Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer need to express it aggressively.
The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
So perhaps a better excerpt in light of recent events would be
>> And another reason that I'm happy to live in [the second half of the 20th century] is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
In the context of the 1960s, governments and nuclear weapons. But more broadly the same holds true for individuals.
Either we learn to live together despite our differences, or we use our newfound great power to annihilate each other.
By historical standards we’re living is a near paradise of non violence and that’s worth persevering at significant cost.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurra...
That isn't possible without bio-warfare. I sometimes hear people foolishly speak of a shooting "race war" in the USA but always remind them that the active phase of such an event would last about 15 minutes.
Unguarded. Scattered around the country. Any oil leaks potentially destroy them. Manufacturing backlogs of multiple years.
https://www.energy.gov/oe/addressing-security-and-reliabilit...
The only thing that's kept domestic terrorism to a minimum is that anyone smart enough to do it well has better economic opportunities.
It’s awful that anyone dies.
Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.
But current protests aren't revolts nor violence anyway. There is side/peripheral violence but that is not the point of the protests
the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever
When people are so pissed off that millions of people take to the streets governments fall.
It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense, [...] But I think it’s worth it. I think 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 is a prudent deal. It is rational."
When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.
Charlie Kirk's assassin is still at-large and fired from a standoff distance, with a conventional long-barrel firearm.
Make of that what you will.
You said it yourself that the shooter is still at large... despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Is there something I'm missing here?
> despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Many such cases. We're still looking for D. B. Cooper, aren't we? Did the FBI ever dig up Hoffa's body? The feds are hardly a panacea with these things.
And you need more context and the training required to take such a shot and then evade the local cops and FBI, with a solid escape plan from a fuckton of witnesses and so forth. And I did not mention that most people would probably panic and mess up, let alone take the shot and escape. It is much more complex than that. When you look at the pattern fit, it no longer looks like a spur-of-the-moment act by a "typical gun owner".
They gave us some 22 years old kid as the person who pulled this whole operation, allegedly, and acted alone. Even if someone had been shooting since childhood, the rooftop selection, escape route, and casing inscriptions suggest deliberate operational planning and situational awareness, not just trigger skill. Shooting skill alone doesn't cover the logistics and environmental awareness. Plus a 22-year-old who "trained since childhood" might have technical skill, but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes, especially under the psychological pressure of killing a person in a public setting.
FWIW, some cases remain unsolved for decades because of scarce evidence, degraded scenes, or lack of witnesses, which does not come into play here at all. Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
...thus I remain skeptical.
> but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes
This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
I spent a lot of time at the range when I was a kid - hitting a 200yd shot from an elevated platform is not difficult with a M1903. A modern 63mm loading can easily push 3,000fps in a long-barrel rifle and if you reloaded the cartridge for a single-use assassination, I see no reason you couldn't push 5,000fps if the barrel doesn't explode from overpressure. With those kinds of ballistics its not a very tough shot unless you're shooting into a hurricane. All you need then is a hunting scope, and that can be bought for $170 in cash at Cabelas.
> Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
This I absolutely agree with. It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
Bit of a harrowing precedent for online privacy, but I presume that will fall on deaf ears.
> This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
Sure, it is, and I cannot back it up. He was operating alone, which is much different from doing it as a team, I believe.
> It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
I thought it was his dad that turned him in, but regardless, the Discord messages are suspicious, because he went to great lengths as to successfully complete the mission, but he would talk about it on an online platform? Something makes me skeptical about it, but who knows. It is just pure speculation from me at this point, but it does not align well with the rest of his behavior, IMO.
I get that criminals make mistakes, and perhaps it was just that. We will never truly know.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemou...
35% of americans are happy with how the current administration has been handling immigrants
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
approval of ICE is around 40%
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/27/republicans-...
edit: it's funny to see my post above offended(?) people who want to believe that americans are kind and loving, despite uh being on a post where everyone is arguing about how bad the political violence and polarization situation is in the US
GP is currently the highest comment, and on other sites I've visited, while too many people cheer this or call for violent retaliation, most of the highly-upvoted comments (both liberal and conservative) condemn it and argue for de-escalation.
Anger and fear are powerful emotions, but so is hope. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and became President, winning his first election with the highest %votes since 1988. Donald Trump also became President in part due to hope; his supporters expected him to improve their lives, while most of Hillary Clinton's and Kamala Harris's supporters just expected them to not make things worse. Now lots of people desperately need hope, and if things get worse more will.
Irrational hope can be dangerous: all the time, people make decisions that backfire horribly, and deep down they knew those decisions would backfire horribly, but they made them anyways out of desperation for an unlikely success. Perhaps this is another example, where the assassin delusionally hoped it would somehow promote and further their desires, but it will almost certainly do the opposite.
But hope can also be rational, and unlike anger and fear (which at best prevent bad things), hope can intrinsically be for causing good things. If a group or candidate that runs on hope for a better world gets enough attention and perceived status, it could turn public perception back to unity and optimism.
I am not claiming this is true. But merely that if I was employed to destabilize the US, I would claim to have been responsible for a number of recent events in order to please my boss.
I am hoping the possibility of a joint common enemy can perhaps unite people in America a bit.
The guy who shot Trump in the ear had (arguably) no particular ideology or goal, just an interest in assassinations and a possible depressive disorder.
In that light, does it really matter what tier party the assassin belonged to? The joint common enemy you allude to is already inside the white house, and as long as that is still up for debate, the country has no future.
it's not, poor parents can't feed their children with hope
In the end there is no going forward in the current context; there are no solutions there. It requires renewed vigor to move to a higher, better frame where growth is possible.
For us americans: political identity (libs v. Trump) has no solutions. Better: the political parties need to serve us. Dead kids or abused kids by adults (Epstein) cannot stand. What can 3.5 std deviations of center left and right get together over? Kids surely. And the knowledge (as Aeschylus narrates well elsewhere with the furies) that violence begets violence surely.
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.
Frankly I find creating an analogue between the death of MLK and Kirk in bad taste only magnified by scrubbing race from an MLK tribute.
Kirk would have celebrated MLK's death as he did the Pelosi hammer attack. Kirk called MLK "awful" and "not a good person" and the Civil Rights Movement "a huge mistake.".
https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rig...
EDIT: It’s particularly funny to imagine that First peoples somehow only became a thing in America sometime after Dr. King’s time.
The whole idea of intersectionality makes it hard to build coalitions and turns everything into a problem that’s impossibly complex to solve and difficult to build a coalition around.
It’s the basic reason many leaders who the majority of a country dislike rise to power. Because that majority can’t put their differences aside.
He didn't advocate for but against. He advocated against people who weren't his version of correct. He advocated for suppression, not liberation.
I don't think you're saying he advocated for the struggles of any marginalized group, but your comment could be read as such.
Charlie Kirk was a bigot who wanted his political "enemies" to suffer.
He never suppressed or oppressed anyone like what DEI has been doing by openly discriminating against people based on their skin color (and therefore presumed financial status).
He had no version of correct and he didn’t want anyone to suffer. He merely spoke and wrote his opinion and for that “crime” and that alone, someone decided to hate him so much that they decided to silence him forever.
This is sad and shameful (as have been the attacks and assassinations of any elected official or public figure in the past many months).
Really?
"Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge." [1]
"...he didn’t want anyone to suffer."
Really?
"We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately." [1]
"He had no version of correct..."
Really?
"The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white." [1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
Given his comments on the Pelosi attack, it's clear that he didn't believe that people should be safe from violence for their political beliefs. Given his comments on trans people[1], it's clear that he didn't believe that they should be safe from violence for the crime of... Being trans.
He would fail to meet the standards of civility set for this thread, or for this forum.
Politics is a barrier that protects us from political violence. The worst practitioners of it know this, and act to encourage escalation that will obliterate that barrier. So far, they've been rewarded by wealth and power for their efforts.
---
[1] Charlie Kirk has called for "men to handle" trans people "the way they did in the 50s and 60s."
Is this how someone just harmlessly opening up a civil dialogue behaves?
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/this-must-stop-tpusas-cha...
But still: murder is murder.
I for one read this and assumed RFK was just discussing gun control in general, only weeks before he was killed. Adding in the context the speech was regarding MLK gives it a whole different meaning. Still powerful, but different.
Attributing “The only thing we [experience] is fear itself” to FDR suggests he said something a little different. That FDR needs to see a therapist for his anxiety.
What saddens me is people take different political views as hatred, and medias run with it. I can't remember how many times a person is labeled fascist or communist just because their views are different.
Some political views are hatred, and ignoring that doesn’t serve any useful purpose.
Charlie Kirk speaking about a trans athlete: "Someone should've just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s[0].
And [1]:
> 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.
And [1]:
> 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.
0. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/this-must-stop-tpusas-cha...
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
There's a side that is genuinely, factually, deliberately misled by their politicians on a routine basis and it plugs into Fox News. This isn't a political statement. It's documented up and down.
It is funny that every side believes that the other side is genuinely, factually and deliberately misled by their politicians on a routine basis.
RFK probably studied Aeschylus in the original Greek, and did an on-the-fly translation. A more literal translation is:
"Zeus, who guided men to think, who has laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our will temperance comes. From the gods who sit in grandeur grace is somehow violent."
There's no "turning the other cheek here." It claims violence does indeed beget violence, and there's no human way around that.
To be clear, I'm not advocating violence, or even criticizing RFK. I'm simply defending the purity of Aeschylus.
I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.
====
Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Here, I get to read all about the latest insanity in the last 24 hrs from…. 4 major countries in Crisis?
Tchau, from central Brazil (today).
Over the last week or so we've had: serious riots in France, catastrophic riots in Nepal, a scandal in the UK featuring the ambassador to the US, hostile drone incursions into Poland, the murder of Charlie Kirk, the ICE raid on visiting South Korean workers, soldiers on the streets of DC and a threatened incursion into Chicago, a school shooting, revelations about the biggest paedophile scandal of the century and its links to the rich and famous, including the current president, and Israel attacking most of the countries around it.
In the background is the continuing war in Ukraine, China's increasing militarisation and threatened technological lead over the US, the situation in Gaza, the disassembly of the established US federal system of government, existential and economic dread over the impact of AI, and climate change.
If everyone's feeling a little edgy, there may be good reasons for that.
That's what people did for 99.99% of humanity btw
And that's just the big events in Europe, if you looked at newspapers you'd see hundreds of horrible things happening every single day.
Even terrorists attacks are way lower than not so long ago: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Terroris...
My parents had the cold war, petrol crisis, September 11, dotcom, 2008, my grandpa fought in wars in the 60s, my grandma was born right before ww2 and talked to German soldiers when she was 6 and her village was occupied, &c.
Young westerners get scared because they're used to people dying far away, now that it's getting a bit closer they think it's the end of the world, the truth is that it's always been fucked up, we just got locally lucky for a bit
Get out of the news cycle, it really isn't that terrible out there
I would go so far as to say going to meetings physically was also a counterbalance.
When you're around other people, even ones who share your beliefs, and say 'I think we should murder that guy!' then in most crowds someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'
It's when you exclusively socially exist in online spaces that the most extreme actions suddenly become encouraged.
Or as Josh Johnson recently quipped, "The internet is all gas no brakes."
We might be thinking of different types of gatherings/meetings. Specifically, I was thinking of someone with a particular set of extremist ideals that get together for a monthly meeting with others with those same extremist ideals. Someone in that group would likely not say "are you okay" rather they'd say "hellzya brother!" or whatever they'd actually phrase it. These types of meetings are also known to have someone speak intentionally seeking to get a member to act as a lone wolf to actually carry out the comment you're hoping someone would tamper. Now, one doesn't need to go to meetings for that encouragement. They just open up whatever app/forum.
Where are these people going that they just see encouragement without resistance?
If you walk slow the earth looks like a plane
If you go faster the earth looks like a sphere
If you travel really fast the earth looks like a dot. A tiny blue one.
There are crowds where that guy is not there, is not heard, or doesn't speak up at all.
In those crowds, people reach out for their pitchforks and outright murder people.
If you take a frank look at history, you will notice those are all too frequent. Even in this century.
I'm telling this story because I think it's how things usually go, and I think you are quite mistaken.
-- James Callender, The Prospect Before Us, 1800
Great quote. I feel the same way about 9/11 - the feeling of confusion, like "wtf is going on?!" IMHO, only those who lived it can really relate.
The response to 9/11 was one of the most foolhardy possible, and it's astounding that any other nature would attempt the same with it still in living memory.
The rest of the world haven't been shy lately about expressing their opinion of the war, something that Israel recognises and care about, but they have provided no way out for israel to take any other course of action.
Our ideas and opinions should be as harmonious as possible with reality. If Israel was understood better and her concerns and fears engaged seriously it would go a long way to ending the war.
In the context of this assassination i feel the path forward is not empty platitudes of "deescalation" rather greater empathy and understanding of people you disagree with. This is mainly an internal process, but also one that should have outward expressions too.
How do you think Palestinians have felt living in an open air prison next to genocidal maniacs with zero ability to control themselves for the past 50 years. USS Liberty should’ve been the end of things, but it wasn’t.
A phrase like "the war" glosses over a lot. If the IDF were not deliberately shooting children¹, would the Israeli public be clamouring, "shoot more children"? If food shipments were not being blockaded², would the public be demanding that Gazans be starved?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-malnutrition-children-blo...
I'm sure some form of military action was necessary in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks. Genocide³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ was not.
[3]: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/isra... [4]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/un-special-committee-pre... [5]: https://amnesty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amnesty-Intern... [6]: https://msf.org.uk/issues/gaza-genocide [7]: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/israeli-human-righ...
On the charges of genocide... Again what you say should be in harmony with reality. In truth all those sources have an anti israel bias. One can't help but think they started with a conclusion and found the evidence to fit in with it, which is the wrong way round. In any event other bodies like the UK government don't agree. Genocide requires intent and there is simply no intent for genocide from the Israeli government. One can also argue that if indeed genocide was the goal the war would have been much faster. anyway i hope that gives you a better perspective of Israels point of view and interpretation of events. Their stated goals in gaza are destroying hamas and ensuring gaza is no longer a security threat. Hamas is very large and quite well embedded in the civilian population and has a lot of infrastructure which means that even waging a war will lead to a lot of civilian casualties. Something that hamas exploits and people who claim genocide ignore.
Funny way to put it. You do not feed the enemy, rest of the world feeds the enemy. You make all effort to prevent the enemy being fed, to starve the enemy to death. Starving the enemy is generally accepted as a war crime, but Israel disagrees. Oh yeah, and enemy in this case includes infants.
It objectively isn't and that's what's so tragic. Israel doesn't need to be understood, it needs to work harder to understand. And, per 9/11, it specifically needed to understand that taking Hamas' bait was a straight shot to dashing international goodwill and benefit-of-the-doubt.
There's some far-off timeline where Israel negotiated in good faith for the return of all of the hostages without dropping a single bomb. The anti-war movement that finds one of its most fervent centers in Israel itself is driven by the dawning horror that many of those hostages are never coming home precisely because Israel (again) chose blind fury over reason. And that's not a matter of perspective, it's a simple fact.
The modern context is we have gone from a benevolent nation to a blidgerent nation. Not really progress. But the context is decisive.
If your family lived in a village in middle east and the military of another country came and seemingly killed your parents, you would think that the person would grow to have certain opinions on the things and certain enemies.
A lot of the policies being enacted have the potential to create a lot of enemies. Just to name a few, there have been thousands of people fired from federal government. Those people and their families have had their lives changed. You have people from other countries who have lived here their entire lives who are now being separated and sent to other countries. You have people playing politics with Ukraine where many people are dying due to something that the rest of the world has the power to solve. Or people in Palestine being murdered while some talk of building a wealthy paradise on the land where they were raised.
I'm not taking a side on these things. But you have to agree that these tactics have the habit of making very determined and malicious enemies. Many political policies, and the people who have strong opinions on them, have to realize that their opinions and the policies they support, do impact the lives of real people. Potentially causing devastating repercussions, death and suffering. If said people are determined to enact revenge, it is no surprise that feel justified in doing so.
I'm not justifying their thoughts or actions. But you can understand that people who have felt these impacts aren't acting particularly rationally or are stable.
You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
What went poorly is our society's collective response. From the medical and governmental establishment, there was much hemming and hawing over what measures to take for way too long (masking, distancing, closing of public spaces, etc). Taking _any_ countermeasures against the spread of the virus also somehow became a culture war issue. I'm assuming GP meant "left or right" by "either side" so make of that what you will.
Fauci himself was known to say that vaccine development takes at least 5-10 years or something like that (and never mind the fact we had Event 201, that the virus contains code BY MODERNA) or else all hell breaks loose (he was also known to say masks aren't effective)
It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue. I can understand differing approaches, but it's the extreme polarisation that flabbergasts me.
Interesting phrase. "Engineer the pathogen".
Why do you believe a pandemic has sides?
2. Divided attitudes with regard to the locus of issues around Covid-19, and public policies, are far from exclusive to the USA.
There's a lot of criticism of places that kept schools closed for longer than was necessary, in retrospect. But we really didn't know whether it would always be the case that the risks to children were low. The virus could have mutated in a way that brought more risk. Or there could have been chronic effects that could only be seen after the passage of time. Given the infectiousness of the virus, it could have been so much worse.
I get the vaccine hesitancy. But I think a lot of people were not willing to accept that vaccination is not just about their own safety, but a collective safety issue.
So public policy should have reflected that, instead of going into counterproductive authoritarian clampdown mode. In my country the authorities literally switched overnight from threatening to jail parents who took their kids out of school to announcing mandatory school closures.
And the next time this happens (which it probably will given the statistics), the US will probably handle it much better and the lock down will be less severe. I'm Korean American, and something like 10 years before covid, Korea had gone through an earlier pandemic (swine flu?), so when covid hit, it wasn't that big a deal. They already all knew what to do and the lock down wasn't as severe.
Yeah, our lockdown was overkill in many instances, but it was all so new to us. There's a good chance it'll be a lot better managed the next time.
https://record.umich.edu/articles/lockdowns-saved-lives-but-...
So yeah, I do see your point in the lockdowns were probably unnecessary, but as others have mentioned, pandemics were new to the US at the time, and we didn't have the knowledge and procedures on how to best deal with it. Yeah, we did probably go overboard, but what happened is understandable given how deadly Covid was.
We know now that social distancing and masks (for those that are willing) would probably have been enough, as other countries used to pandemics already know, like South Korea.
It's a political issue no matter how you look at it, and it was a very political issue at that, considering what the state (throughout the Western world and elsewhere too) proposed doing.
To paint it as merely a "public health issue" is doing people who don't agree a tremendous disservice, and it is very much part of the othering that has led us here. Please stop it.
The measures.
Certain methods of dealing with public health issues have historically been shown to be incredibly effective (e.g. vaccination, milk pasteurisation etc), so it's disconcerning when there's a political movement that pushes an agenda that is clearly based on fear and not rational evaluation of the issues. It seems to me that there's a push to make the poorest sections of society become less healthy and more vulnerable.
That's rich. People who want raw milk are sociopaths? Etc? Once again we have name-calling as a way to shut down debate. Might as well call for violence against people who don't agree with you, and I bet you have done just that. These false equivalences and exaggerations are in fact incitements to violence. You and all who do this should be ashamed of yourselves.
I can understand people wanting raw milk and that's fair enough as it goes, but selling it or providing it to others is risking their health to some degree - this is shown by the relatively high level of people falling seriously ill from drinking raw milk - this is due to the high level of bacteria that is often found in it. If someone does care about the health of others, but believes that raw milk is safe to consume, then it's more a case of ignorance than sociopathy.
> Might as well call for violence against people who don't agree with you
You're out of order with that comment.
