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
... You were so close to getting it. Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class. When the whole point of object oriented programming is that we can make sweeping changes to the behavior of instances with relatively small modifications to the class.
The class is policy. The instances are deaths.
Kirk was not only satisfied with but advocated for the current structure of the "GunRights" class. Then someone operating under the rules of an instance of that class killed him.
It's not right that he's dead. It's not right that any of the victims of gun violence at the hands of strangers died. But in Kirk's case, one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused. It's just usually other people paying the price for his philosophy, not him.
(Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
> Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class.
No, it is not.
> one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused.
No, one must not observe that, because his death was neither predictable (unless you think the "hex" Jezebel placed on him was real and effective) nor a consequence. You are looking at a policy enabling an act (one which existed literally for centuries before Kirk's argument), and saying that this is the same as a political philosophy causing that act.
> (Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
If you are not arguing cause, then you should not use the words "predictable consequence" in reference to a specific incident, because that is equivalent to arguing cause.
I am surprised, because I don't understand what you think the words mean.
A man argues that we don't need to salt roads in the winter. Argues it for years. Argues that nature takes care of roads and that actually it's important we leave them in their natural state. When people note that means people will die driving in icy road conditions, he declares that's the price you pay for natural roads and, anyway, it doesn't matter because most road fatalities are bad drivers anyway.
He drives one winter, slides right off the road, his car wraps around a tree, and he dies.
Did he cause his death? No. Conditions did. Conditions and some bad luck.
Is his death a predictable consequence of the conditions, the conditions he argued were necessary to preserve? Yes.
Do I feel sorry for him? It's hard for me, personally, to feel sorry for someone who got to drive on those icy roads he loved for so long before the dice rolled bad for him. But I've known too many, personally, who died on these roads, so my empathy on that specific topic is a bit burned out. It's reserved for those who advocate strongly that we could plow and salt these roads and then die anyway.
"Predictable" requires: "could a reasonable person have held a high prior probability of that man, specifically, dying in this manner?"
No.
The definition of "consequence" is conflated. The motte is "the conditions increased the probability of the event". The bailey is something like "the event follows from the conditions due to moral law". For example, when people speak of "consequences" for a crime, they refer to punishment.
If we reflect the analogy back onto the original case, we're talking about situation in which our anti-road-salt activist lived in a world where the roads were already not salted, and had no direct control over that policy and negligible impact on the minds of those who do. Further, his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road. Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Relatively speaking, he's an American, so yes. His prior is way higher than people in other countries. Moral law doesn't enter into it. That's really all I'm saying.
> Lived in a world where
Well, a country where. But sure; I catch your meaning.
> and negligible impact on the minds of those who do
Agree to disagree. The President of the United States broke the news of his death; he had the ear of politically powerful people in the US.
> his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road
Agreed. No likelier than any other American. But, that's way too damn likely.
> Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Ah. Here's the issue.
While every individual shooter has a motive (or not; my relative was shot by someone suffering a psychotic break), the system makes it more likely Americans will get shot than their neighbors in other countries. America, specifically, has a dangerous mix of too many guns and too much distress. That's not really disputable without just ignoring the statistics.
And Kirk was fine with that. Well, fine enough to think the current balance of gun ownership was correct. Perhaps he advocated for better mental healthv support or more financial equality, to address the distress? I may have missed it. Never heard it if he did.
It's not acceptable he was shot. But Kirk accepted that someone gets shot his whole public life. He argued, vociferously and frequently, that some people were just going to die and that was the price of freedom.
Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
I wouldn't put 'high probability' money on a <2% probability event, but I would not be surprised by it.
> Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
No, no, and no. I already explained this very clearly.
You've watered down the concept of predictable consequences to the point of uselessness. If wearing a seatbelt while driving, not climbing up on the roof during a thunderstorm, not plunging your country into a war, or getting vaccinated to protect yourself from a dangerous disease are not mitigating 'predictable consequences', the term is just empty air.
Why are you choosing this semantic hill to fortify? What value does it bring?
We seem to disagree about what the word means because I agree with your read on Kirk's position, above.
"Kirk's moral calculus involves accepting that possibly some more people will die, beyond what would happen otherwise, in order to guarantee what he considers an essential right to everyone."
This phrasing is simply incoherent to me. Accepting that "possibly some more people" will die, agnostic to anyone's intent, is clearly not the same as accepting a probability of being personally targeted for murder.
The statistics don't really care that he was personally targeted. Are you trying to draw a difference between politically-motivated assassination and random violence?
I'm not. Because the violence is often not "random." Kirk was mid making that point when he was killed; he was about to debate gang-on-gang violence.
Most killings in the US are targeted. Killers (even the psychotic ones) generally have a personal motivation, some self-justification to pull the trigger. The guns make it far easier to succeed than it would be otherwise.
I'm giving Kirk the benefit of the doubt here. Because if what he really meant was "someone's life is the price of our freedom... But not me, I'm special, I'm doing everything right..." He wasn't misguided, he was stupid. And I don't think he was stupid. So I'm left with the wry observation that the manner of his own death was consistent with his philosophy on the necessity of gun ownership to protect essential liberties.
This is an amazing thread and dialog. I commend both of you for keeping it civil and respectful (exactly how Charlie would have wanted). Just two things to add:
1. Driving, cleaning agents and all the other examples are effectively assumed to be rights but they are not guaranteed by the US constitution. The second amendment on the other hand is very explicit. So it only makes the case stronger for the second amendment (~10k non gang violence, non suicide related gun deaths vs ~40k deaths from car accidents per year, although even one death is too many imho)
2. I would recommend listening to the full comment from Charlie about “some gun deaths are inevitable”. He started with the premise that the US already has a lot of guns and in a country with so many guns, you can’t have ZERO gun related deaths. And then went on to say what he said about some gun deaths being rational/prudent etc. So the spirit of what he was saying wasn’t that some people were expendable but more so that from a practicality standpoint you can’t expect to not have any gun related deaths at all.
In another video he talks about gun confiscation/ forcing Americans to give up their guns (at gun point ;) ?) and how that won’t work either but that’s besides the point.
Once again thanks for such a thoughtful dialog. Really appreciate it!
> Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced
This is the key part that people are the MOST upset about. From the right's perspective, they are getting called "nazis", "fascists" for things that are self-evident to them. But to the far-left, those beliefs are equivalent to Nazism. I don't think people on the right fully understand and internalize that their opponents believe that they are literal nazis. They think it's just a rhetorical device. So they think that the left is being grossly negligent by bandying these words around.
I think now, though, the right has finally realized that being called a "nazi" isn't cute or a rhetorical device, and the far-left really intends to kill people. Therefore, a little cancel culture is the very least you should expect from them.
Who is "the media" in this context? MSNBC just let someone go for even suggesting Kirk deserved what happened. If anything, it seems at least mainstream media is very conservative about the labels it assigns to political speakers.
“””
“We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur shortly after Kirk was shot at a Utah university Wednesday
“””
But....mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of gun deaths in the United States despite the intense media coverage on it over other forms of homicide.
King apologised because he made a claim that was absolutely false and in fact the opposite of Kirk's position on a matter. Not for "chiming in". Not for "disagreeing". For lying.
He was a victim here. Far-left news outlets like Vanity Fair and The Nation twisted the facts and made-up others. I don't really expect a 77-year-old celebrity to have the media literacy to separate fact from fiction, especially when these outlets have tailored their reporting to appeal to exactly his demographic.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
He did. That's why it's important to be able to tell the difference between a situation where the Nazis gas the Jews, and a situation where the Jews gas the Nazis. They are extremely different situations and lessons from one can't be transferred to the other. I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
The lesson you seem to have taken from it is "it's different when I do it". The motto of every blood-soaked despot and every useful idiot who put him in power throughout history.
> I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
I'm sure you thought this was a witty repartee, but it's just dumb.
Hatred, violence and cruelty by an outgroup against your ancestors, or your ingroup, or your ingroup's ancestors, never justifies you own hatred, violence or cruelty towards that outgroup.
The Nazis believed that the Jews had sincerely harmed them. That of course did not justify them. What made them "the Nazis" is not that they adopted that name for themselves. We know that "the Nazis" were the Nazis because they gassed the Jews, and because of everything else in their rhetoric and policies leading up to that point. In "a situation where the Jews gas the Nazis", the Jews would be the ones in the wrong.
> I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
You have read a history book though right? Like you are familiar with what happened specifically on the metric of needless deaths when nobody killed him earlier?
Could someone sympathetic explain why at least some of these people, specifically the healthcare professionals, shouldn't be fired, given that their statements reflect a lack of compassion in a field that demands it and a willingness to give substandard care to others based on their politics? Also, the school teachers: is it unreasonable to not want your children entrusted to educators who endorse political assassination?
In Europe we call this job insecurity. The US has a long tradition of keeping employees hostages because they have debts, mortgage etc. All it takes is a warning from CEO and terror keeps things quiet. Now we see that at state/public level. This comes with no surprise with the current hostile government.
In France it would be considered "Faute grave", a violation of the duty of discretion/loyalty to the organization. You have to give that person a few days of notice but otherwise they can be terminated at will.
Of course, that's the theory. Europe's courts are more politicized than in the US and laws are frequently vague. Someone might try to challenge such a firing. But the law does allow it.
That's in France which has unusually vicious employment laws. In other parts of Europe it's more casual. In the UK you can be fired for more or less any reason outside of a few restricted reasons if you're within the first two years of employment. After that the rules get a bit stricter, but not enough to mean a company has to tolerate an employee bringing the organization into disrepute (which this behavior absolutely does).
There are plenty of layoffs and firings in European countries too. You must have been incredible lucky if have never witnessed it. Each country has different laws regarding employment and it varies a lot between them. Making this Europe vs USA is frankly weird.
In most EU countries, getting fired entails getting paid for several more months (depending on tenure), and after that you still get a (not very high) living wage from the government.
I wonder what Kirk would have thought about these firings.
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
Folks are added to the "Professor Watchlist" for everything ranging from being critical of Trump/MAGA to discussing institutional racism through the United States' history. Folks who wind up on the list routinely get harassed in person, online, and via direct calls/emails with racist and misogynist slurs as well as rape and death threats by Turning Point's followers.
> He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
> According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
You don’t have to rely on second-hand reporting, there’s no lack of material from the man himself to form an opinion from, like for example: https://www.youtube.com/@RealCharlieKirk/videos
Kirk spent years trying to get professors fired and his organization maintained a "watchlist" of professors, who would regularly receive death threats and have people try to get them fired.
FIRE, not exactly a liberal organization, called out TPUSA as a primary cause of increasing threats to speakers and professors on campus in recent years.
The worst I could find said about TPUSA on thefire.org with a DDG search was an incident in which a professor had teaching assignments cancelled and the university later faced pressure from Senators to fire her (they allowed her contract to expire).
The same search found me multiple stories about universities denying recognition to TPUSA chapters.
FIRE is quintessentially liberal. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental liberal value there is, and education is where the free exchange of ideas is most values. American left-wingers (as judged by American standards) not liking that doesn't change what liberalism is; it informs what they are. There is absolutely a bias in FIRE coverage towards conservative and Republican organizations and ideas being suppressed. I have every reason to believe that this is because that's actually representative of what happens on American college campuses.
I doubt Kirk believed in anything, but he was happy to say whatever would get him attention and keep his benefactors happy. He wasn't particularly ideologically consistent, though to be fair, Republicans of his time weren't either.
I don't know the specifics about most of the firings. I think saying it's good someone was killed is inflammatory and not something people should do and expect no consequences. That MSNBC guy getting fired was ridiculous though. Kirk isn't suddenly due respect and zero criticism because he died.
Dowd didn't say that it was good, but did seem to agree that it was justified:
> Dowd responded by saying about about Kirk: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
If somebody says "when you jump off a cliff, you fall," that's not "justifying" anything. That's just explaining cause and effect. You're bending over backwards to come up with an excuse for shutting down speech for purely ideological reasons.
Justify policies enabling gun violence, and you make the world a more dangerous place, including for yourself. Sow hate and violence, and you end up creating people who hate you back. Why is that so hard to understand for some people? Why on earth do some people interpret that as a call for violence? None of it makes any sense.
> If somebody says "when you jump off a cliff, you fall," that's not "justifying" anything.
It is when you say it of someone who was pushed rather than jumping.
There is no rational line of reasoning in which being shot is a natural consequence of supporting the right to bear arms. Hundreds of millions of Americans support the right to bear arms on at least some level.
I come from (have lived in my entire life) Canada, which also has fairly strict gun laws.
It is indeed not surprising that a rise in access to guns correlates with a rise in shooting deaths. That was indeed Kirk's exact point.
This does not contradict the quoted point in the slightest. It is worlds apart from what you are trying to dispute. Taking risks is not in the same category as being targeted.
> a rise in access to guns correlates with a rise in shooting deaths
> That was indeed Kirk's exact point.
This is a disingenuous framing of his quotes that are being thrown around.
> I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal.
> Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty.
That's not "of course there will be deaths", it's "the deaths are justified".
> This is a disingenuous framing of his quotes that are being thrown around.
No, it isn't. The disingenuous framing is the one supposing that his model of "some gun deaths" included political assassinations. It clearly did not.
> That's not "of course there will be deaths", it's "the deaths are justified".
It is "of course there will be deaths". Just as it would be if the subject were cars, or kitchen knives, or poisonous household cleaners, or pesticides, or any other potentially lethal thing that ordinary Americans have access to.
If your standard for "justifying" is weak enough to include this, then it is too weak to conclude that there is any harm or moral wrong in saying it. To pick on this is to miss the point completely:
> This does not contradict the quoted point in the slightest. It is worlds apart from what you are trying to dispute. Taking risks is not in the same category as being targeted.
I've explained this in many other comments already. And I'm doing this as a Canadian who doesn't share Kirk's view.
> If your standard for "justifying" is weak enough ...
This standard is not weak. That is a dishonest attack. His statement is meant to justify the obviously un-needed deaths of children as a necessary evil for Americans to have a "God given right" to own guns.
> His statement is meant to justify the obviously un-needed deaths of children as a necessary evil for Americans to have a "God given right" to own guns.
And this is not a basis for concluding that he was morally wrong to say it.
Unless you feel the same way about everything else that causes preventable deaths.
(Note that the quote says nothing about children. This is a dishonest emotional plea.)
Many shooters choose schools as their crime scenes, to the extent that there's even a term for it: school shooting. Acknowledging facts isn't a "dishonest emotional plea."
1. Drumming up hate and violence and 2. arming the population dramatically increases the likelihood of widespread shootings. The risk is particularly acute for those at the forefront of these efforts. Dismissing the first point and downplaying the second does not alter the reality of the situation. These points also are in no way an encouragement of violence, despite your mental gymnastics.
> It is when you say it of someone who was pushed rather than jumping.
That's some blatant attempt at derailing the discussion, but even then you're still wrong. Cause and effect is still not justification.
> Dismissing the first point and downplaying the second
I have not done these things. I have disputed the first, and still not been shown good evidence. The magnitude of the second is irrelevant to the argument.
> These points also are in no way an encouragement of violence
I did not say they were. "Encouragement" and "justification" do not mean the same thing.
Yes, I proposed that this was approximately as bad as saying that it was a good thing. Saying that something is a good thing is still not the same as encouraging further such actions.
> That's some blatant attempt at derailing the discussion, but even then you're still wrong. Cause and effect is still not justification.
