Fight fire with fire. Apparently it's the only thing conservatives will pay attention to
So many of them are convinced all gun violence is coming from the left, and at this point I'm ready to just let them have their delusions. What are they going to do about it? Implement gun control? Please do
It's like rain on that assholes birthday
It's a free ride when they've already paid
It's the gun shot that you just took to the neck
And who would've thought? It figures
Maybe he was waiting for Chuck to say a number. But chuck was too slippery. One last owning of the libs, right before he was triggered. At least you know he died doing that thing where he opens his mouth and just kind of shows his gums with glee
I do unironically feel bad for his kids, even if they may grow up better without him they still watched their dad get ganked in public. Note they were with him at the time.
And I wasn't being ironic either. I hope his ill gotten gains are enough for his kids to be ok... The damage he did collecting it will never equal what he squirreled away, but hopefully it at least is enough for his kids to grow up with food and therapists
That's my take as well, right now they need comfort food and a highly respected trauma therapist. Maybe keep them away from crowds for awhile as well, who knows what issues will start to manifest in the coming days/weeks/months/years.
They’ll likely be raised to think their father was a martyr, so the poor things (like 1 and 3 years) will probably grow up in the alt-right-o-sphere where their dad was a martyr to the cause.
That’s very sad. They’ll likely won’t have had a chance.
Depends. I expect his wife is just as alt-right-addled as he was, which might mean she’ll raise them to be little Nazis. I guess they might break out of that, and I hope so, but being raised alt-right with a prominent martyr to the cause as your father could seriously fuck you up. Don’t forget they’re very rich, so they’re insulated from the real world.
I mean you might be right, but I imagine the martyr thing could go either way
Just putting myself in their shoes, it probably won't feel nice having their dad constantly praised for doing what they saw him die doing
Plus, Charlie Kirk was more hated than loved. There's no putting them so deep in a bubble that they aren't confronted with that fact
Kids tend to either follow or reject their parents beliefs... I'm not sure what this kind of trauma does to that, but I'll bet it'll make it more extreme
I mean, most gang activity comes from young black men, but that does not mean it's racist to talk about it. I think talking about whether to include or exclude "gang violence" from a conversation about mass shootings is appropriate and not offensive in the slightest.
unless you use it as a overgeneral brush, and fill it with only minorities, and use it as a short hand for black people like it’s used in this context. are you a native english speaker?
dog whistles specifically use words with a cover meaning and the group agrees to internally change its meaning.
He didn't use "gang violence" as short hand for "black violence." That wouldn't make sense in the context of mass shootings. He said “Counting or not counting gang violence?” more as a shorthand for "Are we counting criminals killing each other?" Whether it's hispanic, white, or black gangs isn't very relevant.
Gangs contribute to the majority of designated "mass shootings," and are often excluded from conversations that want to focus on innocent victims of mass shooting as opposed to cases of criminals killing each other. After all, if all mass shootings were just gangsters shooting each other, people wouldn't care nearly as much as they do now. They care about the mass shootings that don't involve gangs.
EDIT: Seems like many sources explicitly exclude gang violence in their stats. So my statement may be incorrect that gangs contribute to "designated" mass shootings as they are not designation such by many sources.
That’s why you just had to go out of your way to point out that gang activity comes from people of color. Not to mention lecturing to people of color about what YOU don’t find offensive. 😂 Thank you for your contribution, goodbye. 🙂
I would actually like to know what he was leading to with that question. Is the implication that gangs have an overrepresentation of trans people? Or that gang violence doesn't count for some reason?
Pointing out that gangs do a lot of violence is an attempt to shift blame onto the demographic groups which are overrepresented in gangs due to socioeconomic reasons (systemic racism).
As others mentioned, "gang violence" is generally a euphemism for non white, especially poor, people. I used to listen to Knowledge Fight(stopped after election not because of the boys, but didn't want to hear Jones gloat) and during several shootings that involved black victims Jones dismissed it as gang violence.
One case I recall was a shooting in a school in GA that he was spinning some other way, until he found out the school was primarily black and the victim (who survived iirc) was black. He then just stated the kid was in a gang with no proof and dismissed the story.
It's a deflection technique. The intention was to not answer or address the question at all, but to shift to another topic he could more easily use to manipulate his audience. If you've ever watched him "debate" he was a master of deflection.
It was more anti-trans hate mongering. 2 or 3 trans shooters out of 5700 is nothing. If you can whittle down the number of "mass shootings" to just a handful of incidents, can make it seem like trans people are vastly over-represented among school shooters.
The number of trans shooters versus non-trans shooters probably has trans shooters falling comfortably into a margin of error. I can't do the math, though, I'm no numbersmith.
Sure. Even if the raw numbers said that say, trans people are 1% of the population, and 1.5% of shooters, that would still be a meaningless figure. The sample size is too low to make any meaningful conclusion.
But the point is even if you don't apply statistics, even using the sample we have, trans people are vastly under-represented among shooters. We represent about 1% of the population and 0.1% of shooters. You don't even need to apply statistics. The numbers on their face show that there is zero evidence that trans people are over-represented.
Now, statistically, I would say that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the rate of trans shooters is any different from the overall population, higher or lower. But there is less than zero evidence that trans people are over-represented.
He was obviously arguing that skin colour minorities were doing any shooting that trans Americans weren't. Because his goal in life was to make people feel like they belonged - by vilifying out groups. And then monetizing that shit.
He was engaging in hate-mongering right until the end. Just like the Nazi propagandists of the WW2 era, he was spreading a message of a demonized minority group being responsible for countless crimes and social ills. He ran literally the exact same playbook against trans people as the Nazis did against Jews.
I have no more sympathy for him than the Nazi propagandists we hanged at Nuremberg. They're guilty of the exact same crimes against humanity.
Does anyone have video of this? (This conversation, not the shooty part) All the news media are quoting this while referring to a video but not showing it.
I watched the close up video and didn’t find it traumatic especially given all what has been happening in gaza and Ukraine, not to mention the children being shot in schools
Do you say the same to those somehow still supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza when there is vastly more grotesque footage? Or for the slaughtering and rapping in Ukraine with now years of footage? Or those enabling the children being blasted away in schools across the us on a daily basis, including yesterday? 🧐
Man, I haven't thought about Heaven 17 in decades. My favorite lyric of theirs was "brothers, sisters, we don't need that fascist groove thing". I remember liking them in the '80s but thinking that their political stance was pretty over the top and that things weren't really that bad in the world. How wrong I was.
Fun fact: the band took their name from a fictional group that was referenced in A Clockwork Orange.
I hate how some are trying to spin this as "he was killed just for having different opinions" like no, he didn't just have "different opinions" that's grossly oversimplifying things, he advocated for the genocide in Gaza, said kids being shot in school is "worth it" because "god given rights" (which version of the Bible had assault rifles in it?) ridiculed disabled people in his circles, and said if his 9 year old daughter got raped he wouldn't allow her to have an abortion
All while in a position of authority and power with influence over a significant portion of people. How anyone can sympathise for him I don't know
If they're "just words" then why are they so butthurt over our words? It's just words when I say "Charlie Kirk deserved what he got". What's the big deal???
I heard something like that from 2 different 'news' sources. One was Fox News and the other was PBS news. The PBS one was a lot less direct, but some rando who knew nothing about him could still take that message away. Zero mention of what he advocated for beyond challenging opinions on college campuses and mentioning he was a right wing influencer. They were playing up the think of the CEO's family card just like they did with the UHC CEO. Oh and don't forget the 247 (/s) random politicians who condemn political violence.
don’t forget the 247 (/s) random politicians who condemn political violence.
Okay. That's just what they feel they have to do for appearances. Even the ones who actively wish for political violence (Trump) say that shit. No one should be surprised there.
Then that would be out of character for the network. No group of people is perfect. Which is seemingly what a lot of lemmings expect. They will always be disappointed.
I've been watching PBS, listening and donating to NPR, for decades. I don't know if it's me, but it seems in the past couple years they've bent over backwards to not seem partisan. Which has made their reporting and coverage somewhat lackluster. Still better than any option out there.
Why do you disbelieve me? Do you think that PBS news wouldn't focus on the political beliefs of a political activist without actually mentioning what those beliefs are when eulogizing him? They talked about how he was big in the Maga movement and how he was close to trump, but they didn't mention any of his horrible views that he got flack for. When you don't mention what his actual horrible views were and instead focus on a bunch of politicians' generic condemnation of political violence, It's not exactly a stretch to think that a viewer could think he was killed for his opinions or his political stance. PBS didn't say that directly, but they don't have to for people to take that message away.
PBS is a respectable news source that I trust. Some internet rando is not.
Edit: I don't care if any of you self righteous fake intellectuals hate PBS. But I do take satisfaction in seeing that there were replies from people I blocked in the past. I don't have to waste my time reading takes designed to hurt my feelings and spread awful ideas.