In general, law enforcement is used to prevent harmful behaviour that disrupts society, so preventing theft is typically high up on the list. I think the people decrying shop lifters being targetted are highlighting the hypocrisy of societies that celebrate people who can steal huge amounts of money (e.g. not paying for work/services provided due to them being a large organisation) and yet demonise people who are struggling to survive and end up stealing food.
I was somewhat on the fence about mask mandates (I'm in the UK by the way) as I didn't think the evidence for masks being effective was particularly strong, but I had no issue with wearing a mask in public as it seemed like a sensible precaution that wouldn't cause me any harm. Then, we had social distancing laws introduced which were fairly draconian, but most people tried to observe them. The real kicker was when Boris Johnson and his cronies were caught not following the laws that he himself had introduced.
I don't think that applies if one of the sides is using rational arguments and statistics
I agree - stats are a tool to try to figure out non-obvious links and trends to figure out what is actually happening. They can certainly be distorted (see mainstream media), but we shouldn't allow bad actors to prevent us making use of probably the best way to investigate population level effects.
It was simple. People without ethical limits seen their opening to weaponize fear and discomfort ... and succeeded.
weaponize fear and discomfort = get close to others (masked) in public and breathe in front of them
Public health is not a technocratic field where there's always clearly one right answer. It presents itself as deciding on things that may hurt individuals but help the collective, and so it naturally attracts collectivists. In other words it's a political field, not a medical one. That then takes them into the realm of sides.
What’s sad today is how much of “sides” today is based on emotion not fact.
Very few facts in life are absolute.
Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
There's the story about the guy who says he was the hardest working man in Vietnam, and then when pressed about what he did, he states he was a trucker to the great surprise of anyone listening.
When asked why he thought that, he says "well I was the only one."
https://vietnamnews.vn/sunday/features/947180/female-drivers...
The joke is that everyone else he went to war with was claiming to be something else, so he must have delivered all the supplies himself.
The response is interesting to me, because having fought in a war, though I am not a US veteran -- I instantly got it. And the place I heard it from was more veteran dominated, and everyone instantly understood/appreciated the joke.
It was essentially not done because it would be too effective.
A personal salute to all those who fought to preserve it.
There is a great video on the Poles who worked to preserve it. A lot of it is ... Unspeakable.
It reveals something deep about the human condition. Auchwitz was a perfectly lovely place for many of the employees as long as they disassociated themselves from all the suffering and evil around them.
I walked all the way back from the famous entrance gate, along the train tracks, to the monument at the back. The place was huge and imagining people suffering there during that type of weather was especially heartbreaking. I was luckily able to convince the taxi driver to wait for me. I have some black and white photos I took of it somewhere on my shelves. That visit sticks with me more powerfully than almost anywhere else I've been.
The older ladies busy making handmade perogies was such a delicious treat.
But I also got to meet Stefan Petelycky. He wrote the book: Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine
He ended up there and was one of the lucky ones who made it out. When he pulled up his sleeve and showed me his tattoo, the number he was given there, a chill crossed my entire body and an overwhelming sense of sadness hit me.
I of course had heard about the concentration camps but seeing a tattoo in person made the event much more real where I could connect to the tragedy in a way I never did.
As someone whose parents, grandparents, and entire family lived in Italy through WWII (and one grandfather who lost an eye in WWI), nobody liked talking about it.
If they did talk about it, it was usually brief and imbued with a feeling of "thank God it's over. what a tragedy that we were all used as pawns by the political class for nothing more than selfish ambitions."
There was a prominent component of political scheming to his rise to power, and it was a totalitarian state that murdered political opponents even before it got to genocide, but he was enthusiastically supported by a large portion of the German society.
And there's no doubt about it - it was a myth. Most of Germany stood behind him, and were outraged by the failed July 20th coup... In 1944. Ivan and Uncle Sam were kicking down the door, extermination camps were working overtime, yet most people were still fully behind him.
The hardest thing for people to admit is that they've been duped.
Most of Germany had seen the defeat of 1918. Once a war is started the only way is forward.
Anyone picking up the paper could tell that the war wasn't going to be won by them in 1944. It was two years after Stalingrad, a year after Kursk and Italy's surrender, France was being liberated, Finland was collapsing, and Germany was fighting a three-front war.
Compared to all that, 1918 at the time of the armistice looked down-right optimistic.
Another way this observation is manifested is how out of nowhere you have countries voting in extremist parties and politicians.
Hitler was appointed to the chancellorship by senior political leaders (the president and the former chancellor) who thought they could control him. Unfortunately Germany at the time embraced the "unitary executive" theory of government.
We all know how that worked out.
You’re completely correct about the conservatives and others thinking they could control Hitler
I can't tell you what my relatives were like leading up to the war (I certainly wasn't born at that point), but they were illiterate peasants from the south, far removed from the cities and politics.
My suspicion is that, if anything, they were like most southern Italians, who seem to have a profound distrust of the government and politicians.
If I'm honest, they didn't have any moral objections to the war--they just felt used.
Up until the last century, violence was seen as just another necessary part of living, and morality only came into play when it involved you're own community.
[0]: a more nuanced take that is illuminating can be read here: https://www.france24.com/fr/20140730-grande-guerre-poilus-vr...
I've felt this myself a few times now. Both when Trump was attempted assasinated and now with Charlie Kirk. I am sad that public discourse and our democracies are kind of unraveling these days and that this is just a sad reality of that fact. As far as Trump or Charlie Kirk go, I have no sympathy what so ever.
I'm not sure I really want to blame anyone for things becoming like this, it all seems like par for the course in the world we've created for ourselves. I just wish we were able to stop before this.
I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived). I guess I was wrong... and, in that case, Garcia Marquez might agree with you.
You could be forgiven for not knowing, since the collective coverage and attention to it since has probably been less, total, than what this received in the last couple hours.
> By the way, 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, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-...
I mean a lot of people are saying that. Big if true etc.
You are clearly not paying attention.
The difference is the public nature of the execution. That is what makes it more similar to, say, Colombia or Venezuela _to me._ Within the context of 'magical realism', it is the perspective and mass dissemination of the violence that heightens that feeling.
Going back to the original topic, there is a reason that most of 100 Years of Solitude's pivotal moments happen around the staging of public executions (and not so much the off-screen violence, of which there is some but it's not focal).
Excuse me? Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman were less than 3 months ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
Doomscrolling, mostly.
Ruby Ridge was 1992, Waco was 1993.
1993 was the bombing of the world trade center.
This is worse, but we have always lived in "interesting times" depending on where you were in the globe.
RIP Charlie Kirk, no human deserves that. The rest of us left are still not necessarily better people after that exact moment, hopefully everyone takes a pause.
Do you think we have a Presidency with the same sensibility? They sent the national guard with zero pretense all over the country. This is about to get serious.
I am definitely worried what Trump and republicans will do as a response.
More posts debating the justification for killing 11 people in a boat in the Caribbean who did not pose an imminent threat.
HN rules do not prevent any of these discussions.
But here we have a individual who advocated those killings.
Here we have an individual who publicly justified school massacres by saying those senseless deaths are a worthwhile price to pay for gun rights in the US.
On HN it's perfectly fine to justify all this violence, to argue that the violence is regrettable but necessary, but any equivalent discussion about this one individual is somehow beyond the pale.
I'm an outside observer, but isn't that the point of the right to bear arms in your constitution? I don't think the people who wrote it were naive enough to not understand guns could be used for evil purposes, so inherently they supported the price of the deaths of innocents as a trade off for the benefits of guns, right?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
There’s endless legal debate how this should be interpreted, but it’s not obvious that there was an assumption that there would be mass individual gun ownership.
I dunno, this one is a whole lot less open to interpretation than the first sentence
The term "well-regulated milita" predates the constitution and traces back to the days when white people were often a substantial minority compared to the populations of enslaved black people they lived among.
On St Croix where a young man named Alexander Hamilton grew up, the ratio was 1 free person to 8 slaves, so the well-regulated militia was to assemble at the fortress if they heard a blast of the cannon: they were required to come with their weapons in order to put down a slave revolt.
Source: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
It's also probably worth mentioning that "people" in "the right of the people" certainly excluded slaves from the right to own weapons, making the text even more burdened by its own history
My point is: what the founders understood was that some gun violence was the unavoidable cost of maintaining the system of slavery, itself a system of formalized/normalized political violence.
What they couldn't have predicted is that the Bill of Rights would also apply to the individual state and local governments since that wasn't true until the 14th amendment almost 100 years later and didn't really kick off until the 1900s. This is obviously important to understand what the original amendments mean.
1. The goal of the second amendment was never "everyone should be able to have as many guns as they have, and if people use a gun to kill a dozen children then so be it", it was "it should be illegal for the government to take away people's weapons because the first step a tyrant would take is to disarm the populace so they couldn't fight back." That goal doesn't hold water anymore in a world where a computer geek working for the US military in a basement in Virginia can drone strike a wedding on the other side of the world. Instead, the NRA has made "guns good" into something that too many people make their whole personality, and the people who are actually trying to destroy society use that as a weapon to prevent any positive change when someone murders a dozen kids by making people feel like the only choice is between "anyone can have guns and children are murdered every day" or "the government takes your weapons and forces any dissidents into siberian-esque gulags".
2. Firearms were far less common, far less accessible, and far less deadly than they are now. Compared to what was available at the time, modern-day weapons like the AR15 are effectively weapons of mass destruction. If you went into a school with a civil war-era rifle and tried to kill as many people as you could, you'd maybe get one shot off which might not even kill someone if you hit them, and then you'd get tackled while you were trying to reload.
However I was speaking in the context of the tradeoffs of danger and the awareness of what blood you get on your hands for agreeing. Although the writers of this bill couldn't forsee AR15s and drone strikes, I'm sure they could forsee that there was a cost to freedom to bear arms.
The relative lethality of a particular style of rifle doesn't seem to matter. Better guns than muskets were available at the time, and they didn't seem to think it necessary to limit that amendment.
I don't think your opinions about the history and purpose of the second amendment holds water.
The logic behind the 2nd amendment doesn't hold once Uncle Sam has nuclear tipped icbms and I'm not allowed to have them. I'm also not allowed to have tanks or rocket launchers or even high rate of fire Gatling style guns.
To paraphrase, "if you think the 2nd amendment is what's keeping the government off your back, you don't understand how tanks work"
That being the case, I would say their opinions and beliefs are pretty important to the current national climate.
Wilder, in the sense of less Organization, less infrastructure, slower transportation and communication. People had to protect themselves, because there was nobody around who could do it. But today, the majority of people can be reached in a matter of minutes.
> When I look around at the violence the last several years (mass rioting, looting, uptick in murder pretty much everywhere,
You don't understand that guns are the major reason for this?
This is the sort of violence that begets more violence.
It's like when a conservative person is canceled they throw an absolute fit, then turn around and cancel someone on the left, without making any connection.
A school shooter isn’t trying to say “shut down all schools”.
But a terrorist flying a plane into one of the most important symbols of your most important city is certainly trying to send your society a message.
Same with this killing
Think about how you would feel if some guys beat you and your friends up in a bar fight, vs someone individually stalking you and beating you up outside your own house. You got beaten up in both cases, but the bar fight beating will unlikely make you feel as vulnerable and scared to leave the house as being stalked and targeted individually
Looks like a storm is coming.
Nevertheless, I realize that it's usually a zeitgeist more than any particular thing that really flows through history.
Not sure what the comparison with COVID is supposed to be. Spanish flu was not created in a lab. There was no vaccine for the Spanish flu. The only real similarity is social distancing, quarantines, and masks -- we did that back then too.
https://liberalarts.vt.edu/news/articles/2020/08/virginia-te...
This seems vague. Can you elaborate on the claim you’re making?
Neither was covid-19: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
The article literally says there is no consensus.
2. The lab leak hypothesis is geopolitically convenient for the US
3. They explicitly state "low confidence" in their affirmation of this hypothesis
2. Irrelevent because:
3. Low confidence, but probable merely implies plausibility, at least a somewhat higher likelihood than a wild previously unencountered zoonotic.
Based on all publicly available information it does seem more likely, the CIA will be better informed than the public, if they (and others) concur then I don't see why we need to dismiss it.
From further in the article: "But the once controversial theory has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies - and the BND is the latest to entertain the theory. In January, the US CIA said the coronavirus was "more likely" to have leaked from a lab than to have come from animals."
Clearly world leaders were afraid of anti-Chinese sentiment, didn't want to be seen "siding" with Trump, or just didn't want to piss China off.
What's the Pindar quote again? "War is sweet to those who have no experience of it. But the experienced man trembles exceedingly in his heart at its approach"
Do you know what Harding's famous "Return to Normalcy" stump speech in the 1920 campaign was about? I bet you don't; few do. My U.S. history textbook in high school mentioned it, but did not explain what it was about.
There are facts, skills, smarts and then there is wisdom. The latter is in short supply and is orthogonal to the other three.
It would be fascinating to see how 2001-2025 fits into that.
1) There is an eternal power struggle among people that is only obliquely acknowledged and seems willfully forgotten.
2) There is a lot of useless crap based on predatory psychological cues that will be weeded out through natural evolution.
In the arc of history, it's not that different from any other time. We just have a recency bias.
According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds.
Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0...
I imagine that "I support assassination to drive change" would be even less popular.
One person in a thousand prepared to commit violence for political ends can be enough to turn a country into chaos.
Maybe it wasn't 23%, but it was certainly not insignificant.
> It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.
I don't think anyone conflates the phrase "threatening or committing violence" with "threatening or committing calling you a bad name". Yes, there's too much equating speech and violence, but the particular wording of threatening or committing imho is largely still reserved for the physical variety.
Oh yea. A guy was murdered with an illegal handgun and an illegal silencer. and not one single Democrat usually so hot to call for more gun control did so.
Must have slipped their minds.
Michigan has been trying to ban 3D printed guns for years before UnitedHealth CEO was murdered. That was just during the session and a coincidence, not cause.
I hope not, because that would mean people would already forgot why supporters were describing it as reacting towards violence with violence.
It is unfortunate, but many people have lost hope the system can change, so revolution is getting more likely, and revolutions are seldom peaceful.
2/ I carefully said "entitled to" to avoid a debate about personal responsibility and limit the conversation to "paid for a life-saving service they did not receive", which everyone will agree is wrong.
3/ If you think the CEO did not issue orders to make it as difficult to claim as possible, and drag the process as much as possible, you are a fool.
Denying help to a human is one thing. Denying them help after they paid for the help so you can buy a yacht another thing entirely.
The problem is the conclusion that we must allow this so that their business economics can be sound, so that they can continue to exist. We should instead conclude that being horrible to people is bad, and any business model that requires it should not exist.
Brian saw a company that he knew ahead of time was horrible to people, that he knew ahead of time decided that many of their customers must die, and indeed this was critical to the company's economics and business model, and thought, 'You know what? I want to be a part of that. I like that so much that I want to be the one in charge of it.'
Why that job, instead of the millions of others? Well, we can take a gue$$. He had to make his nut, no matter who he hurt along the way, right?
Meanwhile, as an arguably less-horrible person, I see a job posting for startups that use AI to scan terminal cancer patient records for timely funeral business leads in exchange for offering crypto credits that can be applied towards a coupon for palliative care AI chat or whatever, or makes drones and AI systems for tracking and identifying government critics for later persecution, and I have to click 'next' because my soul is worth more than the salary. What a fuckin' chump I am.
One interesting thing is sympathy for Mangione doesn't seem very strongly influenced by income level or level of education. The two biggest mediators seem to be political alignment and age. It seems the vast majority of US adults under 50 have a significant amount of sympathy for him, with only 28% expressing no sympathy at all.
https://www.cloudresearch.com/resources/blog/mangione-suppor...
Except for in Japan? I noticed in all those reports Japan was at or near the bottom of countries measured for trust in their government. I was never able to find polling with regard to sentiment on Shinzo Abe's assassination but the majority of the country opposed the state funeral for him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe#Re...
I think that had far more to do with it than saving a few yen.
Here's a Japanese article from when the decision was made. Note that the scandal leading to his assassination, which was a significant issue in its own right, isn't even mentioned. That's because the decision to hold a state funeral was itself very scandalous.
That incites violence. Thinking we're oppressed when we're living lives that are immensely better than that of any oppressor of the past... We must stop that.
When the rule of law is eroded, which it has been, in the US and worldwide. Then it does indeed become more rational to use violence to restore the rule of law. Unfortunately it also increases the motivation towards violence for personal gain, that makes the task of restoring the rule of law all that more difficult. Countries have spent years trying to recover that stability once it is lost.
You need protection, non corruption and a level of equality to be protected by that rule of law.
I think that is what mostly has been eroded - also the poorest 10% need a reason to believe in rule of law.
The others don't matter if it's lacking, because social contracts without contracts meaning anything are worthless.
As far as the poorest 10%, though: There is always a poorest 10%. And a poorest 50%. If you're in the middle class or higher, you have every reason to prevent the poor from revolting and taking what you have. This can be accomplished by a vast array of carrots and sticks. Some countries lean more toward the carrot - we call them liberal democracies. Autocratic states use the stick.
But although greater wealth inequality may be a good indicator of the tendency of the lowest 10% to become lawless, it is not a good indicator of which method is used to keep them in check. Cuba has pretty amazingly low levels of wealth inequality - essentially everyone's poor. Keeping them from rebelling, however, is all stick, precisely because any kind of economic carrot would undermine the philosophy that it's better for everyone to be poor than to have wealth inequality.
For the most part, the bottom 10% in most liberal democracies are much better off than most people in most autocratic states.
Wealth inequality isn't great but the existence of wealthy people in successful countries helps fund service for the entire population. Yet I saw a poster the other day titled "class warfare" with a picture of graveyard saying that's where the "rich" will be buried. People don't understand at all how counties and economies work and how this system we live in works vs. the alternatives (I'm in Canada btw).
I don’t know where you can even think the bottom 10% of the west/liberal democracies are better than “most” in those other countries. That’s a wild thing to think. Seems like typical western centrism and chauvinism.
The average income in Egypt is ~$1900 USD a year (it's probably worse now but this is a number I've seen). Low income threshold in Canada is about $20k (EDIT: CAD) a year and that's about the bottom 10%.
So not sure what your point is re: wild thing to think. Do you think the average Egyptian is better off than the low 10% Canadian?
How is it that because liberal democracies "control the world" that Egypt is forced to be an autocracy? Do they have no agency? If Liberal democracies so control the world how come some countries have been able to do better (China e.g.)
This is exactly how I would have responded to the above comment. I'd just add that there is tons of evidence for liberal democracies attempting to help or entice those countries to become less corrupt, more transparent and more democratic. Saying that countries that have been independent of colonial rule for a hundred years, which incidentally were mostly handed democratic systems, have become autocracies because of liberal democracies want them that way is sheer insanity.
Your point about agency should be the standard rebuttal to all forms of third-worldism that attempt to blame homegrown problems on external actors. But having someone external to blame for homegrown repression isn't just post-hoc rationalization. It actually serves to reinforce the oppression in those states, both as a pressure-release valve for autocrats, and the failure to evaluate internal problems serves as an underlying reason why they have not successfully overthrown those regimes and transitioned to democracy.
Mostly, though, that type of talk comes out of the mouths of Westerners who know nothing about the situation in, e.g. Egypt.
Your comment can be adjusted a bit and it would work for “do black men have no agency” contrasted with white people in a country like America. Or any number of other oppressive dynamics.
—
This all ignores that Egypt’s current regime right now is propped up by America.
I think it does the opposite. Those services were mostly built during the last century after the war when conditions were just right for people to get those policies implemented. Since then the wealthy have mostly been lobbying against those services, dodging taxes, spreading propaganda justifying the inequality, etc. Now we're seeing the results of this work by the wealthy.