It is not a derailment. It is a characterization of what's wrong with your analogy. The entire point is that you are trying to say that someone (Dowd) pointed out logical cause and effect, but he did not. He saw a deliberate illegal act and attempted to characterize the specific as a natural consequence of increased access to tools. It is nothing of the sort. Kirk's quote, on the other hand, is accepting a statistical consequence and making a statement about risk and moral tradeoff, in defense of what he considered a fundamental right (I disagree, btw).
> I have disputed the first, and still not been shown good evidence.
You can easily look that up. I'm not going to rehash every hateful far right arguments here. In fact, you can read the article to find a clear example of his behavior, where he literally cheers and jokes about political violence directed at those he disagrees with.
> The magnitude of the second is irrelevant to the argument.
It's not about "magnitude." I'm addressing your use of euphemisms when discussing the arming of the population with deadly weapons. You refer to it as "supporting the right to bear arms," as if that's just a matter of opinion and something harmless. No, it has real consequences and costs lives.
> Saying that something is a good thing is still not the same as encouraging further such actions.
That's a straight up lie. Dowd didn't say or even suggest that the shooting was a good thing. And no amount of mental gymnastics about "approximation" is going to make this not a lie.
> He saw a deliberate illegal act and attempted to characterize the specific as a natural consequence of increased access to tools.
Yes, needlessly antagonizing and arming people results in armed people turning against you. Again, this isn't hard to understand. Nor is it unethical to point this out.
The mental gymnastics on display is astounding. You're falsely accusing people of justifying violence, while defending someone who actually did that.
This is my last reply, because I do not tolerate being accused of "lying" for saying things that I sincerely believe to be true and which I actively attempt to evidence.
> You can easily look that up. I'm not going to rehash every hateful far right arguments here. In fact, you can read the article to find a clear example of his behavior, where he literally cheers and jokes about political violence directed at those he disagrees with.
I read the article. It does not show Kirk doing anything of the sort. In fact it does not show Kirk doing anything at all; it only gives Dowd's general opinion of Kirk's rhetoric, which doesn't include any such claim. Furthermore, it cites the memo from Dowd's former employer, which directly contradicts the claim.
> Charlie Kirk believed that “when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts.” Regardless of whether you agreed with his political views, his words and actions underscore the urgency to maintain a respectful exchange of ideas – a principle we must champion.
Kirk's views were not "far right", more or less definitionally. A very large percentage of Americans would agree with most of what he had to say — as demonstrated by crowd reactions at his debates, and by recent election results.
I'm not going to rehash every explanation here of why the things he said that are claimed to be hateful are in fact not actually hateful. Regardless, people saying hateful things does not justify a violent response. I firmly believe that Kirk agreed with me on that.
> I'm addressing your use of euphemisms
I am not "using a euphemism". I am simply rejecting your framing of the issue. You have no right to compel me to adopt your framing of the issue. And as a matter of fact, the American population objective is not "being armed". American gun owners by and large acquire guns by choosing to do so, not by having it forced upon them (for example by military conscription). In doing so, they are exercising a right that is, and has been, guaranteed to them and their forebears for nearly two hundred and fifty years, by the highest legal document in the land (and following on from a pre-existing common law tradition). A right which is consistently endorsed by a large majority of the American population, including Democrats (e.g. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/one-in-five-americ...).
Again, I say this as someone who opposes gun ownership, living in a country with fairly strict gun laws and no similar recognition of a "right to bear arms". I respect law, and I respect national constitutions, and I respect societies.
> That's a straight up lie. Dowd didn't say or even suggest that the shooting was a good thing.
No, it's how words work. When you say that something is a good thing, you are not thereby encouraging similar things to happen.
You are the one who misrepresented me. I said that Dowd appeared to consider the action justified; you falsely claimed that I said he encouraged such actions. I did not say that he further encouraged such actions. I also very explicitly said that he didn't say the shooting was good, so it is entirely off base to accuse me of "lying" and then point out that Dowd didn't say the specific thing that I agreed he didn't say.
But I did have cause to view Dowd as seeing the shooting as justified. This was a subjective personal judgement, not a claim of fact; hence the phrase "did seem to agree".
To "justify" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justify) is "to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable". Therefore, someone who thinks that something "is justified" is someone who believes that this has been shown.
Where Dowd said:
> You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.
it came across to me that this reflected a belief on Dowd's part that the shooting was reasonable. This is a plain reading of Dowd's words, which use a common idiom to express the idea that the "awful actions" are a natural response to "saying these awful words".
Therefore, Dowd "seemed to agree that it was justified".
> And no amount of mental gymnastics about "approximation" is going to make this not a lie.
I did not engage in any kind of mental gymnastics. I pointed out that different things were different; and I pointed out that you made an objective claim about what I was claiming that was objectively incorrect — what I actually claimed was different.
Again, I gave a personal moral judgment that it's bad to justify political violence, specifically, about as bad as approving of that violence. You don't have to share my morals or values. But you are expected to abide by basic rules of civility.
> Yes, needlessly antagonizing and arming people
Kirk did not "needlessly antagonize" anyone; he spoke his mind. None of his expression of opinion was ever about a desire to make people angry. People did get angry, because they didn't like the fact that he had the opinions that he had. But he was absolutely entitled to have those opinions, and to express them.
He also did not distribute weapons to people, certainly not to the shooter.
> You're falsely accusing people of justifying violence, while defending someone who actually did that.
I did not accuse anyone of justifying violence. I theorized that someone appeared to consider that violence justified — and gave clear reason why I thought so, which is easy to understand and follows from a plain reading of the words.
Kirk did not, at any point I have been shown, claim any kind of extrajudicial violence to be justified. I can understand why other people believe he may have thought it justified, but I have already clearly explained why I think they are incorrect.
> I do not tolerate being accused of "lying" for saying things that I sincerely believe to be true and which I actively attempt to evidence.
Your "evidence" being...
> it came across to me that this reflected a belief on Dowd's part that the shooting was reasonable
Uh, that's not evidence. That's you literally making stuff up and using weasel words like "came across" so that you can then accuse people of "misrepresenting" you when they call you out on it.
> This is a plain reading of Dowd's words
You clearly don't know what "plain reading" means. It's the opposite of projection.
> I am not "using a euphemism". I am simply rejecting your framing of the issue. You have no right to compel me to adopt your framing of the issue.
Whether something is a euphemism doesn't depend on whether you agree with me or not. You stated that "there is no rational line of reasoning in which being shot is a natural consequence of supporting the right to bear arms." Supporting the right to bear arms is a euphemism for making deadly weapons widely available. When such weapons are made widely accessible, it's only logical that they'd end up getting used, contradicting your statement. The euphemism serves to obscure that contradiction.
> American gun owners by and large acquire guns by choosing to do so, not by having it forced upon them
This is a straw man.
> I read the article. It does not show Kirk doing anything of the sort.
No, you didn't. Here's the quote from the article:
> Speaking to a television audience a few days after the attack, a grinning Kirk called for the intruder to be sprung from jail.
> “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,” he said.
We have a serious problem here if we can't even agree on whether something is literally written in the article or not.
> why the things he said that are claimed to be hateful are in fact not actually hateful
It's hateful to have a "debate" about why groups of people should be persecuted out of existence. That's not up for discussion.
> None of his expression of opinion was ever about a desire to make people angry. People did get angry, because they didn't like the fact that he had the opinions that he had. But he was absolutely entitled to have those opinions, and to express them.
Attacking people simply for existing in this world provokes anger, and they have every right to feel that way. Although to be very clear, turning that anger into violence is unacceptable. Returning to the main point, absolutely no one is "entitled" to deny the existence of others.
> Regardless, people saying hateful things does not justify a violent response.
That? That reads like “if you put a lot of hateful words out in the world you should expect it to lead to hateful action”. If anything this would be more relevant if Kirk inspired someone to kill any of the various groups he encouraged violence against. It doesn’t read at all like a justifying for killing him.
I was talking with a friend about this and came to the conclusion that people in certain lines of work should be held to a higher standard when it comes to situations like this:
* government officials (as you say), members of federal agencies, civil servants etc.
* journalists
* healthcare workers and emergency services personnel
* educators
There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.
All of these are places where a mindset that glorifies or justifies political violence and death seems like it would be an impediment to actually doing the job properly, which is the only thing that would make me accept "cancel culture". Others may be morally unjustified in "crossing the line", but should not lose their jobs for it.
For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone. The "stochastic terrorism" argument is especially insidious: it attempts to launder "speech" into "violence" (and thus justify "an eye for an eye" etc.) by hand-waving at some vague notion of, basically, extremely non-imminent incitement. The idea is that convincing a wide audience of people to have a more negative impression of a group stochastically increases the number of members of that group that will die to violence. But none of the dots are ever actually connected in this argument; and taken seriously and applied even-handedly, it would make basically any form of political discourse impossible.
Initially, I thought Matthew Dowd's comments (I had very little exposure to them) didn't fall into that category — that they were simply made in incredibly bad taste. But I looked up some more of the transcript and, yeah, I can't excuse that. Certainly he wasn't as aggressive about it as, say, some Bluesky users. But part of it does fundamentally boil down to making the "fuck around and find out" argument, and "finding out" is just not supposed to involve being shot and killed.
> For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone
It's really difficult. How do you apply this to government worker? Some are actively involved in killing people, foe example the military, (some) police, the judiciary in some jurisdictions, politicians.
In places with a judicial death sentence it's acceptable to decide that someone deserve to die.
I spoke too briefly in spite of myself. Consider standard exemptions to apply: war combatants, people actively threatening your life, etc. I personally oppose the death penalty, but not strongly enough to deny other jurisdictions the right to impose it.
It's funny, because government officials, journalist, healthcare workers, and educators are exactly the kind of people Kirk attacked as a podcaster, and generally have been the primary targets of the MAGA right. Podcasters are apparently not high enough on the trust ladder to be held to a higher standard for what they say.
We are at a place where the president of the united states gets to mount an insurrection and pardon people who beat cops with the American flag then claim the opposition is "fostering violence"; gets to claim that educators are "grooming and indoctrinating kids", that journalists are the "enemy of the people", that government officials are the "enemy within". While those people on the left are expected to summarily disarm their rhetoric because they are in positions of trust. Sure but what about: gestures toward the president of the united states.
Or what about, I don't know, the world's richest man, Elon Musk? He has so much power and therefore responsibility. Why isn't he expected to speak with prudence and responsibility? He's on Twitter spouting off about how the left is "the party of murder" before anyone even knew anything.
AOC, Bernie, and Zohran are often labeled "radical left socialists", but they offered nothing but calls for peace and calm from them. Meanwhile Musk was calling them murderers! No one is going to fire him for that rhetoric!
So if you're going to demand accountability for words from people in positions of trust -- which to be clear I agree with -- let's be honest about the fact that some people are put in higher positions of trust, and some people should be, but for some reason (money/power) are not ever, never, not once held to account for what they say. So maybe if we want to actually change something as a society, we should stop doing the same thing, and instead hold people at the highest echelons of power responsible for the things they say and do.
I have not "summarily dismissed your opinion as political".
I have observed that you are presenting a bunch of mostly unrelated political talking points and not engaging honestly with the comment you replied to.
I engaged with your post in several ways, the primary way being 1) I agreed with the substance of your post and 2) I extended your list of "people held in positions of high trust who should be more careful with their words" to include the president and the world's richest man, who are in fact engaged in divisive rhetoric at the moment, far worse and more impactful than any teacher or doctor. That's very related.
If you didn't want to engage with me that's fine, but saying people are engaging in political ideological battles and therefore out of bounds, when the discussion is about politicis and ideologies, is lame. Saying you didn't summarily dismiss my opinion as political is straight up false when your last reply was a one line quote from the rule page
No, you didn't. You used it as a jumping-off point to attack the entire universe of people you disagree with.
> but saying people are engaging in political ideological battles and therefore out of bounds, when the discussion is about politicis and ideologies
This is entirely disingenuous. The scope of the discussion is much narrower than that, and does not give you cause to bring in the actions of Trump, Musk, "MAGA" as a group, etc. etc. etc.
> Saying you didn't summarily dismiss my opinion as political is straight up false when your last reply was a one line quote from the rule page
It is true, because I did not "summarily dismiss your opinion"; I carefully read and assessed your entire post, and considered its form entirely inappropriate. Your opinion is not actually relevant to that judgment. I would be saying the same thing if you were speaking out against whatever other groups in the same fashion.
I am stopping here because
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
and it's abundantly clear that this is no longer possible.
> the entire universe of people you disagree with.
My comment was focused on two specific people in positions of high trust engaged in violent rhetoric who should be accountable, which is very on topic of this whole discussion. And I wouldn't be talking about Elon Musk or Donald Trump but for their positions of trusted power. If they were not the world's richest man and POTUS I wouldn't care what their rhetoric is. But because of their stations their words demand scrutiny far more than those of teachers or doctors. If we're not going to scrutinize them, I don't see why we're going after regular citizens and holding them to a higher standard.
> The scope of the discussion is much narrower than that
You’d like it to be that narrow, but you can’t circumscribe the discussion to only be about things you’re comfortable with.
> I carefully read and assessed your entire post
That may be true but no one can confirm because your dismissal consisted of a single line, a summary.
> I am stopping here because
A substantive discussion can be had but not when the rulebook is being quoted to shut it down in lieu of dialog. Cheers!
Some local restaurant in my area announced they were investigating and would fire some folks who had some sort of video supposedly showing a celebration.
I'm not really a fan of policing rando back room worker's response to an event, who may or may not have even known they were being recorded.
I think it's easy for people to forget sometimes because the interface doesn't make it particularly obvious that much of social media is screaming from a soapbox in some of the world's largest agoras.
The interface makes it feel like you're having a polite conversation among like-minded folk. In reality, you're like one of those folks on a street corner with a megaphone and most of the time the rest of the world isn't listening to you. But they can tune you in anytime they want, and there can be consequences for holding a strong opinion incompatible with the strong opinion of other people you will be wanting to do business with.
... That of course includes this medium. Watch what you say today everyone, your future and current employers are reading Hacker News.
The people getting fired have shown themselves to be exactly the types of people Popper warned about in his Paradox of Tolerance: they "begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
These vigilantes are just socially (and constitutionally!) doing what Popper said to do when faced with those that teach people to answer arguments with bullets: "We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's called being a decent human being. As we say in America, if there’s a terrorist at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 terrorists.
I for one do not want an airline pilot that praises an assassin, or my child to have a teacher that mocks people in mourning.
I do have political opinions, but I try very hard to stay back from a line that would mark my words as unprofessional. Social media has normalized behavior that would have brought termination instantly 10 years ago.
The firings are regrettable, but if they lead to more civil public interactions they are worth it.
It's hilarious watching the right wing embrace cancel culture now that they're in power. To be honest, I think most were waiting for a reason to go full mask off.
Trump started blaming the "radical left" before they had even caught someone. I'm still not convinced we have the persons full picture. Some of the terminology used hints at in-group memes from the "groypers"
He was also asked on a Fox News show what we need to do to avoid creating radicals on both sides and his response was the following:
"I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. They don't want to see crime. Worried about the border. They're saying, We don't want these people coming in. We don't want you burning our shopping centers. We don't want you shooting our people in the middle of the street"
"The radicals on the left are the problem," Trump continued, "and they're vicious and they're horrible and they're politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders."
If you wanted to unify, this isn't the way. Witch hunts and dog whistles certainly won't help.
I didn't celebrate his death and I don't really care if people lose their jobs over doing it. I just find it hilarious that MAGA cried for so long over being "cancelled" and now they're doing it themselves.