Sorry to break it to you, but PBS Newshour is not immune to corporate and political bias, just because it is(was? Idk honestly) partially publicly funded. They have sponsors to please and viewers to pander to just like other stations. I do generally think they are better than most broadcast news but they are still biased towards a general pro-corporate sanitized viewpoint. If a CEO (or any important western figurehead) dies they aren't going to focus on harms they did, they will focus on telling how they were such a great loving family man regardless of if it is true.
At the end of the day he is a human being, that's why. I'm not trying to defend the guy, but fundamentally that's what is supposed to divide the progressives/liberals vs the conservatives. The conservatives don't care except when it's their own while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.
At the end of the day he is a human being, that’s why.
Julius Streicher was also a human being. He was hanged at Nuremberg for the same kind of hate-mongering that Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of crimes against humanity.
There's a long list of people taking our liberties away, and the guy who says stupid shit is pretty far down on that list. Words matter, but they're not violence.
Why do you think the actual white power, right extremists are getting closer and closer to power everywhere? Why is there is a spike in young men leaning right? Because they listen to assholes like this one. Words are very dangerous in the long run.
But the ends don't justify the means. Morality isn't outcome-oriented. It's wrong to kill someone just for their words and ideas.
If the assassin had targeted the people enacting those ideas, that might be different. But assassinations tend to be a net negative. I can't think of an exception.
No, its because they see asshole like you cheering for the murder of people who say dumb shit. How the fuck can you not see your own extremism when its so fucking blatant???? "People who dont agree with me deserve to die!". That you lot, thats you lot right fucking now.
Nah, it's the same playbook every time. You have dangerous right wing rhetoric justifying violence (as seen in this thread, even by Kirk himself) that leads to political violence and the right is just "this is deserved" (see J6 or the attack on democratic lawmakers), but when it hits themselves, suddenly political violence is the worst and collective pearl-clutching starts. These people have created a dangerous atmosphere that they can't control and it's backfiring, there was never an attempt from them to defuse it.
People like Kevin Roberts who threaten revolutions with thinly veiled violence etc… btw my personal theory is that Kirk was shot by a right wing lunatic who was disappointed in Kirk's 180 on the Epstein files which went from something like "this is the biggest conspiracy in history, never trust the government" to "I trust my friends in the government" over a weekend. They have created an atmosphere of "you need to fight those in power by any means necessary" and now they find themselves in an awkward spot.
Anyhow, everybody in the thread you replied to just did what Kirk ask them to. Not show empathy, not let the victims emotionally hijack the narrative. He made the world a worse place, I don't know if it's gonna be better without him but I have no reason to believe otherwise.
"Everybody in the thread just did what Kirk asked them to..." And you dont see the problem there?
As for the world being a better place... I highly doubt it, since hes now going to be a rallying cry for action against "the left". Hes a martyr now, a symbol that right wing lunatics while cling to as they march down the streets demanding Trans people are butchered, immigrants, legal and otherwise, are shot in the streets. "We need you, Trump, to do a third term. Its a civil war out here, dont you know?" will be next.
Shooting people is never, ever, your first resort in silencing a voice. Facts and words are. Violence only ever causes more violence. Someone out there today, he never hurt anyone, is going to pay the price for what happened to Kirk. You know its true. You all do. Yet youre all still all over social media happy, and cheering, and back slapping.
In the famous of words of John Wick... "Consequences."
So, youre the same kind of cunt he is? And youre good with that? I dont know, I would have thought seeing how much of a prick he was would put you off being one, but here you are, repeating his talking points like a fucking ghoul...
No he wasn't a human being, he was a fascist. The two are mutually exclusive. The world is a better place now that he's not in it and that's worth celebrating.
while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.
This is like saying "so much for tolerance" when progressives don't tolerate intolerance. It's a social contract: if you are intolerant of others you don't get the benefit of tolerance extended to you.
If you are unsympathetic towards others then you don't get the benefit of sympathy.
Yeah, it’s definitely going to happen. Which is hilarious, that some hateful douchebag will cause the deaths of thousands in death, but would also have caused the deaths of thousands in life. Anyway, Europe’s still looking nice. Canada’s definitely getting caught in this shit
Yep. I've already said this like three times on other platforms: it's ok to be happy about this. He gave you permission. Twice, actually. The "it's worth sacrificing a person every now and then if it means we get to have guns" and this empathy thing.
This is maybe the only time it's ok to be happy someone died.
When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel. Does Nazi just mean conservative fascist now? And if so is B. Netanyahu a Nazi? That seems weird.
Like the Germans they are starting with the homeless and disabled. In this case the Latino community is being targeted in the same way as the Jewish community was in Germany.
I don’t know what “sionisom” is but to answer your question. Nazi, is a good way to describe a genocidal facist. The Nazis do appear to have aligned with Zionist in modern times. Nazism and Zionism are very similar because they both have goals to create a white ethnostate. The brand of nazism we are seeing in the United States is targeting and scapegoating (hallmark of Nazism) the homeless, and Latino communities. People are being disappeared off the streets without due process or accountability. In Germany the worst concentration camps were on foreign soil during the holocaust so the United States shipping people to Africa and El Salvador should worry even the most skeptical critic. RFK has talked openly about sending people with mental illness to camps. He also has openly made blanket statements about autistic people not having a life worth living.
Except the word nazi denotes and is defined by the hate of Jews.
You might say that sionists and nazis are similar, but they are categorically different. Or it would be slightly self-destructive as a Jewish state to want to exterminate all Jews, dont you think?
When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel.
Well, Israel didn't exist when the NSDAP did, so if you apply the literal meaning of each, a Nazi couldn't support Israel. But fascism was also something that only applied to the party in power in Italy from 1922 to 1945. The terms have somewhat evolved since then; fascism generally meaning authoritarian, ultranationalistic and antiliberal. The same applies to nazism, but usually with some racist ideology with hatred for other religions.
Yes, it is a good way to describe a genocidal facist. The Nazis do appear to have aligned with Zionist in modern times. Nazism and Zionism are very similar because they both have goals to create a white ethnostate. The brand of nazism we are seeing in the United States is targeting and scapegoating (hallmark of Nazism) the homeless, and Latino communities. People are being disappeared off the streets without due process or accountability. In Germany the worst concentration camps were on foreign soil during the holocaust so the United States shipping people to Africa and El Salvador should worry even the most skeptical critic. RFK has talked openly about sending people with mental illness to camps. He also has openly made blanket statements about autistic people not having a life worth living.
Maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just an accident. There were probably lots of guns on campus, after all open carry is legal on campus' in UT, as I understand. Let's not prejudge the guy, he deserved a fair trial.
The whole concept of having that fascist there and treating his appearance as some sort of festive event, on a university of all places, is just so bizarre to me. And then this "open carry campus" nonsense.
It sounds like UT is just a fascist breeding ground.
I'd like to ask a general question that I'm not entirely sure I can give enough context for.
When did we as a society start listening so intently to what amounts to barely more than children? This Kirk guy looked chromosomal on top of being barely out of high school, how and why do so many people listen to him?
Half a century ago thought leaders were people like Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan or Gwynne Dyer or Roy Bonisteel or any number of scholarly people over a certain age.
When did we start caring about high schooler's opinions on a national level?
Yee. They always change their tune when it affects them. The only way it happens for the party of narcissism.
Look at the Republicans who are accepting of gays. Bet they have a gay family member in some capacity because they are incapable of feeling anything for something that isn't "theirs".
You are absolutely correct. Anyone that believes he would do this is a brainwashed MAGA dipshit. He would "rules for thee, but not for me" so fast it would make heads spin. Never been happier about a hole in a neck.
Yeah. Nobody should have to watch their parent or child die. Guy was a waste of oxygen but I hope the kids get plenty of therapy.
Moving forward may the world be a slightly better place, where these conservative grifters are tempered slightly by the fear they might end up like Charlie here.
Yeah, thats whats going to happen. Not that the unhinged right wing fuckwits use him as martyr, and saddle up for some weird fucking payback.
The way to defeat Kirk was with words and facts. A bullet does nothing but make his voice louder. If it was some left wing culture war weirdo, all they did was make him immortal. Yay...
"The way to defeat Kirk was with words and facts."
And you scoff like my statement was outlandish.
My gut feeling is this isn't going to be as impactful as people are saying. I remember the media buzz after Trump was almost waxed and we didn't see any (noteworthy) reprisals.
Depends. Jan 6th saw some pretty unhinged people get together with guns and zip ties. It wouldnt take much, for that to have gone a whole lot worse. And now we are seeing right leaders and influencers all over the world mark this as a call for violence against the left. I have a feeling that somebody, somewhere, who has no connection to whats happened, pay the price for whats happened to Kirk.
If nothing else, he'll become a martyr. And that might be the worst thing of all.
This is genuinely the first time in a long time that the news has brought me genuine joy. I don't give a fuck, but I am angry at him and people like him for being so shitty that it makes me feel joy at their deaths. This is on you bitch.