I also think it's wrong to assume the wealthy are the creators of that wealth just because they have it. It can also be the result of using positions of power to get a larger share of a pie baked by a lot of people.
The top 1% of highest income in Canada pays 21-22% of the taxes. Their share of the income is about 10%. So they "rich" are paying for services everyone else is getting.
The top 10% pay 54% (!) of the taxes. Their share of income is about 34%.
The top 0.1% pays about 8-9% of the taxes.
So in Canada the rich are absolutely paying for the services everyone else gets. That's before accounting for their indirect contributions to the economy by running businesses, employing people, taxes paid by companies, etc.
Maybe some random billionaire has some scheme that reduces their taxes. But most of the the rich pay way more taxes than others.
Maybe you need to give me more examples. Who are "actually wealthy" people in Canada who do not pay any taxes whatsoever and contribute nothing to the local economy/country? e.g. they avoid paying GST or HST, they avoid paying property taxes, they don't pay capital gains taxes?
I do agree that some rich people (and also not rich people) campaign for a smaller government and less taxes. I don't think that's an unreasonable position. There is a sweet spot for taxation and taxes in Canada are quite high. It's not a zero sum game (e.g. we have people leaving Canada to go to lower tax countries like the US).
In unequal societies governance is controlled by less people and they tend to divert money into activities that increase their wealth instead of benefitting everyone - this has in particular happened in the west over the past 40 years.
Everything I see around me, in data and anecdotally, tells me that in my unequal society (Canada) everyone is doing better and governance is not controlled by rich people. The current government that won the elections would not be the preferred government of the ultra rich who want to make a little more money on the backs of everything else (which honestly is not a thing as far I can tell).
Marianna Mazucato's writings look interesting but I'd have to dig in more. Rutger Bregman seems like much less of an expert in the domain and I'm not sure his ideas vibe with me but might take a look.
"The wealthy are hiding their wealth" sounds like a conspiracy theory. I think we have pretty good visibility into the really wealthy (e.g. we know pretty well who is on the short list of billionaires in Canada and more or less what they own). Banks report any movement of money >$10k, real estate is tracked, company ownership is tracked. That there is some large number of really wealthy people hiding in plain sight doesn't compute. We can't disprove the idea that some person living on the streets in East Vancouver is actually a billionaire hiding their wealth but even if so that percentage of those people in the total population isn't going to move the needle vs. all the known rich people who can't really "hide". If there are ways to legally not pay taxes then we'd hear about them and use them. Billionaires do have some options most of us can't pursue but I think the idea that the rich hide their wealth and don't pay taxes is mostly a myth. Prove me wrong...
Here's some data to try and support my claim:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/467384/percentage-of-pop...
The % of the population in low income families has been declining. Here's a broader time horizon:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/467276/number-of-persons...
We'd need to plot that against income/wealth inequality but I expect that has increased over this period.
This isn't consistent across Canada, for example in Alberta: https://www.statista.com/statistics/583120/low-income-popula...
There's virtually no movement since 1976 (the percentage is somewhat lower today).
I'm assuming the threshold for low income represents some more or less equal standard of living.
We can look at some other metrics like life expectancy:
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/can/can...
This has consistently improved since the 1950's which doesn't seem to support the theory that the broad population is doing worse.
If you think you have a better metric that shows that most people are worse off due to the increasing wealth/income gap then let's see it.
Random by the way is that I just saw an article today about the wealth distribution in Canada and the data point there was that the top percentiles wealth has declined since 2019. Obviously the top 0.1%/1%/10% still own a lot of the total wealth (I think the figure was something like 56% of the wealth in the top 10%) but that's what you'd expect in a free capitalist system.
( I think the article was related to this report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-605-x/2025001/article... )
Another random by the way observation is that I think the ability of some random person to get ahead is probably unprecedented. Never has knowledge been so accessible (Internet) and various means of production be so accessible and cheap (content creators, apps, prototyping equipment, etc.).
It is clear that one rich person who leisurely spend their morning getting ready for a business meeting does not provide any care to any elderly.
Your comment is clear example of the type of misinformation that got us here.
In the end money is an institution. You can only get things done, I if someone are willing to take money for work. And that only works when there is a certain level og equality.
Start a successful business, take some chances, and maybe you'll pay more tax. Heck- many software engineers are likely in the top 10% in Canada.
I don't know the particular situation for Canada, but I know that welfare benefits are getting worse in my country (France)
As a society we have a capacity to work, and we divide that work using money.
Your observation thst rich people pay for services is indicative of an oligarchy. When rich people pay, then it is not a plethora or small businesses, a democratic chooses government, or a consortium of investors bundling together to do something great.
You are literally pointing out the failure of the west.
Oligarchy would be the rich controlling the countries in the west. Other than in people's imagination and conspiracies there is no evidence of that actually happening. Was Trump the favorite candidate of the rich in the US? I very much doubt it. Do the rich gain more influence with their money - sure. But not more influence then the rest of the population. The 99.9% have more influence than the 0.1% in aggregate.
The west is the only place on this planet where the corrupt rich do not have absolute control (see Putin). Is it perfect, no? Is it better than those failed attempts to make everyone equal, strong yes.
The top 0.1%, 1%, 10% are still a lot of people. This includes many successful small businesses, it includes large businesses, it includes many. Those people have varied opinions on how countries should be run, just like all of us. But they also have a vested interest in having a safe and free and well functioning society.
> Hate begets hate; violence begets violence[...]Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate[...]but to win[...]friendship and understanding.
> The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence[...]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_begets_violence#Words....
If you subscribe to Kant perhaps, but most people's argument against violence (and morality in general) is probably not Kantian.
I think the argument for not committing violence when you are able to do so without any form of repercussion comes down to a morality issue, you don't do it because it is wrong. That works at an individual level, At a societal level you cannot assume all people to be moral. When faced with the inevitability of not all people being moral (or not agree on the same set of morals) you need a secondary reason to prevent violence. I suspect quite a lot of people would accept the morality of violence to prevent more violence. That is where individual morality might weigh in on the aspect of whether violence is appropriate to establish or protect the rule of law.
Revolutions harm the poor and the disabled far more than they harm the able bodied and the privileged
No one is making insulin when society collapses
A more likely explanation is that pro-violence propaganda began swamping social media in 2016, which is 9 years ago. 18 year olds have been exposed to it nonstop since they were 9 and 34 year olds since they were 25.
The people who are disposed to anger and violence move along the radicalization sales funnel relatively slowly. But already once you've shown interest, you start seeing increasingly angry content and only angry content. There is a lot of rhetoric specifically telling people they should be angry, should not try to help things, and should resort to violence, and actively get others to promote violence.
Being surrounded socially by that day in and day out is a challenge to anyone, and if you're predisposed to anger it can become intoxicating.
A lot of people want to say marketing doesn't work or that filter bubbles don't matter. But the bare facts are that we've had nearly a decade of multiple military intelligence agencies running nonstop campaigns promoting violent ideology in the US. And it would be naive to think that didn't make a difference.
The same sort of campaigns were run at a smaller scale during the Cold War and have been successful in provoking hot wars.
Hmm, interesting thesis. I'm aware something like half of the Whitmer Kidnapping plotters were feds/informants, to the point a few were exonerated in trial. There's certainly some evidence the government is intentionally provoking violent actors.
It's on record that Russian and Chinese propaganda campaigns in the US were aimed at sowing division generally, more so than any particular viewpoint.
For example, just one that turned up at the top of a quick Google search
> And the analysis shows that everyone from the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, as well as military bloggers, lifestyle influencers and bots, as you mentioned, are all pushing this narrative that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war and thus Texas should secede from the United States, and that Russia will be there to support this.
https://www.kut.org/texasstandard/2024-02-14/russian-propaga...
Those spaces used to be great places for people to ask questions, share interests, and find relief in a community that understood them. But over just a year or two, the whole atmosphere flipped. The focus turned from mutual support to a shared antagonism toward neurotypical people, who were often dehumanized.
It was heartbreaking to watch. Long-time members, people who were just grateful to finally have a place to belong, were suddenly told they weren't welcome anymore if they weren't angry enough. That anger became a tool to police the community, and many of the original, supportive spaces were lost.
I've wondered about this kind of shift being an inevitable response to the growing online trope of autism being the boogeyman used to shill everything from not getting vaccinated to making your kids drink your urine.
The head of us health regularly talks about autistic people as a terrible tragedy inflicted on their parents and a net negative to society. I expect that kind of rhetoric would fuel hostility across any group.
At the time I did some data analysis on the usernames of people promoting these ideas. Before the Reddit API changes you could get statistics on subs that had an overlap of users. What I noticed was there was an overlap with fringe political subs. The autistic subs with more anger issues had more fringe political people in it and as the subs became angrier the overlap increased. Inevitably the most vocal and pushy angry people were active in those political subs. You can see similar things with the angrier comments on HN.
I don't think it's an inevitable response to the things you mention. But it may be related. For example there's the term "weaponized autism" [e.g. 0]. That is, politically fringe and extreme groups talk and joke regularly about weaponizing autistic people as trolls. I think the autism forums became part of the recruiting funnel for this sort of extremism. At least that's the hypothesis that seemed to best explain all the factors.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35947316/ # I don't know if this paper or journal are any good. It's just the top hit that seemed relevant. One of the authors is Simon Baron Cohen, a well known autism researcher.
I thought about building tools to track it on Reddit, but with the API changes most of the existing tools have been shut down.
There also used to be sites that tracked foreign influence activity but they've mostly stopped from what I can tell.
I did use some of those tools to track inorganic activity in other forums (not autistic spaces at the time) and got a feel for what inorganic activity looked like. Then when I saw the changes in autistic spaces I was able to see the patterns I had already seen elsewhere.
On Reddit at least, what usually happens is trolls try to become moderators. Or, failing that, they complain about moderators and fork the subreddit to a new sub they can moderate. Typically they'll show up as unproblematic power users for a few months before it becomes clear they're trolls. Once they have moderation powers it's basically over.
At any rate, with LLMs it's impossible to track now. Your best bet if you're interested is to study how it works in known cases and then use your own judgment to decide if what you're seeing matches that pattern.
At the very least researchers can build models off older insights even though places like Reddit are now closed off.
In particular regard anti democratic developments, an increasing oligarchy, and increased inequality.
If I was a leader, I would take this really seriously and start to make some hard decisions.
The military took over for security purposes, and asked the leadership of the movement whom they wanted for an interim government. It was not the happy, peaceful democracy we all long for. It was a costly victory. But I feel happy the legitimate grievances the protestors held will lead to change. I hope they can find some candidates who will stand for them and reduce corruption, and do the best they can to help with the economy.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/former... ("Former Nepal PM Jhala Nath Khanal’s wife Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar burnt alive as protesters set his house on fire")
IMO it's far too early for anyone to declare any kind of victory, in that unresolved, chaotic power vacuum. No one can guess where that will go.
It's a tough proposition. The goal is for the elite to have the awareness, humility, and political courage to not let things get so bad. But that point is well before Dauphines lose their heads. It's when peasant children are asking for bread and not getting any. Maybe before even that. Don't reach that tipping point and you won't careen towards the other atrocities.
They're called "less lethal" for a reason. It's not a paintball that splatters on impact (and even then, those can also harm). Even a properly shot rubber bullet carries injury risk if you're too close. What's all that police training for?
Surely everyone is the physical cause of everything that results his action or inaction? We differentiate the world through all the interactions and then we get some langrange multipliers and whatnot, or we do it more carefully taking non-linear effects into account to still get some notion of responsibility.
Surely these people you mention are in fact responsible, and surely that should make them targets in case they increase deaths, destroy people's potential etc?
Jhala Nath Khanal was PM for less than 1 year in 2011.
But he was still in politics, leading party that was part of the governing coalition.
It's notable that all of those are pre-democratic.
GP stated this.
Parent replied with a list of scenarios where violence created progress, albeit none of which featured universal democracy before the violence.
IOW, they are loudly agreeing with each other.
They are very different levels of democratic access.
Yes, in 2025.
Sadly the United States abolishing slavery for ~4 million within its own borders in the 1860s did not represent humanity as a whole.
On paper the problem is solved because it’s illegal to openly buy and sell another person. In practice the exact same treatment and de facto ownership and exploitation of other people remain without any meaningful enforcement in many parts of the world.
I blame how slavery is taught for the confusion. Slavery itself is a legal state where one's autonomy is fully controlled by another. Forced labor is something people commonly use slaves for, but the absence of labor didn't make one free - a slave allowed to retire was still enslaved as was a newborn born into slavery even before they're first made to work.
The use of social media to spread misinformation with a specific agenda also makes democracy impossible.
There has to be a line, however fuzzy, somewhere. Remember Trump used misinformation to steer a crowd who then stormed the Capitol. Incitement should never be covered by free speech protection.
By contrast, acts of bombings and other political violence were both more common and widespread in the 1970's and 1980's than now.[1] In those cases, people took great personal risks.
[Edit: removed Nepal, mentioned in other comments]
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OPSR_TP...
I tell you that as a french person.
The myth of possible peaceful changes at the political level is nothing but a myth precisely.
Shooting people like kirk does not seem particularly useful for such goals tho
In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait.
To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.
I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.
That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?
So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.
Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn.
Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing).
Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.
There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did.
>Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging
Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it.
A decade of refinement later, and look where we are.
I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy)
Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable
However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control.
I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to.
He was simply saying that the term empathy is overused vs sympathy
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually," he continued. "I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time."
You can peruse the "political views" section on his Wikipedia page if you want something comprehensive, but here's an example for you to chew on:
In one podcast interview, Kirk cited Leviticus 20:18 (he paraphrases as "if thou liest with another man, thou shalt be stoned") and called it "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." That's a pretty explicit endorsement of the death penalty for sodomy. If that isn't hate speech, what is?
> They [...] don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it).
I think you're the one misunderstanding it. The first amendment protects people from government censorship, not infamy and disgrace.
The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population.
The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs".
So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society.
So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes.
Because that is working so good for Europe? At some point you need to understand that replacing a population is not the solution for low fertility population.
The great replacement theory is the theory that there is an intentional effort to dilute or replace the capital-W White, meaning the historical English/Scottish/Scotch Irish, population of the US, with immigrants and former slaves, and it usually involves a part that says that it is being done to weaken the country against its international competitors. A third part that is usually involved is that the process is being facilitated by and for the benefit of people like "international bankers", "cosmopolitans", "elites", etc., terms which have an antisemitic history.
To steelman it, you would have to steelman at least the intentional dilution part. Not just to say that it is hard to meet our demand for labor without immigration but that someone is coordinating it. Further, I don't think it has any meaning without the part that says it is being done to weaken the country, which you would have to show that not only would it weaken the country, but that is the intention of these coordinators.
Without that, you just have a demographic argument. If "Whites" do not have many children, and the population would otherwise shrink as a whole, while immigration is needed to satisfy demand for labor, then their proportion will shrink, but it is not "great replacement" without it being intentional/directed.
Not of the conspiracy itself (I'm not interested in that, since the literal version isn't even well agreed upon by most of its believers) but of the observable pressures that make the conspiracy attractive.
I think I could convince an average believer in the great replacement theory (who would be a casual believer that doesn't know many of the specific details you've listed at length of the "official" version) that my restatement of the issue is what they're actually concerned about. In fact, I have had productive conversations with right wingers who express such a casual belief in this theory by telling them what I've written here in the comment you're replying to.
On top of that I don't even think most boomers need to be inconvininced. Increase capital taxes, remove the ceiling for SS taxes, give wokers a 4 day workweek, raise minimum wage, invest in 3rd places. A few steps give people the time and energy to meet and make families.
But it seems like we really will just go to civil war before we make sure rich people contribute to the nation.
If you want more children you have to reward mothers directly and significantly in line with their potential earnings. Not a paltry few thousand dollars, but more than enough to offset the price of daycare in hcol cities. I want to mimic social security but for families, and that means concentrated benefits (that directly incentivize voting turnout and interest group formation).
At the same time I want our country to continue to be competitive globally when it comes to business, and not turn into whatever Europe has become. We can't just add this as a line item to our budget. We are not that rich and we have financial problems that are looming.
The hate mongering is from those who bow down to the zeitgeist of the age.
My hope is that Charlie Kirk bravely speaking the truth in the face of so much hate, even though it cost him his life, inspires many more to not fear for their lives to speak the truth, and raise their kids to be the same, until society turns and rejects what is false.
> I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
What you are doing here is quite literally the opposite of steelmanning.
I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy.
What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives?
What is this supposed to achieve?
Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"?
That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth.
If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong.
E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!"
And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better"
Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.
tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins"
When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back.
That goes for both sides of our political system, and beyond to the rural urban divide, the gender divide, the racial divide, the class divide, etc.
I think I found out about by reading rationalist stuff. E.g. Less wrong and slatestarcodex.
Debates take all forms, and Charlie's form was just as valid as yours or anyone else's. Gatekeeping is falling out of fashion, just sayin...
The kind of individual who shoots someone for saying things he doesn't like is a narcissist.
Ideas anger narcissists because if they are counter to what they already believe, they are a personal affront, and if they cannot reason the challenge away because - quite simply, they're wrong and the other person is right - it creates a great anger in them.
And narcissism is prevailing in our culture currently. People far prefer to call the other side bad, stupid, etc, rather than introspect and consider that maybe you're not that smart, and maybe you don't know everything, and maybe what you believe is actually naive and just a manifestation of your sillyness.
The problem of course is that the only way opposing narcissists can overcome each other is by force. So there'll be less argument, and more go-straight-to violence.
A world where pugilism prevails over debate would look markedly different. I doubt Kirk would bother holding events if any of what you said was fundamentally true about politics.
I have coworkers lying low so they don't get deported from the country. And many were born here. I beyond exhausted of this "both sides" narrative as if I need any introspection on the prospect of "maybe we should exile people based on skin color".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAqMIZdX5g ("Charlie Kirk Hands Out L's")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVQ3l5P0A4 ("Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Power vs Justice")
A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".
The whole point is you either answer A) no, and get a reaction from the audience for looking bad cause hitler or B) yes, and now you have conceded.
It amounts to a party trick.
If he fails to corner you, then comes the escape hatch where he brings up God and how God defines morality. Now the debate is over because you either believe in God or you don't.
This is a script that turns the whole thing into a rigged game not a method for arguing.
This part:
> A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".
> B) yes, and now you have conceded.
Yes, it makes the person look silly because the only answer that seems correct is yes, because there is obviously objective evil.
You don’t understand the discussion. Kirk is saying objectively morality exists. We can all agree that murdering a one month old child is objectively immoral. Not that all situations are objectively moral or immoral.
You yourself seem to be the one trying to bend what objective morality means by claiming it only applies sometimes.
If it were so obvious it would not be something worth debating in the first place which has been debated far better by far greater people. This is not a novel topic.
No but having the student admit objective morality exists is debating. You know this. I know you know this. You know the audience reaction is to the person losing the point too. You know you are being deceitful pretending the audience reaction is the debating technique not the actual technique that caused the reaction. I know you are being deceitful too. Stop posting, go outside.
The correct answer there (to someone who, unlike me, does not believe in objective morality) is something like "I oppose everything Hitler did and stood for. Notwithstanding that, your question is incoherent." What unprepared 20 year old comes up with that on the spot? Much less be prepared to back it up, only in sound bites (because that's what works in the format)?
It's not a question of skill or aptitude, but rather that he actively sought performative "owning the libs" arguments than genuine rigorous intellectual debate.
The point of his videos is to teach Young Republicans to identify weaker, more easily targeted members of the liberal tribe, alongside a set of disingenous talking points they could use to harass and ideally embarass those individuals.