> Rhetoric on social media must be deescalated. Let’s hope this is the start.
Right, because the President of the United States holding water for certain types of radicals and accusing one side without any evidence will be the start to that. It starts at the top.
> I just find it hilarious that MAGA cried for so long over being "cancelled" and now they're doing it themselves.
It's not at all hard to find examples of them rationalizing them. Much of it has been preemptive, even.
The central argument, from what I have seen, is that the things right-wingers got "cancelled" for in the past are simply not in at all the same category as the glorification of political violence.
Others have argued that people saying "what happened to free speech?" are being disingenuous, because they will use that freedom of speech precisely to argue against freedom of speech in the future.
You’re right about Trump favoring one sides radicals. But it’s naive to imagine the radicals on the other side do not get the same treatment.
As an example, consider all the politicians on the left who have called Trump a Nazi. A vile, ludicrous lie. By repeating the lie, they normalize it so now hoards of easily impressionable kids voice it. ( This was actually the lie that got an Iowa art teacher suspended. )
The whole thing must be dismantled. It’s terrible.
> But it’s naive to imagine the radicals on the other side do not get the same treatment
Please show me a Democratic and/or leftist politician that hasn't disavowed political violence.
> As an example, consider all the politicians on the left who have called Trump a Nazi. A vile, ludicrous lie
That's just like uh, your opinion, man. Someone holding the view that he's a Nazi certainly isn't that crazy considering the military deployments to protests, election results denial, and attacks on free speech. Either way, I don't see how viewing someone as a Nazi is the same as covering for violent actors on your own side.
By the way, Trump himself has called opponents fascist on multiple occasions[0].
Let's start with the President (and others in power) along with prominent media figures like Jesse Watters. They can set an example for others to follow.
Its use is replete on reddit, and there's even a "Furry OwO" game on Steam. Trying to pass this off as groyper-coded is insulting to one's intelligence and incoherent, being at odds with the anti-fascist rhetoric he also used. (Simultaneously signaling "groyperism" and anti-fascism?)
If you really want to argue he's a "groyper," you'd do better to just admit the "OwO" thing is furry- and trans-coded, and consistent with the anti-fascist slogans, but that it's a false flag to be blamed on trans-furry Antifa types meant to inflame moderate Republicans of the sort Kirk represented to drive them further to the right for the sake of accelerationism. Of course, that would be easier if you weren't also trying to paint Kirk as so extremely rightwing that we ought to breathe a collective sigh of relief that he's gone, as if one of Hitler's top henchmen was just taken out by a partisan.
The anti-fascist stuff is a inside joke that groypers use. Nick Fuentes recently called Trump a "Jewish fascist" on his show.
The rest of your comment is pretty bad faith and uninformed. "Painting Kirk as extremely right wing" as if he isn't, lol? Again, I don't think he deserved to die. The quick jump to conclusions by Trump and right wing media is reckless and will lead to more unnecessary killings.
Far as reporting goes, theres two tracks. Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
> Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
How does that square with the issue that he texted his trans significant other to go pick up his rifle which he could not do as feds found the rifle first. [1] The feds are interviewing the trans partner as we speak. To be clear I am not anti-trans, rather just confused how he could also be a Groyper. Maybe this is possible, just a new concept to me.
> According to public records, Lance Twiggs, 22, resided at the same address where Robinson lived. A relative of Twiggs confirmed to The Post Saturday that “yes, they were roommates.”
> The family member, who asked not to be identified, said Twiggs was the “black sheep” of their St. George, Utah, family, but declined to speculate on a romantic relationship between the two men.
> She said she didn’t know her relative’s politics or whether Twiggs was transitioning to become a woman, but added that it wouldn’t surprise her.
So basically the source is "it was revealed to me in a dream". For all we know they were just roommates.
It's possible. I keep hearing terms used interchangably on different YT channels and all of that could be people just projecting their preferred narratives so I guess we will have to wait for the Discord and cell phone text message transcripts assuming those ever drop. They so rarely do. Either way at least we know the roommate was involved to some extent. The Discord transcripts may be the most telling of the relationship.
Turns out a more than that, which is totally fine. [1] Love should have no limits. also covered by 7 other news sites but DM have the most complete coverage
I would not be surprised. They seem to have the best journalists and bravest laywers. I just wish they had a version or layout of their site that could be embedded in the URL that would leave out all the tabloid stuff, otherise it gets flagged here on submission most of the time.
It gets flagged because it's right wing, not because it's a tabloid. And agree, the DM is consistently accurate, breaks many stories and has massive throughput from their newsroom. It's one of the world's most popular papers for good reasons.
Well, groyper thought leader Nick Fuentes uploaded a video long time ago where he goes into what was basically a date with a another white nationalist dressed like a catboy. Also there's a common meme about the twink -> white nationalist pipeline Gryoper lore is hard to follow even for terminally online people.
The last real nazi's were either burnt, buried or relocated to South America shortly after WWII. Today Nazi, Fascist and all other terms like it are just inflammatory ways to say: "someone I disagree with".
I use the Firefox addon Foxreplace [1] to display that word as such. Others should do the same.
You wish. Basically 90% of German nazis stayed in Germany and were completely unharmed by any form of persecution. Most of them had even kept everything they stole from all the murdered people, including companies, homes, and items of value. A large share of the later West German Lawyers and Politicians had NS background, in the DDR it was slightly less. Of the rest - many were flown to the US to contribute to the American weapon programs, roughly similar share were taken to the UdSSR for the same reasons. "Burnt, buried, or escaped to South America" is the smallest part of them.
Either way, 100% of the people being called Nazi's, Fascists, Hitler are just people that other people do not agree with. Such words have entirely lost their meaning. Even the people cosplaying as Nazis as neo-nazi's are just larping junkie thuglets and are far from disciplined national socialists in expensive military uniforms.
>
Either way, 100% of the people being called Nazi's, Fascists, Hitler are just people that other people do not agree with.
The other day, a Fox News host called for the mass-murder of mentally ill people.
> Brian Kilmeade suggested that mentally ill homeless people who refuse government assistance should be given "involuntary lethal injection" or something similar, adding, "Just kill 'em"
I guess if I call him a Nazi, that just means I just, like, disagree with him?
At what point can we call a spade a spade? What do we call that man?
How is he not getting cancelled? Should someone celebrating something bad happening to a man that's calling for mass-murder get cancelled?
Which inherently makes them a threat to others. Keep in mind that this is happening in the context of Iryna Zarutska getting stabbed to death.
I disagree with it, but it's objectively not what you're representing it as.
> I guess if I call him a Nazi, that just means I just, like, disagree with him?
It's not justified by the evidence.
> At what point can we call a spade a spade? What do we call that man?
Something else.
> How is he not getting cancelled?
How isn't he? I've lost count of the times I've had to hear about this in the last few days, which is strange because I don't watch American TV at all and he has nothing to do with Kirk. If you think he should be fired from Fox because of it then you are absolutely welcome to call them and say so. That's freedom of speech, and I agree that you have a much better case than most of the "cancelling" attempts I've seen over the years. Fox execs, however, are under no obligation to agree with you.
> Should someone celebrating something bad happening to a man that's calling for mass-murder get cancelled?
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Kirk and Kilmeade are different people.
> it's objectively not what you're representing it as
Well, they represented it as "the mass-murder of mentally ill people". There's lots of them (mass), they're being intentionally killed against their will (murder), and the vast majority of chronically homeless people are mentally ill.
Maximally, it is subjectively not how they represent it, if one believes that a state-sanctioned judicial killing is not murder. That is far from a universal belief.
> I italicized "who refuse government assistance" for a reason
This does not make an objective misrepresentation. It doesn't even make it a subjective misrepresentation. They would be objectively misrepresenting it if "mass-murder" is objectively incorrect and/or if "mentally ill people" is objectively incorrect. As I said in my previous comment: mass-murder is, at worst, subjectively incorrect and mentally ill people is obviously correct.
I don't have to wonder why they refuse government assistance. It's the mental illness. You are stating that you believe the policy is justified because they are mentally ill.
> This does not make an objective misrepresentation. It doesn't even make it a subjective misrepresentation. They would be objectively misrepresenting it if "mass-murder" is objectively incorrect and/or if "mentally ill people" is objectively incorrect. As I said in my previous comment: mass-murder is, at worst, subjectively incorrect and mentally ill people is obviously correct.
It is objectively a misrepresentation. It was misrepresented as being about mentally ill people in general. In reality, it is about an identifiable subset of mentally ill people, for a clear reason that directly relates to the basis for subset identification. To describe it as "the mass-murder of mentally ill people" is to imply that it doesn't have anything to do with the government assistance question. But it does. That is what makes it misrepresentative.
> I don't have to wonder why they refuse government assistance. It's the mental illness.
Many mentally ill people do not refuse government assistance. In fact, probably a large majority of them are happy to receive government assistance.
> You are stating that you believe the policy is justified because they are mentally ill.
I am not stating that the policy is justified because they are mentally ill. I am not stating, and did not state, that the policy is justified at all. In fact, I explicitly said:
> I disagree with it, but it's objectively not what you're representing it as.
I will not reply to you further, because this is not a good-faith discussion — it is just you repeatedly refusing to acknowledge something that I have clearly established, and falsely claiming that I said things that I objectively did not say.
When Nick Fuentes first appeared, him and his little gang of nerds were definitely more far right than Kirk. TPUSA had a gay man on staff, and put him all over those little memes they made.
Israel is about the only thing Charlie and Nick disagree on now.
From what I’ve seen, Charlie stopped at promoting lies that if you believe them imply violence is on the table (and that have a history of inspiring violent acts). Nick has been willing to take the next step and go “We can’t do anything! Except kill them. But don’t do that! I didn’t say to! But what else can we do?” (So, Fuentes is closer to Trump’s level of flirting-with-telling-people-to-kill than Kirk was, AFAIK)
As far as their disagreements over doctrine of-late, I’m not sure. Their messages do/did differ in where they drew the line, though.
I’ve seen Loomer’s turning on Kirk (over his “turning” on Trump re: the Epstein files) cited as part of this, with Nick’s crowd being on Loomer’s side, but given Nick’s history with Trump that I know of I’d find that surprising, but I’ve not closely followed Fuentes so I’ve got some reading to do there.
Could you share the video where he says "women should be secondary to men"? I'm interested in seeing this. I'm familiar with him saying "...prioritize marriage and children over career goals.." and "young women who supported Kamala Harris don't value having children..." but that had nothing to do with "secondary". He also said "young MEN should order their lives correctly by putting family first." But I'm always interested in knowing if I'm missing something.
You're completely misrepresenting and misquoting the access to weapons comment. A parallel would be "give me liberty or give me death" which is a foundational quote in the invention/founding of the Constitutional Federal Republic system that has been adopted by many western nations.
You'll want to look into the "groypers," who are the group the alleged shooter may have been most closely affiliated with. They and Kirk's Turning Point USA had a falling out over TPU's unwillingness to be as ultra-nationalist, isolationist, or white supremacist as the groypers are. They assert that Kirk's brand of conservatism was carrying a kind of stolen valor over claiming they got Trump elected when the groypers would argue they were the ones most instrumental in cementing Trump's support among traditionally disenfranchised white nationalism.
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
The thing making it hard to make conclusions about the shell casings is that the groypers have co-opted a number of antifa slogans (via deep irony poisoning), in particular including "Bella Ciao" in a playlist of anti-Charlie Kirk "Groyper War" songs. I think the killer was probably a groyper, but there are certainly ample grounds for confusion.
I'd be interested to know your sources. Information is flowing fast (as it often does in such a tragedy); I'd be interested to know what's being said outside my sphere.
The bullet engravings are well known (and people pushing the groyper theory seem to believe the engravings support their theory just as well).
There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Many sources similarly assert that Robinson's father "recognized" him in photos and "encouraged him to turn himself in" (see e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/tyler-rob...). However, I don't know anything specific about his "testimony".
> There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Could turn out to be true, but considering the hilariously wrong stuff that was being published even by mainstream sources in the 24 hours after (the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance) I’d not yet treat this as meaningful at all. I’ve not seen anything above tabloid-level pushing it yet.
They saw arrows and thought "must be trans ideology!" Turned out to be a Helldivers 2 reference, as with the "hey fascist catch this". The other references are all textbook groyper, and Robinson was even pictured on his mother's Facebook "as a guy from a meme" which was a copy of a groyper Pepe meme.
The very first reports of the engravings to break, supposedly from FBI sources, just said they had “pro trans” messages.
> The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
I agree. We can take away some things (like “very online” and some suggestions of certain connections to spheres or activities, like the Helldivers 2 reference) but there’s little more than rather mixed suggestions that could go multiple ways, as far as political affiliation and motivation that we can read from them, so far.
Ah, thanks for the link. I saw several headlines about it when that “news” dropped, but only followed one, and it claimed an FBI source. It may have been even worse than the others, and downstream from them, so to speak.
This is a frequent challenge when following breaking news.
I similarly delayed accepting Charlie Kirk had actually died because the only source I could find was President Trump (and news sources reporting Charlie Kirk's death that, ultimately, seemed to be using President Trump as a source).
Since President Trump is an extremely-well-documented liar, this was not a reliable source. It can be hard to figure out the source for news like this, since news outlets are not in the habit of doing well-disciplined source citation or summarizing sources to make it easy to identify them (in contrast to, say, a research publication).
Yeah at the time (and I’ve yet to see this contradicted?) it seemed like Trump broke the news on that one, which is certainly an unusual way for that to happen, which also made it more reasonable to put that on the “maybe, but let’s see” pile.
(I did believe it, but only because I’d watched the close-view video and regarded survival as all but impossible… without that I’d have “grain of salt”ed it, too)
I also find it very interesting that Netanyahu's post about Charlie Kirk happened at the same time as Trump's. How would he know before the rest of the world such that he could post at the exact same time as Trump?
You have timestamped links for this, of course? This is the first I've heard anyone even claim that Netanyahu said anything about it, and as you can probably see I've been very active in the discussion.
You can read anything you want into those if you want to. To me they reek weeb culture (as opposed to furry like everyone else jumps to - there are overlaps but they are distinct), 4chan trolling and lemmy more than anything. We can not know the intentions behind those engravings and they say nothing about which, if any, affiliation the shooter had. Could be a Luigi wannabe, could be a false flag to induce civil war.
"Unafilliated" seems like the most plausible assumption right now. Everyone pushing theories about shooter affiliation right now either has their own political agenda behind it and are doing so incincerly or are useful idiots serving the aforementioned.
Your post prompted me to reread everything after perviously reading social media processed information, and you are right, it's not clear cut. Especially once they redacted/not-redacted (actually read both in the same article) the bullet engravings story.
(https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/charlie...)
However from what did seem credible I think this still looks left-wing motivated
Unlimited free speech for everyone, but consequences for saying things that harm or offend.
If you say "Democrats suck", don't expect them to buy your product. If you say "God doesn't exist," don't expect Christians to come to your business. If you say "I hate gays", expect to get fired from your medical clinic job.
Have free speech, but use it wisely.
Having free speech serves to diffuse social tension. It ensures we don't wind up as cattle, like in 1984. Just don't expect that you can praise the death of certain people and expect everyone to love you for it.
Maybe above all you should be kind. Regardless of your politics. Articulate what you don't like with your free speech, but don't be an asshole.
Unfortunately social media encourages fast engagement with little nuance, so we see a sewer instead of a noble land of open thought and debate.
But we shouldn't throw free speech out with the bath water.