I don't give a shit about Charlie Kirk, rest in piss, but my celebration is mildly stunted by the fact that this is a dangerous thing to normalize and this is a massive notch in that direction given how huge of a public figure he was and the nature of his assassination being so public.
Of course, the right is largely responsible for that normalization, and Charlie Kirk's death is actually on people like Charlie Kirk's very hands. However, for me its just the consequences and the dark future that this seems to push us further into.
Hopefully the right fails to capitalize on his death effectively and we move onto largely forgetting about the piece of shit.
He had shitty opinions, we know. I won't follow them. I will have empathy and I will not celebrate his death. Still, I think the world's population improved with one less hateful person around.
Here’s the frustration and why this should not be celebrated:
Charlie Kirk spent years dehumanizing people, making lives measurably worse, and profiting from hatred. The cosmic irony of him being shot while calling trans people dangerous and minimizing gun violence feels like the universe delivering a punchline he wrote himself. There’s a cathartic release in seeing someone who seemed untouchable suddenly silenced by the very violence he dismissed.
But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive. Every celebration post, every "rest in piss" meme, every "fucked around and found out" joke is already being screenshot and weaponized. The worst people imaginable, those eager to exploit violence, are being handed exactly what they want: supposed proof that “they were right,” justification for crackdowns, and, most dangerously, a martyr whose blood sanctifies every awful thing he stood for.
Celebration may feel like a dunk on fascism, but in reality it accelerates it. It may feel like strength, but it exposes a movement so strategically bankrupt that it mistakes emotional satisfaction for political victory. Kirk alive was one influencer among many; Kirk dead is a rallying cry that will outlive us all.
The rage at what he represented is justified. But celebrating his death guarantees those very ideas will flourish. American democracy is dying, and a gravedigger falling into the hole is no victory when it only deepens the grave.
His ideas needed to be defeated. Instead, they’ve been immortalized.
I wouldn't say he was murdered. He considered himself to be a culture warrior and when a warrior falls in battle, even if it's a most pointless battle standing on the wrong side of history, it's generally not considered murder.
I have seen so many right wingers post something along the lines of "leftists are so psychotic for being happy he was killed, we should kill all leftists in response!"
the problem is that he was wrong; Empathy is a good thing. You are embodying his shitty ideology by not having empathy. That doesn't mean you gotta suddenly like the guy or not call out his shitty ideology, but don't let yourself get dragged down into the septic tank and get covered in the shit.
I choose not to have empathy for those who wouldn't have empathy for me in the same situation. He openly mocked people who die to gun violence, so no sympathy from me. I lean towards enjoying that he is gone. The line for me is killing is bad, but I'm glad he's dead.
Some people say empathy, tolerance, & inclusion are strictly moral values. However this misses that they are also a social contract lest we end up in the paradox of tolerance.
Kirk had none for those outside his in-group. Those outside his in-group owe him none in return.
How, exactly, does having empathy lead to toleration of unempathetic ideologies like fascism? It logically would make us even more averse to those kinds of ideas. Dare I say, a dearth of empathy on a societal level leads directly to those places.
What a reductive and unnuanced view of the world. I sure hope you are not representative of the rest of the population or we are even more fucked than I thought.
When one group proclaims the sadness of tragedy of a great harm upon a member of an intolerant group and the intolerant group refuses or even celebrates that same sort of great harm against the other, that normalizes the one sidedness of that for that society. Calls for reciprocity become decried as politicization
Exactly the opposite. We should have empathy, tolerance, and inclusiveness for all, unless people choose to exclude themselves from that collective. I’m saying those who only have parochial empathy shouldn’t expect to receive empathy from others they’ve already cut themselves off from, and it’s not something those they shut out to be shamed for that they experienced the repercussions of their actions.
If you can't tell the difference between someone who says "empathy is bad and no one should have it" and someone who says "I don't have empathy for this specific person due to their specific actions" then you should not be trying to argue nuance of definitions with anyone.
You are describing parochial empathy, with the caveat that somehow you think it’s different when you do it.
No parochial empathy is when an in-group only has empathy for the in-group and none for any out-groups.
The resolution to the paradox of tolerance does not require individuals in a group to only experience empathy for other individuals in their group.
Instead members of groups that adhere to the social contract or peace treaty of tolerance all feel empathy for each other.
Only when an individual, individuals, or a group of people break the social contract or peace treaty are they no longer protected by it. Every individual in the groups still being tolerant still feel empathy for each other across group lines.
This is so the groups that practice tolerance can defend themselves from a group that has chosen to be intolerant. Such as the Nazis killing minority groups in WWII.
That's what most here are doing. Should everyone in this group who celebrates breaking of the social contract be fair game for reprisal? You see the issue with this parochial approach to empathy?
You see the issue with this parochial approach to empathy?
Tolerant people in groups whether that is by race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender are still feeling empathy for tolerant people outside their groups. So people practicing tolerance as a peace treaty are still practicing empathy not parochial empathy.
Do you see the problem with using a straw man to argue? Refuting your argument is trivial.
That’s what most here are doing.
Considering this acts in accordance with self-preservation this is a rational and useful decision to have made.
Should everyone in this group who celebrates breaking of the social contract be fair game for reprisal?
Charlie Kirk and the other fascists he was a mouth piece for have already broken the social contract with their fascist takeover of the United States. This fascists administration goal is to around up minority groups into death camps and a pollute the planet as much as possible with coal powered 'freedom cities'. The fascist chose to break the peace treaty and so they are no longer protected by it.
The intolerant group has already decided those being tolerant are fair game before this. The fascists already wanted to kill people. We knew this before the election. They were completely open with what they wanted to do. Now tolerant people have to work together with people outside their groups to defend themselves against intolerant fascists. This is a clear cut example of real empathy.
It might be surprising, but it's not a limited resource that needs to be spend sparcely. You do not need to make the world worse for those in an other tribe in order to make it better for your own tribe. That false dichotomy - which you and him probably share - is the root of a lot of evil in this world.
trump is honoring him with a military procession, to distract from epstein. people said he was killed over, because he was pining for epstein files to be released. Kirk did more harm than good, but MSMS seems to try to sanewash him.
Exactly. I've been saying this all day, but we literally hanged people at Nuremberg for doing exactly what Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of incitement to genocide.
Quick note to say legally speaking Nuremberg trials were kangaroo courts, and many prosecutors and judges were uneasy about the whole thing because many of the offences were not illegal in the Third Reich, and international law wasn’t yet developed enough to make them offences in a wider sense. That said, Nazis deserved a comeuppance and subsequently international laws were made more useful. But Nuremberg should never be held as the gold standard of jurisprudence. They were a starting point and we should always aim higher. People can look to The Hague for more effective and legally sound judgements on the matters of war crimes and human rights violations.
Why were they kangaroo courts? They were established by an International Charter.. You can point out that the Nazi's crimes weren't illegal under German law, but who cares? Multiple jurisdictions can exist simultaneously. Sure there's an element of ex post facto in making crimes against humanity a legal charge after the fact, but the ex post facto protections are something we democratically agreed to adopt. And maybe we can just agree to not let genocide be subject to ex post facto protections under international treaty. Yes, this was all just made up by people, but ultimately all laws and legal systems were first dreamed up by people doing a lot of improvisation.
I don't like the tone of that. If some dude peddling bullshit gets what he deserves, I don't see the reason not to relish in it even a little. This guy has been an oppressive POS who's rhetoric is celebrated by Neo Nazis. That's like saying, "just cuz hitler died doesn't mean you get to say mean things."
Look, I know we all struggle to maintain morality against our emotions, but, sometimes, the reaction is perfectly valid.
With you. We can't sit here and make fun of him for thinking so poorly of empathy while refusing to show any empathy. He was a piece of trash and needed to be taken out like one, but I'm not going to throw a party over it. It's a "you gotta do what you gotta do" situation.
Having empathy is having the ability to see someone's emotions and understand things from their point of view. Calling someone out for being am unpathetic POS doesn't preclude you from being empathetic. Empathy doesn't mean you have to abide evil.
Comical to me how many people in soooooo many posts about this just HAVE to go out of their way to note they aren't celebrating or some blah blah about any human dying.
That's what they definitely want, but keep in mind, there's two outcomes for them: one, you try to hold moral superiority and succumb once again to justifying their victim narratives and allowing them to change the discourse, or two, which they will still claim regardless, that you fight back and they have an additional excuse they would have manufactured regardless.
Anywhere in the world and even in the US' own history, when things get bad enough, you have to recognize you will never get through the mental gymnastics and that you are under a regime that's only going to get worse. And yes, that certain people are going to try to benefit from that instability and perhaps are even forcing it, but also that sometimes the only answer is to get ahead of the road they've paved so you can change the course faster and sooner than they would have expected. Not doing so or even fighting against the people actually resisting against the regime due to your own superiority complex is what has ended up cementing dictatorships instead of powering successful revolutions back into democracies.