There are better and worse debates but I question the validity of an argument about the quality of debates of someone who likely got shot for a political argument.
At least his argument seemed to hit some spot. (I don't know a single one, didn't even know the victim).
Are you even able to meet that level yourself? This is non-sense. Obviously we all would love to reach that level of knowledge, introspection and speaking capability of Chomsky/Foucault, but it is absurd to expect it at all times.
If you compare it with the more sober, reflectful sort (eg russell vs copleston on the existence of God [0]) you can see how far we've fallen.
Nevertheless, his killing I think will make us slide even further.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpADrtr85iM&pp=ygUlYmVydHJhb...
Are you claiming Kirk was just shilling, as was imagined about Ann Coulter[0]? (Very NSFW).
The sad thing is if people debate like it’s a performance when it’s not.
I’m not American, I never heard of this guy before. But I saw the video of the last moments and it’s a telling snippet. He was incredibly dismissive in his answers which were vague and devoid of information, while being clearly rage bait meant to be cheered on by his base.
Why can't we strive for a proper environment and expel those who don't want to foster it? Schools are not entitled to give "equal platform" to unequal ideas.
It didn't.
> The elevation of racist ideology to being just another political opinion deserving of respect
This has not occurred.
This is also irrelevant, because Kirk has not made racist claims.
I'm not convinced political debates are good for anything else. Most people believe in things without really thinking about them. Especially politics.
If you stop and actually reason this stuff out, you're going to reach some deeply disturbing conclusions which border on wrongthink. If you try to spread the nuggets of truth you discovered, you just fail miserably at first. People will not be convinced.
They probably won't really refute you either. Maybe it's because you're right, maybe it's because they didn't even think about what you said and just responded emotionally, there's no way to know for sure because trying to test ideas in debates just doesn't work with the vast majority of human beings.
If you insist on this path, people start thinking you're acting superior to them with your unconventional ideas. At some point you start getting flagged and downvoted on sight. Then you start getting personally called out. Labeled as some "extremist". Maybe one day you become such a nuisance authorities actually knock on your door and arrest you. Maybe your ideas offend someone so much they assassinate you.
So I don't blame this guy at all for debating like a politician. If he debated seriously and won, would his opponents revise their entire belief systems and start following his logical footsteps? Of course not.
no he didn't, and this is absolutely self-evident, he trolled and victim-blamed and had no interest in talking to anyone about any kind of idea
If he were still alive, he would be writing and speaking about how such violence is unfortunate but ultimately acceptable— even necessary— to "preserve our freedoms", brushing it aside to be forgotten. He of course did so many times in life, notably in 2023 when he was quoted doing so in the media:
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
Kirk's death has already overshadowed the news of that school shooting, which will indeed be forgotten by most long before we stop talking about him.
One final victory for Charlie Kirk, I guess.
He would have really advocated for violence, or school shootings? That seems odd. It is way different from "gun deaths are worth having the 2nd amendment".
My question was not answered, and my comment was ignored.
Good job for everyone here for not being able to hold a rational, non-heated conversation.
He didn't say Kirk advocated violence but that he was indifferent towards it in favor of the 2nd amendment. Isn't it interesting how a pro-lifer like Kirk didn't care that much about lives if it's about gun ownership?
Seems like it's harder to get a driver's license than a gun.
What makes gun death so special, that we don't do the same for guns?
According to your logic Kirk was against speed limits, driver licenses and seat belts but cared about lives. I doubt that he thought like that when it came to road safety.
Kirk's point was that we do for guns (domestic violence etc red flags). But like cars we don't ban them.
> According to your logic Kirk was against speed limits, driver licenses and seat belts
No.
That would be the equivalent of what we did against traffic deaths.
Red flags have the disadvantage they come after the damage.
It is very hard for someone living in the UK to understand things from the US context. It just comes across as bizarre that people accept that school children will relatively frequently die for this. I do not feel impelled at all to own a gun. It isn't something that I ever think about.
So when you say things like the phrase above, it is very alien to most people from the UK. We just don't understand what the benefits are of owning guns that justify the negatives.
By the way, this isn't an attack, it is just me sharing a state of mind with you.
In London, someone grabs your phone, threatens to take your watch with a machete, or tries to rape your child. In New York someone marches down the street wanting to punch anyone that gets close. You let yourself be victimised and then report it.
In Texas, they generally don't do these things because they might get shot. People defend themselves.
In exchange, we accept there will be some unwanted violence. Kirk made an analogy here: we don't want road deaths, yet we don't ban cars. We don't want school shootings, but we don't ban guns.
South Africans in London have similar perspectives regarding being able to defend themselves.
But the rest of the UK is extremely safe. Compared to the US? Very! And we don' have guns to defend ourselves. How does that work? And it is the same in many, many countries that don't have guns - a lot safer than the US.
So that argument for guns just doesn't work. There must be something deeper to it. It must really be something that triggers a deeper response in people.
I also visited Austin Texas and spent a night staying in the center on 6th street and didn't feel safe. Aggressive black guys shouting and stuff. I googled that location when I got to the lodging and someone was shot there a year earlier.
I guess it depends the area but I wouldn't say guns have made Texas a haven of peace.
So picking these incidents and citing them as a reason for owning guns, while ignoring the whole picture strikes me as dishonest.
The US has a lot of violent cities, I live in NY (in a very good area) and there’s still more street violence than you’d expect in a similar area in London. But that’s a coastal city. People don’t have guns here.
If someone walked down the street in Austin threatening to kill people that wouldn’t happen. Honestly.
I’m not sure if I have an answer one way or the other - I’d like it if I could buy milk in NY without someone threatening violence, and don’t think it’s right for jihadists to stand in the middle of London saying they’ll kill all the jews without the police doing anything, but I also don’t want to live somewhere where someone snaps and they have access to an automatic weapon.
That the US is safer than other places because it has guns? I guess you can sincerely believe that, but the facts say something else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
Check out both tables and you will see that the facts do not say what you think they say, at all.
Homicide rates by firearm per 100,000 inhabitants (2017):
Jamaica - 47.857
United States - 3.342
Serbia - 0.415
Jamaica - 8.8
United States - 120.5
Serbia - 39.1
It shows that Serbia has loads of guns, yet barely any firearm-related homicides, whereas Jamaica has much less guns, yet homicide rates by firearm are way higher than the US.
Thus, the statement that "More guns -> More gun-related violence" is evidently false.
In any case, I think the argument that was brought forward in favor of guns does not hold true universally for every places. For example, in Hungary, you do not need guns as a deterrent.
Perhaps London would benefit from it, I actually have no idea and I do not know if I could have any way of telling.
It is a cherry picked example and has nothing to contribute to the overall argument that gun ownership makes the US safe. Otherwise I can point to the many mass shootings in the US and say that would never have happened in the UK.
I live in the UK. It is objectively safer to live in the UK where we are not allowed to own guns. To us, it is absurd to claim we need guns to be safer when we look at what actually happens in the US as a result of guns.
I don't think this is really a controversial take.
That is why the argument for gun ownership actually happens at a deeper level in the psyche.
It obviously makes the argument that Texas isn’t New York or London and has little street crime, as a result of gun ownership. You wanted to understand the mentality? That’s the mentality. No road men in Austin.
> Otherwise I can point to the many mass shootings in the US and say that would never have happened in the UK.
Yes you can. That’s a fine argument, I agree with it. I’ve made comments about not wanting to die because someone had a bad day earlier in this thread supporting exactly this argument. You’re arguing with someone else rather than reading my responses.
I do not think it is that difficult to grasp either. Do you understand now?
I am Eastern European, no guns here either, and as I said, it may not universally apply to all countries, or even cities within one country.
Sure, I can read English, I can understand the actual English words you're typing and the point you're trying to make. I just think it isn't true, and an honest reading of statistics would show that.
But I don't think we're going to get honesty here.
This does not imply what I said though, it just confirms that more guns does not imply more gun violence.
You did not leave an answer to "If people (thieves, criminals) think "this guy may have a gun", then others are less likely to rob him to avoid getting shot." though.
You wanted to know the mentality behind it, and this is the mentality behind it, so now you know why people say and believe these things. As I previously have said, this probably cannot be universally applied to all countries, but it theoretically could be, especially if we consider the fact that "more guns -> more gun violence" is just simply not true. I have a feeling it is a cultural thing. How come Serbia (among other countries) have lots of guns yet no firearm-related violence? Many other countries have much less guns per 100 people (as per statistics), yet gun violence is through the roof. We have to look at it from many different aspects. We need ask ourselves "why?" or "why that is?", what are the differences? What are the cultural differences?
Just to be sure, I am not in favor of guns, but I do believe in that guns can be a deterrent in some places at the very least, and we know that more guns do not lead to more firearm-related homicides, so theoretically it could work in some or many places. I do not know much about Serbia. I wonder how come they have lots of guns yet barely any related crimes.
Check the statistics[1] with regarding to robbing, knife crimes, homelessness, and so on. Perhaps that is a better starting point?
I have been told by many locals to not wear an expensive watch around designer stores, or touristic hotspots because robbery happens on a daily basis, it depends on the time of the day and which day it is, of course.
I have watched many YouTubers visiting London as well and they tell quite the story, too.
[1] See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44914081
It's interesting that you mention driver's licenses. Would you say that intellectual consistency would require a "pro-lifer" to be in favour of nobody being allowed to own a car? After all, sometimes fatal driving accidents occur.
I do not think that he was against regulation, and keep in mind that criminals inherently do not care about gun laws or regulation.
The definition of a criminal is somebody who breaks the law, which means anyone who breaks any law is disregarding the existence of a law. This is not unique to gun legislation.
If your bar for whether or not we should have laws and restrictions is whether or not people will break them, then I don’t really know how you can square that with the necessary existence of our judicial system.
Let’s look at this another way: despite DUI laws, there are people still drinking and driving every day. Should we remove the restriction and just allow drinking and driving?
>There was a school shooting on the same day as Kirk's death: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/students-wounded-shooti... If he were still alive, he would be writing and speaking about how such violence is unfortunate but ultimately acceptable— even necessary— to "preserve our freedoms", brushing it aside to be forgotten. He of course did so many times in life, notably in 2023 when he was quoted doing so in the media:
Notice they said "he would be writing and speaking about how such violence...is unfortunate but ultimately acceptable - even necessary - to 'preserve our freedoms.'"
To which you responded:
>He would have really advocated for violence, or school shootings? That seems odd.
Where did they say "advocated" or "encouraged" or anything remotely like that? "Acceptable" and "necessary" are not saying "pro-" as you are implying they said. So right out the gate you are misrepresenting the person and moving the goalposts so that a bar which you have established on your own must be met.
So my question is: why should anyone feel obligated to meet your challenge? They said Kirk ultimately determined that these sacrifices are acceptable, even necessary, for the second amendment which he considered a good thing worthy of virtually any cost. You twisted that into claiming he was advocating for violence and school shootings. Clearly that is not what they said at all.
The way you’re approaching this discussion is the same way people like Shapiro and Kirk (used to) approach debates. Just like the above quote from Charlie where he said it’s [sic] “ridiculous to expect no deaths in a country that allows guns.“ Who said zero deaths? Why is that the bar and who set it? It clearly isn’t reasonable. But when pundits like them says things like that, they get to paint anybody who disagrees with them as having foolish expectations
At first I also had thr reaction of thinking "he asked for it" , and all that schadenfreude feeling.
However, now I think it was a great loss and hope the killer gets the whole extent of the law.
See, in a society that is tending more and more to the extremes, polarization and radicalism, we NEED people to TALK.
Being from outside of the US, I don't know the ideas this guy was spewing; However, from what I've read, what he did was basically talking and debate. We need that. We need to be open to talk ideas, even if we dont agree. Where are we when someone who speaks his mind gets killed for that?
I am socialist and anti-US-imperialism in general, but I tend to frequent r/conservative and r/ccw and even patriots.win subteddits. Because im interested in a different point of view.
I get sad that most posts in r/conservative block externals, as I would love to interact in some of the posts. But... after this guys assassination... I dont blame them. People should feel safe to talk and discuss their ideas.
I'm to stupid to be able to debate against this guy, or the other guy.that speaks too fast and always looks angry (anti abortion American dude). But ... why isn't someone smarter and with opposing views debating them?. We need it.
That does not mean he deserved to die. He didn’t. But he did not die undergoing some noble endeavor or engaging in free speech in some profoundly brave way.
You can see this with Ben Shapiro when he walked out of an interview with conservative BBC host, Andrew Neil. Shapiro was unprepared for a real challenge and his go-to of speaking fast, gish galloping, and calling out the “radical left views” of his opponent didn’t work because the host was a conservative.
https://youtu.be/6VixqvOcK8E?si=GX9TcG7gOgUQH3Bo
If you want a someone who would be an effective counter, look to Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo.
Even though Kirk made a point to debate students, generally, there were always a few at good schools that pretty thoroughly defeated him.
And in fairness to Kirk, he sometimes posted the in full (albeit always with laughably distorted headlines):
I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way. Either committing or supporting violence against those we disagree with, has no place in a civil society.
But his children no longer have a dad in their life. That is just heartbreaking to me. It’s hard for me to understand people who are so wrapped up in political rhetoric that they think taking a person’s life is acceptable.
That said, while I don't condone it I can't say I'm surprised by it. It seems stoking divisions is a large part of the modern media landscape and all it takes is one person with the motive and the means.
I don't care about Kirk or his family, they can take care of themselves. I'd like this country to no self destruct in this glee for wanting to start another Civil War, though.
As long as you understand that this opinion is wholeheartedly NOT shared by them at all.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/republican-s...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Paul_Pelosi#Misinfor...
Agreed. Sadly the leader of one side openly and repeatedly calls for violence against anyone who disrupts his speeches [0]. The former leader of the other side condemns political violence and even calls his opponent after an attack out of concern for his welfare. [1]
[0] https://time.com/4203094/donald-trump-hecklers/
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/14/bide...
Ironically, assassinated Charlie Kirk was one of the most reserved US public figures in this regard.
And while political violence is abhorrent Kirk was no angel. In the aftermath of this his views on gun violence have been echoed widely but he is a man that called for political opponents (namely Joe Biden) to face the death penalty [0]. That page outlines much more. So are his calls for political violence including the death of his opponents, inflammatory language like slurs[0], encouraging violence against immigrants and transgender athletes[0] “reserved”? I would hate to see what you consider out of line then
[0] https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-has-h...
I'm not from the US, and do not have a horse in this fight, but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people in the US who believe that the most inflammatory and divisive leader America had in modern history was Obama. The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is teared apart by the media, while Obama was cuddled by it.
(btw, speaking from my non-US experience, when a leader is cuddled by the press, it is a bad sign, not a good one)
Regarding your accusation that I work for Kremlin, you should be ashamed of yourself to say such things to a person who was literally beaten by Putin's polizai for protesting his policies. In your simplistic mindset, anyone who has a differing opinion from you surely must be a paid troll working for evil people. It is very fitting that you exhibit this attitude in a discussion about a person who was killed for his views. Should I be shot, too? I surely have it coming, right?
Good on you for protesting his policies. But maybe don’t spread his propaganda for free? I never celebrated, excused or wished death on anyone. Shame on you for implying that.
You want to know why a lot of those people, who are reactionary by nature, thought Obama was so divisive?
It's because they couldn't stomach being led by someone who wasn't white.
>The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is teared apart by the media, while Obama was cuddled by it.
You'll notice that Obama was roundly (and rightfully) criticized by the left for his actual policies, and was criticized by the right for his skin color. For those who focus on policy ramifications, Obama was repeatedly critiqued. The problem is the right wing media machine couldn't outright drop a hard -er or call him "boy", so they had to use emotional cues to insult him personally. Forget about actual policy, especially because his signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, was copied verbatim from enacted GOP legislation.
In the past, I have wanted to know, so I asked several of them over the years. Now I understand quite well.
> who are reactionary by nature
This is untrue.
> It's because they couldn't stomach being led by someone who wasn't white.
So is this.
> and was criticized by the right for his skin color.
This is not even remotely a fair characterization.
> so they had to use emotional cues to insult him personally.
Such as?
I tend to think that many white people voted for Obama in part because he was black. Like, we elected this guy, can we now finally put aside the question of racism? And then, somehow, instead of putting aside the question of race, it was dialled up to 11, with all these diversity quotas and DEI initiatives.
Btw you too are guilty of furthering this division: your instant reaction to criticism of Obama was to play the racist card! Of course, the only reason someone can criticise mr Obama is because they don't like the color of his skin!
I have roundly criticized Obama for the last 17 years since he was elected. I was critical during his tenure, and critical of his actions after his tenure. He doesn't get a pass.
I voted for him in 2008, not because he was black, or because he was a Democrat, but because I was sick of no-bid contract loving Neo Cons whose stock portfolio was antithetical to national security, and thus I wanted and voted for change.
But let's look at his actions and what I disliked.
Drone strikes? Yup. Critical of those. Bailing out Wall Street? Yup. Some of those bankers should have been jailed, versus bailed out with golden parachutes. Continuing the forever wars in the Middle East? Of course I critiqued those. Ignoring actions by our "friends" in the middle east that furthered Arab hatred of the US? Absolutely hated that too. Trying to pacify Putin after his attacks in Georgia, invasion of the Donbas? Yes. Was particularly hard on him for this. Not standing up to the GOP reactionary wing? Yes, I blamed that on him too. Failed healthcare policy? Of course I have issues with that.
Let's stop pretending that Obama was some sort of liberal or far leftist. The dude was pretty center-right by world standards, and only considered remotely left because the GOP had spent the Bush II administration pushing the Overton window about a hundred quadrillion light years to the right.
I could go on. But as someone who spent some time in GOP heavy rural areas during one of Obama's campaigns, I can tell you a lot of the people in those areas routinely began their critiques of Obama with a word that starts with an N and ends with an -ER.
Show me one example of any of those figures you listed inciting violence. I'm waiting. "inflammatory rhetoric" is not the same as saying "the Left is a national security problem"
Obama:
- "If they bring a knife to the fight, we're going to bring a gun." [0]
Biden:
- "If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him" [1]
- "We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye." [2]
- the whole "Darth Biden" event speech was filled with statements framing political opponents as enemies of the country, kinda sinister from the head of the most powerful state in the world, no? ("Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.", etc) [3]
Waltz:
- "When it’s an adult like Donald Trump, you bully the shit out of him back." [4]
- "I tell you that... because we need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us." [5]
Newsome:
- "But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth." [6] (apologies for the Twitter link, didn't find direct video elsewhere)
Would that be enough?
[0]: https://www.factcheck.org/2011/01/obama-guns-and-the-untouch...
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/Joe-biden-donald...
[2]: https://nypost.com/2024/07/15/us-news/biden-defends-bullseye...
[3]: https://www.newsweek.com/read-everything-joe-biden-said-his-...
[4]: https://www.startribune.com/in-key-2028-state-tim-walz-says-...
[5]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/tim-walz-brea...
That said, these pale in comparison to Trump's many, many endorsements of or acceptance of violence. Even mocking an attack on Pelosi's husband. I've never heard Trump apologize for his words, actions, or inactions. He could not even be bothered to call the governor of a state whose elected representatives were attacked, saying even to speak would be a "waste of time". Only when one of his sycophants is harmed does he suddenly see a serious problem.
In fact Trump pardoned those who violently attacked national police as the attackers sought to disrupt the transfer of power. (Some of whom went on to rape and murder others.) The very people he urged to "fight like hell", and he endorsed by waiting to see whether they would succeed before changing his tune.
Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
Trump acts like a mob boss. Doing and saying whatever he wants, and punishing those who oppose him with whatever means he thinks he can get away with. Even boasting that his supporters would stand by him if he shot someone on a famous public street.