I mean, if a surgeon for instance was posting something like "Glad he died" on social media I'm not sure that would indicate whether or not they could do their job properly. However I'd still consider that individual to be slightly unhinged for posting something like that. Personally I think social media is almost entirely opinion policing garbage and engaging with it 'unironically' is a low IQ indicator but whatever.
> I mean, if a surgeon for instance was posting something like "Glad he died" on social media I'm not sure that would indicate whether or not they could do their job properly.
It raises the suspicion that the surgeon might fail, consciously or unconsciously, to work at full capacity for a patient who happens to resemble the victim in some way.
When an order to harm is given and followed, the harm was caused proximately by the person following the order; and ultimately by the system in which the speech was to be taken as an order, and was followed. It was not caused by the speech itself.
Where American law makes an exception for "incitement to imminent lawless action", this is a recognition that something more than mere "speech" is going on.
Let's say we're both in the army and I'm your commanding officer. I order you to kill a civilian and you do it.
Did I just kill a civilian, or did I just say some words?
I think it's clearly the former.
Another case: someone takes private nude photographs of your wife and then uploads them without her consent to social media. Is that "free speech" or sexual assault?
I'm pretty close to free speech absolutism, but there are some things that go beyond just being speech or opinions. Libel and defamation (whose scope is very narrow), shouting fire and it leading to injury or death, influencing or instructing someone to kill another person, spreading non-consentual sexual imagery, etc.
No, I am not saying that. I am saying that when an order is given, it has other properties, aside from "being a form of speech", and those are the properties that make it bad to give an order to do a harmful thing. The simple fact that it is uttered, is not what's problematic about the order.
It is therefore not valid to say that "you believe speech can harm people", any more than "you believe breathing can harm people" (since breathing is a prerequisite to being alive, which is a prerequisite to giving an order).
Okay, so speech should be banned, in contradiction to the first amendment, if it has certain properties you don't like? The first amendment says there are no properties of speech which entitle Congress to ban it.
> Okay, so speech should be banned, in contradiction to the first amendment, if it has certain properties you don't like?
No.
What I am saying is very simple and I find it very hard to believe that it could be misunderstood in good faith. But I will try one last time to make it as absolutely clear as possible before ignoring you.
Giving an order is an action. The action has properties. One of those properties is that it is speech. Another property is that exercises power, to compels someone else to do something. Because the action is compelled, the order-giver can be held responsible for it.
But these are both properties of the order. The speech, itself, does not have the property of exercising power. Words used for other purposes cannot compel an action. When an action is compelled, it's because an order was given, not because words were spoken.
There is a mountain of precedent for this in US law, too. In general, the fact that doing a wrong thing required speaking does not constitute a defense against the wrong thing. If you call emergency services and knowingly make a fradulent claim about an emergency — for example, "swatting", or making a nuisance 911 call — then you commit a crime, and the fact that the crime was put into effect by the act of uttering words will not defend you in a court of law. Penalizing these crimes does not in any way constitute a ban on any form of speech.
The same is true of "time, place and manner" restrictions. For example, if you cause hearing damage to someone else through inappropriate use of a loudspeaker, you may still be found guilty of a crime; the question of whether you spoke into the loudspeaker or used some other sound source is irrelevant.
Your original claim, in the flagged and killed comment, does not hold water. Hitler used his power to compel his subordinates to kill Jews (and others). To exercise this power, he communicated in natural language (specifically, German). This does not constitute "speech" harming people. It constitutes the use of that power harming people.
That's correct - speaking is an action. Nonetheless, the founding fathers decided that speaking is a type of action which should never be restricted, no matter which other properties it may also have.
You may argue for restrictions on the form of speech such as yelling into someone's ear with a megaphone, but that doesn't apply here since ordering someone to kill someone is a matter of content, not form.
Unconstitutional precedent does not become constitutional simply because it's precedent.
It's been amazing to watch the chair occupants change on this subject (free speech) in the last few years. I still remember "freeze peach" and https://xkcd.com/1357/
1. I'm actually fine with people getting fired for openly celebrating or claiming murder is a good thing.
2. People getting fired for simply pointing out that Kirk is a victim of a system he helped build are getting fired, which is a completely different situation.
3. The Trump admiration openly going after people is infringing on freedom of speech.
Relating to the topic of the article, lefties rejoicing in Kirk getting shot are getting doxed and losing their jobs. That was a tactic pioneered by the left over the past decade. Now the same tactic is being used against them.
I suspect the consequences they're referring to are the consequences the right is currently trying to manufacture consent for. Stochastic violence against the transgender community, the government proscribing leftist political orgs as terrorist groups, Trump sending the national guard into blue states to "crack skulls," that sort of thing.
Trump orders all flags in the nation at half mast and Kirk is being treated like a fallen statesman and hero, the State Department claiming it will revoke the visas of any immigrant who speaks negatively of Kirk, the breathless media coverage, Trump ranting about "leftist violence", the right wing's endless calls for violence and war on social media (going entirely unclamped-down upon,) and the narrative being created that Charlie Kirk was a peaceful intellectual scholar and activist of the likes of MLK Jr and Jesus Christ.
It's obvious a stage is being set here. And of course when whatever happens happens, it will be blamed on the left.
when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people". When they killed Brian Sicknick, he called them heroes and pardoned them. If even 10 percent of the right had drawn a line against political violence after Jan 6 then we wouldn't be here today. They all embraced it when it was their side. Charlie himself chartered the buses and obstructed the resulting investigation.
It’s be really nice if they’d repudiated political violence by not electing Donald Trump president after he mused on stage about how his supporters could shoot Hillary if she won, in 2016.
That was the first big test of whether we were going to enter a new era of normalized political violence, and we (his voters, but collectively we as a country) flunked it. Wave of violence it is, I guess. Reckoned at the time it wouldn’t be much fun, and go figure, it ain’t.
The articles you linked actually confirm my point, did you mean to link something else?
As Snopes and politifact confirms, Trump made the following statement about the "Unite the Right" protestors, a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis who had staged a violent rally followed by a vehicular murder: "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides".
>The articles you linked actually confirm my point, did you mean to link something else?
I meant to link exactly what I linked. The articles do not confirm your point.
You did not make a claim that he simply spoke those literal words. You used a paraphrase that misrepresented who he was referring to.
The sources do not say that he made this statement "about the 'Unite the Right' protestors". They also do not support describing them collectively as being all of those other things you call them.
I do not believe you are engaging in good faith, because someone engaging in good faith ought to notice the clear logical holes in the argument you are making. Especially since it has already been explained to you repeatedly by myself and others.
of course he was talking about the "Unite the Right" protestors. The violence occurred at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, what other "side" could he possibly have been referring to?
My purpose in this post is not to convince you of anything (because I don't believe this is possible at this point), but to make the logical fallacy in your rhetoric as clear as possible to onlookers. This problem is a matter of basic logic, not of opinion; thus you cannot change my mind about it. It's clear that this is not a discussion (https://thoughtcatalog.com/brandon-gorrell/2011/03/how-to-ha...) so I will not reply further.
> of course he was talking about the "Unite the Right" protestors.
There were many protestors with a wide variety of views on many topics among them, who conducted themselves in a wide variety of ways. (All the same is true, of course, of the counter-protestors). To say "there were many fine people on both sides" is to say that each group contained people who were worthy of praise.
You say they were "a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis", but not all of them were racists, not all of them were anti-Semites, not all of them were KKK members, and not all of them were neo-Nazis.
Your initial claim was:
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
This means that you are saying that he described murderers this way; and then you went on to conflate "right wingers" with a variety of other terms of abuse.
This is blatant and flagrant logical fallacy (the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition). It is not logically valid to take a statement made about people "being on a side" (i.e. in a group) and represent it as a judgement of the "side" in general, nor of other people on that "side".
James Alex Fields Jr. killed Heather Heyer. "Right wingers", objectively, did not. "Unite the Right protestors", similarly, objectively, did not.
Donald Trump did not call James Alex Fields Jr. a very fine person. He did not refer to racists as "very fine people". He did not refer to anti-Semites as "very fine people". He did not refer to KKK members as "very fine people". He did not refer to neo-Nazis as "very fine people". He did not describe murder, racism, anti-Semitism, KKK membership or neo-Nazism as virtuous.
He also did not refer to "right wingers" as "very fine people", although of course he presumably believes there is nothing wrong with being politically to the right.
As said by Snopes even in the article headline, Trump did not "call neo-Nazis and white supremacists 'very fine people'. As explained in the article, he explicitly "condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists outright and said he was specifically referring to those who were there only to participate in the statue protest." As shown in the original quotation, he explicitly described the violence as "vicious and horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch". Immediately before the pull quote, he explicitly said "and you had some very bad people in that group" (meaning the Unite the Right protestors). He explicitly elaborated the point: "But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly." When the reporter went on to ask a rhetorical question hinting at the same fallacy of composition, Trump explicitly distinguished the people he was praising from those he was criticizing: "The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest". Which is to say, he explicitly agreed that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are "rough, bad people", which is in fact the opposite of calling them "very fine people".
You use this as a talking point because you are trying to paint Trump as someone who praises murderers. But you know, or at least reasonably ought to know, that your narrative is contradicted by the evidence, because the evidence has been shown to you multiple times. The plain meaning of what Trump said is very nearly the opposite of what you're presenting it as.
You have unfortunately been misinformed about both examples that you brought up.
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
Trump did not call the killer a fine person, nor did he call everyone involved on the right fine people. He explicitly stated that there were, "some very bad people in that group." The "very fine people" was referencing those who were peacefully protesting both for and against the removal of historical monuments. If you watch the original video instead of the selective reporting this is all made very clear. You can watch or read the transcript of the "very fine people" press conference here: https://www.veryfinepeople.info
> When they killed Brian Sicknick, he called them heroes and pardoned them.
Brian Sicknick was not killed by anyone. The medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes. There is no evidence that he was killed, which was reflected in the difficulty the prosecutors faced, and its why nobody was ever convicted of murder.
You don't seem to understand why the "very fine people" remark was unacceptable to many of us. Like I said, he was excusing political violence. A woman had been murdered by neo-Nazis and he went out of his way to minimize, justify and excuse the act, while condemning imaginary "alt-left" violence at the same event.
On the topic of Sicknick, I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted. The timing alone is strong evidence that the two are related.
Even if it was "merely" an assault on a police officer, it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter. You opened this door.
> Like I said, he was excusing political violence. A woman had been murdered by neo-Nazis and he went out of his way to minimize, justify and excuse the act, while condemning imaginary "alt-left" violence at the same event.
I again strongly encourage you to go watch the video or read the transcript since it directly contradicts what you are continuing to claim. Trump explicitly said that that the neo-Nazis should be "condemned totally." A total condemnation is exactly the opposite of your claim that he was "excusing" or trying to "minimize" the events. I will also note that I find it quite odd that you claim to be upset about Trump allegedly downplaying violence, but then go on to downplay and minimize left-wing extremist violence. I believe that all political violence should be condemned, its unfortunate that you appear to believe otherwise.
> I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree here, I don't find it likely that I will be convinced to ignore the medical expert who examined the case and the corresponding documentary evidence that points against the idea that Sicknick was killed.
Please take a look at the transcript in its entirety. Shortly after the part where he says Nazis should be condemned, he goes on to say that there are "fine people on both sides", undercutting his earlier claim.
I and the other poster looked at the transcript in its entirety, and called upon you to do so as well.
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
The thing about Trump's speech pattern is that he says word-salads. In both the transcript and the video of the speech, you can see him basically trying to make both points at the same time (as he often does when he's scrambling to figure out what to say). The most charitable steel-man interpretation I can give of his words is
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.
> The most charitable steel-man interpretation I can give of his words is
In my view, he said this and more, plainly and as comprehensibly as can be expected.
> Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
He said very directly and explicitly that he was talking about the non-violent protestors:
> There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there was some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest — because I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
He draws a very clear contrast between who he considers "rough, bad people" and who he considers to have "innocently protested".
> Problem is, that second point clashes hard
Only because of a human tendency to assign people to ingroups and outgroups and commit the fallacy of composition. Logically speaking, there is no contradiction whatsoever.
> I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies
It shouldn't, first off because they were seen and documented (even if some of the footage may have been suppressed) and second because of a general base-rate assumption that protests have a reasonable basis and are mostly conducted by non-violent people (and fair, intellectually honest discussion doesn't throw that assumption away just because the idea expressed is in the "wrong" general direction).
Put another way: the consensus estimate is that the George Floyd protests in 2020-2021 caused close $2 billion in damages (mainly to property), including over half a billion within Minneapolis–Saint Paul, along with (per Wikipedia) 19 confirmed deaths and over 14,000 arrests. However, this became a global phenomenon with protests spread across thousands of cities and towns, with probably millions of people involved (I can't readily find an estimate) directly in the streets and many more simply taking actions such as putting BLM logos on their webpages. So even with that extent of violence and damage, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a "moderate protest group actually existed". Right-wingers like to meme about news networks (CNN in particular as I recall) speaking of "mostly peaceful protests" against a background of widespread arson and looting seen on camera; but as it turns out this is not actually a contradiction.
> if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd
I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews". In some cases, the "Y" may have sounded somewhat like a "J" because of interference from the trailing "s" of the previous iteration of the chant. But I didn't hear an "s" on the end of the word. That would come from a mental auto-correction after already hearing "Jew" and realizing that "Jew will" is ungrammatical.
I concur with most of this, with one minor exception.
> I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews".
I believe your personal experience, but you didn't see the whole story. Both chants were given. Hilariously, one possible explanation is that a subset of the protestors performed mental auto-correction: hearing the "you" chant coming from other protestors, filtered through their own biases, they heard "Jew," went "Oh, we're finally doing this!" and started chanting "the quiet part loud," as it were. Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted, it may be reasonable to infer that at least a subset of the protestors had mental priors that would make that substitution likelier than not.
(Not terribly important, but as a sidebar: your pull quote is an excellent example of what I mean when I say "word salad" regarding the current President. "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee." is the kind of thing that would make a sentence diagrammer light their own hair on fire. He has a speaking style that leaves his words very open to multiple interpretations).
Entirely plausible. I don't think we have solid evidence, though. People showed me chants where they believed "Jews" was said and I didn't really hear it. At most it sounded as if a minority of them might have been saying it. That would make you technically correct, but I don't think the claims that are generally made accurately represent the situation.
> Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted
I agree that this originates in hateful, extremist circles. I also think that people who hear it could validly assign different meaning to it and use it with that different meaning, and may validly feel that extremists don't get to decide what it means.
In my experience, very few people who oppose immigration (in majority-white or formerly-majority-white countries) consider themselves to hold a belief in the inferiority of non-white races. Certainly many more of them say things that understandably give the impression of such a belief. But many of them are of those races, too, and give no impression of an inferiority complex. If anything, they resent that they abided by rules that are now (in their view, at least) not being enforced against others of the same race.
----
As regards "word salad":
> "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee."
This is just Trump speaking the thoughts as they come to mind rather than taking the time to organize them into proper sentences. Taken literally the overall structure is ungrammatical. They are not a prepared speech being read aloud. But it takes little effort to refactor them. I understood this quote as:
> There were people in that rally who were very quietly protesting the fact that a statue of Robert E. Lee was being taken down. I know this because I looked into it the night before. If you had looked into it, you would know this too.
The part you quote is a logical fallacy. (This does not invalidate Snopes' refutation of your point; that would be another logical fallacy.) A group led by extremists can contain moderates, and there is ample evidence that this group indeed did contain moderates. I assure you I am very well informed about the event. It was a subject of very intense discussion in my circles at the time.