Political violence is of course bad... but as soon as you call for it, especially indirectly, you deserve whatever comes to you. Stochastic terrorism is still terrorism, and there's not a lot more American than the fact we don't negotiate with terrorists.
Back during Trump's first term I would hear people saying "this country is going to fall into civil war" and I told my friends "we are nowhere near a civil war." Because the conditions were not there. It takes a huge buildup to move people to organized violence. You have to have thousands and in the US case millions or at least 100s of thousands of people willing to kill and die for a cause and we didn't have that, and still don't.
But the pandemic came and we saw half the country couldn't be bothered to wear a mask or get a vaccine to protect their neighbors and the other half saw that outpouring of collective psychopathy and realized that their neighbors were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their family and community to "own the libs" and we moved a step closer.
But you can't have a civil war like the 1800's today, there aren't bright geographical lines of loyalty. I predicted in the Biden administration that we would see a period of rising violence scattered across the country, like bleeding Kansas, but spread all over.
And that is exactly what we are seeing.
We still aren't at the point where we could fall into civil war, but we are closer every year. Trump is doing his damndest to create the conditions.
I pray we never get that far. Civil wars are the worst short of full on genocide, and they make the big G a whole lot more likely.
Ding dong the witch is dead? It's hardly unusual to celebrate deaths of some public figures. Especially ones that are disliked by large numbers of people.
To be fair, using his talking points that made him one of the biggest cunts on the planet as justification to be just like him, its pretty wild. He was cunt, there no doubt about that. But his death brings that question back onto you. Are you going to celebrate the death of a 31 year old man just because you didnt like the dumb shit he said? If the answer is yes, you might not be the good guy you think you are.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
No really, if he was a nicer guy this probably wouldn't have happened.
I’m not convinced it did happen. His last words were literally making light of gun violence. If I read this in a book, I’d say it was too on-the-nose
We have no clue how long the shooter was zeroed in. It's entirely possible they chose the funniest moments to pull the trigger.
Shooter was standing there for an hour going
"well I gotta do it now then"
It was all set up. The person who asked the question, before the universe just throw a bullet at Charlie Kirk.
The universe didn't do it. The universe and I were doing a LOTR directors cut marathon all day today.
Damn. I didn't know the universe was a LoTR fan.
In infinite universe theory, there are nearly infinite timelines where this didn’t happen. We’re finally entering the good timeline.
This timeline's scriptwriter has been phoning it in for years.
Seemed like it was more in the neck to me
"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure" - Clarence Darrow
Fight fire with fire. Apparently it's the only thing conservatives will pay attention to
So many of them are convinced all gun violence is coming from the left, and at this point I'm ready to just let them have their delusions. What are they going to do about it? Implement gun control? Please do
Icon
His last words
His last word was "violence".
It's beautiful
It's poetic.
And isn't it poetic?
Don't you think?
It's like rain on that assholes birthday
It's a free ride when they've already paid
It's the gun shot that you just took to the neck And who would've thought? It figures
If some historian a hundred years from now or whatever wants to say this moment represented a real turning point, please don't
This is the best use of this meme I’ve ever seen, bar none.
Make Fascists Afraid Again.
A sniper with an innate sense of comedic timing?
Maybe he was waiting for Chuck to say a number. But chuck was too slippery. One last owning of the libs, right before he was triggered. At least you know he died doing that thing where he opens his mouth and just kind of shows his gums with glee
I'm guessing shooting at any other point would produce similar results.
Yeah, nearly every sentence he uttered could have ended with a bang. 💥
He was like a fascist Wile E Coyote.
shot; dies
Narrator:
I always said "You can tell when Charlie Kirk is arguing in bad faith by when his lips are moving and sounds are coming out."
And it was literally the last thing he ever did.
He died doing what he loved
Lying for money. I hope he saved enough for his family
I do unironically feel bad for his kids, even if they may grow up better without him they still watched their dad get ganked in public. Note they were with him at the time.
I did not know that... That sucks
And I wasn't being ironic either. I hope his ill gotten gains are enough for his kids to be ok... The damage he did collecting it will never equal what he squirreled away, but hopefully it at least is enough for his kids to grow up with food and therapists
That's my take as well, right now they need comfort food and a highly respected trauma therapist. Maybe keep them away from crowds for awhile as well, who knows what issues will start to manifest in the coming days/weeks/months/years.
You're looking to feel sad for someone because a violemce happened, but this wasn't bad.
Feel sad for his victims, cry with joy for those who now won't be, or shut the hell up and enjoy your sippy cup of champaigne.
I feel bad for his kids, actually.
They’ll likely be raised to think their father was a martyr, so the poor things (like 1 and 3 years) will probably grow up in the alt-right-o-sphere where their dad was a martyr to the cause.
That’s very sad. They’ll likely won’t have had a chance.
I do too... But I wouldn't say they don't stand a chance
Their dad got shot while encouraging gun violence. That might instill some strong opinions in them
The kind of strong opinions that will likely be buried and come out later in therapy
But it could go either way
Depends. I expect his wife is just as alt-right-addled as he was, which might mean she’ll raise them to be little Nazis. I guess they might break out of that, and I hope so, but being raised alt-right with a prominent martyr to the cause as your father could seriously fuck you up. Don’t forget they’re very rich, so they’re insulated from the real world.
I mean you might be right, but I imagine the martyr thing could go either way
Just putting myself in their shoes, it probably won't feel nice having their dad constantly praised for doing what they saw him die doing
Plus, Charlie Kirk was more hated than loved. There's no putting them so deep in a bubble that they aren't confronted with that fact
Kids tend to either follow or reject their parents beliefs... I'm not sure what this kind of trauma does to that, but I'll bet it'll make it more extreme
Hating.
“Gang violence” = racist dog whistle. The assassin couldn’t have picked a more perfect time to fire. 😂
I mean ideally it would've been at his time of birth
Okay, second-best time. 😂
I mean, most gang activity comes from young black men, but that does not mean it's racist to talk about it. I think talking about whether to include or exclude "gang violence" from a conversation about mass shootings is appropriate and not offensive in the slightest.
a dog whistle has nothing to do with the facts but a shared agreement between people in the know as to its hidden meaning.
I understand that. I'm saying that there is no hidden meaning. Gang violence is understood on its face by everyone.
unless you use it as a overgeneral brush, and fill it with only minorities, and use it as a short hand for black people like it’s used in this context. are you a native english speaker?
dog whistles specifically use words with a cover meaning and the group agrees to internally change its meaning.
He didn't use "gang violence" as short hand for "black violence." That wouldn't make sense in the context of mass shootings. He said “Counting or not counting gang violence?” more as a shorthand for "Are we counting criminals killing each other?" Whether it's hispanic, white, or black gangs isn't very relevant.
Gangs contribute to the majority of designated "mass shootings," and are often excluded from conversations that want to focus on innocent victims of mass shooting as opposed to cases of criminals killing each other. After all, if all mass shootings were just gangsters shooting each other, people wouldn't care nearly as much as they do now. They care about the mass shootings that don't involve gangs.
EDIT: Seems like many sources explicitly exclude gang violence in their stats. So my statement may be incorrect that gangs contribute to "designated" mass shootings as they are not designation such by many sources.
That’s why you just had to go out of your way to point out that gang activity comes from people of color. Not to mention lecturing to people of color about what YOU don’t find offensive. 😂 Thank you for your contribution, goodbye. 🙂
"That's racist."
"It may involve a race, but it's not racist."
"That's why you said it involved that race!"
Bizarre logic.
Offensive was the wrong word. I meant that it's not racist. It's unhealthy that one would be offended by acknowledging the existence of gang violence.
I would actually like to know what he was leading to with that question. Is the implication that gangs have an overrepresentation of trans people? Or that gang violence doesn't count for some reason?
I guess we'll never know.
Pointing out that gangs do a lot of violence is an attempt to shift blame onto the demographic groups which are overrepresented in gangs due to socioeconomic reasons (systemic racism).
Given who he was, probably the latter as a to-him socially acceptable racist dog whistle.
I bdt he was pretty piseed he had to dog-whistle it.
Using one minority as a scapegoat for gun violence wasn't working, so he was switching to a different minority.
As others mentioned, "gang violence" is generally a euphemism for non white, especially poor, people. I used to listen to Knowledge Fight(stopped after election not because of the boys, but didn't want to hear Jones gloat) and during several shootings that involved black victims Jones dismissed it as gang violence.
One case I recall was a shooting in a school in GA that he was spinning some other way, until he found out the school was primarily black and the victim (who survived iirc) was black. He then just stated the kid was in a gang with no proof and dismissed the story.
It's a deflection technique. The intention was to not answer or address the question at all, but to shift to another topic he could more easily use to manipulate his audience. If you've ever watched him "debate" he was a master of deflection.