It is also telling that you weren't content with just stopping after the words 'disrupt the transfer of power', but felt necessary to add smear about rape and murder. I am not willing to even verify the veracity of this claim, and will just ask you this: how many of those who took part in BLM riots were convicted for rape and murder crimes, likely quite a few, right? Should we bring that in every conversation on every action supported by the politicians that you support?
> Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
No, they don't. They do, however, openly prosecute their political adversaries for fabricated crimes. It was quite characteristic that democrat-friendly talking heads spent months in late 2020-early 2021 how Trump is going to issue a presidential pardon for himself and his allies, and then Biden, four years later, did just that.
I am not Trump supporter. I'm just telling you that you are extremely biased and unwilling discuss politics in good faith: you just know what truth is and consider everyone who disagrees as being wrong or stupid or evil. That is exactly kind of mindset and rhetoric that inspired someone to kill Kirk. He was such a bad fascist, after all!
Waltz should not speak that way. Perhaps he is given more grace since his words didn't incite an insurrection which he watched closely and refused to intervene for hours in the hope it would succeed. Waltz also doesn't express the desire to be a dictactor, plans to give police unlimited power, ask foreign governments to hack his opponents for his gain, shake down foreign leaders for dirt on his opponents and their families, or openly weaponize the DoJ / ICE / IRS to persecute anyone who opposed him.
>> Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
> No, they don't.
I guess the prosecutions of Quintez Brown, Robert Menendez, and Eric Adams don't count?
> ...how many of those who took part in BLM riots were convicted for rape and murder crimes, likely quite a few, right?
Did Biden pardon BLM protesters who then went on to rape and murder?
> Should we bring that in every conversation on every action supported by the politicians that you support?
If there is a discussion on political violence and how seriously leaders handle it, then I'd say the consequences of pardoning such actors is in scope.
> ...you are extremely biased and unwilling discuss politics in good faith: you just know what truth is and consider everyone who disagrees as being wrong or stupid or evil.
If there is a disagreement, then thinking the other person may be wrong is common, no? I don't presume every disagreement is because of stupidity or evil. Though I do believe evil exists (not in any spiritual sense), and that evil is more manifest in some actions than others. Assassination is quite evil for example. I try not to hold any beliefs too strongly, since I've been very wrong in the past.
> That is exactly kind of mindset and rhetoric that inspired someone to kill Kirk. He was such a bad fascist, after all!
You know what inspired Kirk's killer? Perhaps you should inform the FBI. I'll wait for the facts because it's not clear to me what motivated this attacker. It's just as likely he played a lot of Helldivers, surfed 4chan, and thought Kirk wasn't far enough to the right.
That said, rhetoric like mine is far less likely to inspire violence than say a "Professor Watchlist" which--in practice--functions something like a who-to-harrass-or-kill list.
> Perhaps he is given more grace since his words didn't incite an insurrection which he watched closely and refused to intervene for hours in the hope it would succeed.
Yeah, tweeting non-stop urges for protesters to stay peaceful. It is a certain kind of delusion to think that this 'riot' was at attempt to overthrow the state. Of course, Democrat propaganda bent over themselves to present it that way, but anyone with critical thinking understands, that even if Capitol was taken over by the unarmed protesters, then what? Oh, Senate would capitulate and declare Trump God Emperor? Please.
If we stop talking about fabricated mythology of a horribre horrible coup attempt, and look at reality, Jan 6 riot was a relatively peaceful affair, far more peaceful than BLM protests from the previous summer. I happened to watch it all live, on youtube, as it happened, it culminated in QAnon shaman strolling down the halls saying 'God bless you' to every security guard who were just standing there and doing nothing.
It is no wonder that all these livestreams were promptly scrubbed off all social media afterwards, because if anyone would watch it, as it happened, the narrative of a coup would just fall apart.
> I guess the prosecutions of Quintez Brown, Robert Menendez, and Eric Adams don't count?
I don't know who are the first two, but Eric Adams is a name I know, and from what I understand he mas prosecuted after he broke ranks with the Dems on the migration issue.
So yeah, they prosecute insignificant pawns and those who broke rank, and they also fabricate criminal cases against their chief political opponents, trying to deny him the right to be a candidate in presidential elections. However, these attempts were found unconvincing by the supreme jury - people of the US, whe majority of whom voted to re-elect Trump as president.
> Did Biden pardon BLM protesters who then went on to rape and murder?
Why would he need to pardon people who were neither prosecuted nor convicted?
Literally ignoring any and all recorded footage clearly demonstrating violence to the contrary, what kind of vocabulary judo do you have to perform to label a woman being shot to death[1] a "relatively peaceful affair." Calling anything "relatively peaceful" where someone dies by getting shot genuinely boggles my mind. By this standard, Charlie Kirk's debate was "relatively peaceful."
But seriously, damage from BLM riots is estimated to be over 1 billion USD and the number of fatalities during those riots was far higher than one Ashley.
Comparing killing of Ashlei Babbitt and Charlie Kirk is highly inappropriate. The former is at worst a voluntary manslaughter (and actually classified as a justifiable use of force), and second is a first degree murder, premeditated and with a deliberate intent to kill.
Damn, sounds like more terrible people who encourage violence then, wish they didn't encourage it either, kinda sounds like a problem America and its politics has in general.
There hasn’t been a day in the last decade that Trump wasn’t making the news for a new insanely inflammatory remark—including in the last 48 hours. To help you remember when that was: that’s when he called for War on an American city, using the visual language of Apocalypse Now, a movie about war crimes. That was in the same breath as his new “Secretary of War” detailing that war would be violent, pro-active and excessive. This is true for almost everyone in his cabinet: daily dehumanizing remarks, threats, calls to attack.
One vs. many thousands: There are three to four orders of magnitude of difference in how inflammatory each side is.
You want to prove me wrong? Give me one date, a single date in the last ten years and if I can’t find Trump publicly insulting to someone that day, I’ll concede.
The only examples of call to violence you can find are people quoting Trump and his enablers, or mocking their style. Those horrible things you read? Those insanely callous dismissal of Charlie Kirk, victim of gun violence? Those are quotes of Charlie Kirk, reacting to mass shootings.
You are wagging your finger and scream "Here’s a monster!" but what you are looking at is a mirror.
> There are three to four orders of magnitude of difference in how inflammatory each side is.
Not really.
One can only agree with this statement if he considers that calling Trump and his supporters Nazis, fascists, racists, etc, is not an inflammatory rhetoric, but a totally acceptable objective truth that just truthfully describes them. (Btw, do Nazis deserve to be shot on sight?)
However, if one doesn't consider this an objective truth, but a violent dehumanizing rhetorics, then suddenly he finds that one side routinely smears the other in the worst ways possible, and that the total amount of such rhetoric vastly drowns the messaging from another side.
> You are wagging your finger and scream "Here’s a monster!" but what you are looking at is a mirror.
That's a nice straw man you made. Please, refrain from messaging me again, if you don't plan to argue in good faith.
Can you link some examples?
> TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
They've been quite influential, and those campus efforts likely contributed to the Gen Z turnout that helped win in 2024.
This is way over-estimated. There's a number of talking heads on the right that Gen Z listens to. For every Charlie Kirk, there's five others.
Even if we assume those numbers are inflated, that's quite a bit of influence if someone is influential only on Twitter.
Given that and the fact that we're in the middle of a new South Park season, a show known for its last-minute incorporation of real-world news into storylines, it will be interesting to see how the show handles this tragic development.
I’d heard of him-I’ve lived my whole life in Australia, and although I have a Twitter/X account, I almost never use it, and that’s not a new thing, I dabbled with it but never committed.
Do most Australians know who he was? I don’t have any hard data, but my “No” to that is very confident. But I remember briefly discussing him (in person) with one of my old friends from high school, who is deep into right-wing politics (he’s a member of Australia’s One Nation party, which a lot of people would label “far right”, yet mainstream enough to have a small number of seats in Parliament)
Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.
Been following Charlie Kirk for two or three years now.
The shooting is front and centre on the ABC news website.
I would argue CK was somewhat influential among getting lots of young Christians to vote for Trump, who clearly doesn’t live Christian beliefs, but the shooting is being catastrophized for political value.
That says a lot more about those "other well-known figures" than it does about him and his already extreme ideology
In my country Australia, there's a backlash on self-destructive "empathy" decisions in criminal courts. Violent repeat offenders are granted bail or short sentences for violent crime, why? Because the judge empathises with their traumatised upbringing, for example when they come from a war-torn country. This pattern of "justice" has spiked crime rates including violent home invasions and stabbings.
Didn't like the guy, but he was just a guy expressing a horrible opinion. Violence was not the answer.
It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.
I honestly don’t know what the actual factual answer to the question is. 1? 2? But the question warranted an answer, even if it was “I don’t know.” Given that the answer to many questions about mass shooting, specific or otherwise, is “too many,” the answer he gave offered no factual data. Maybe he was prepared to offer something more fact-based and nuanced. But to me the answer he gave comes off as dismissive, lacking in additional data, and possibly ideologically-motivated.
I imagine the question was posed because many in the community adjacent to Kirk are looking for an excuse to see trans people further isolated and stripped of their rights. Forcing the debate - if we can call it that - into the world of facts doesn’t seem problematic to me.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-mass-shootings...
>Even one mass shooting is too many.
This is a misrepresentation of the exchange. "Do you know how many are trans" "Too many" doesn't imply that there would be fewer mass shooting, it implies that the situation would be better if the same amount of mass shootings were happening, but the identities of the shooters would be different.
But in this current case, the speaker's political background fits the interpretation perfectly, so I don't think that we need to explain it away.
Put another way, if he was a HN member he was definitely be banned.
Yes, that's exactly your problem. You built an image in your mind, and you interpret according to that image. If you built your image the same way you interpret this reply, well...
> was definitely be banned
HN banhammer has its own biases.
> "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."
I think a difficulty in searching for such answers is assuming that it was a well reasoned decision. I'm not sure how often attempting to take a life is a purely rational decision, devoid of intense emotional motivations (hatred, self-preservation, fear, revenge, etc.). And that's all assuming the assailant was of somewhat sound mind.
I think one of the dangers of more and more extreme divisions in society is that those divisions cloud our mental processes, threaten our emotional health, and take away opportunities for meaningful civil discourse. All of which can lead to more heinous acts that we struggle to make sense of. One of the scariest parts for me is that this can all be too self reinforcing ("Their side did this bad thing to our side, let's get them back!!!" repeat/escalate...). How do we break the cycle?
Yes, you're wrong there (no offense). He's quite popular beyond X (formerly Twitter), particularly amongst the young (~20s) conservative movements. For example, he has almost 4 million subscribers on YouTube and similar on TikTok.
I'd say X isn't even his most popular platform. He's much more popular on video platforms, due to his open campus debates.
I attended one of Charlie's debates this past year and they pretty much let anyone walk up to the mic. It wasn't scripted or censored, that I saw.
To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.
In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" kind of way some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.
And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.
On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.
> Mom, you don’t understand. I’m getting really good at this. I have my arguments down rock solid. These young college girls are totally unprepared, so I can just destroy them and also edit out all the ones that actually argue back well. It just feels so good.
that cambridge woman had prepared for exactly what he would say in the same order than he said it and what order he would change topics in. he practiced his script a ton, even if the other person with a mic wasnt on a scrip
That is a lot of people
There are plenty of dangerous mentally ill people out there who don't use any type of logic or reason as a basis for their decision-making.
The shooter is also in custody already and captured thankfully.
The first person of interest was detained, but released.
FBI director says a suspect is in custody. That governor says a person of interest is in custody. Local police say the shooter is still at large. This is what Reuters was reporting as of 1 hour ago.
I think that's the mixup. You can be insane but still perform some very calculated plots.
People decide to kill people all the time. People order others to kill people all the time. People advocate for others to order yet others to kill people all the time. Some violence is legitimate. Some violence is justified. Plenty of violence is neither. But to ignore the violence of the state as sanctified, while condemning all violence against it as madness results in an alarming ethical framework with abhorrent conclusions.
Also, I would argue that it has more to do with mental framing than “being crazy”. Police and military leadership hire selectively and craft training to ensure that people aren’t mentally ill and still willing to kill.
Mental illness isn’t the only explanation. When people are indoctrinated into stupidity and no longer believe in truth or reality, it’s possible to convince them to both believe “I support police / military” while attacking police officers (several of the worst offenders of Jan 6).
Perceived desperation is a better explainer than some generic mental illness.
“Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump said.”
He influenced the US President, that seems pretty influential to me. Anecdotally, my kid in high school surprised me by knowing quite a lot about them.
What if that is purpose?
He recently went to Cambridge Univ and debated a student who actual knew his routine. It didn't go well for him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvIktYig9Y
It seems to be a healthy debate for both sides.
It seems to be a healthy debate to someone who doesn't know Charlie's logical fallacies and scripted style.
Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations. Some want to be doctors, nurses, chefs, electricians, plumbers, or artists. Saying that women should get married and raise lots of children denies those aspirations, and says to me that those who ascribe to that model have no consideration for women as human beings. Let women pursue their own definition of happiness rather than prescribing one for them.
No. They are right. When you survey people, most women are happier working for their children rather than their boss. Most women feeling that way doesn't preclude other women feeling differently. Not does it prescribing a definition of happiness for women that want to work for their boss.
If you mean happiness is not the only metric, we're agreed.
> Sacrificing to have a rewarding, independent life without children ... is definitely not an any way inferior to a “happier” one raising kids.
In the way that it makes makes most people less happy, it is.
I haven't heard him say anything about immigration in general, merely illegal immigration which (should be) the exception, and should be a matter of crime not a matter of 'pro or con'.
See the “On Immigration” section.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
Kirk regularly spoke out against antisemitism on both the left and right. So much so, in fact, Israeli Prime Minister tweeted[0] his condolences, praising Kirk as a strong, positive force for Jewish and Christian values.
The problem is that that kind of influence often goes under the radar for people outside the circles in question, because influence is no longer mediated as centrally as it used to be, it’s more targeted and siloed. That’s a big part of how the current political situation in the US arose.
Yes, you are wrong, he was the leader of the most powerful campus conservative movement group in the country, was an extremely prominent figure in right-wing media, to the point where he is a central figure in pop culture images of the right, and a central target for being too soft of organizing figures for even farthe-right groups.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
Motives for assassinations (attempted or actual) of politicial figures are often incoherent. Political assassins aren’t always (or even often) strategic actors with a clear, rationally designed programs.
1. He was influential in a influential circle of people who roughly speaking drive what gets discussed and shown to a wider audience. In a favourite-band's favourite-band sense. His jubilee video just recently got 31 million views on youtube and probably a billion more on tiktok and reels.
2. If he wasn't killed by some nut who thought the flying spaghetti monster told him to do it then this is a really clear example of online politics and discourse jumping violently into the physical world. That's a real vibe shift if I have it right that it's basically the first assassination of that kind.
It wouldn't shock me at all if the driving topic here was actually gaza rather than domestic politics.
Crazy people murder all the time, hell he probably did it for a girl. See the movie Taxi Driver.
This would be a relevant question in many nations, but it's a bit beside the point in the US. Violence is a deeply respected and loved core of the culture for its own sake. It's an end, not means. Nearly all the US's entertainment, culture and myths are built around a reverence for violence. Even political violence has been pretty much the norm through most of the US's history. Celebrated cases aside, there's been something of a lull since the mid 1970s, but if as now likely it increases again, this will be a boring old reversion to the US's norm.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/07/18/charlie-k...
We don't know yet, but we can infer these possible changes "the person who shot him [was] hoping to elicit":
- stop an effective communicator from further moving the needle of public opinion in his side's favor
- intimidate other effective communicators with similar views
- intimidate other future possible effective communicators with similar views
- cause more violence (some people love chaos and violence)
Kirk was the young face who brought lots of energy, but he was well funded by old Republicans (incl. Foster Friess).
I think he and the org were active on Twitter, but they were MUCH more active on YouTube, and short form video (Instagram, TikTok).
It’s not even clear we know who the shooter is (still conflicting reports about whether the suspect has been arrested, let alone a confirmed identity). Too soon to know what the motive is.
He had a podcast.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-charlie-kirk-show/...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/...
Also an enthusiastic proponent of military force (against other Americans)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/charlie-kirk-calls-full-...
Why would someone target him? If they want more division. Maybe even if they want a civil war.
Who would want that? Maybe someone in government who wants disorder as an excuse to impose order by force. Maybe someone in Russia who wants a world order not let by America.
some of Charlie Kirk's last words:
> ATTENDEE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
> KIRK: Too many. [Applause]
I don't think the shooter was trans. but I'm trans, and I don't see this going well for me, or for my community. the DoJ was already talking about classifying us as "mentally defective" to take our guns. now there's a martyr. the hornet's nest is kicked.
murdering this man was not just wrong, it was stupid.
That said, Kirk, in this exchange was not engaging in debate so much as theatrics. The question that was posed to him was intended to force him to acknowledge that being trans doesn’t seem to be associated with a unique propensity to engage in mass shootings. Instead, he responded in a way that was ideologically motivated. Quite a few people praised Kirk for engaging in debate, but if this is exemplary of his format, not bringing in facts, then I would call it more performative than debate.
Regardless, this is awful; and I hope the repercussions for the trans community aren’t dire.
Creating a society where women feel less inclined to have abortions.
Definitely would have paid less tax!
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot in politically motivated killings, governor says (cbc.ca) 102 points by awnird 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
What retaliation did this trigger?
Depends what your objective is. If your goal is to accelerate political violence and set Americans at odds to an even greater degree than they already are, it's completely rational. I have no idea who did it; it could be domestic extremists, foreign actors, cynical strategists. It might be some isolated murderous person with a chip on their shoulder who totally hated Kirk, but that seems like the least likely possibility because of the fact that they've made a clean getaway - 12 hours with no CCTV imagery or even a good description is unusual for such a public event.
We heard what happened on July 13th, and even from this far, culturally and physically, we could see (and this is not to play down an attempt on someone's life) – ah, there goes that election.
How the impulsive acts of violence have changed the course of history too many times, how people in power, people looking to take power twist and use such events. We don't learn from all that history, do we?
The issue isn't just about one thread, it's about the overall pattern of using the site.
A crackdown on trans people would be disastrous for the Rust community.
My opinion on why it gained traction: the group is already marginalized, is part of a larger, also marginalized group (lgbtq community), and shootings are unpopular, while guns are, so it benefits the speaker to connect the two. There are also narratives floating around that are in synergy with this connection, such as the tragic statistic that trans people have a very high suicide rate, and the false narrative that being transgender is a mental illness.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-mass-shootings...
The effect would be subtle, but following Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction, assassinations of union elites after the civil war supposedly blunted the effects of the reconstruction.
I too am trans.
Unfortunately, and you probably have already heard. ATF leaked that the rounds were etched with pro-trans messaging and the shooter is allegedly a trans man.
Assuming this all turns out to be true. This will lead to greater hatred; far more than before.
Hard to predict what will happen but let me give examples from history each time this has happened.
Christians were thrown to the lions in Ancient Rome.
Many times through history for the jews.
Muslims and crusader kings of spain.
Irish and chinese, the chinese exclusion act of 1882?
armenian ?genocide?
rwanda tutis.
We now have a situation where government must do something about the trans shooter issue. LAwfully they'd have to take each trans person to court to prove mental illness to ban them from 2nd amendment right. Technically... DSM5 is pretty clear about it...
fortunately, this was bogus! the "pro-trans messaging" was that the bullets were stamped with "TRN," which was the manufacturer's mark, and the shooter was a 22yo cis Mormon male.
As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then.
Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.
Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.
Kirk was not a benevolent truth seeker. He was a political provocateur and propagandist dressed as a debater. And Paul Pelosi was one of the victims of his smears.