Please stop following me around to post about this. I already explained why I was not willing to continue the discussion before, and one of your comments in those other threads has already been flagged and killed.
This is a talking point I have seen repeated constantly throughout the discussion. It does not accurately represent the point being made, as explained in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45234349 .
I actually have witnessed the concept of empathy used on many occasions for a sort of rhetorical abuse, by alternately demanding it of people and then denying that they are fundamentally capable of it in a given situation due to identity differences. In the literal sense, empathy requires (https://www.simplypsychology.org/sympathy-empathy-compassion...) a deeper understanding of negative emotions based in "putting oneself in another's shoes"; but many will argue that this simply can't be properly done.
A simple example is that men are accused of lacking "empathy" for women who feel endangered in social/dating circumstances where the man might feel empowered. But we simply cannot spontaneously change our perspective on a given circumstance. (And, of course, it is treated as offensive to turn the example around; but that's another discussion.)
Indeed, your empathy is not being expected here by anyone. But your sympathy is. You are being expected to treat murder as a crime and the loss of a healthy adult life as a tragedy. Kirk had many ideas about how people should go about their lives that you might strongly disagree with, or even consider unconscionable. He also had many ideas about the reality of how businesses and other institutions operate, or about what is fair in that context, similarly.
But from what I can tell, nothing he ever said rose to the level of supposing that ending someone's life is an appropriate response to that person having the wrong ideas. (And the bit you're quoting is so incredibly far from that, that it's hard to assume good faith when people make this argument.)
His killer apparently disagreed. And many people on social media also seem to disagree, although they haven't taken action on it.
Does that, in your mind, apply to everyone? For example, would it be okay to execute a few of the people people who protested in support of Oct 8 just when it happened, long before there was any reaction?
I would also like to point out there is a very large difference between firing and killing. So no, people getting fired is not somehow equivalent to a killing.
There are incredible numbers of people who support, even celebrate deaths. And we're not even talking about the other difficulties, like perspective (e.g. the death of a Russian father fighting in Ukraine, do you celebrate or mourn?)
Sure, but the HN guidelines apply to us all, no matter who or what you're commenting about. If someone else posts a comment that's against the guidelines, flag it and/or email us ([email protected] ). If you disagree with it, respond in a way that is within the guidelines, or don't respond at all, please.
Do you have any detailed thoughts on what these people should have done or said, and what they actually did or said?
This seems like you are feeling quite offended -- to judge (now ex?) friends as "inhuman", and to further alienate them by labeling them as "liberals".
The 4th Amendment prevents police from conducting searches without a warrant. There are criminals who are going to escape detection because of that, and there are known criminals who go free because of that, and every year some of those criminals are going to commit murder and other crimes that they would not have been able to commit if it weren't for the 4th Amendment. And the 4th Amendment is not the only other amendment in the Bill of Rights that makes it harder to catch and prosecute criminals.
Is it worth it to have a cost of some deaths every year so that we can have the Bill of Rights? Yes, it is. If you think that makes me callus, you need to develop a thicker skin.
> If you think that makes me callus, you need to develop a thicker skin.
Since GP also made the typo, I don't know if/to what extent a joke was intended here.
(The adjective, here intended to mean "emotionally hardened", is "callous". A callus (noun) is a region of literal thickened skin. Although "callous" can also literally refer to skin which has calluses.)
Do you think the same thing about "give me liberty or give me death?"
"...cost of unfortunately..." Is that not clear? The context was he was responding about a question about the 2nd amendment. clearly the first order thinking would make it clear it's not the rule, it's the purpose of the rule that's important.
The purpose is so you don't get arrested for some social media comment or other rights, like what is happening in the UK right now.
I didn't like or respect the guy but really that is probably the most reasonable thing he ever said (other than release the Epstein Files), if you believed the 2nd Amendment is important to have then you are essentially arguing for some gun deaths every year.
Note: I believe the 2nd Amendment is really the proof that the founding fathers weren't the super geniuses the mythology has them as, but hey, too late now.
Pretty much everything out of the guys mouth was either stupid or horrible. This just happens to be one of the most relevant to the current conversation
You are purposely misinterpreting what he wrote. He said that it doesn’t matter how you die, it shouldn’t whitewash you. If you were radical and widely considered dangerous to the fabric of society, your death doesn’t magically absolve you of that or erase everything you said while alive.
Sorry if you misunderstood, it is a nuanced take, I'm saying acknowledging one as a terrible person in response to flowery embellishments of their life isn't celebrating that death. My statement wasn't about political violence, rather, we shouldn't be punishing people for pointing out the false depiction of the dead. I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
> I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
I have a nice little trick for it: when you go to a funeral of a person in your family, or close to your family, who was an asshole, I bet you won't be saying to other people "yeah, sad, very sad. But, please remember, he was an asshole". Right? I would not -- not the time, nor the place.
Yes, Kirk is not a family (probably not yours, and definitely not mine), but the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
These people aren't at a funeral, they are online, responding to false glorifications of him. These comments obviously aren't directed at the family but the news publications and media's handling of his passing. If that's not the appropriate space for that criticism when/where is it? Just after the public not ever knowing their real action's in life have moved on with a false glorified image of the person, move on and aren't paying attention anymore?
That is not a fair characterization of what they are doing, no. (Besides which, "glorification" is subjective. People thinking Kirk was a virtuous person because of things they consider virtuous but you don't, is not "false".)
> These comments obviously aren't directed at the family but the news publications and media's handling of his passing.
None of the example comments I have been shown reference supposed news or media bias. Many of them have straight up described the murder as a good or morally just action. Some have even expressed a desire for the same to happen to others in Kirk's orbit.
We aren't at his funeral and he's a public figure. It was Voltaire who said "We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth". I tend to agree. He's a public figure, he's fair game to criticise. He didn't magically become a good guy by virtue of having been murdered. If I were somehow at his funeral, I'd absolutely show respect and not mention all the weird and nasty as fuck shit he said.
> the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
> I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
Perhaps I missed the part where Charlie Kirk organized a group of guys to hijack a bunch of planes with civilians on board, and then crash them into buildings.
On a serious note, if you cannot see a difference between these two, I have no idea what to say.
Let me be more specific, how much division, hatred, pain, and violence does a person have to be responsible for before it's socially acceptable to express an opinion that the world is better off without them?
How much before it's okay to party on the streets after learning about their death?
Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
If people are whitewashing his history then it's to be expected that other people will speak out to set the record straight. That's how free speech works and trying to silence it on the basis of "decorum" is dishonest and manipulative.
> Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
To answer this question, we would have to first agree on the term "hate", and what does it mean to be a "merchant of hate". Then, we examine the evidence, and arrive to the conclusion.
So, what is "hate"? What is "merchant of hate"? Why Kirk, in your view, was one?
Are you really this unfamiliar with his work? Because if you agree with his ideology then just be honest and say that, don't try to drag people into these quasi-intellectual debates about what constitutes hate.
> Hate is calling for violence against transgender people and other minorities "like in the 1950s and 60s".
Can you provide me a link to a source where he calls for a violence against transgender people and other minorities "like in the 1950s and 60s"?
The article you provided does not prove it at all. Instead, they take something he said, and provide an interpretation of it that fits their narrative. Alternative interpretation, which is way more likely given what he said, is that man today are not as decisive w.r.t. matters of what he considers "right" and "wrong", i.e., letting transwoman compete in woman sports.
You can take these six words (i.e., "like in the 1950s and 60s") out of almost a minute monologue, and make your own interpretation (it's a free country after all). However, if your goal is to show me that he was calling for violence, then you kind of failed, because he did not do it there. If there is a video or an article where he did so, please share, I would like to learn more.
So far, I do not see hate towards minorities or transgender people.
I'm not the one trying to rationalize clear calls to violence under the guise of oh gosh we can't possibly know what he meant in any one of hundreds of examples, but your continued gaslighting attempts have been noted.
You can't claim that things are being taken out of context when you can't possibly come up with context where his statements mean anything other than a call to violence when context is added.
There are HUNDREDS of these statements, but your idea of a debate seems to be declaring complete ignorance over the unambiguous meaning of most of these statements and declaring victory when the other person realizes what stripes you're really wearing and backs out.
Just to make a point, I think people like him should do what Hitler did in the end. What do I mean by this? I guess you'll never know.
I am not a product of US school system, so, perhaps you know more than I am.
However, calling for violence is not what I've heard there. You, of course, are entitled to your own interpretation. Just do not expect others to agree.
Neither am I, but you don't have to be American to know that 1950s and 60s were a terrible time to be "different" in any way.
If you were trans in the 1950s and 60s you were persecuted, criminalized, physically brutalized by society who viewed you as a freak, pathologized and involuntarily institutionalized in places where they tortured you with hormonal drugs, chemical castration, electroshock "therapy", and lobotomies that permanently harmed people beyond recognition and killed them. I'll repeat - against their will.
To say that trans people need to be treated like they were in the 1950s and 60s is a coded, but unambiguous call to violence. There's no interpretation that you can possibly come up with that's favorable or peaceful for that group.
I don't expect you to agree because I know that you're not engaging honestly, nor is anyone else who's painting Kirk as a peaceful figure.
>I'm not the one trying to rationalize clear calls to violence under the guise of oh gosh we can't possibly know what he meant in any one of hundreds of examples, but your continued gaslighting attempts have been noted.
>You can't claim that things are being taken out of context when you can't possibly come up with context where his statements mean anything other than a call to violence when context is added.
It's all from the bigot's playbook, as Sartre observed:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Keep that in mind. Your blood pressure will thank you.
We live in a time where accusing someone of engaging in bad faith is against the guidelines, expressing an opinion that the world is better off with a hateful figure being dead is inhumane and shameful, and such opinions are to be forcibly repressed if one is to be allowed to participate in discussion.
My blood pressure isn't affected by individual bad actors, but our bizarre society where it's acceptable to sow hatred and incite violence as long as you dress up nice and speak in a polite, coded language. If Hitler was simply a top-level advisor and never issued a direct order he would be hailed as a peaceful debate person by the same people who now smugly use "humanity" as a stick to beat those who actually have it.
I would upvote you, but my ability to do so has been taken away without an explanation.
Fred Rogers getting shot would have been a lot worse, and great mourning of his passing more justified, than Charles Manson getting shot. Clearly this is neither of those cases, but, as clearly, we don’t regret the murder of every famous person equally, even if we would rather the murder hadn’t happened in each case.
The canonization effort around an only-known-in-certain-circles propagandist has been utterly bizarre to watch. Air Force 2 escort? What, pardon me, the fuck.
[edit] I’ll add that the fawning wall-to-wall treatment and coverage has been especially wild to watch when it occurs so close, time-wise, to a murderer with a kill-list shooting two democratic politicians in their homes, killing one of them plus a spouse (and a dog, as everyone always seems to add) before being stopped, which news was so barely-covered and left the news cycle so fast (and saw the same kind of callousness from the right that they’re now perceiving from the left, including, as always when it’s this guy, from the President of the United States) that, when I’ve brought it up or seen it brought up after this event, it’s been easy to find people who didn’t even know it happened.
Yes. Yes, it is a tragic event. Apart from it being simply morally utterly reprehensible, it is an extremely primitive and counter-productive way to fight against ideas and the messengers of those ideas.
Again, morally reprehensible and it doesn't fucking work. It only shows 'the other side is just as bad/worse', turns the messenger into a martyr, and galvanizes support.
> What is actually tragic is that spreading lies, as he did
Unlike many others, he invited anyone to the mic to prove him wrong. Hardly qualifies as lying. Anyone could have gotten to the mic and debate him. Sure, you may don't like his beliefs, but there is a huge difference between lying, and defending (even incorrect and unfounded) claims in public.
Even if he believed that himself, anyone who came to the stage to dispute him would receive death threats. Read the audience. He knew what he was doing.
Let me document five very serious lies from him:
1. On Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble, Kirk repeatedly promoted the false claim that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy declared Floyd had died of an overdose.
2. Ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Kirk spread falsehoods about voter fraud, and immediately after Trump lost the 2020 election, Kirk promoted false and disproven claims of fraud in the election.
3. Kirk called the public health measure of social distancing prohibitions in churches a "Democratic plot against Christianity".
4. In the 2020s, Kirk was a Christian nationalist who called the separation of Church and state in the United States a "fabrication".
5. Appearing at a Trump campaign rally in 2024, he said: "This is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way."
There are innumerable more. For the record, the February 2023 Brookings Institution study found Kirk's podcast contained the second-highest proportion of false, misleading, and unsubstantiated statements among 36,603 episodes produced by 79 prominent political podcasters. [1]
Contrast it with the way in which truth is actually spread; it is by citing good-quality references.
> Even if he believed that himself, anyone who came to the stage to dispute him would receive death threats. Read the audience. He knew what he was doing.
This is far fetched. People who have sent the death threats are lunatics. If the number of people who are sending death threats is our new standard for the quality and importance of debates, then we should simply stop the debates. There are always unhinged people around. Where does it leave us?
> Let me document five very serious lies from him:
Sure. Some are maybe lies, some are his opinions, some are misleading claims, and the rest are his own beliefs. Still, anyone could have went in front of the mic and debated him for it. In my opinion, someone is a liar when they have a platform to lie, and no way for the public to engage, debate, and correct them. While Kirk's beliefs are very far from my own (e.g., I do not believe that election was stolen), I still think that what he did is needed today: speaking your mind, and being open to be challenged in public.
It is bewildering how the Republican voters don't realize that the party cares exclusively about those who fund the party, not about those who vote for it. The votes are gained exactly on the basis of lies. If the party actually cared for its voters, it would send all the non-immigrant work-visa employees back home immediately if they don't have a PhD degree in their field of work.
The footage I have seen universally depicts a cheering, entertained crowd that expresses nothing I could interpret as hateful towards anyone.
> Kirk repeatedly promoted the false claim that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy declared Floyd had died of an overdose.
Two autopsies were performed, and both involved at least one medical examiner. One of them found that fentanyl and/or methamphetamine may have been a complicating factor. But this is understating the case. Floyd is known to have taken a very high dose of fentanyl (https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/evide...), which is commonly understood to be a very dangerous drug. The other autopsy, commissioned by Floyd's legal team, did not include a toxicology report.
> ... voter fraud ...
This is, of course, hotly contested. People on the other side of the aisle, from what I can tell, sincerely believe that the people "disproving" these claims are fabricating their evidence and/or ignoring supporting evidence.
Regardless, believing a falsehood to be true is not the same thing as lying.
> Kirk called the public health measure of social distancing prohibitions in churches a "Democratic plot against Christianity". In the 2020s, Kirk was a Christian nationalist who called the separation of Church and state in the United States a "fabrication". Appearing at a Trump campaign rally in 2024, he said: "This is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way."
This is the same thing repeated three times, and it is an opinion, not a claim. He was not saying anything about what the law or Constitution provides. He was describing what he considers to be the general order of the society around him.
Many political thinkers across the spectrum have disputed that the US implements real separation of church and state, irrespective of what the laws and Constitution say. There are many simple ways to make this argument.
For example, giving preferential tax treatment or legal recognition to married couples is a clear mingling of church and state; government didn't come up with the concept, existing religious traditions (including paganism; I am not agreeing with Kirk's opinion on Christianity here) did.
For another example, from the Constitution:
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...
It's hard to fathom, given the identities of the people involved, that "Creator" here refers to something other than the Christian God.