With words, maybe. With lead, evidently not.
Now that you mention it, this seems most likely.
It was more anti-trans hate mongering. 2 or 3 trans shooters out of 5700 is nothing. If you can whittle down the number of "mass shootings" to just a handful of incidents, can make it seem like trans people are vastly over-represented among school shooters.
The number of trans shooters versus non-trans shooters probably has trans shooters falling comfortably into a margin of error. I can't do the math, though, I'm no numbersmith.
Sure. Even if the raw numbers said that say, trans people are 1% of the population, and 1.5% of shooters, that would still be a meaningless figure. The sample size is too low to make any meaningful conclusion.
But the point is even if you don't apply statistics, even using the sample we have, trans people are vastly under-represented among shooters. We represent about 1% of the population and 0.1% of shooters. You don't even need to apply statistics. The numbers on their face show that there is zero evidence that trans people are over-represented.
Now, statistically, I would say that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the rate of trans shooters is any different from the overall population, higher or lower. But there is less than zero evidence that trans people are over-represented.
The trans shooter myth is simply blood libel.
Just some good old racism
He was obviously arguing that skin colour minorities were doing any shooting that trans Americans weren't. Because his goal in life was to make people feel like they belonged - by vilifying out groups. And then monetizing that shit.
our gangs of forcefemme communists are very trans and very violent, yes
He was engaging in hate-mongering right until the end. Just like the Nazi propagandists of the WW2 era, he was spreading a message of a demonized minority group being responsible for countless crimes and social ills. He ran literally the exact same playbook against trans people as the Nazis did against Jews.
I have no more sympathy for him than the Nazi propagandists we hanged at Nuremberg. They're guilty of the exact same crimes against humanity.
Seriously? We’re living in a movie.
It gets dumber...there was a school shooting today, 3 kids dead, 1 state over from this.
Reality displayed an immaculate sense of poetic justice today.
Does anyone have video of this? (This conversation, not the shooty part) All the news media are quoting this while referring to a video but not showing it.
They're /very/ intertwined. I don't recommend looking for it unless you want trauma
Yeah, like less than a second after he says violence is a sudden and absurd amount of gore
A full on tarintino, some would say
I watched the close up video and didn’t find it traumatic especially given all what has been happening in gaza and Ukraine, not to mention the children being shot in schools
I had the same experience. It's regrettable how desensitized to violence I am these days.
I saw it unintentionally and it was horrifying. It's always horrifying to see such a thing, no matter who it is.
Meh, /b/ broke me a long time ago
You're desensitized to violence. Not something to be proud of or encourage 😟
Do you say the same to those somehow still supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza when there is vastly more grotesque footage? Or for the slaughtering and rapping in Ukraine with now years of footage? Or those enabling the children being blasted away in schools across the us on a daily basis, including yesterday? 🧐
Yes, as the decensitivation is a necessary element for the continuation of the violence
Almost like the one asking the questions was in on it. I hope they never find them.
I'm laughing at the song choices being posted on the music community.
Golden Earring - Twilight Zone for the lyrics
"Where am I to go now that I've gone too far? Soon, you will come to know when the bullet hits the bone"
Utah Saints - Something Good, for the hilarious, to me, coincidence between the song title, the band name and the location of the event
*NSYNC - Bye Bye Bye, need I say more
U2 - Bullet the Blue Sky
You plant a demon seed
You raise a flower of fire
Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot... how could I forget. Still have the CD somewhere, the singer is the brother of the T-1000.
Man, I haven't thought about Heaven 17 in decades. My favorite lyric of theirs was "brothers, sisters, we don't need that fascist groove thing". I remember liking them in the '80s but thinking that their political stance was pretty over the top and that things weren't really that bad in the world. How wrong I was.
Fun fact: the band took their name from a fictional group that was referenced in A Clockwork Orange.
I hate how some are trying to spin this as "he was killed just for having different opinions" like no, he didn't just have "different opinions" that's grossly oversimplifying things, he advocated for the genocide in Gaza, said kids being shot in school is "worth it" because "god given rights" (which version of the Bible had assault rifles in it?) ridiculed disabled people in his circles, and said if his 9 year old daughter got raped he wouldn't allow her to have an abortion
All while in a position of authority and power with influence over a significant portion of people. How anyone can sympathise for him I don't know
For a white ethnostate run by fuck-you-got-mines, obviously.
If they're "just words" then why are they so butthurt over our words? It's just words when I say "Charlie Kirk deserved what he got". What's the big deal???
...like who?
I heard something like that from 2 different 'news' sources. One was Fox News and the other was PBS news. The PBS one was a lot less direct, but some rando who knew nothing about him could still take that message away. Zero mention of what he advocated for beyond challenging opinions on college campuses and mentioning he was a right wing influencer. They were playing up the think of the CEO's family card just like they did with the UHC CEO. Oh and don't forget the 247 (/s) random politicians who condemn political violence.
Shocking
No, it wasn't. Bullshit.
Okay. That's just what they feel they have to do for appearances. Even the ones who actively wish for political violence (Trump) say that shit. No one should be surprised there.
I watched PBS news tonight as well, and what AndiHutch said was pretty much right on.
Then that would be out of character for the network. No group of people is perfect. Which is seemingly what a lot of lemmings expect. They will always be disappointed.
I've been watching PBS, listening and donating to NPR, for decades. I don't know if it's me, but it seems in the past couple years they've bent over backwards to not seem partisan. Which has made their reporting and coverage somewhat lackluster. Still better than any option out there.
Why do you disbelieve me? Do you think that PBS news wouldn't focus on the political beliefs of a political activist without actually mentioning what those beliefs are when eulogizing him? They talked about how he was big in the Maga movement and how he was close to trump, but they didn't mention any of his horrible views that he got flack for. When you don't mention what his actual horrible views were and instead focus on a bunch of politicians' generic condemnation of political violence, It's not exactly a stretch to think that a viewer could think he was killed for his opinions or his political stance. PBS didn't say that directly, but they don't have to for people to take that message away.
PBS is a respectable news source that I trust. Some internet rando is not.
Edit: I don't care if any of you self righteous fake intellectuals hate PBS. But I do take satisfaction in seeing that there were replies from people I blocked in the past. I don't have to waste my time reading takes designed to hurt my feelings and spread awful ideas.
Sorry to break it to you, but PBS Newshour is not immune to corporate and political bias, just because it is(was? Idk honestly) partially publicly funded. They have sponsors to please and viewers to pander to just like other stations. I do generally think they are better than most broadcast news but they are still biased towards a general pro-corporate sanitized viewpoint. If a CEO (or any important western figurehead) dies they aren't going to focus on harms they did, they will focus on telling how they were such a great loving family man regardless of if it is true.
Sounds like you don't know much about PBS but confidently wanna mansplain it to me
I dearly regret Charlies tragic passing.
When I initially heard the news I was hoping he was in for a half a century of quadriplegia with destroyed vocal cords.
It's okay, you can also deeply regret his tragic birth, too.
Advocating for genocide in Gaza isn't even a different opinion. It's the same opinion as democratic party leadership.
This person is correct.
At the end of the day he is a human being, that's why. I'm not trying to defend the guy, but fundamentally that's what is supposed to divide the progressives/liberals vs the conservatives. The conservatives don't care except when it's their own while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.
Julius Streicher was also a human being. He was hanged at Nuremberg for the same kind of hate-mongering that Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of crimes against humanity.
Maybe it's time to start fighting fot our liberties, instead of feeling bad for the guys taking them away.
There's a long list of people taking our liberties away, and the guy who says stupid shit is pretty far down on that list. Words matter, but they're not violence.
Why do you think the actual white power, right extremists are getting closer and closer to power everywhere? Why is there is a spike in young men leaning right? Because they listen to assholes like this one. Words are very dangerous in the long run.
Yes, words matter.
But the ends don't justify the means. Morality isn't outcome-oriented. It's wrong to kill someone just for their words and ideas.
If the assassin had targeted the people enacting those ideas, that might be different. But assassinations tend to be a net negative. I can't think of an exception.
No, its because they see asshole like you cheering for the murder of people who say dumb shit. How the fuck can you not see your own extremism when its so fucking blatant???? "People who dont agree with me deserve to die!". That you lot, thats you lot right fucking now.
Jesus christ.
Nah, it's the same playbook every time. You have dangerous right wing rhetoric justifying violence (as seen in this thread, even by Kirk himself) that leads to political violence and the right is just "this is deserved" (see J6 or the attack on democratic lawmakers), but when it hits themselves, suddenly political violence is the worst and collective pearl-clutching starts. These people have created a dangerous atmosphere that they can't control and it's backfiring, there was never an attempt from them to defuse it.
People like Kevin Roberts who threaten revolutions with thinly veiled violence etc… btw my personal theory is that Kirk was shot by a right wing lunatic who was disappointed in Kirk's 180 on the Epstein files which went from something like "this is the biggest conspiracy in history, never trust the government" to "I trust my friends in the government" over a weekend. They have created an atmosphere of "you need to fight those in power by any means necessary" and now they find themselves in an awkward spot.