I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.
In a broader sense, it is of course not okay to shoot someone, but that's taking the quote out of the context of gun control measures.
I disagree with him on guns, but that is the point.
instead his opinion is more, "all gun deaths are ok"
he was never going to be worried about the count or a more nuanced comparison of how many gun deaths are acceptable
And I have the sensation that all the ones we drive a car nowadays are engaging in a similar type of risk acceptance, we know there's too many people dead every year in car accidents, but we still believe that overall having access to cars outweighs the risks, without meaning that car accidents are acceptable and trying to improve the safety of the cars and roads meanwhile.
Kirk thought in a similar way that gun control and possession were definitely good for the US population and that gun deaths were still a price to pay for it.
BTW, gun possession is also legal in all EU countries. It just not considered a right, but a privilege. And this is accepted by most parties in EU, both left and right.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
He didn't deserve to die, but he wasn't advocating for a world of opportunity and hope. Just oppression and hate. Let's not act like he was some saint helping people.
What if the birth will kill the mother? Is that not okay either?
It's not even political. You just follow the logic and you kind of have to support abortion. There isn't really a logical reason not to.
I actually believe the world is really messy and you have to have solutions that deal with the messiness. Being absolutist in any direction will never be right. Taking the extreme opposite position of mandated abortions is equally stupid and quite frankly as childish. It's surprising anybody on this site would defend something so illogical.
Also read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-w...
I think a pro-lifer would say that intentionally terminating a human being would still be wrong. I have a very hard time disagreeing with them on that.
> What if the birth will kill the mother? To my knowledge the vast majority of abortions are not because of this and all pro-lifers I know would be in favor of saving the mother. Most are for "convenience" and that is what pro-lifers are against. Again, I have a hard time disagreeing with them on this topic as well.
Spoken like a person who either doesn't know or doesn't care that current anti-abortion policies in several red states have women scared to get pregnant, despite wanting to do so voluntarily, because doctors are refusing life saving procedures on the mother if the state can possibly perceive it as abortion, leading to many scenarios of live births to dead mothers, including one case of a corpse being artificially kept alive for weeks for the sake of the baby.
The abortion laws of most blue states are already a rational compromise (still a very conservative leaning one) between the practical rights of women and the religious beliefs of far right totalitarians.
Every thirty one seconds an abortion is carried out in the US.
Tradeoffs between rights and safety are always made. I interpret "some gun deaths are ok" as to mean that they are inherently dangerous, and that seeking 0 accidental deaths is too high of a standard for something to be allowed. And we don't hold other parts of daily life to this standard, like vehicles or medicine. If you want to get into degrees, that's fine, but a blanket shutdown on the sentence doesn't do that.
If it were upto me, we wouldn’t have such a car dependent culture. It is absolutely possible to invest in public transportation/multimodal transport and reduce this number significantly.
But to middle class snobs who think they're morally above it all, such dirtiness is a reality they can wave away with a dismissive comment of superiority, safe from all that messiness, in their nice suburb homes.
So long as they intentionally ignore these lower class facts that some wrongdoers exist who can literally only be stopped by deadly force, they can continue to put their chins up and lament the inferior-to-them simpletons who think guns have to be a thing, in between taking long savouring sniffs of their excrement after every bathroom visit.
Police worldwide, where guns are usually illegal, are usually armed.
We totally should. I mean it isn't even controversial idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero . If we start with "all traffic related deaths are excessive" then trying to get rid of them in any way possible is only natural. Shame that 2nd amendment fans will be against any requirements for gun owners, event if they are similar to European commercial drivers tests.
Psychological test before buying a gun? What a heresy.
Haha, sure. One, the tyrannical government is taking roots day by day and no one does shit. Two, even in this fantasy world where half the people wasn't on board with the destruction of our democracy, if the people as a whole were to take arms, they'd be going after a professional army whose budget is many orders of magnitude higher than this citizens militia's.
History shows that an underfunded militia can still tie down or even outlast the U.S. military in a guerrilla context - Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are all examples.
It is a great analogy though, in both cases the issue comes down to ease of access to deadly weapons capable of killing a lot of people in a short time period. I remain ever surprised that we think the average person is qualified to handle such weapons, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
He was helping students by supporting the most anti-intellectual party ever, that cancelled student debt relief and help programs.
He was helping the downtrodden by supporting the most billionaire-friendly administration ever, giving tax breaks to the rich and dismantling the last of our social safety nets.
Get real. I don't even buy that you believe all that shit.
Completely violating the principles of personal responsibility.
It is very easy to be generous and altruist with someone else's money and then even take the credit for it.
Let's just assume you are correct. The solution should be universities lower or eliminate tuition. Not exponentially increase it. Not pay presidents and coaches millions and millions of dollars. And not stick taxpayers with the bill - or devalue our currency with government spending.
My understanding of the Italian political climate of the 60s, 70s, and 80s is that there were political groups/cells (on both the far right and far left) that organized around violent acts to further their political goals (which involved the eventual authoritarian takeover of the Italian government by either the far right or far left). For example, you can think of the Red Brigades to be akin to the Black Panthers, but with actual terrorism.
In contrast, most political violence in America has been less organized and more individual-driven (e.g., see the Oklahoma City Bombing). For better or worse, the police state in the US has been quite successful in addressing and dispersing political groups that advocate for violence as a viable means for societal change.
He wasn't a "lone wolf".
Resistance orgs across the ideological spectrum were systematically dismantled after decades of violence because their hierarchical command structures made them vulnerable to infiltration, decapitation and RICO-style prosecutions.
The Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, European Fascist groups and many white supremacist groups all fell to the same structural weaknesses.
Lessons were codified by the KKK and Aryan Nations movements in the USA in the early 90s by Louis Beam[1] who wrote about distributed organisational models.
This was so successful it cross-pollinated to other groups globally. Other movements adopted variations of this structure, from modern far-right and far-left groups to jihadist organisations[2]
This is probably the most significant adaptation in ideological warfare since guerilla doctorine. There has been a large-scale failure in adapting to it.
The internet and social media have just accelerated its effectiveness.
"Inspired by" vs "carried out by" ideological violence today is the norm.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-be...
[2] https://www.memri.org/reports/al-qaeda-military-strategist-a...
It's not so much that we haven't been able to adapt to it as we've simply refrained from doing so. Their violence was in line with the interests of local elites.
you really try hard to see "bad commies" uh?
How Does the Cycle of Political Violence End? Here's What an Expert Says. (Was: The Kindling Is a Lot Drier Than It Used to Be) https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/02/political-...
The author's point is that political violence does occur in cycles, and one thing that makes a cycle run down is when it gets gets so awful that universal revulsion overtakes the political advantages of increasing radicaloric and action.
He gives examples, which may be within the living memory of older HN readers (like me):
"I can remember back in the ’60s, early ’70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the ’60s or the ’70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out."
and:
"You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don’t know, but it did. It wasn’t just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down."
This is not particularly optimistic, but it it's an interesting analysis.
Nick Fuentes has repeatedly condemned political violence for years, he and his followers have also been trying to get Kirk to debate him, so killing is counter-productive from that perspective. Furthermore, the "attacks" by Laura Loomer that I've seen don't get anywhere near calling for violence.
If it's a lone nut, that could come from anywhere.
This is not the kind of thing I would go around admitting in public.
And yet, here we are.
Now that it turned out to be a groyper, you'll have to recalibrate your priors. Turns out it's the people who buy the most guns who are the most violent.
It did not "turn out to be a groyper". There is zero substantial evidence for this claim, its a complete fabrication. Elle Reeve, a journalist at CNN who has followed the far-right since the infamous Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in 2017, said of those claiming that the shooter was a Groyper that, "It’s like they’re grasping at vapor."
I've did not claim it was someone who is trans, an immigrant, or woke, however all evidence currently available points to him being a leftist. Some people early on were lead to believe that the shooter was trans due to reports of "trans-ideology" being found on the casings, but that was a rash, pre-mature extrapolation. The relevant text can be attributed to a wider array of groups/online sub-cultures (notably, the text cannot be clearly attributed to the groypers).
There is, however, evidence that the shooter was on the far-left.
1. Terminology used by the radical-left-wing to slander Kirk found on the casings ("hey fascist! CATCH!"). No Groyper would ever use such a phrase, they don't think of Kirk as a fascist and themselves get accused of being fascists.
2. Reference to an anti-fascist song most often played by far-left figures, particularly those identifying themselves as "anti-fascist".
3. A high school friend described the killer as being left-leaning on issues and that he was the only member of his family who was a leftist. This is hearsay so I take it with a grain of salt, but its still important evidence which fits perfectly with the other points.
Furthermore, all of the "evidence" you put forward cannot be considered by any reasonable person to be evidence that someone is a Groyper.
1. Being online a lot isn't evidence that someone is a Groyper. Massive numbers of apolotical, right-leaning, and left-leaning people are "terminally online".
2. I am aware of no evidence at this point that the killer was an "incel" in the sense that the term is typically used.
3. Being white does not make someone a Groyper. Funnily enough, on the contrary, among the online far-right the groypers are often accused of being non-white due to their relative openness to other racial groups.
4. Being Mormon is not evidence of being a Groyper. On the contrary, Catholics are most represented among the groypers with only a few figures being Mormon.
5. Playing video games is not evidence that someone is a Groyper.
6. I am aware of no evidence at this point that the killer was a "gun nut". Furthermore, even if he was, this would not be evidence that he was a Groyper since guns are not one of the primary issues addressed by groypers and would only tangentially be related.
In summary, none of what you said is evidence of your claims. I am begging you, and others, to engage honestly about this instead of spreading false claims.
Bella Ciao is a groyper meme though. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ais7KJXx8Gyd0hsrbakKW
Bella Ciao added to groyper playlist over two years ago.
Before the other day when this misinformation campaign began, nobody ever associated the song with groypers. Its always been associated with anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi groups, which contain a completely different set of beliefs. In recent history the only people to ever use the song for political purposes have been left-wing groups: Protestors against the AfD in Germany, communist priest Andrea Gallo, movement against Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, left-wing protests against Meloni in Italy.
Combining the lack of substantial evidence of association with groypers with the history of the song being used by left-wing movements, in addition to the evidence in my post above and elsewhere, its clear that this cannot be reasonably associated with groypers by any evidence-oriented person.
"hey fascist! Catch! Up arrow, right arrow, three down arrow" is a video game reference from a video game called Helldivers 2 that groypers use all the time.
Every bullet casing had a different groyper meme on it. It's either a groyper or a really elaborate groyper false flag. Those are the only two options.
Acting like it's all a coincidence is just spreading disinfo. Thankfully the bots don't make it to HN very often, or this place would be a disaster.
You may be stuck with extreme people you disagree with despite leaning one way or another. You just want to dabble in politics but supporters of the parties can be rabid. It can be even harder to get a word out within the echo chamber.
I'm not saying murdering everyone is the right alternative, but if you think trying to balance political power by "winning debates" or something seems reasonable, that ship has long sailed.
I know everyone hates it when people “both sides” things these days, but one thing I do see both sides having in common is a refusal to honestly engage with and comprehend the other position. This doesn’t mean agreeing. It means understanding what someone believes and how they might have gotten there.
Where the echo chambers and other things that you mention do come in is in reinforcing that dynamic, in reinforcing each side seeing only a straw man version of the other.
You're equivocating between reasons as in causes and reason as in rationality.
To justify the vigilante killing? Some exceptional amount far beyond anything he could have possibly caused with his rhetoric.
If he had broken some law with his speech, the police could handle that.
Charles Manson was convicted for murders he didn't do himself, so there is obviously a limit in how much damage you're allowed to do with words.
Many dictators didn't kill anyone themselves, they just talked others into it.
Or think of the Hamas leaders who talked their people into the actrocity of the October 7 attacks.
I just want to know where people draw the line.
BTW the whole MAGA thing is based on the assumption of damage that is caused by words. You know the whole LGBTQIA2S+, DEI and climate change stuff our kids get indoctrinated with by schools, universities and the liberal media.
But I wouldn't bet any money on us, given what I've seen in the last 10 years.
Violence against... tea?
The violence was tame compared to something like the French or Russian or Chinese Revolutions. For example, after the Continental Army and Minutemen surrounded the Brits at Saratoga (in New York State) in the first of the two great victories made by the American revolutionaries, the Brits were not killed or even made prisoners of war: many thousands of British soldiers were allowed to travel on foot through Massachusetts to Boston (which was firmly in the control of the Brits for the entire duration of the war) if they promised not to harass any Americans in their path and if they promised to stop participating in military action against the American colonies (i.e., to personally go back to England).
these people don't argue to uncover the truth, they just provoke you into some debate-bro logical gotcha that is simply borne in ignorance.
it's not even if you agree or not with him, he has no intention of ever learning your side, it's just a smorgasbord of conservative bs on repeat.
murder bad. but this guy was a provocateur who tried to get the most "impact" for his side. that is why his hot takes are so insane. they aren't points to argue against, they are dog whistle rallying points for all the racists and misogynists to think society is theirs. so let's not defend his work as "just having opinions i disagree with" ...
I have seldom (probably never) seen anyone have a big change of heart from such discussion, but often both sides concede a little, and it feels like progress toward common ground, minuscule though it may be.
Increased political violence is bad. The state starts breaking down since the price for everything is death so action stalls.
those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolutions inevitable. pretty sure a us president said something like that.
But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.
The wikivoyage page for the United States explicitly advises that neither politics nor religion should be discussed when meeting people in this country.
How did we get to this point.
> But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.
For at least the last 5 or so years I've been right there with you with the same thoughts and concerns. I'm completely convinced after what I saw today that global social media platforms were and still are a mistake. Especially so for the younger generations that have never known a world without them.
I don't think we ever left? The KKK was still marching in the annual parade in my home town when I was born, in 1994. Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, and still - to this day - racists make a habit of shooting at the memorial sign. [0]
Forget don't talk about politics or religion, there's still large portions of the US where you should avoid being visibly black or gay if you want to stay safe.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/emmett-till-memori...
1. Why is discussing these things so difficult? So many internet forums are a pure deluge of unkindness, anger, and dishonest discussion.
2. There was a video of someone promoting their social media handle and asking people to subscribe with the backdrop of the shooting. How does someone end up acting like this?
I do not think there will be a time where racism is eradicated like a disease, but I think it's possible to confine it to small spaces and individuals. Similar to how I believe the majority of views like pedophelia: people with those mindsets exist, they don't form (huge) groups, and are generally consistently condemned. With the values I believe the US to have (tolerance of opinions and religion) this will always be a constant struggle.
Continuing with this disease analogy, the internet + social media has removed all possible herd immunity strategies to stupid ideas. People with any kind of ideology can search up their groups and commiserate, without ever encountering a differing viewpoint.
Furthermore, people are offloading their thoughts more and more to LLM's, so much so that we're becoming the mental equivalent of those wall-e humans [0].
We're not thinking for ourselves. Other people are thinking for us, delivering those thoughts to us, pre-digested. This leads to reactionary behavior, I think. And in an environment with such a reactionary populace, populism becomes so easy to exploit.
[0]: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*uFK...
P.S. Sorry for the rambling. You're not wrong that the US has been, and still is, incredibly hostile to specifically identifiable groups of people. However, I think that the ability to discuss how to go about solving/remedying/containing this has been uniquely hampered in the last 20 years.
That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
Countries with strict gun control enjoy far lower rates of firearm accidents, suicides, and murders. IMO it's clearly worth the tradeoff. Very few of us live in a place where only guns can solve our problems.
The fact that occasionally someone goes to great lengths to kill doesn't mean we should make it easier for everyone.
Australia seemed to have a deeper relationship with guns previously, that stemmed partially out of necessity (farming etc), but there are also a lot of parallels with US culture here – the American dream, being a colony hundreds of years ago, etc, some focus on personal rights and freedoms, being a federation of states, etc. I don't think it was as deep a relationship as the US, but coming from the UK it seemed that Australia had a very different view than the UK.
Australia turned this all around. The culture shifted, and people realised that for the greater good it was something they needed to get past, and they did.
Maybe there's hope for US gun control yet, although the turning point for Australia was a (single) mass shooting. Maybe the US needs a much bigger turning point. I'm a little surprised that the Las Vegas shooting a while ago didn't provide that.
In 2024, estimated 16,576 deaths in the US from guns (excluding suicide, which is a very large addition on top of that), and 499 mass shootings.
For example, https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
I'm for a lot more gun control than what we have today, but it's "the right of the people" in the text.
[As a necessity for a free state, A well trained and in good working order group of able bodies citizens capable of fight for defense of self and state, is required], the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Militia is just the people. Oxford 1800s has well-regulated to mean “in good working order”.
Congress around 1982 had the Library of Congress issue a study about this in great depth, with millions of citations to historical documents, which give ample evidence and quotes. You may have to dig to find it, but it's a good read to gain more understanding.
Also the second militia act of 1792 actually required all able bodied men to own guns, and this was the law for well over the following century.
The founders had no qualms about everyone having arms.
Thankfully, whatever they meant then, we live today and can change the constitution and the laws to suit present circumstances. Nothing is sacred.
This is the thought process of the morally depraved, upon which every tyrannical government establishes its power.
The word has many meanings. Learn which one the phrase in the Constitution is using.
The US populace is vastly larger and better armed and capable than Afghanistan.
The US military requires a massive economy to function. If it tries to attack itself, those little armed people could stop it, the economy would crash, and the US military would crumble without needed support and supplies.
A final issue is the US troops would lose a lot of soldiers if they were told to go attack fellow citizens. The soldiers would quit, would hesitate, would not want to kill people they view as their own people.
So armed citizenry absolutely have major power against the govt.
Finally, if you were in a country where the govt set out to kill its citizens, would you rather have arms or be completely unarmed?
All being said, I am no military guru and I could be wrong
We had no military objective in Afghanistan.
Our only goal there was to enrich contractors who had stockholders working at the highest levels in the Pentagon and White House. That goal was achieved spectacularly.
In which case you'd need a strong internal investigatory services in order to root these plots out before they happen by following up on leads and tips.
Well... not to get political, but I think we're hollowing that out too?
Who will necessarily be so strong they'll be capable of pulling such things off to serve their own ends.
It's an intractable problem all the way down.
My point isn't that outlawing guns would stop every possible scenario. Rather it would make killings of all kinds far less likely, which is a win for everyone--even hate-spewing pundits.
So let’s define what your definition of strict gun control is. Also, if you want people to care more, stop including suicides because it drastically changes the numbers.
The purpose of my original comment was that the US dwindles Japan in firearms, but Japanese still manage to kill themselves just fine. So it's not a strong point by the parent I responded to. If Japan maintained that decrease for several more years, I think this would be worth revisiting, but for now it doesn't have much weight.
Note that Montana, the worst state for suicide, is about the same as South Korea at 28/100k.
I say this sadly as having had a friend kill herself in High School via a gun her dad had lying around. And ya, it was a red state (Mississippi).
What exactly is irrational?
Japan is, famously, a country where the system generally works. Hell, a late train would get you a letter for your boss. It's a bit different in places where the police don't have the resources, or dangerous individuals aren't removed from the public.
Yemen is in second place for guns per person. How responsive is their government to the people?
The debate over guns actually hinges on the extent to which the individual should be empowered to defend themselves, and historically, it hasn't just been about guns, but about all weapons, and even martial arts (which have also been banned at various points in history). Governments don't like to empower the individual, because they want to maintain a monopoly over violence (for many practical reasons), and because empowering individuals often creates its own set of trust problems (which is true for anything -- how many drivers are trustworthy, for example). Defenseless individuals are easier to govern from an administrative perspective, and if a government is good at protecting the populace from threats, it works. In fact, it can be better for the population as a whole, at least while the government is competent. But life is messy, and there are points where individuals need to defend themselves. As systems break down, not only does the need increase, but also the effectiveness of the means, because the threats you have to defend yourself against by definition don't play by the rules.