> There are innumerable more.
Again, the reliability of "fact-checking" institutions is in question. I have personally encountered examples of sites like Snopes and Politifact giving significantly different truth ratings to the same claim when it was made by different politicians. There are other sites out there dedicated to cataloguing such examples.
What we need is for politicians to not keep labeling their opposition with violent rhetoric. Everything from punch a Nazi, to death to communism, we've got to get the violent rhetoric out of politics. Too many unstable people.
Both sides have their nut cases. And you can’t actually restrict nut case speech with our current constitution at least, you can’t even prevent them from being elected.
Didn’t the President of the United States say he didn’t care about bringing the people together, and has wished violence upon people who don’t support him politically?
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Such a powerful message Trump sent when the very first thing he did in January after the inauguration was to pardon the people who tried to murder his vice president and did beat cops with an American flag. He pardoned people convicted in a court of law of seditious conspiracy against the United states. That was a permission slip.
So I agree, there's a direct line from the political violence on J6, to the political violence we see today. If there is any lingering doubt, the the message from the President is clear: he literally said he doesn't consider violence from the right to be a problem. Right wing extremists are just people trying to reduce what they see as crime, according to him.
I was borderline, almost, kinda, 10% rethinking whether I was actually wrong to label MAGA fascists.
Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
I mean, that’s literal Nazi shit. They say literal Nazi shit, this isn’t isolated. What do you call it? WTF. Elon sieg-heils twice at the inauguration and they don’t disown him. What is it going to take before we get folks who still think calling them fascists is the problem, actually, to blame the party that twice elected a guy president who told his supporters they could shoot his opponent if she won?
> Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
Yeah, it was an escalating suggestion from what another host had put on the table, which was the once-far-right “if they refuse help, lock them up” (the missing step here that someone from the left-leaning-middle would want to perform, is being curious about why homeless people refuse help and seeing if that’s something we can address without the very-expensive and sharply illiberal [classical sense] step of imprisoning them) but I guess now we have to call that moderate right because even the part of the far right that’s within Fox News’ window is saying “do Nazi stuff”.
Granted, you’ve been hearing little suggestions like this for a long time from ordinary republican voters, if you’ve been in their spaces much, but hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
> hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
Meanwhile, another Fox News host has been promoted to Secretary of "War", and is busy drone striking random boats and straight up murdering people.
While yet another Fox News host has been charging people with crimes that juries refuse to indict because they're so preposterous.
It seems we have a serious problem with Fox News hosts and podcaster bros running this government and directing policy. Remember, Fox News isn't just talking to its audience -- it's talking to the President, he watches religiously. He pays more attention to them than all his cabinet and advisors combined.
The most disconcerting thing about this murder is that it seems like the killer was relatively normal beyond being excessively involved in online politics. In many of these things there's fairly obvious symptoms of major mental illness, or at the minimum it's some guy who's basically way down out in life. This was a young seemingly smart guy who just decided to throw his life away, and murder somebody else, probably as a result of spending way too much time in online circle jerks.
Have you actually watched any of his content? Like many I'd literally never even heard of him until today, and now I'm watching his videos. [1]
He was going into generally extremely liberal areas and willing to openly debate and discuss his generally conservative and Christian values in 'real time', while encouraging his opponents to use the internet, chat bots, and whatever else they might like to try to get a zinger off on him. And it was real debate - not the media/talk show nonsense where two people just scream at and interrupt each other, with no real debate happening. He happily let people go off on their monologues before responding, and without resorting to typical fallacies you see online like ad hominem, straw-manning, etc.
I don't really agree with a lot of his values, but I think he is an absolute icon in terms of how political discussions should happen. This is how democracy, debate, and more broadly - an Open Society should work, and he was killed for pursuing this. If this isn't the path forward for debate in society, then what is?
If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024
If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022
Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023
'Prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people' – video
On debate
Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025
The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024
We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
Charlie Kirk in his own words: 'A Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic' – video
On gun violence
I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025
The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024
The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025
We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.
– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025
There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
I think it's telling that for a guy who spent years debating and publicly speaking on highly charged topics that those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context. For this to be the sort of comments that somebody wants to murder over, they seriously need to take a breath outside their echo chambers every once in a while.
For instance, due to said echo chambers you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical. In reality, it's referencing a real situation. The Biden administration turned the world upside down to try to get Britney Griner, a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" released from Russia after she was arrested for bringing marijuana into the country. We ended up trading Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer who has since become a member of Russia's parliament, for her. At the same time we left Paul Whelan, a US Marine who was arrested in Russia for allegedly spying many years ago, just rotting away. He was eventually released in a multi-prisoner exchange after Trump took office.
People spoke of 'rage' regularly in this thread. Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
>Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
I don't need to imagine. 80% of domestic terrorism is perpetrated by the right, They certainly aren't quiet about their grievances, even when the grievances are imaginary.
There were numbers published about this until Trump ordered them taken down.
Regarding the Griner thing, it's telling that when the right decided to compare two humans value the first thing the went to were her gender, race, and sexual orientation wasn't it? Personally I'd have stuck with her job, which was the bit that actually mattered. Instead, they made it about identity politics in order to spread rage.
To be clear, I'm saying that Biden fought for Griner because she was famous, not because she enjoyed cannabis and liked the ladies or whatever it is Kirk seems to think. Spies aren't famous by definition.
It's reasonable to disagree with Bidens choice, but it's rage bait to make it about her skin color and toilet-part preferences.
Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable, but I want to take a more fundamental approach to this. I really like Kirk's style of simply asking questions that make people accept their own views. There are two reasons to this - the first is because you may not even realize what you believe, and the second part is because my assumptions about what you believe may simply be wrong.
Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her? Would you approve if the same was done for William Elliott Whitmore, in the case where he was busted bringing drugs into Russia? For context he's a random celebrity (excellent musician), mostly the equal but opposite of Griner, but certainly at least as famous.
> Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her?
Mostly I dont care at all. It's one of a thousand tiny decisions every world leader makes every day that would have been on page 15 of the newspaper 25 years ago. However, I can see why you would disapprove. It's reasonable to disagree with politicians, unless you're doing it because you're some kind of bigot.
Now explain why Griners genital preference is relevant if the point wasn't to enrage people and imply that a black lesbians life is worth less than a hetero mans. Again, he was comparing people and these were the attributes he chose as important qualifiers.
> Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable
Is it your stance that actual spies are more widely known than WNBA players? I mean, that's a hilarious burn towards the WNBA, but it's literally not true. It's only anecdata, but i knew more about Griner than the other person. Still do.
It's also weird that you focus on this one person as if they were the only possible alternative to Griner. They weren't. That's just the one the right trotted out because it was the only one anybody had ever heard of at all.
Both sides were playing politics with lives, and it was gross. It was worse that Kirk made it about how black and gay Griner was. He did it to get views and it worked, but it had a cost.
>William Elliott Whitmore
Frankly, I also wouldn't care about whoever he is unless someone framed it to be a comparison between a black, gay, pot smoker and a 'normal' person just to piss me off. Identity politics are evil.
Ok, so you don't care. I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
The Biden administration was obsessed about race and sexuality. And in this case, they blew our highest value prisoner to get somebody out of prison who unquestionably brought drugs into Russia - exceptionally rapidly, while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned. Yet this person we got out, on the double, just happened to match the exact race and sexuality characteristics that the Biden administration was obsessed with. Do you think this was just a coincidence?
Yes, and there is no reason to believe otherwise that I am aware of.
I provided many quotes showing that Kirk played the race, sexuality, and religion cards frequently. I beleive he did so to provoke rage and engagement, and the evidence seems to support my stance.
Can you provide even a single quote that shows Biden considered her lesbianism, blackness, or other 'controversial' characteristics as the deciding factor here? From where I sit it looks like he just did what his constituency demanded. Kirk on the other hand made unsubstantiated claims about all of the above to drive engagement.
> I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
I'm only discussing this particular case because you chose it as the most defensible from my long list. Even then, you are struggling to justify the divisive language Kirk chose. Had you chosen the one about black pilots this would be even more open and shut.
Okay, you think it's just a coincidence. I'll again continue to pretend to believe you. Now can you understand why lots of other people believe it is not a coincidence?
And no, this quote is hardly the most defensible. On the contrary it's one of the more outrageous until you realize he's referencing an event that literally happened.
> while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned.
So this part stuck in my craw, and I looked it up. Almost nothing about the way you have described this situation is accurate.
Biden tried to have Whelan freed as well, but Russia refused due to Whelan being considered a spy while Griner was perceived as only a low level criminal. At the time Biden was quoted saying that Russias reasons were "totally illegitimate" and that the US would "never give up" on trying to have him released.
Further, Griner was only one of several prisoners Biden tried to have released during this first swap. The others were not black lesbians though, so you didn't hear about it.
Biden later lived up to his word, because in 2024 Whelan was released as part of the 2024 Ankarta prisoner exchange, which Biden and Harris negotiated and which was considered to be one of the largest and most complex prisoner exchanges in history. It was NOT Trump, as you claimed earlier.
The entire narrative as you know it was WRONG, and the dichotomy was even more false than you've been led to believe.
Not only do I stand by my earlier statements, I feel even more convinced that Kirk was not just kind of a jerk, he was a full bore jerk. He likely knew Biden was working that deal, and turned it into race baiting hate speech anyhow... and you believed it.
Russia freed Griner because they got Viktor Bout in exchange. He's a polyglot international arms dealers with connections to weapons and smuggling around the world, who was known not only as the "Merchant of Death" but also as "Sanctions Buster". And as mentioned he is now literally serving as a Russian politician. Them giving away some drug addled ball player in exchange, undoubtedly had them laughing their assess off in private. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, it's difficult to imagine a more ridiculous exchange.
Had Biden tried, he could have gotten vastly more for Bout. In terms of thinking about US interests, and not his election campaign, he probably should not have even been releasing Bout anyhow - since that guy is very much the real deal. Thanks for the correction on the timeline! I was probably conflating the story of Whelan with that of Marc Fogel. Though it's funny reading the details of the Ankara exchange exchange as well:
----
Freed as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West, the opposition figures, Andrei Pivovarov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, had mixed feelings about the deal.[63] Kara-Murza stated that article 61 of the Constitution of Russia forbids to deport citizens if they do not approve. None of them did so or was even asked to do so. Yashin added that he is Russian, a Russian politician, and sees himself as a patriot, whose place is in Russia.[63]
----
Russia gets to deport activists who don't want to be deported, and that they couldn't otherwise constitutionally deport, and gets back, amongst others, a global FSB assassin.
Again, it's reasonable to debate Bidens decision, or anyone else's. Hell, I might even agree with you that he could have done better with the negotiations. In the end his plan worked, but it's possible a better negotiator could have gotten there more quickly or for less.
It's not reasonable to drum up rage about it through bogoted hate speech, which is what Kirk did. Despite Griner being only one of several prisoners Biden advocated for Kirk rambled about her sexual preferences and skin color then made up a fairy tale about how it was being done at these other prisoners expense. It wasn't.
Kirks claim that she received special treatment as a black lesbian cannabis enthusiast was just a straight up lie.
Griner was part of a larger package that included the other prisoners Kirk was concerned with. Kirk knew that fact, and ignored it in favor of devisive rhetoric.
Ultimately Biden got all of them released, and Kirks rhetoric did nothing but give the rightwing bigots and leftwing zealots both more rage fuel along the way.
America is in a bad place, and people fabricating lies like Kirk did are one reason for that.
I don't think your post here is in accordance with the facts. Biden released arguably the single highest value captive we had in order to solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had, and he started this process almost immediately after she was detained. That is indisputably extremely special treatment.
At this point we loop back through. Biden was absolutely obsessed with pandering based on race and deviant sexuality, largely as a means of furthering his own political ambitions which relied heavily on these two demographic, which were expected to (and indeed did) prove critical in the 2024 election. And in this case the completely unprecedented and special treatment he offered was granted to somebody to happened to fill out every checkbox he sought to pander to.
And you want to claim it was, instead, because of her alleged "fame" as a WNBA player. Okay, that's fine - and I can't prove you wrong because outside of private conversations it's not like Biden's going to pull an LBJ and openly rant about strategic racebaiting. But what's not fine is you then claiming that anybody who accepts the most probable explanation is suddenly lying or engaged in divisive rhetoric is, itself a lie. And in fact you'd also be pointing to the overwhelming majority of Americans as only 38% of people approved of this action [1], which is obviously going to be disproportionately made up of heavily partisan Democrats who are not exactly being impartial.
I think I've had enough of this conversation, but I did want to add one more thing before I call it quits: Thank you for taking the time to engage with me. I know there were more fun things you could have spent this time on.
One thing Kirk got right, was that we all need to be more open to engaging with each other in a civil way. He didn't always get it right, but nobody does and he didn't deserve to go out the way he did. I hope that the person responsible faces serious consequences, but more importantly I hope that we all find a way to respectfully disagree with each other and can find the grace to bend enough to meet somewhere in the middle.
I think that our conversation here is further proof that it can be done.
Sure thing, and agreed - I think at this point we're probably just going to go around in circles so there's not much more to say. But it's always great to be able to just wrangle ideas back and forth in a civil fashion, particularly when people see things so very differently.
I think if more people did this, we could get back to being a much more united country, not necessarily in agreement - but simply in acceptance of each of us having our own different takes on things that aren't necessarily wrong - even if they might be largely incompatible with what we personally happen to believe to be true!
> solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had
Again, that is NOT what happened. You have the facts wrong, likely because Kirk and everyone else in right wing media lied to you.
The negotiation was for several prisoners, that happened to include Griner among them. In the end Biden didn't get a great deal, but Griner and another named Sarah Krivanek (who hadn't officially been convicted yet and was just listed as "deported") were released in the first round. More importantly the first round opened the door to the later negotiation that allowed for the release of 26 additional prisoners, including Whelan - who you used as an example of someone that would have been worthwhile earlier. Sometimes negotiations take more than a single round.
It's probably worth noting that Whelan was booted from the military for larceny, and wasn't exactly an upstanding fellow himself, but it's irrelevant to this conversation in the same way that Griners sexuality and race are.
> completely unprecedented and special treatment
I have seen no evidence to support this claim. I have seen evidence to the contrary (IE - Biden negotiated for others at the same time). I'm not sure what else there is to discuss if it's become a matter of "faith" rather than one of evidence.
> the most probable explanation
The most probable explanation is the one supported by the facts, not the inference of Biden's motives based on right-wing talking points. There is no evidence to support the theory that Biden allowed Griner's race or sexual preferences to play a factor in his decision and there IS evidence to the contrary.
EDIT - Also, your statistic is misleading at best. If you do the math only 46% disapproved. So it was an 8% difference. The rest, like me, probably just didn't care.
> those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context
In what context is it okay to say this?
> Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
----
> you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical
This is a strawman. They think pointing out that someone is a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" is hateful and unnecessary. The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated in a way that a United States Marine should not be denigrated.
No, he's offering a vivid illustration of how efforts to combat racism can end up overtly racist themselves. Take the exact situation and simply reverse it. We have a highly qualified and upstanding black marine (make them a lesbian if you fancy) imprisoned in Russia for years for "spying." And the government just kind of shrugs. Then along comes a this dope headed white guy athlete who gets arrested for unquestionably bringing drugs into the country. And suddenly the entire government apparatus kicks into action to get him out, to the point of offering who is perhaps our single highest value Russian prisoner, an international arms dealer, in exchange for him - all the while continuing to just shrug at the black guy (or gal) left lingering in prison.