Anyhow, everybody in the thread you replied to just did what Kirk ask them to. Not show empathy, not let the victims emotionally hijack the narrative. He made the world a worse place, I don't know if it's gonna be better without him but I have no reason to believe otherwise.
"Everybody in the thread just did what Kirk asked them to..." And you dont see the problem there?
As for the world being a better place... I highly doubt it, since hes now going to be a rallying cry for action against "the left". Hes a martyr now, a symbol that right wing lunatics while cling to as they march down the streets demanding Trans people are butchered, immigrants, legal and otherwise, are shot in the streets. "We need you, Trump, to do a third term. Its a civil war out here, dont you know?" will be next.
Shooting people is never, ever, your first resort in silencing a voice. Facts and words are. Violence only ever causes more violence. Someone out there today, he never hurt anyone, is going to pay the price for what happened to Kirk. You know its true. You all do. Yet youre all still all over social media happy, and cheering, and back slapping.
In the famous of words of John Wick... "Consequences."
Well, that was just a necessary cost of preserving the second amendment 🤷♀️
So, youre the same kind of cunt he is? And youre good with that? I dont know, I would have thought seeing how much of a prick he was would put you off being one, but here you are, repeating his talking points like a fucking ghoul...
No, someone who spread as much hate as he did, doesn't deserve sympathy.
I hope the bullet is ok.
Whatever. He was fucking gloating ever since the MAGAts took over, while others are being violently oppressed for "not qualifying" to be "American".
No he wasn't a human being, he was a fascist. The two are mutually exclusive. The world is a better place now that he's not in it and that's worth celebrating.
This is like saying "so much for tolerance" when progressives don't tolerate intolerance. It's a social contract: if you are intolerant of others you don't get the benefit of tolerance extended to you.
If you are unsympathetic towards others then you don't get the benefit of sympathy.
People don't sympathize with their trash when it ends up in landfill.
The world is just a little better today.
Overall it still sucks, but it's nice to know good things still happen once in a while.
I’m savoring it, as things are bound to get worse. The right produces too many directed nutters.
Yeah we merged onto the highway to hell in November... Things were always going to get worse. It's nice to have the occasional shining moment though.
This will directly lead to things getting worse. The right will be mobilized by the martyr, is my fear.
I suppose you’re right. However, I have no doubts that the administration will use this to hasten their authoritarian processes .
I bet the world moves on in a week
Nah...I don't think so
Political violence is a symptom. There's been tons of political violence, this time they aimed low on the totem pole and got away clean
We were already here. Nothing has changed. It's been done to the left, now the right has lost someone after numerous attempts
They already were trying to do authoritarian crackdowns, it wasn't working. Now they're afraid, and probably more likely to make even more mistakes
Yeah, it’s definitely going to happen. Which is hilarious, that some hateful douchebag will cause the deaths of thousands in death, but would also have caused the deaths of thousands in life. Anyway, Europe’s still looking nice. Canada’s definitely getting caught in this shit
Yep. I've already said this like three times on other platforms: it's ok to be happy about this. He gave you permission. Twice, actually. The "it's worth sacrificing a person every now and then if it means we get to have guns" and this empathy thing.
This is maybe the only time it's ok to be happy someone died.
I firmly believe that there are people who make the world better by dying.
Let's also not forget how giddy he was when Paul pelosi was nearly killed over his politics.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paul-pelosi-charlie-kirk-bail-conspiracies-b2214680.html
so does this mean that any maggot who says they feel for his family or friends or colleagues, are really just liberal cucks in disguise?
Sure enough. Probably on soros payroll too.
I'll respond the same way he would have.
Yeah but you gain one smug counter or one sanctimony counter.
X smug counters make x number of your opponents creatures attack, your blockers take no damage.
Oh. No. They don't actually do anything until like... An edition later when they're part of a bunch of insane stacking combos.
I remember every single time someone they didn't like died. They would rejoice in the most vile manner imaginable. Fuck them.
I am betting that Kirk's killer was a fellow conservative who found him too soft and not hard right enough.
Or... maybe it was the same guy who killed Brian Thompson... because Luigi is innocent.
Fuck him. ❤️ ::: spoiler Spoiler :::
spoilers please
I think I figured it out. Thanks! I’m sorry.
Don’t feel any empathy when Nazis get hunted
When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel. Does Nazi just mean conservative fascist now? And if so is B. Netanyahu a Nazi? That seems weird.
Yes Netanyahu is a Nazi
So when does he start exterminating the Jews?
Edit: he literally cant be a nazi. He's a sionist.
Like the Germans they are starting with the homeless and disabled. In this case the Latino community is being targeted in the same way as the Jewish community was in Germany.
So he's a sionist then. Not a nazi. Stop throwing words around if you don't know what they mean.
I don’t know what “sionisom” is but to answer your question. Nazi, is a good way to describe a genocidal facist. The Nazis do appear to have aligned with Zionist in modern times. Nazism and Zionism are very similar because they both have goals to create a white ethnostate. The brand of nazism we are seeing in the United States is targeting and scapegoating (hallmark of Nazism) the homeless, and Latino communities. People are being disappeared off the streets without due process or accountability. In Germany the worst concentration camps were on foreign soil during the holocaust so the United States shipping people to Africa and El Salvador should worry even the most skeptical critic. RFK has talked openly about sending people with mental illness to camps. He also has openly made blanket statements about autistic people not having a life worth living.
Except the word nazi denotes and is defined by the hate of Jews.
You might say that sionists and nazis are similar, but they are categorically different. Or it would be slightly self-destructive as a Jewish state to want to exterminate all Jews, dont you think?
Well, Israel didn't exist when the NSDAP did, so if you apply the literal meaning of each, a Nazi couldn't support Israel. But fascism was also something that only applied to the party in power in Italy from 1922 to 1945. The terms have somewhat evolved since then; fascism generally meaning authoritarian, ultranationalistic and antiliberal. The same applies to nazism, but usually with some racist ideology with hatred for other religions.
Yes, it is a good way to describe a genocidal facist. The Nazis do appear to have aligned with Zionist in modern times. Nazism and Zionism are very similar because they both have goals to create a white ethnostate. The brand of nazism we are seeing in the United States is targeting and scapegoating (hallmark of Nazism) the homeless, and Latino communities. People are being disappeared off the streets without due process or accountability. In Germany the worst concentration camps were on foreign soil during the holocaust so the United States shipping people to Africa and El Salvador should worry even the most skeptical critic. RFK has talked openly about sending people with mental illness to camps. He also has openly made blanket statements about autistic people not having a life worth living.
GOP heard they'd be getting tots and are trying to hide their disappointment that you meant the potato product.
dude it's tots how are you sad? get me some franks red hot it's happy time
these are actually useful though
I prefer thots to tots.
I wonder if we will get a new wave of users as reddit has another ban wave for people laughing at this cunts neck exploding.
He was permanently deported to the afterlife.
Plenty of people have been deported much worse places based on his brand of rhetoric.
Ma'at hasn't spoken yet.
If so then he is sucking hitlers dick as we speak.
Maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just an accident. There were probably lots of guns on campus, after all open carry is legal on campus' in UT, as I understand. Let's not prejudge the guy, he deserved a fair trial.
The whole concept of having that fascist there and treating his appearance as some sort of festive event, on a university of all places, is just so bizarre to me. And then this "open carry campus" nonsense.
It sounds like UT is just a fascist breeding ground.
They didn't seem to care when it was Paul Pelosi, or the two democratic politicians that were assassinated in their homes.
Not wearing a helmet, bullet-proof vest and all and arguing against gun control.
He was asking to be shot...
/s obvsly ffs
I'd like to ask a general question that I'm not entirely sure I can give enough context for.
When did we as a society start listening so intently to what amounts to barely more than children? This Kirk guy looked chromosomal on top of being barely out of high school, how and why do so many people listen to him?
Half a century ago thought leaders were people like Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan or Gwynne Dyer or Roy Bonisteel or any number of scholarly people over a certain age.
When did we start caring about high schooler's opinions on a national level?
I think since forever, there's for example quite a few teenagers amongst the US Founding Fathers age when signing declaration of independence:
Alexander Hamilton 21 James Monroe 18 Nathan Hale 21 John Marshall 20 Aaron Burr 20 Charles Pinckney 18
I feel bad for this guys family but becoming your own meme for getting assassinated is crazy. This whole thing has been insane.
I dont feel bad for his family.
Considering he literally said he'd force his own prepubescent daughter to carry a pregnancy to term if raped, i'd say they dodged the bullet he didn't
Spoiler. He would not.
Yee. They always change their tune when it affects them. The only way it happens for the party of narcissism.