This, imo, is the real point of the second amendment. The Bill of Rights is essentially a declaration that certain rights are derived from a higher authority than government, which is why they are inalienable. No one needs permission to defend themselves, and it's my belief that the right to bear arms was put in there to ensure that should the system fail or become ineffective, the people would still be able to exercise one of their most fundamental natural rights. It certainly wasn't an accident, because it was the second thing that they added. The verbiage around government and militias makes sense in the context of having just fought a war of independence, but it also makes sense when you consider that it's often well-meaning governments that take this right away.
When was the last time that private gun ownership helped overcome a dangerous government?
Whatever the reason for the 2A, in practice, it has contributed to far more death than it prevented.
The second amendment isn't about safety or preventing death, it's about the right of the individual versus the overall collective. Governments and systems break down, but what doesn't change is the individual's right to defend themselves. Whether or not you think it improves individual safety in practice is irrelevant, because it's not your call (nor even the government's) to make.
The Obama CDC study on gun control concluded that guns are used to stop far more crimes than they are used for in crimes. It concluded that a household with a gun saw far less bad outcomes than a household without during home invasions. It concluded a lot of things that didn't sit well with the left, so after all the fanfare to make it, it was downplayed by that admin. Read it, it's quite interesting.
Think through that a bit.
Citation please. NCVS data puts defensive gun use around 70K instances per year while OJP.gov data puts firearm crimes in the 400K range.
neocons love to use disaster to further their deep state dreams.
............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy off.
ok let's try data instead of feels. Per Capita, what is the number of mass shootings per year in the USA, and in Japan. I did't know the answer but asked Gemini.
The most recent year for which there is data, apparently, is 2023, during which there were 604 mass shootings in the USA, and 1 in Japan. Given the respective population counts, the per-capita rate of mass shootings in the United States was about 225 times higher than in Japan.
Given that, are you confident that your observation that "one guy made a gun once in Japan" is a strong refutation of the idea that the US could reduce mass shootings by strengthening regulations?
My intention was to point out that the not-mass shooting overshadowed the mass shooting in the news. Obviously both are bad, but 3 people dying in a single shooting incident is worse than 1 person dying in a single shooting incident, yet the 1 person dying is the one that gets the news coverage.
Now, how about your evidence?
https://rockinst.org/blog/public-mass-shootings-around-the-w...
The US is an outlier in how many guns we own, with about 1/3 of American adults owning guns, and we are also an extreme outlier in mass shootings unless you compare us to places that lack rule of law. How many more people need guns before that mass shooting number goes down to 0, do you think?
How? without decreasing access for sane people or using any of the previous talking points that have been rejected previously. now’s the time to suggest real change that could have an effect but suggesting the tired “no black rifles” will still go nowhere.
Granted, this decreases access for everyone. But I'd argue sane people would not demand private gun ownership in today's environment.
And you clearly have a “too few people want to solve these” problem. Most of you even voted to the person who campaigned that he wants to make these worse.
This won’t be solved, and will it be made worse in America for the next decade for sure.
Your response seems very off topic in focusing on "mass shootings" which are at best an ill-defined marketing term created to lump family annihilation suicides with more public mass casualty events like the pulse nightclub shooting in order to launder dubious policies.
But my whole original comment said nothing about mass shootings to begin with.
You didn’t clarify that by “everything that’s happening” as the preface to your suggestion that gun control is pointless you specifically meant “political assassination and no other gun deaths”. It’s reasonable that someone would see you say that gun regulation wouldn’t have an effect on gun deaths and think that you were talking about gun deaths generally.
It would actually be bizarre for a reader to read “everything that’s happening” and think “the person that wrote this is referring to the first shooting at a school today and specifically excluding the second shooting at a school today”
How could that make any sense?
I can come up with a multitude of political violence examples in countries with strict weapons laws - New Zealand, France, Japan. Then if you add in other weapons - cars, knives, bombs, the list gets even longer.
The point is - gun control won’t stop political violence. Perpetrators will use other means at their disposal.
Technically true. But gun control means political violence will have to engage much closer and is less likely to be as deadly. Do we want more or less death+maiming in our political violence?
The issue is political violence. Whether it’s done up close or far away is a distraction from the fact it exists.
No, political violence isn't an "inevitable part of life".
I will just casually ignore your reductionist argument, I’m sure you’ll understand. Reasonable people don’t argue that way as all arguments would just … boil down to nothing.
She disagreed, I disagreed with her, she made points I feel were unfair oversimplifications “guns have more rights than women,” but we had a respectful discussion but she didn’t want to talk with me anymore after that. I would’ve talked with her after because I value what people have to say and I want to have discussions. I think we can have discussions but we should never take away the rights of citizens.
The problem is in people assuming that they are “good”. That’s hubris. The reality is that everyone is equally capable of evil—we’re just looking at taking guns out of the equation so that gun violence becomes highly unlikely.
I'm kind of surprised to hear somebody in America think it's a likely enough thing to happen to be worth the obvious societal cost of the wide spread weapons.
Realistically, if they did come for you, how much use would your weapon be? Do you believe that it would mean the difference between your life and death, or just that you'd feel better going having been able to put up some defence? Several genocides have happened in neighbouring countries from where I live in living memory, and it isn't at all clear that having access to a weapon allowed anybody who was targeted to survive.
The cost in mass shootings (now nearly two per day in the US) is a real cost borne by society at large. Your cost is still only hypothetical, and of unclear value if the worst did happen.
I think that all rights are hypothetical until they are used. People in America have the right to free speech and assembly but depending on your perspective these rights are hypothetical for most people because they don’t use their speech or right to assembly very often or to the fullest extent. In some states, women have the right to have an abortion but many don’t use that right so hypothetically for them it doesn’t have any value. I think with the right to keep and bear arms it’s the same, for a good person defending themselves with a gun this hypothetical right becomes applied and has an immeasurable value to them. I don’t think we should discard any of our rights even if they are rarely used. I don’t think the risk of a genocide or civil war is infinitesimal, I think these sort of events happen often and are guaranteed over a long enough timeline. I think that people who are well armed would be better off in these situations and may even be the people who put something like a genocide to a stop.
I can see that you like to think of yourself as a rational thinker about this, but you're refusing to answer the actual criticism: actual people are being killed every day due to the availability of weapons in your society. There are nearly two mass shootings per day. So far this year that has led to 250 deaths and more than a thousand injuries[1]. These are not hypothetical abstractions, which is all you seem interested in engaging with. These are real people, many of them children, who find themselves victims of gun violence. You are arguing that your feeling of safety is more important than their actual safety. All of your arguments amount to a continuation of your position that you put your own feelings ahead of the actual deaths of people in society around you. This is a very selfish way to engage in your society.
Guns make people feel safe.
They don't actually make you safer.
You're more likely to be killed by your own gun than someone else's.
Realistically, you have no hope of protecting yourself with a gun if you're surrounded by gangbangers with a bunch of guns all pointed at you.
Etc, etc...
The gun debate isn't a debate about facts, it never was. It's a debate about feelings, and scared people won't change their minds unless they stop being scared.
Nobody in America right now is trying to make people feel safe, not in an era where the President of the United States feels it is appropriate to personally attack... anyone for any perceived slight, in public, with verbal violence and in the case of anyone looking even vaguely hispanic, physical violence.
In other words, the sum total of America's values have resulted in a citizenry that lives with existential dread. Maybe those values need a second look?
Aren't there other potential ways to fix society from your example of your stolen car other than "we should just arm everyone"? Shouldn't the answer be we should have police actually help these situations and we should do more to reduce the rates of people living lives where they're more likely to steal a car in the first place?
I would love to live in a world where everybody has what they want but we don’t live in that world. That being said there is no excuse for somebody taking something that does not belong to them. I was deeply hurt by these experiences and forever changed in the way that I think and act. I learned that sometimes when I told people about the things that had happened to us, I felt that that person had sympathy for the criminals and no sympathy for me. I learned that it is a fact that police cannot be everywhere, they cannot react instantly, and even if they can react sometimes they won’t for political reasons. I still think of the time where I was sucker punched by some man on the street for no reason which is what initially lead me to purchase a firearm for self-defense. I can’t fix society, but I can protect myself and my loved ones.
No gun will save you during genocide if you are a target. Best case scenario you kill few attackers and die anyway.
All it takes is an armed populace that stands by while “those people” (their neighbors) are killed by extremists (their other neighbors).
... having said that, isn't it funny just how much gun violence there is in the one developed country that allows for open slather gun ownership. It's like, yes, you can never stop a determined person from doing violence, but by reducing the availability and power of fire arms you do stop a lot of fools from doing "mass shooter" levels of damage.
So I would say the reaction will be quite different, given that Kirk was a political ally and not a Democrat.
At least one HN, this story is already getting 100x(!) the reach, when it doesn't even involve lawmakers.
Trump has already issued a statement blaming his political opponents for the death before the perpetrator has even been identified.
"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that funded and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country."
> That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
The event was set up so nobody could have direct access to Kirk, which would have been required for the "home-made shotgun" approach. There were barricades and bodyguards in front of him, and a waiting car in case he had to be whisked away. Shooting someone from 200+ yards requires more precise weapons than someone can make themselves. I think it's also important to note that Utah literally started allowing open carry on college campuses a few weeks ago. Not only did all those "good guys with guns" not prevent the assassination, having a large number of armed people in a crowd makes finding the shooter more difficult, as we've seen from police arresting the wrong suspect multiple times.
If you find this horrifying (and I hope you do, because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder), then I encourage you to really think about whether we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds. We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.
Someone who calls for violence or does violence against people wishing to have open debate is the essence of fascism.
what if that persuasion is not logic, but propaganda, and the end result of following said goals is the loss of your way of life? What if lies are held as truth and money allows the lies to be repeated so often many don't even realize their axioms are baseless? What happens to the sheep when the wolves vote to eat the sheep?
But of all things Charlie Kirk was not, first among them: He was not "a threat to democracy".
idk, this doesn't sound very democratic to me
The answer to bad speech is more speech. If you refuse to do that then you are not convinced of being right -- you lose the argument when you resort to violence or justify resorting to violence over speech.
It had better be. All claims so far do not stand up to scrutiny -- they are all exaggerations, therefore they incite unjustified violence.
It is historically proven as the first step to violence. People seem to think that words don't matter.
They matter very much. Just because you can read millions of words a day, doesn't mean they're not powerful.
Support him or no, he didn't deserve to die for his political beliefs.
I definitely believe that people should be more understanding of each other, and less quick to jump to insults and othering, but we know so little about this situation, to be so confident that it was caused by speech seems extreme.
I am also aware that a lot of the political violence of the last few years ended up not being motivated by the reasons one might naturally expect.
At the root I agree in principal though. It's, for example, still possible he picked a bad fight with an unstable individual in a bar last night (over something not politically related) and they followed him to the event he was speaking at to shoot him. I'm not as convinced I've seen that kind of thing happen "a lot", but it's true we don't have post validation yet.
How many long-range rifle shot assassinations do you know of that were not politically motivated? Jilted lovers and such don't do that. In context it's hard to take this assassination as anything other than politically motivated.
Kirk would seem like an ideal target as he has a high media profile and is not involved in running the government. I would guess that the aim is to promote civil war and thus provide an excuse for martial law.
This happened a few hours ago while the decedent was commenting on 5/5700 mass shootings being performed by trans people being enough to take rights, which the decedent normally argues should not be abrogated, away, and that most shootings were gang violence. This is after a few years long history of promoting inaction on guns despite clear Constitutionality and clear need.
Ironically it was at a school, making it a school shooting. Unironically, there was a school shooting in Colorado occurring at the same time.
Guns are the problem. Everyone knows this. Some try to justify it anyway, Mr. Kirk among them.
Like I said, I simply don't understand why someone's response mere hours after a deadly shooting is "I blame my political enemies who are wholly uninvolved and tried to help prevent these types of occurrences."
---
Edit --
Here are two quotes from, as you said, your political enemies:
> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."
> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reactions-fatal-shooting-us...
> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."
> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reactions-fatal-shooting-us...
Why was the first thing you reached for a claim that Democrats are bad because you hadn't yet heard any sympathies from Democratic politicians (alleged creators of the term stochastic terrorism)? That seems extraordinarily unreasonable.
As a former Republican, it makes me sad to see people supporting a party that claims to have values be extraordinarily unfair to their fellow countrymen. Toss aside all the other nonsense in the political arena for the moment. Democrats have been advocating for gun control for years. Years! Why would an attack about someone being killed by the very thing they warned about even enter the brain of a reasonable person, if not for the poison of propaganda?
Sorry. We in the west don’t live like that.
Sort of, even South Park self censored when it came to drawing an animated Muhammad.
It essentially says, "They are so lacking of basic compassion that even jokes are not allowed."
That's the joke.
My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.
It would bring on the end of a society. It might well happen in the US case, they've been heading in a pretty dangerous direction rhetorically. If we take the Soviet Union as a benchmark they probably have a long way to go but that sort of journey seems unnecessary and stupid.
"You shouldn't do anything unjustified" is an uncontroversial and useless prescription.
This is a nonsense argument. It is possible that constantly making apocalyptic statements can result in an apocalypse, and saying that people should stop doing that is not contradictory.
The words you use matter. If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated. If you're not advocating for murderous escalation, then stop using those words (for example).
Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat, who/what maintains the list of words which can replace "democracy" in that section, and what happens when someone disagrees with the maintainer of that list?
At the same time, I do believe there are ways to share such statements while also reinforcing healthy ways to react at the same time. kryogen1c's example ending in "he should be assassinated" crosses the line from bigstrat2003's talk of apocalyptic claims to direct calls to violence about them - the latter of which I agree is bad teaching (but I'd still rather people be encouraged to openly talk about those kinds of statements too, rather than be directly pressured to internalize or echo chamber them).
This is why the first question posed about the statement from kryogen1c was "Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat". The follow on questions were only added to help highlight there is no reasonable answer to that question because it's the call to assassination which is inherently problematic, not the claim someone is a threat to the democracy here. The latter (talking about perceived threats) is good, if not best, to talk about directly and openly. It's the former (calling for assassination about it) which is inherently incompatible with a stable society.
You can "educate" someone all you want, they will still suffer from all the normal biases and those biases will still affect their choices.
This is why we have double blind trials even though doctors are "experts"
I do believe education on how to effectively engage against an idea which feels threatening is better equipped to handle this apparent fact than bigstrat2003's approach of teaching people to not say certain beliefs because they'd be worth killing about. That doesn't mean it results in a perfect world though. Some may perhaps even agree with both approaches at the same time, but I think the implication from teaching the silencing of certain beliefs from being said for fear they are worth assassinating over if believed true ends up driving the very problem it sets out against. Especially once you add in malicious actors (internal or external).
You’re one to talk.
Well, yes. People point this out regularly with mass shootings. Sometimes the shooters helpfully leave a list of all the violent rhetoric that inspired them. Anders Breivik claimed to be acting against an "existential threat". Those words get used a lot.
I would say it is true. Such killer is a threat to democracy.
Yes, it's true that lunatics on both sides may use their side's rhetoric as a call to action but often this isn't even the case and they're just hopelessly confused and mentally ill people. It'd be nice if we lived in a society where those people couldn't get guns or could get mental health treatment and it'd be nice if one side of this debate didn't weaponize these common sense ideas into identity politics but here we are.
Well, since they don't believe in democracy, I suppose they won't be too concerned when their opinions are discarded. What do they want, representation?
All claims I see of a person being "a threat to democracy" are super exaggerated, and almost always of the "a thread to our democracy" (which makes one wonder: who is "us" in that phrase, and what about everyone else?).
Exaggerating threats is itself an incitement to violence. Maybe tone it down?
There have been no consequences, no corrections, no apologies for blatant lying and spreading hate. There’s not even a pretense of honesty anymore.
“Tone it down!” That’s rich!
See: January 6th insurrection, trump's call to the GA secretary of state, increased gerrymandering, and attempts to throw out certain ballots.
Are these not threats to democracy?
- J6 was not in fact an insurrection (no weapons, no plan, just a crowd acting like a mob)
- all attempts to challenge the 2020 election results were through legal means (even the call to the GA SoS was not a crime)
- gerrymandering is absolutely standard in American politics and has been almost from the start
- "attempts to throw out certain ballots" has "attempts to stuff ballot boxes" on the flip side, which you ignore.
You are not even-handed.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...
Even if there were no weapons, the events of the day still satisfy that.
- Just because something was deemed to be legal, does not mean it's okay and therefore not a threat to democracy.
- I never stated that gerrymandering was exclusive to Republicans. I know it happens on both sides, but it is a threat to democracy either way. My point about it being "increased" is because it is now being done mid-decade by Republicans rather than just when the census occurs.
- You frame this as if the second negates the first. Let me be clear, they are both threats to democracy. Thank you for providing me with another point of evidence towards my argument.
And all 70-something accusations across the country, when they had to be held to actual factual basis, were rejected, and the candidate continued to lie and say he won when he did not.
>(even the call to the GA SoS was not a crime)
Wrong.
>J6 was not in fact an insurrection
Wrong.
>gerrymandering is absolutely standard in American politics and has been almost from the start
One political party in the past generation has advocated for eliminating it, while another political party is explicitly and proudly using it to weaken democracy. No pretense, just "We need to keep Republicans in power, and so we will do everything we can to that end, even if it is undemocratic".
One political party wants to make elections more accurate and representative by changing to things like ranked-choice or approval voting, and one political party defends the status quo because anything that gives voters more options would disenfranchise extremists.
You are not even handed.
There is no inherent threat of violence in saying "this person is a threat to democracy". This is why the US has strong protections for speech, so that we don't get arbitrary determinations of what's acceptable and what's not.
The First Amendment is about stopping the government from stopping you from saying the things you want to say. The First Amendment says nothing about social norms. People in this thread are asking for people to tone down the rhetoric, something that seems eminently reasonable. Think of it this way: if you want to insist that so and so are "a threat to democracy", what's to stop them from similarly inciting violence towards you? Generalized violence would not be good for anyone, including those who might currently feel safe from it.
The golden rule is always in effect.
So, yes, your speech saying so and so is a "threat to democracy" is protected speech, but it is in fact inciting violence.
> Where as so and so "is going to destroy our society" is not?
The quote was:
| We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.
Indeed that is very much not incitement to violence but actually incitement to de-escalation. The "or the cycle is going to..." part is not specifically a threat against any one person, unlike the "so and so is a threat to democracy".
How can you not see this?
Incitement to violence is what I see when the president explicitly tells his supporters to beat up his opponents, which he does. Unfortunately, that is one of the smallest incitements to violence we've seen from the right over the years.
Deport an illegal immigrant? They may get killed back in their more dangerous home country (or die slowly due to less access to medicine), or grow their home economy instead of yours. Let them stay? Maybe they're a dangerous criminal and will kill someone here. Don't deport any? Your culture and nation get diluted into nothing - some value those things highly, others don't, but to the former, that's an existential threat.
Tax fossil fuels? The economy slows, there's less money for hospitals, more crime due to poverty, this can easily kill people, or maybe it's harder to keep up with China. Don't tax them, and now you're taking your chances with global warming.
Spy on everyone's communication? You've just made it much easier for a tyrannical government to arise, and those have killed millions, and trampled values many hold as dear as life itself. Don't spy? Well maybe you miss a few terrorist attacks, but you also have a harder time identifying hostile foreign propaganda, which could have devastating but hard to isolate effects.