You would obviously find this sort of behavior repulsive, wouldn't you? I mean I certainly would - I think anybody would. Yet when you flip the script and change the races suddenly there's this segment of society that's like 'Yeah, this is okay.' No, it's not okay. His reason for opposing this action is not because of her race, but mostly the only reason some people found it acceptable was because of her race - so it became a relevant component of the story.
Just as a data point, as a Canadian I had never heard this name before, and I couldn't possibly name a single other WNBA athlete, whereas I could name international female athletes from many other sports. Here in Toronto, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_League_(women%27s_football) (which infamously included a former mayor's niece) is probably better known than the WNBA.
By contrast, the mere words "United States Marine" paint a clear picture of a very particular sort of individual that is instantly legible, internationally.
That may just be a regional thing. I certainly couldn't name a single X league player.
Regardless, she was certainly more famous than some spy whose job required that he not be famous or even memorable. Right choice or not, Biden likely just made the choice that got him the most positive attention, as one does when they're a politician.
No, someone who says "you probably think" is not thereby strawmanning. This is an attempt to guess what someone else's position is (granted, guesses like this are often not very charitable, but that in turn often results from a genuine inability to understand the other side). A strawman is when someone goes on to argue against that position without waiting for confirmation. GP's argument goes on to justify the quote. The justification does not depend on whether the guess about GGP's position was correct.
> The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated
No, it is not.
It is lamenting that a WNBA player may be (in Kirk's view) praised more than a USM despite (in his view) a lesser achievement, and in spite of smoking pot, because of a system that (in his view) treats black people and lesbians preferentially.
I give thanks here to GP for the context, which makes it entirely clear why Kirk would hold this view and give this specific object example. It also makes it obvious why my view of the statement is correct, but I already knew it would be something like this anyway before seeing the context. In fact, I wrote the above before reading GP. (In fact, I also realized this going in; qv https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45233308 .)
It's very easy to understand things like this by understanding the fundamentals of the arguments being made and policies being proposed (here, something like an objection to "DEI") and considering the speaker's statement within the speaker's own evidenced framework of morals and values, rather than your own. You appear to think, fundamentally, in terms of whether groups are being "hated" or described as superior or inferior. Someone like Kirk thought, from what I could tell, fundamentally, in terms of whether rules are being applied consistently and fairly to groups, and about whether the rules are acceptable in the abstract.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
My evidence is that my interpretation is consistent with many other things I have learned about viewpoints like Kirk's, from observing him and others over a period of many years. It is not a matter of "plausible deniability"; my interpretation is plainly and straightforwardly the one that makes the most sense to me, by far.
As noted upthread, the example also clearly maps to a specific object example.
Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
> Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
That's kinda wild. You've not seen much of the anti- black, female, gay, and/or drug-using rhetoric that people use. It is an obvious dog whistle.
By "it", I mean the things that you are referring to, which people including yourself claim to be such rhetoric.
I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation, and concluded that the people showing them were frankly incorrect in a large majority of cases. The words, commonly, simply do not mean what they are represented as meaning. They are only understood as having that meaning because they are processed by ideological opponents with unwarranted priors, in some cases seemingly resulting from psychological projection. (The pithy statement of this notion is "if you hear dog whistles all the time, maybe you're the dog".)
This is mediated by attempts to listen to the other side in their own words, and ask them pointed questions. I have used these to build a coherent model of several "right-wing" or "conservative" belief systems which I have found in the past to be consistent; new observations rarely give any rational reason to doubt my previous conclusions.
Having strongly held opinion on who lives and who dies are petty heavy opinions one might say, correct? Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
I'm not saying people should necessarily die for their opinions. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that if your opinion, and the political policies you push for, literally result in the life or death of someone's family members, then those people may have very strong reactions to that.
Like if there was an entire town of purple people and I went around saying I want all people purple people to be killed, should I be surprised if purple people might want to cause violence towards me? I mean, I'm just debating and using words, right? But those words an debates are literally about the lives and deaths of other people.
> Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
Can you show me a video/article/blog post where he said that Palestinians should be wiped out? I would like to see/read it myself.
Are you looking for something where he literally says "wiped out"? Or are you looking for his stance that it doesn't and shouldn't exist? I'm not a follower of Charlie Kirk or his positions and I don't support any violence against him. However, finding his position on Israel and Palestine is a very simple google search away. You can hear it from his own mouth right here:
How did this interaction end? Why do you show a short scene from a potentially long discussion?
This one looks like a rage bait more than anything. Pretty equivalent to taking a phrase out of context, and then claiming whatever suits your narrative.
My point was that many of the "debates" Charlie Kirk was having were about who lives and who dies in the world. Doing so publicly with the intent of swaying policy and elections. And the fact that the topics being discussed with "just words" are really discussion of life and death. You seem to be trying to say that these debates weren't really about who lives and dies.
You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
I mean, do you think the follow up to this conversation results in the gentleman he is "debating" to walk away happily and change his views on whether Palestine exists? Because that seems to be what you're insinuating. You seem to be saying, that either his debates really weren't about the lives and deaths of others. Or that his opinions and policies were really "the right thing to do" and people on the other side just didn't understand that yet.
> You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
You took a part of the conversation and showed it to me. Show me the whole thing, and not a rage bait piece potentially taking out of context.
I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith. You're doing a "no true scottsman" argument when you know full well there is plenty out there. But nothing will convince you.
For you it seems like unless there is a video where Charlie Kirk is telling a soldier to pull the trigger and kill somebody directly, you won't be convinced. It's the same argument that Charles Manson shouldn't be guilty because it was just his opinions that caused people to be killed.
Don't you see that one could see you're the one not arguing in good faith? What he's saying is that taking out of context clips do not represent anything. You need to understand the context of what is being said, and why.
For instance earlier in this thread numerous people were claiming he said he disliked the word empathy, completely leaving out the part of the discussion where he said that is because it had been politically weaponized and abused, much preferring the term sympathy which is less susceptible to exploitation.
> I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith.
What? Why?
What you did with your example is that you took a 60 second snippet from a conversation and use it to prove your point. I am not buying this because taking things out of context does not constitute a proof. An example would be saying that Charlie Kirk thought that empty is invented concept (a lot of people repeat it), while in fact if you watch the full video where he said that, you would know that his position was that sympathy is a better choice of a word. Now, when you learn this you realize that a single quote without a context means nothing.
This is why I am asking you to show me context.
We started this conversation when you mentioned strong opinions on who should live or die. Then, you proceeded with an example of wiping out Palestinians. Then you said that he said it "doesn't and shouldn't exist". To prove your point, you showed a short cut from a much longer discussion. I am willing to engage with you on the merits of the evidence you provide, but I think we should conduct this discussion based on the full video, and not a piece that was cut out for a rage bait articles or tweets.
This is why. In the other reply to me you said "This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that." So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences. I take your combined arguments to either be that everything Kirk said was objective (as if it being objective would automatically mean people can't be insulted). Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue. Does that mean he should have been killed? Absolutely not. But again, it is quite obvious that saying things that insult people can lead to consequences. And those consequences can vary because people vary.
You intentionally disregarded my first statement in that comment that clearly differentiated between opinions and incitement for violence.
> So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences.
It seems to me you cannot differentiate personal insults (e.g., saying to a dude in a bar "your wife is ugly!" -- as you suggested), and opinions about ideas, e.g., "capitalism is a bad system". Are you saying that arguing the point of why capitalism is bad should be treated as an insult to people who think capitalism is better?
The difference between making a personal insult (the key word here is personal), and arguing why something in aggregate should or should not exist are completely separate issues. However, in the world of identity politics these two are inseparable.
> Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
Or, let's listen to the whole conversation and not a rage-bait excerpt, and see if it was what you say it was.
> If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue.
Arguing ideas is not an insult. If you believe that any challenge to any claim is an insult, then it basically kills any sort of discourse unless the point made is in full agreement with your beliefs.
The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Your current iteration is trying to differentiate between insulting a person (ie. the ugly wife) and insulting people in aggregate. And arguing that ideas about an aggregate is not insulting a person, and therefore, the aggregate cannot be insulted or offended.
Then you jump to a logical fallacy that if you challenging some ideas is offensive, then challenging all ideas is offensive.
You do realize that co-workers discussing whether we should use AWS or Azure as our cloud provider could be a rich debate on the topic. But is highly unlikely to result in someone becoming offended and evenly less likely to result in some form of violence.
But this is altogether different from other kinds of ideas. We can discuss ideas along the same topic and at some point we transition from rational debate to offense. We can start with the idea that people with blue eyes are fundamentally different than those with other eye colors. That's not too offensive. Let's take it further, people with blue eyes are inferior to all other eye colors. This might offends some people. What about, people with blue eye color are so inferior that we should expel them to "blue-eyed people island". How about, people with blue eyes are so inferior that they would be better off as slaves for people of other eye colors.
What if I went on a tour across the country to debate blue-eyed people on the topic. Did I incite any violence? Did my ideas offend any aggregate? Would you be surprised if my ideas resulted in violence against me?
If you replace "blue eyes" with other things, you can see the number and ferocity of the aggregate changes depending on the topic at hand. Your ideas are so provably contradictory to the ways of the world that I don't understand how this isn't obvious to you. Wars have been waged over the idea that one religion is superior/inferior to another. Galileo was imprisoned for his idea that planets revolved around the sun. I can go on and on.
> The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Mental gymnastics about what? I am pretty consistent in my messaging: opinions and incitement for violence are two completely different things.
You, on the other hand, full of straw mans.
Any claim can be offensive, as I said earlier with my example about capitalism. According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
PS are you applying the same standard to “From the river to the sea” chants? Or offending Israelis and denying their rights to exist is totally fine?
> According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
Where did I say that? that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that a discussion of capitalism has an entirely different risk profile than discussing other topics. I stand by the first amendment that people can say whatever they want. Where you lose me is your follow-on that what they say disallows people from being offended. And secondarily, disallows people from having consequences for what they say.
Being on HN, it is highly likely you work a corporate job and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know that if you were to debate some of Kirk's ideas in your workplace that you could be disciplined for it. Because your workplace knows that certain topics are extremely divisive and that don't want people arguing and fighting. That is why I said you are arguing in bad faith. And both you and I know we're not talking about the topic of capitalism. Let's be real.
Next time you speak to a woman at work I want you to try this idea out on them:
"Hey X, all kidding and sarcasm aside, this is something that I hope will make you more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, X. You're not in charge."
This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it. You obviously know what topics will get you fired from your job. You obviously know what topics will get you punched in the face if you say things to the wrong person. And that's not even politics, that's just how the world is.
I have no idea what "from the river to the sea" means. Based on what you said, it's some kind either pro-Israel or anti-Israel thing. I am not Israeli nor Palestinian so I don't know enough about the topic to publicly state an opinion on the matter.
All I know is that both Israeli and Palestinian children who have had their parents killed will grow up hating the other side. And if there were some kind of attempt at peace or debate in the future, one of those kind of people will be the one killing the person trying to have the debate. We're talking decades long generational hate from lost loved ones. Someone from the outside thinking they know what that's like to the point of deciding who should be killed can easily become the target of the other side. It doesn't matter which side that is.
> This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it.
I know what point you are trying to make. I hope you realize how ridiculous it sounds. People can be offended by anything. Does it mean we should stop talking?
Ukrainians can be offended by the idea of peace talks with Russians: Russians are aggressors, there is nothing to talk about! Are we gonna stop any diplomatic contact with Russians right now?
For any somewhat important social issue I can find people who will be offended. Should we stop discussion about issues in our society?
He promoted the “Great Replacement Theory” (a “fact” as he characterized it) which is plainly a violent-radicalizing notion, with a long violent-radicalizing history and recent examples of violence done in its name.
He promoted 2020 election denial conspiracies. Moves to mess with due process for voting, or to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power (say, promoting coup attempts) are some of the gravest threats to peace possible in a democracy, as far as speech goes. Lying about such, is right up there.
[edit] sources easily searchable if you have the topics, letting people pick their own works better if search turns them up pretty easily, that way there’s no worry that I’m choosing clips out of context or something.
> sources easily searchable if you have the topics,
So, you made a claim. I asked you for an example of a material that you based your claim on, and instead of backing up your claim you are sending me to find a source that will prove it?
> letting people pick their own works better if search turns them up pretty easily, that way there’s no worry that I’m choosing clips out of context or something.
What is the source material, a video, or a text, that you based your claims on? Is there a chance that you actually never saw the source material yourself?
It would have taken you a lot less time to type “Charlie Kirk great replacement theory fact” into a search box and find his own words than to post on here over and over pretending both to give a shit and like you don’t know how to use a search engine.
You see, I can find some link and read them, but then I may come back and challenge you on what you've said. However, since I've read a different source (not the one you've read/watched), then we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we arguing about different things. To avoid this, people typically cite their references. So, you are not willing to do so, which makes me believe that you never actually read/watched a source material yourself, and best case scenario it was a tweet.
I have no idea why you resort to name-calling, it does not look good on you.
Dude(tte) you’re on HN in 2025 and pretended not to understand how to google. Assuming trolling and that it was pretending is the generous reading of that.
No. Many people have shown me reasons they think I should believe it. In every single case, it has been plain and obvious to me that it's nothing of the sort.
Let's not kid ourselves here. The arguments being made were often opinions on whether one set of people should be killed and another side being saved. For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result. Saying thousands of people should be fired from their lifelong jobs in the federal government means you have had major and long-standing impacts to entire families (and there have been many suicides as a result. You can go on and on like this (Israel/Palestine for example).
Yes, these are just opinions and debate. But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people. That doesn't justify him being killed, I don't support his killing in any way. But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
> For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result.... But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people.
By this standard, so are all political debates. At the very least, if one person's position on a topic concerns "the lives and deaths of real people", then so, necessarily does the position of anyone who disagrees.
> But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
I am a bit confused. Are you saying that now we should stop debate hot topic because opinions/claims we voice during those debates can impact people and cause them to commit violence towards us?
I think you're confusing a few things here. I think you would agree that opinions exist on a spectrum from minimal impact to maximum impact. I could say I have an opinion on my preferred type of ramen noodles and people may disagree, but ultimately, it's not changing anyone's life and killing people. And on the other side of the spectrum you have things that cause harm to people. Like racism, genocide, etc.
If I use my words and political influence to support say genocide, is that a bad thing? Because you could say it is a debate we should have, right? It's just words. But topics like this mean people are literally dying. Having an opinion, especially have a strong public opinion, that people in Gaza should me evacuated, starve to death, etc. Isn't really just words. You're literally arguing those people should be displaced, eradicated, starved, etc.
You are expecting people who are the victims and supporters of death and destruction to be rational. To use words to "debate" their points. That's like arguing Israel/Hamas should be debating until there is a "winner" and the other side concedes. When in reality, there are generations of hate and anger. Neither side is really interested in a debate. And there is likely no realistic solution that either side with peacefully support. But make no mistake, this debate result in the deaths of others. People are literally dying and starving. Just because you in particular are not in that position doesn't mean you words about have no meaning. This is a person using influence to change political policy and elections. To literally choose who lives and who dies.
If you dropped into Gaza right now and tried to "debate" someone that Israel is correct, you might get some resistance, no? It's even highly likely you would meet some violence. This is pretty obvious to most of us. Didn't your parent tell you not to discuss religion or politics in certain settings? These are heated topics with histories of violence. It's disingenuous to think you can make strong public statement on those topics and not meet strong resistance in the least, and violence at the worst.