Look at the Republicans who are accepting of gays. Bet they have a gay family member in some capacity because they are incapable of feeling anything for something that isn't "theirs".
You are absolutely correct. Anyone that believes he would do this is a brainwashed MAGA dipshit. He would "rules for thee, but not for me" so fast it would make heads spin. Never been happier about a hole in a neck.
I feel bad for his kids. They didn't choose to have a piece of shit for a father.
Yeah. Nobody should have to watch their parent or child die. Guy was a waste of oxygen but I hope the kids get plenty of therapy.
Moving forward may the world be a slightly better place, where these conservative grifters are tempered slightly by the fear they might end up like Charlie here.
They won't be, they will turn the outrage up to 11.
Yeah, thats whats going to happen. Not that the unhinged right wing fuckwits use him as martyr, and saddle up for some weird fucking payback.
The way to defeat Kirk was with words and facts. A bullet does nothing but make his voice louder. If it was some left wing culture war weirdo, all they did was make him immortal. Yay...
"The way to defeat Kirk was with words and facts."
And you scoff like my statement was outlandish.
My gut feeling is this isn't going to be as impactful as people are saying. I remember the media buzz after Trump was almost waxed and we didn't see any (noteworthy) reprisals.
Depends. Jan 6th saw some pretty unhinged people get together with guns and zip ties. It wouldnt take much, for that to have gone a whole lot worse. And now we are seeing right leaders and influencers all over the world mark this as a call for violence against the left. I have a feeling that somebody, somewhere, who has no connection to whats happened, pay the price for whats happened to Kirk.
If nothing else, he'll become a martyr. And that might be the worst thing of all.
And now they don't! Weee!
Neither did the children and families of Kirk's numerous victims.
They're safe now
This is genuinely the first time in a long time that the news has brought me genuine joy. I don't give a fuck, but I am angry at him and people like him for being so shitty that it makes me feel joy at their deaths. This is on you bitch.
Have you tried therapy? Enjoying murder is horrific
Yeah, murder is horrific. I don't enjoy the fact that he was murdered; I feel joy at the fact that he can no longer spread his toxic filth anymore.
enjoying his murder is part of our therapy
I don't give a shit about Charlie Kirk, rest in piss, but my celebration is mildly stunted by the fact that this is a dangerous thing to normalize and this is a massive notch in that direction given how huge of a public figure he was and the nature of his assassination being so public.
Of course, the right is largely responsible for that normalization, and Charlie Kirk's death is actually on people like Charlie Kirk's very hands. However, for me its just the consequences and the dark future that this seems to push us further into.
Hopefully the right fails to capitalize on his death effectively and we move onto largely forgetting about the piece of shit.
He had shitty opinions, we know. I won't follow them. I will have empathy and I will not celebrate his death. Still, I think the world's population improved with one less hateful person around.
Here’s the frustration and why this should not be celebrated:
Charlie Kirk spent years dehumanizing people, making lives measurably worse, and profiting from hatred. The cosmic irony of him being shot while calling trans people dangerous and minimizing gun violence feels like the universe delivering a punchline he wrote himself. There’s a cathartic release in seeing someone who seemed untouchable suddenly silenced by the very violence he dismissed.
But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive. Every celebration post, every "rest in piss" meme, every "fucked around and found out" joke is already being screenshot and weaponized. The worst people imaginable, those eager to exploit violence, are being handed exactly what they want: supposed proof that “they were right,” justification for crackdowns, and, most dangerously, a martyr whose blood sanctifies every awful thing he stood for.
Celebration may feel like a dunk on fascism, but in reality it accelerates it. It may feel like strength, but it exposes a movement so strategically bankrupt that it mistakes emotional satisfaction for political victory. Kirk alive was one influencer among many; Kirk dead is a rallying cry that will outlive us all.
The rage at what he represented is justified. But celebrating his death guarantees those very ideas will flourish. American democracy is dying, and a gravedigger falling into the hole is no victory when it only deepens the grave.
His ideas needed to be defeated. Instead, they’ve been immortalized.
Billy Joel was finally wrong: not only the good die young.
I can't believe he was only 31. Like he didn't seem that young at all to me
I wouldn't say he was murdered. He considered himself to be a culture warrior and when a warrior falls in battle, even if it's a most pointless battle standing on the wrong side of history, it's generally not considered murder.
No empathy for this scum <3
I keep reading people complaining about how people are taking these quotes out of context.
So went to the source, and I see them in context.
They are actually worse in context.
Stupid fuckers on Australian news are going with the 'conservative activist' shit.
Nazi pig got put down like the animal he was. Activism is for the oppressed against their oppressors.
A reputable news source, though, or NewsCorpse/Sky/Ch 9?
I checked the ABC News website, and they're calling him "MAGA Influencer", which I'll accept.
Nooo, we need more respectability politics, surely if we kowtow to fascist harder they will see the error of their ways.
In the end, he did get one vaccine shot.
The anti-life one.
More people like him should get their shots. Hey, it's a matter of public health!
"I'ma give you a gangster pill, that's a little piece of lead taken to the head"
I'm not celebrating, it's just a routine champagne toast. I do it every time a fascist dies of unnatural causes.
I have seen so many right wingers post something along the lines of "leftists are so psychotic for being happy he was killed, we should kill all leftists in response!"
"Some gun deaths are worth in order to have the second amendment"
I hope he had couple minutes to reflect on this before he died.
My dad was team horse de-wormer back in covid. Don't talk to him much.
Mom now says the he was a christian and he did everything right.
Guess sometimes parents can suck too
So we're just practicing what Charlie preached by not giving a single fuck that he died by a shooting.
God works in mysterious ways.
the problem is that he was wrong; Empathy is a good thing. You are embodying his shitty ideology by not having empathy. That doesn't mean you gotta suddenly like the guy or not call out his shitty ideology, but don't let yourself get dragged down into the septic tank and get covered in the shit.
I'll gladly die on this hill, get at me nerds
I choose not to have empathy for those who wouldn't have empathy for me in the same situation. He openly mocked people who die to gun violence, so no sympathy from me. I lean towards enjoying that he is gone. The line for me is killing is bad, but I'm glad he's dead.
All those people have loved ones, who are surprised that this worked for once
https://youtube.com/shorts/h9qQ1kC8xWg
I empathize with him. Live by the sword, die by the sword... In his situation, I'd accept my fate
I dont think we get a choice when it comes to accepting fate
Just sayn
Of course we do, we can accept it or not.
Choices don't always change reality, but they always change us
Just fyi
Some people say empathy, tolerance, & inclusion are strictly moral values. However this misses that they are also a social contract lest we end up in the paradox of tolerance.
Kirk had none for those outside his in-group. Those outside his in-group owe him none in return.
How, exactly, does having empathy lead to toleration of unempathetic ideologies like fascism? It logically would make us even more averse to those kinds of ideas. Dare I say, a dearth of empathy on a societal level leads directly to those places.
What a reductive and unnuanced view of the world. I sure hope you are not representative of the rest of the population or we are even more fucked than I thought.
When one group proclaims the sadness of tragedy of a great harm upon a member of an intolerant group and the intolerant group refuses or even celebrates that same sort of great harm against the other, that normalizes the one sidedness of that for that society. Calls for reciprocity become decried as politicization
bullshit. You're just intellectualizing being a creep.
You're arguing for parochial empathy over real empathy.
Exactly the opposite. We should have empathy, tolerance, and inclusiveness for all, unless people choose to exclude themselves from that collective. I’m saying those who only have parochial empathy shouldn’t expect to receive empathy from others they’ve already cut themselves off from, and it’s not something those they shut out to be shamed for that they experienced the repercussions of their actions.
He made it very clear he excluded himself from that collective.
In words and actions he did so incredibly clearly.
As are you, right now.
If you can't tell the difference between someone who says "empathy is bad and no one should have it" and someone who says "I don't have empathy for this specific person due to their specific actions" then you should not be trying to argue nuance of definitions with anyone.
You are describing parochial empathy, with the caveat that somehow you think it's different when you do it.
No parochial empathy is when an in-group only has empathy for the in-group and none for any out-groups.
The resolution to the paradox of tolerance does not require individuals in a group to only experience empathy for other individuals in their group.
Instead members of groups that adhere to the social contract or peace treaty of tolerance all feel empathy for each other.
Only when an individual, individuals, or a group of people break the social contract or peace treaty are they no longer protected by it. Every individual in the groups still being tolerant still feel empathy for each other across group lines.
This is so the groups that practice tolerance can defend themselves from a group that has chosen to be intolerant. Such as the Nazis killing minority groups in WWII.
That's what most here are doing. Should everyone in this group who celebrates breaking of the social contract be fair game for reprisal? You see the issue with this parochial approach to empathy?
Tolerant people in groups whether that is by race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender are still feeling empathy for tolerant people outside their groups. So people practicing tolerance as a peace treaty are still practicing empathy not parochial empathy.
Do you see the problem with using a straw man to argue? Refuting your argument is trivial.
Considering this acts in accordance with self-preservation this is a rational and useful decision to have made.
Charlie Kirk and the other fascists he was a mouth piece for have already broken the social contract with their fascist takeover of the United States. This fascists administration goal is to around up minority groups into death camps and a pollute the planet as much as possible with coal powered 'freedom cities'. The fascist chose to break the peace treaty and so they are no longer protected by it.
The intolerant group has already decided those being tolerant are fair game before this. The fascists already wanted to kill people. We knew this before the election. They were completely open with what they wanted to do. Now tolerant people have to work together with people outside their groups to defend themselves against intolerant fascists. This is a clear cut example of real empathy.
Hoes mad
He was a force for evil in this world.
Have empathy instead for the victims of the policies he advocated.
It might be surprising, but it's not a limited resource that needs to be spend sparcely. You do not need to make the world worse for those in an other tribe in order to make it better for your own tribe. That false dichotomy - which you and him probably share - is the root of a lot of evil in this world.
People's empathy absolutely can get exhausted.
That's why, for example, I am pissed about the situation in Gaza but I am capable of going to work instead of spending every day sobbing on my couch.
It's not surprising at all to see the people who spent an entire year advocating for genocide also having empathy for a dead nazi.
Come on now, someone already died
He is right, empathy is a dangerous feeling. Sometimes, it is better to feel it, and still toss it aside when it apply to assholes
trump is honoring him with a military procession, to distract from epstein. people said he was killed over, because he was pining for epstein files to be released. Kirk did more harm than good, but MSMS seems to try to sanewash him.
"A few gun deaths are worth it to protect the God given rights of women and LGBTQ+." - Charlie Kirk
Did he actually say that? That literally what genuine psychopaths say.
Well gonna be interesting to see what south park does
Agreed... I am very interested to see if they'll double down or fold
I mean, I wouldn't say "don't celebrate it" but just because someone else is a piece of shit isn't a blank check for you* to be a piece of shit.
*Collective "you"
There's a difference between being an asshole and being an asshole while monetizing it and corrupting the next generation.
Even the CEO guy who got Luigi'd was not as bad as Charlie Kirk in my eyes, he just made evil decisions for profit
Charlie Kirk exported his evil. Taught kids how to be evil. To be all manner of phobic. To hate. He actively worked to make the world a worse place
Fuck him
Exactly. I've been saying this all day, but we literally hanged people at Nuremberg for doing exactly what Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of incitement to genocide.
Quick note to say legally speaking Nuremberg trials were kangaroo courts, and many prosecutors and judges were uneasy about the whole thing because many of the offences were not illegal in the Third Reich, and international law wasn’t yet developed enough to make them offences in a wider sense. That said, Nazis deserved a comeuppance and subsequently international laws were made more useful. But Nuremberg should never be held as the gold standard of jurisprudence. They were a starting point and we should always aim higher. People can look to The Hague for more effective and legally sound judgements on the matters of war crimes and human rights violations.
Why were they kangaroo courts? They were established by an International Charter.. You can point out that the Nazi's crimes weren't illegal under German law, but who cares? Multiple jurisdictions can exist simultaneously. Sure there's an element of ex post facto in making crimes against humanity a legal charge after the fact, but the ex post facto protections are something we democratically agreed to adopt. And maybe we can just agree to not let genocide be subject to ex post facto protections under international treaty. Yes, this was all just made up by people, but ultimately all laws and legal systems were first dreamed up by people doing a lot of improvisation.
he fomented, and encouraged hate+ violence amongst susceptible incel population, hes culpable.
I don't like the tone of that. If some dude peddling bullshit gets what he deserves, I don't see the reason not to relish in it even a little. This guy has been an oppressive POS who's rhetoric is celebrated by Neo Nazis. That's like saying, "just cuz hitler died doesn't mean you get to say mean things."
Look, I know we all struggle to maintain morality against our emotions, but, sometimes, the reaction is perfectly valid.
I'm not celebrating his death, I'm celebrating the fact that he will no longer be calling for violence. Don't see how that makes me the bad guy
If we're both celebrating, it makes no difference to me.
I respect the dead the same way Hoots and Caelan Conrad do. I wonder if small face man from Toilet Paper USA will get an episode.
Schadenfreude.
With you. We can't sit here and make fun of him for thinking so poorly of empathy while refusing to show any empathy. He was a piece of trash and needed to be taken out like one, but I'm not going to throw a party over it. It's a "you gotta do what you gotta do" situation.
I feel more similarly to when you hear about exotic game hunters getting killed by the endangered animals they were hunting.
This got seems like a huge piece of crap, but I don’t take joy in this. But after all I’ve read he’s said today, yeah, not surprised at all.
I worry this is the start of something bigger though that will be terrible for everyone.
Having empathy is having the ability to see someone's emotions and understand things from their point of view. Calling someone out for being am unpathetic POS doesn't preclude you from being empathetic. Empathy doesn't mean you have to abide evil.
Oh hell yeah. I'm cracking open a bottle of wine for celebration. So well deserved.
I've been saving a small bottle of bubbly for something, not sure what. This is the perfect occasion. Cheers, friend!
I'm not going to celebrate, I simply don't care that karma struck him so hard.
Thoughts and prayers, lmao
Comical to me how many people in soooooo many posts about this just HAVE to go out of their way to note they aren't celebrating or some blah blah about any human dying.
That's what they definitely want, but keep in mind, there's two outcomes for them: one, you try to hold moral superiority and succumb once again to justifying their victim narratives and allowing them to change the discourse, or two, which they will still claim regardless, that you fight back and they have an additional excuse they would have manufactured regardless.
Anywhere in the world and even in the US' own history, when things get bad enough, you have to recognize you will never get through the mental gymnastics and that you are under a regime that's only going to get worse. And yes, that certain people are going to try to benefit from that instability and perhaps are even forcing it, but also that sometimes the only answer is to get ahead of the road they've paved so you can change the course faster and sooner than they would have expected. Not doing so or even fighting against the people actually resisting against the regime due to your own superiority complex is what has ended up cementing dictatorships instead of powering successful revolutions back into democracies.
good riddance.
They want pity and/or retribution for him for him, then there's a list he needs to get on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Hortman
Political violence is of course bad... but as soon as you call for it, especially indirectly, you deserve whatever comes to you. Stochastic terrorism is still terrorism, and there's not a lot more American than the fact we don't negotiate with terrorists.
Yeah, the victim literally called for it. He celebrated it against his enemies, I'm not all that tore up about it
Political violence is bad... But what no one seems to be saying is that it's a symptom.
You can't stop it. You can't take all the guns. You can't crack down on it.
It's a sign of where we are as a country right now.
What? The US negotiates with terrorists all the time
You seem to misunderstand. We don't negotiate. We supply them because they're killing people we want killed, or we blow them up.
Back during Trump's first term I would hear people saying "this country is going to fall into civil war" and I told my friends "we are nowhere near a civil war." Because the conditions were not there. It takes a huge buildup to move people to organized violence. You have to have thousands and in the US case millions or at least 100s of thousands of people willing to kill and die for a cause and we didn't have that, and still don't.
But the pandemic came and we saw half the country couldn't be bothered to wear a mask or get a vaccine to protect their neighbors and the other half saw that outpouring of collective psychopathy and realized that their neighbors were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their family and community to "own the libs" and we moved a step closer.
But you can't have a civil war like the 1800's today, there aren't bright geographical lines of loyalty. I predicted in the Biden administration that we would see a period of rising violence scattered across the country, like bleeding Kansas, but spread all over.
And that is exactly what we are seeing.
We still aren't at the point where we could fall into civil war, but we are closer every year. Trump is doing his damndest to create the conditions.
I pray we never get that far. Civil wars are the worst short of full on genocide, and they make the big G a whole lot more likely.
Charlie Kirt says he’s pro life, dies…
I'll sleep ever so slightly better now.
The people cheering are just honoring Charlie's legacy.
I find no joy in anyone's death, but in some deaths I do find amusement.
I keep seeing this photo of Charlie Kirk and I keep thinking "There's no way that's Charlie Kirk".
"Unalived"
Right?
Fair point.
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHhahzhzhzhzhahahahhzhahahashhahahahahahaha
I thought there were no good Nazis, but he just proved me wrong.
Cheer Up Charlie
Ding dong the witch is dead? It's hardly unusual to celebrate deaths of some public figures. Especially ones that are disliked by large numbers of people.
Today's theme song
I can't help to think Kirk was being insincere and pandering in this quote. He was just responding to what Clinton was saying
So you agree with Kirk?
To be fair, using his talking points that made him one of the biggest cunts on the planet as justification to be just like him, its pretty wild. He was cunt, there no doubt about that. But his death brings that question back onto you. Are you going to celebrate the death of a 31 year old man just because you didnt like the dumb shit he said? If the answer is yes, you might not be the good guy you think you are.