Now, it shouldn't be this way. And I wish it wasn't. But as long as military's exist and you have people willing to kill to make their points instead of debating, then that is just reality. It's like trying to debate a hornets nest and being surprised that bees aren't particularly interested in debates.
I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur. Which, unless you live in a vacuum is simply not how the world works. Why don't you walk into your local bar tonight and walk up to each couple. Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
So would your opinions be inciting violence by your own definitions? You mentioned above wanting to send weapons to Ukraine. Those weapons will be used to kill people, and have frequently been used to intentionally target victims with no military connection whatsoever. They will also be used to prolong a conflict that's not only increasingly obviously hopeless, but at this only being sustained exclusively by locking people inside of a country, making it impossible for them to leave, and then replenishing mass deaths on the front line by dragging random people in off the streets, often through violence.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want the war to end immediately by settlement, which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions. [1] The headline for that article is "Ukrainian support for war effort collapses", while you're here claiming we should perpetuate the war as much as possible, implicitly suggesting you're taking the Ukrainian side. This, by the way, is way free and open debate is so important. You obviously have not really thought to imagine how things might look from somebody else's perspective because you probably simply have not been exposed to that much, if at all.
And it seems it's literally dangerous to expose certain groups contrary view points at this time in society, as they respond to words with bullets.
This is exactly why giving examples isn't helpful. All that does is define what tribe you are on. And each tribe has talking point to defend their position. Where everything I'm saying is agnostic of that.
Without picking any side in the Ukraine/Russian conflict. You can pick one side or the other AND STILL have the other side wanting to inflict violence on you. I wasn't promoting or defending either side. My point was that have a debate, opinion, argument, whatever about something where lives are literally on the line is prone to violence. The violence is what the whole thing is about. Because if Ukraine/Russia could just "debate the idea" of land ownership, then there would be no violence.
Where you're arguing/defending for one side, the other side is in heavy opposition to that. If you want to supply Ukraine with weapons then you shouldn't be surprised if the Russian side wants suppress you. If you're arguing not to supply weapons, then Ukrainians might have issues with that. But the point isn't to pick sides. The point is that some ideas are prone to more violence than others. And if you make yourself the face of one side or the other of those ideas, it shouldn't be shocking to meet violence.
Kirk held opinions on many controversial topics. My argument isn't that any of those opinions are right or wrong. It was that strong opinions on those topics tend to result in violence. I feel like I'm the only person here who it isn't plainly obvious that religion and politics are extremely divisive topics. Especially in our current time.
I think this is increasingly clearly a false equivalency. If somebody took the equal but opposite of every Charlie Kirk position, they could go to the most religious or conservative universities in the United States and feel 100% safe, even without any sort of personal security. They'd probably have to worry much more about a false flag attack than somebody genuinely trying to hurt them because of their opinions. But many of the positions he expressed in ostensibly liberal areas suddenly open one up to the threat of overt violence, up to and including murder. Liberalism in the US has become highly dysfunctional, and I say that as somebody who still identifies as liberal, though I'm not sure for how much longer if "we" continue down this path.
You are again resorting to tribes. This is a tactic used to unite people against a common enemy. In reality, no person should be completely liberal or completely conservative. Most people have mixed views on different topics. For example, would you argue that the current "Conservative" government is fiscally conservative? A true fiscal conservative would have major issues with some of the current fiscal policies. But due to tribalism, they go along with their team because the "other side" would be worse.
It's only when people become tribal that the positions no longer matter. They devolve into the thinking that no matter what their tribe does is the right thing to do. And anything the other tribe does is the wrong thing. That is the problem in today's politics. I would further argue that it is the tribalism that leads to political murder that you speak of.
I consider myself to be in no tribes and make my decisions on what I think is best for me and my family. And from that standpoint, I'd wouldn't mind hearing what specific liberal policies that you think are resulting in overt violence and murder. Because in my opinion, irrational people combined with tribalism is what leads to the violence you're referring to. I mean, irrational people commit violence without even belonging to a tribe. Adding the tribalism just gives them more "enemies".
It has nothing to do with tribes or policies, in and of themselves. It has everything to do with politicians and the media, who are increasingly regularly labeling everything and everyone they disagree with as fascists, threats to democracy, enemies of the state, and every sort of pejorative in between. And these same politicians/media then actively and directly incite violence in no uncertain terms. [1] This is then further backed by an extensive weave of NGOs and other groups that actively agitate young and easily impressionable individuals to violence.
Even in this thread you had somebody arguing that Charlie Kirk being murdered prevented a Civil War, which is just about the dumbest take imaginable, but that's again the result of somebody consuming endless amount of hyperbolic agitprop, often in online bubbles with no contrary voices present whatsoever, so dumb takes never get challenged, which is precisely what produces people like the killer in this case who has not only thrown away his own life, but taken the life of another individual and turned somebody he probably strongly disagreed with into a martyr.
--
I'd also add here that the social media response to this is itself also telling. If e.g. somebody like Cenk Uygur was murdered because of politics, you're not going to have conservatives going on social media and cheering it. That's just completely sociopathic and absurdly inappropriate behavior. People can have different opinions, even opinions we strongly disagree with.
I just want to add one more datum to this, because it's a perfect example. Recently Home Depot fired an employee who was refusing to print posters for a Charlie Kirk vigil. Trump's attorney general took this one step further and was threatening businesses with lawsuits if they or their employees engaged in "hate speech" around this event, which would include acts like this.
Did conservatives then rally around the "tribe" and cheer this on? No, obviously not. Because people have a right to their own opinion, even if its wrong and abhorrent. The response to this, primarily from conservatives, was overwhelmingly negative. [1] Again, imagine the roles were reversed. This is not a both sides thing. There is only one side that wants to silence everybody that disagrees with them.
> ... which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions.
No. That's the part you're making up. The mood has simply shifted from fighting all the way to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to forcing Russia to leave Ukraine alone through other means, such as destroying the oil and gas infrastructure that powers the Russian economy. Everyone, even Russian officials, admit that Russia is in deep-deep trouble if the attacks continue.
> I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur.
I am a bit confused. An opinion that states that a violence towards particular group should happen is an incitement for violence.
> Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that.
Inducing rage and anger is what algorithms on social networks are optimized for. So we are sooner or later getting governments to regulate almighty algorithms driving social networks of today.
This is much more reasonable than getting fired over questioning mass experimental gene therapy or smiling in a photo with a Native American, or making the "ok' hand sign. Or ...
Fascinating how the guardian can spin people celebrating one of the most destabilising acts of evil committed this year into a free speech issue. There's something very wrong with people when they celebrate cold blooded murderers like luigi miagione. Reddit is full of people almost openly gleeful about this and the Guardian chooses to take their side.
Brian Kilmeade called for the execution of homeless people on Fox news. Hopefully these same tone police/anti calls for violence people push to get him fired from Fox.
Since he is talking a literal fascist talking point (execute the undesirables) there is no way my right wing friends can support him talking for them, since they HATE to be associated with fascists/called fascists.
No just make it clear that it is not tolerated in a civilised society. Well done to the guardian for challenging that idea. It takes a unique kind of courage to stick up for people who like political assassinations in todays day and age. I'm really impressed at their progressiveness that they are concerned about the rights of even such contempible people. Someone needs to look out for them. People calling for violence are one of the most suppressed groups, they deserve a platform.
Even in the cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes I see Kirk's detractors throwing around these discussions, I have seen nothing that advocates violence, except perhaps the government monopoly on force (e.g. to speak in favour of the death penalty).
There are quite a few to be found if you look around.
From Wikipedia:
On January 4, 2021 (the day before the Capitol attack), Kirk tweeted that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 “buses of patriots” to Washington, D.C. to “fight for this president.”
On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
Sounds plenty violent to me. I'd have to agree with those who say there are grounds for seeing Kirk as someone who frequently advocated for violence.
>From Wikipedia: On January 4, 2021 (the day before the Capitol attack), Kirk tweeted that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 “buses of patriots” to Washington, D.C. to “fight for this president.”
Was it clear 2 days before Jan 6 that it was going to be violent, or does this hinge on the "fight" wording?
>On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
See: >except perhaps the government monopoly on force (e.g. to speak in favour of the death penalty).
Yes, Kirk advocated for a violent solution due to the election not going his way. It's also standing in stark juxtaposition to how Brazil handled similar issues with a much greater level of integrity.
"Expect perhaps" now seems as only so much weasel words. Whipping? What manner of government monopoly on violence needs to include whipping?
What could “fight for this President” possibly mean when you’re sending people to the capital, after the election’s over, while telling them the election was stolen, on the very day that the election is to be formally certified? The election was over, the contest had ended… so far as legal options that follow the usual route for the peaceful transfer of power. What does “fight” mean here? What is someone using that kind of language around an event like that trying to accomplish?
I think it’s prodding people to do something dangerous and illegal and a risk to democracy herself, and I’m not really sure what else it could be.
(Why… would Trump hold a rally in DC on that particular day to begin with? And why did he and other speakers choose to say what they did? None of this is mysterious, it’s easy to read, but it still seems to be eluding a lot of folks in ways that it don’t think it would in any analogous situation that didn’t involve partisan politics)
> What could “fight for this President” possibly mean when you’re sending people to the capital, after the election’s over, while telling them the election was stolen, on the very day that the election is to be formally certified? The election was over, the contest had ended… so far as legal options that follow the usual route for the peaceful transfer of power. What does “fight” mean here? What is someone using that kind of language around an event like that trying to accomplish?
The same, non-violent thing that it means in the stock phrase "fight for your rights".
> None of this is mysterious, it’s easy to read, but it still seems to be eluding a lot of folks
Other people are not unaware of the possible connotations you describe. They have evaluated the evidence for themselves and concluded that those connotations were not intended.
Two days before the January 6, 2021 insurrection, there were already clear and documented warning signs that violence was likely. Intelligence units within the FBI and DHS were aware of this chatter, and the FBI’s Norfolk office even issued a report on Jan 5 warning of extremists preparing for “war” at the Capitol. Social media and fringe platforms (Parler, TheDonald.win, Gab, Telegram, etc.) were full of posts openly discussing storming the Capitol, bringing weapons, and even targeting lawmakers.
We can conclude with very high certainty that joining this clamour with promises to send busloads of people to fight was a call for violence at the time.
> there were already clear and documented warning signs that violence was likely.
Even taking your claims for granted (none of this sounds familiar to me) there is no reason to suppose Kirk would have had any knowledge of it. For that matter, the FBI and DHS believing something about an ideological group doesn't make it true.
It means what "fight" always means in a political discussion, work hard to make your voice heard and win the argument. So you know exactly what it could be. There were still court cases out there, and shenanigans being uncovered. And in the end the only person that died was a trump supporter. Unlike the other riots during that time where dozens died and it's much more easy to read what one side wanted to happen, namely country-wide intimidation and destruction. And another politician shouted "Fight like hell!". Do you denounce that? Of course now. I'm sure you don't even want to discuss it.
Even after taking the quote that far out of context, coming up with that meaning requires extensive, uncharitable interpretation.
I don't think the median person in the 50s and 60s even had any mental concept of "being transgender" in the first place. In those days, it was considered an exceptionally rare condition (I can remember seeing a figure in the ballpark of 1 in 30,000).
> I don't think the median person in the 50s and 60s even had any mental concept of "being transgender" in the first place.
Oh, the people he's referring to had no problem understanding the simple mental concept that the best way to deal with a f** or a cross-dresser was to beat the shit out of them, while the authorities look the other way.
If you disagree, do tell me, pray tell, what do you think he meant by that statement? How does his well-documented history of playing identity politics that explicitly attack trans people fit into your interpretation?
(Which was certainly a bit better than the 40s, where a large number of people felt that the best way to deal with them was chemical castration or an extermination camp.)
> Even after taking the quote that far out of context, coming up with that meaning requires extensive, uncharitable interpretation.
I'm getting rather tired of the expectation that far-right media personas saying sick shit requires us to bend over backwards to take the most charitable view of them and their attacks and dogwhistles, while random nobodies griping about them are held to a Caesar's Wife standard of civility that the targets of their ire don't even try to meet.
Just look at what happened to Brian Kilmeade the other night - nothing. But heaven forbid someone says a harsh word about him or someone else equally repugnant...
Countless people had an opportunity to ask him to clarify. To the best of my knowledge, none ever did. If someone had asked, and he said anything that confirmed the narrative people are running with, I'm sure it would have been shouted from the rafters. So I can only assume that either nobody asked, or he meant something that simply doesn't support the narrative.
Alternately, you could write to TPUSA and ask them.
Many others have offered plausible interpretations that don't advocate for violence; I see no need to rehash that here. But the main point here is that Kirk's objection was very clearly not, in context, to transgender people simply existing. The objection in that instance was very specifically to trans women competing alongside cis women in competitive sports, on the grounds that this is unfair to the cis women for physiological reasons (the same ones that motivate separating women from men in most sports in the first place).
When I try to search for information on the quote, I find even more misrepresentations, so I can't really just quote you an analysis. One article lede claims:
> He went on to say he blamed "the decline of American men" on trans people.
This is blatantly incorrect; he blamed this putative decline for a willingness to accept such competition rules.
> How does his well-documented history of playing identity politics that explicitly attack trans people
He has no such history. There is a history of people representing his quotes in this manner. Considering them in context makes it very clear that he did not "attack" trans people and did not wish them harm, especially not physical harm. He simply disagreed about which/how many people are trans, what forms of care would be best for their well-being; and he furthermore had concerns about people (especially minors) being convinced of being transgender when that wasn't (in his view) actually the case.
> I'm getting rather tired of the expectation that far-right media personas saying sick shit requires us to bend over backwards to take the most charitable view of them and their attacks and dogwhistles, while random nobodies griping about them are held to a Caesar's Wife standard of civility that the targets of their ire don't even try to meet.
Civility is expected for everyone. But people making strongly worded political claims that you disagree with is not incivil. Calling someone else's opinion "sick shit" is not. A claim about a "dogwhistle" is inherently saying that you know someone meant something worse than what was actually said, while denying that you have any burden of proof. You do have a very strong burden of proof for such things.
There is no double standard. Holding views on these "culture war" issues is not what gets leftists censured; endorsing extrajudicial violence is. The rightists I know do not take clips of leftist speakers out of context, and are happy to give detailed arguments against those positions, rather than letting quotes stand on their own. They do not argue that it's immoral or disgusting to have certain beliefs — only that the consequences of the corresponding policy would be immoral or disgusting.
There are no clips of Charlie Kirk telling the students at these debates that they believed or espoused "sick shit" or anything of the sort. He didn't even call them stupid, or otherwise insult them. He just wasn't that kind of guy. When students at the mic complained that he was setting people up to look dumb, he would simply point out that they weren't bringing specifics that could be debated in any meaningful way, or didn't seem to know his actual position, etc. And in point of fact, they all had ample time to prepare, had they been in interested in talking about issues with Charlie Kirk, rather than in trying to make points about what he believed while addressing him.
It's not at all "bending over backwards" to apply the basic charity required. It's not a matter of searching for possible explanations of a phrase that aren't horrible — except for those who have not developed an understanding of the underlying mode of thought. Rather, it's a matter of listening to people who offer such explanations, learning how easy it is to make people sound bad out of context, and not immediately jumping to meanings that are horrible simply because they would be convenient for your argument.
If the platform consists of a large percentage of people who support this assassination, even some who used the word "hilarious", then it's good that this community gets exposed by a post like this. I for one will never come back after seeing how hateful and awful so many here are.
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.