Simply put, death, existential threats, threats to democracy, etc., are common in politics, and one cannot talk honestly about it while avoiding their mention. I would say that, unless you cannot keep a cool head in those circumstances, you shouldn't get into politics in any capacity. But of course, those that need this advice won't heed it.
I genuinely can’t tell if you realize that this is a description of the victim, and your comment could easily be construed as a justification for what happened, or if you condemn the action so heartily you missed that.
Which leads to my point: there are discourses around this that completely miss each other. That’s a huge problem because so many people will loudly express strongly held emotions and two people will read completely opposite view points. US public discourse is at a point where language, without copying context, is failing.
Saying “both sides miss each other” isn’t true either: I’m convinced one side is perfectly capable of quoting leaders of the other, even if they find it absurd, but the reciprocal isn’t true. Many people can’t today say what was the point of one of the largest presidential campaign. They’ll mention points that were never raised by any surrogate or leaders. But they can’t tell that because the relationship is complete severed.
I don’t think there’s a balanced argument around violence, either: one side has leaders who vocally and daily argue for illegal acts violence, demand widespread gun possession vs. another where some commentators occasionally mention that violent revolution is an option, but leaders are always respectful. The vast majority of people who commit gun violence support one particular political movement, even the violence against the leaders of that same movement. If that’s not obvious to you, I can assure you that you are out off from a large part of the political discourse about the US, not just around you, but internationally.
As someone of Eastern European origins I would celebrate Vladimir Putin's murder, especially since he's responsible for the murder for so many in Ukraine today (both Russians and Ukrainians). I think the reality is a touch more nuanced than the absolutist ethical stance.
Could you say the same if he murdered your friends, family, children? All for what? That man has no respect for human life, civilization or diplomacy.
While within a civilization we can afford each other grace, it remains important for the very security of our civilization that we retain our malice and use it sparingly on those who seek to destroy it. Otherwise i fear that we only believe in it because its convenient or makes us feel morally superior. Do really believe in it if you're not willing to get your hands bloody to defend it? If you were capable of defending it, would you not celebrate the victory?
Putin being murdered tomorrow would create a significant opportunity for peace in the region and spare many, many lives. Such an event would be worthy of cheer.
If someone or something is a threat to democracy and rule of law, then they are. Period. I think pretending the ruling political party in the US is not intentionally destroying the government is not a valid strategy.
This is not an endorsement of what happened today. I worry this will have a big chilling effect on political speech in the country.
Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.
Regardless of where you stand on the subject of concealed carry, I don't think its controversial to say we shouldn't be encouraging untrained/unvetted folks to go seek out would-be assassins before they have demonstrated themselves to be a danger. That's exactly how "armed security" shot and killed an actual bystander at the Salt Lake City 50501 demonstration earlier this year.
Even so, most folks who carry prefer concealed carry for tactical reasons, one of which being that unless you have your rifle in a ready position, its not very useful in a self-defense situation, and simply marks you as "shoot this one first". And it turns out that walking around with a rifle in a ready position is generally perceived as aggressive, regardless of actual intent, even by those comfortable with firearms (consider a police officer approaching with a holstered weapon vs one in their hand).
So in the context of this shot, it ought to be relatively easy to pick out the shooter in the moment, the problem is that a ~200m radius around the tent where Kirk was speaking covers a lot of territory, and that's a lot of ground to cover effectively without obviously interfering with students' free movement about their college campus.
The theory then is that this will act as a deterrent - an angry bad guy wants to go out taking dozens of people with him - a few people wouldn't be "enough" for his grandiose end.
https://www.utahpoliticalwatch.news/what-actually-happened-a...
This is not correct.
> Wikipedia:
> A bad faith discussion is characterized by insincerity and a lack of genuine commitment to the exchange of ideas, where the primary goal is not to seek truth or understand opposing viewpoints, but to manipulate, deceive, or win the argument regardless of the facts
Discussion is most useful when parties attempt to make the strongest arguments for and against each other's positions to find an optimally logical position and/or to clarify ideological beliefs that underpin those positions. Good faith discussion enables that. Bad faith exchanges are often used to derail, to generate strawmen, to mischaracterize another party's beliefs or thinking, et al.
You may have seen one of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. Those exist, as do many examples like the below:
For whatever it's worth, there are liberal and neocon commentators who are hated for doing this same thing (and rightfully so).
Even if someone concedes "good point", it does not mean they frequently are debating in good faith. My view of the "very often in bad faith" is not being aware of a single position where he evolved. For example, not only saying "good point" but also "you're right."
Your retort, my comment, the comment I responded to all seem very predictable. Charlie Kirk's debates seem to be a Rorschach test.
Google AI says similar when asked "how often did Charlie Kirk debate in bad faith". The response lists lots of criticisms, but also that defenders point out that Kirk did at least engage in open debates (which is commendable even if not always done in good faith, it was some level of dialogue at least).
There are other sources that indicate there are quite a few of these bad faith examples (not just my words, not just my anecdata):
> "When we found out about his death, I wanted to know if I misjudged him, so I looked again on YouTube," she said. [1]
> "But I found the way he talks to people in a debate is not opening up any genuine discussion – especially when he debates with a woman. He tends to talk very fast and talk over them," she said. [1]
I've seen debates with Pastors, and others, where opinions do change - the tenor of those debates is all quite different. I don't see the same talking points constantly brought out even after someone thoroughly debunks one (from a previous debate).
[1] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/young-fans-critics-debate-charlie-...
The fact is, he facilitated many frank exchanges of ideas. Whether he was willing to change his own mind during them is immaterial. Anyone could discuss any topic with him, and arguments needed to be made by both sides in front of an audience that observed and evaluated. Those sorts of interactions are the lifeblood of a pluralistic liberal democracy.
Imagine if Trump refused to debate for the presidency? That would be terrible, regardless of the fact that no presidential candidate would meet any of your standards for “good faith.”
No, because he WAS reaching across an intellectual divide.
Would be curious to your reply to hnewsenjoyer's comment, as it captures my thoughts well. His willingness or lack of willingness to change his mind doesn't mean he wasn't facilitating the exchange of ideas or bridging intellectual gaps. He was doing politics the way it was supposed to be done in a liberal democracy.
You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. There are many examples like the one below, which is absolutely a constructive discussion.
Bad faith arguments and cheap rhetorical trickery didn't wash.
The only excerpts from those debates on the Charlie Kirk channel are edited to show him in a good light - the original full videos tell a different tale.
I don't doubt he lost debates. I don't doubt that there were instances where he took cheap rhetorical shots. I've done that, you've done that, and he did that.
Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point
"I am right therefore I win" is all the proof I need that you have watched a lot of Charlie Kirk edits.
I cited a video that supported my argument. You then make a complete straw man.
This comment is completely unacceptable and I demand that you delete it.
I'll modify it to: No surprise you object to someone of opposing views going onto campuses for exchanges of ideas.
Regardless of how offensive you may find the arguments he made, or the fact that he promoted them and was paid for them, there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with him. What do you propose to do about them? Delete them? Send them to re-education camps? Strip their voting rights? Of course not. Shaming and ostracizing them as “deplorable” has now reached its 10th year as a failed strategy.
There’s only 1 option — we have to talk to each other. Are the conversations imperfect? Yes. Are they often performative yelling where no one will change their mind? Sure. Does it allow people whose views are heinous to articulate those in front of an audience? You bet. Did Charlie Kirk build a business around it with clickbait titles about "owning the libs?" Yep. And does this country need more engagement and dialogue? Unquestionably. There is no alternative.
There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.). Given the segments of society that are armed to the teeth, you’d think the left would be the side that is eager for dialogue over violence, but instead many on the left are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even those who wouldn’t embrace the “violence > dialogue” rhetoric can often be influenced by it, as can be seen in the “He didn’t deserve murder, BUT…” statements.
You may have seen clips of Kirk answering the question of “why are you doing this?” I’m seeing it shared frequently in the aftermath of his death, because it was asked of him a lot. He says it quite plainly: “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.” He’s correct on this point, and I believe his legacy will be for being someone gunned down for and in the act of trying to address issues via dialogue. I encourage you to consider that, as I suspect my rant above about the importance of dialogue over violence is actually very much aligned with your own values.
yes, the conversations need to be honest and on equal footing. Not rage/click-bait to further divide society, which is exactly what Kirk did. His "conversations" were not about exchanging ideas but "owning the libs".
> There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.).
Qanon, January sixth, Pizzagate, Plandemic, Birther and other conspiracy theories, the attacks on democrat politicians, the rhetoric around George Floyds murder and BLM, the rage against black athletes doing something as simple as taking a knee. See a pattern? Hell Trump's own words and those of his cabinet are radicalized rhetoric, so I really don't know what to tell you when you say "the left rejects dialogue and is violent". "The left" has tried for years to explain the world via fact checking and educational content, lots of good that has done!
> “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.”
Charlie Kirk never planned to be swayed by a better opinion. His whole career was based on "prove me wrong", an obvious challenge to prove that he is right, and nothing can sway him. Give me one time where he changed his mind through dialogue. Even when shown a dolphin foetus and mistook it for human, he did not accept that he was wrong.
So yea, excuse me if I don't think you are arguing in good faith, just like i don't think Charlie Kirk ever was.
> His "conversations" were not about exchanging ideas but "owning the libs".
There are many counterexamples to this. If you're arguing in such good faith, you should explore those.
> lots of good that has done!
Even this is a good example of what I'm talking about. It sounds like you're giving up on dialogue, which is precisely my point. Don't give up on it. Commend those who seek it.
> fact checking
Get out of your bubble. The many failures of anything-but-neutral fact checking are patently obvious, if you have the good faith to look.
> Charlie Kirk never planned to be swayed by a better opinion
You may be correct, but that doesn't even matter. The proposition that no one was swayed by his dialogue would be outrageous, and I doubt you would make such an argument. So even if he would never change his mind, he's still contributing to dialogue.
I asked you before -- What is it that you propose be done about the tens of millions of Americans that agree with Charlie Kirk?
I gave you about 10 examples of "the right" being unhinged, violent and espousing radical rhetoric. You conveniently ignored all of them and continue claiming it's "the left" that does not want dialogue. That is bad faith.
> There are many counterexamples to this.
I am really not about to waste my time going through that dreck. If you have examples i'll have a look.
> Get out of your bubble. The many failures of anything-but-neutral fact checking are patently obvious,
Again, going to need sources. Is "get out of your bubble" the constructive discourse you were mentioning earlier?
> What is it that you propose be done about the tens of millions of Americans that agree with Charlie Kirk?
That I do not know, people have been radicalized by insane conspiracy theories over the last 10 - 15 years that I don't think much can be done to help them at this point.
Just for context, here some constructive statements from Charlie Kirk:
- If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
- 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.
- Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
- The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
- 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.
- 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 don’t defend those things he said, or those things hateful rightwing things you cited. The fact that you think of them as a response to “look at this bad thing on the left” is very telling. The existence of bad things on the right have no bearing on the observation that there are bad things on the left.
You should think more deeply about what to do about all those Americans who agree with Charlie Kirk. “Force them to change their minds” is not an option available to you.
I encourage you to read the thread you jumped in on, which begins with the example you asked for. The first comment you responded to, which perhaps you stopped reading partially through, explains my position, and it’s not “Charlie Kirk is the good guy here.” You don’t have to like him, you can disagree with everything he thinks, but he was doing politics the right way: through debate and discussion. Classifying that as somehow invalid is an attempt to insulate yourself from challenges to your worldview.
Cambridge debating is a microcosm of parliamentary debates in the UK, AU and elsewhere that I'm not entirely sure the US has in government anymore, if ever - the CSPAN footage I've seen largely features lone people showboating unchallenged, often with props.
Your 12 minute video shows a back and forth near Q&A exchange between Kirk and another not entirely opposed with Kirk taking various interpretations of well regulated militia as he saw them with little push back.
It has edits and has been self selected and post produced by Kirk to post on his channel to highlight how "good" he is.
He’s cherry-picking one interaction, has all the editing controls, and even with all that, he literally interrupted the guy less than a minute in.
This is exactly what I meant: the appearance of a debate, with a heavy anvil on the scale.
Actually, not “may or may not.”
The comment I was responding to claimed that he did not engage in constructive conversations. This video is ABSOLUTELY an example of a constructive conversation.
You don’t seem to know what that looks like, so you telling me WITH BIG SHOUTY LETTERS that ABSOLUTELY it is… That feels a bit self-defeating to stay polite.
When you have to change the terms of the discussion, it's because your argument is weak.
Otherwise, you would have stopped your reply at the first line. That could have been a great question if you cared enough to read to the answer before dismissing it.
There are many examples of videos like the one below, and if you'd seen any of them, you would absolutely understand why people think this.
Can you explain why you’re flabbergasted?
“If I say something that someone doesn’t like, then they are justified in killing me.”
And accept it.
Violence isn't the answer and I wish yesterday's event didn't happen, but his actions were a far cry from just "saying something someone might not like"
The first amendment is important, but it has boundaries, and Kirk made a living from being very close (arguably sometimes over) these boundaries. I think his message, which I wholeheartedly disagree with, will be carried on by others, as is their right. But I hope they do it in ways that are more firmly within the healthy boundaries of the first amendment. And if they don't, it should be the courts that decides if they should be penalized, not a lone armed civilian.
And what happens when the courts are to no longer be trusted for impartial or otherwise reasonable verdicts? We use randomness to control corruption in courts through the likes of juries, but First Amendment civil cases are almost always bench trials decided by a judge, or motions via summary judgement. Not juries. What's our fallback and our "check" there?
Mere opinions cannot do this, even in principle.
As I'm sure you're aware, merely voicing opinions doesn't cause people to agree, either.
> The first amendment is important, but it has boundaries, and Kirk made a living from being very close (arguably sometimes over) these boundaries.
The boundaries are far tighter than you imply. Nothing I have seen him say comes anywhere close at all. Even the most uncharitable representations being spread around of his out-of-context excerpts would absolutely be protected speech in the USA. I am not a lawyer but I have spent a lot of time researching this. When Kirk and others like him say that US law does not recognize a concept of "hate speech", they are objectively correct. Wikipedia agrees:
> Hate speech in the United States cannot be directly regulated by the government due to the fundamental right to freedom of speech protected by the Constitution.[1] While "hate speech" is not a legal term in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected speech under the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court case on the issue, Matal v. Tam (2017), the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment and that the U.S. government may not discriminate against speech on the basis of the speaker's viewpoint.[2]
Note that this was a unanimous reaffirmation, in quite recent, very ideologically polarized history.
Saying "America is better off without black people in it" is not a crime by itself. Having a prosecutor dig up the Twitter post where you said that while you're defending a battery charge can turn a six months in jail / $2,000 fine crime into a one year / $5,000 fine crime.
This has helped me to understand a lot of human behavior and social media posts and reactions (also propaganda, cults, sales, etc)
You may think you have come to a logical conclusion about political issue x or political party x, but very likely the vast majority of us are first having a triggered emotional reaction and later using our pre-frontal cortex to logically create a narrative on why we feel this way and justify it.
Taken to extremes I think you can see things like today happen and see how people react.
Sometimes I catch myself defending someone or a position and later realize I am just wrong, it’s just that I had an emotional reaction felt a possible connection with the person or a cause or vibe they expressed or are connected with and then my attorney brain kicks into overdrive trying to make it all add up.
It also explains a lot of domestic issues, if you are upset or scared your brain stays in the limbic center and is literally incapable of rational thought until you calm down or feel safe.
Just my two cents
"A magician, asked how he comes up with his magical tricks, asks back: are human rational or irrational? It's a trick question, we are rationalizers. We make up our minds, and then come up with a reason why that's right.
Magical trick is all about understanding this dynamic and guiding the reasoning to the conclusion you want it to make"
I wonder if he/she/they will ever be caught?
Some years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
People are calling this an assassination because they are making the (probably reasonable) guess that the reason to shoot Charlie Kirk during a political speech is to make a political statement.
Someone got up to use the bathroom and didn’t lock the machine. Dude thought he was being funny. But of course since he logged on to the adjacent machine he put himself on the suspect list and got caught. And in a hell of lot of trouble as I recall. I think he got expelled, too.
That was for a prank, not an assassination.
The thing some crime dramas don’t get right is that while circumstantial and tainted evidence cannot get you a conviction, it is absolutely possible for it to be used to prioritize manpower used to narrow you down to the top of the list.
There’s a thing in law enforcement called Parallel Construction. It can be used to protect confidential informants such as in undercover operations, but it can also be used to replace evidence that was found illegally, such as illegal recording or theft by a neighbor.
They just need to find something that follows process front to back. They don’t need to do that in order to figure out it was you in the first place.
Statistics say the spouse or partner almost always committed the murder. Even lacking any evidence they look really really hard at these people. It’s not illegal or unfair to do so. It’s triage. If I’m looking at Mrs Fredrickson’s murder, I’m not looking at any cold cases or spending effort on many other active cases. It’s unfortunately a numbers game.
I have a feeling he'll get caught.
We are better than that.
Here's a list of the top posts on Reddit in the last 24 hours:
Shooting at a Colorado school (More important than that other thing)
Charlie Kirk has just been shot
Charlie Kirk says gun deaths "unfortunately" worth it
If you preach hate, don’t be surprised when it finds you.
In an attempt to remove Banksy's art, the UK government has created a more iconic symbol of injustice in the UK.
Kirk once said gun violence is “part of liberty.”
Why do you think President Trump ordered all US Flags at half staff for the death of a Political Commentator, but not for the death of actual Legislators?
He died doing what he loved: trying to get other people killed
Bad Bunny Says He Didn’t Include U.S. in Tour Dates Due to Fear of ICE Raids
Ironic he dies in a school shooting.
Senate investigating Peter Thiel’s money ties to Epstein
“I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage” -Charlie Kirk
hope you have a good day.
You should get off social media for a while if you think it in any way is.
It’s mind boggling how violent and destructive it can get once people completely give up on the humanity of other people.
So, let’s keep trying for more peaceful lives. Even angry peace is better.
[0] https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1965928054712316363
edit: regarding the surveillance issue, wonder what the retention on google earth/maps logs is for the location of the shooting?
Some people using guns to defend themselves against who they believe are the harbingers of this authoritarian State is 2nd amendment working as intended. Not a "tragic but necessary sacrifice" as some will put school shootings, but actually what right to bear arms is supposed to be about.
And it's immaterial if you ultimately disagree to whether this administration is authoritarian, but these things will keep happening as long as enough people believe that to be the case. It's a feature, not a bug.
- Pro–killing “undesirable” children (look up T4 or Tiergartenstraße 14)
- Virulently anti-Jewish
For starters, Charlie Kirk, for all his flaws, is the opposite on those two points.
I’m not pretending Charlie Kirk was a saint or planning to livestream the funeral but it does puzzle me how people who share far more political DNA with the Nazis keep declaring that others are the "modern Nazis" or Goebbels equivalents.
I'm curious though: In what way do Democrats (or "the left") share far more political DNA with Nazis?
This is wrong, it was not a moderated debate. The event was a campaign rally and anyone could be ejected for asking the wrong questions.
How do you figure?
> The event was a campaign rally
For whose campaign, in what contest?
> anyone could be ejected for asking the wrong questions
According to what policy, cited where? What are "the wrong questions", and how did they apparently not include the ones Kirk was addressing when he was shot?
I believe those things are true of both the MAGA movement and of Nazis, albeit in different amounts of severity.
And Nazi Germany regime was at some point very into idea of a Jewish state.
This is a very strong claim to make without support, especially given the history TPUSA had with people who were at best pushing the boundaries of the right. No historical comparison is going match perfectly but it’s hard not to see parallels in the attempts to subvert a democratic political system, demonize minorities, or the justifications they use. TPUSA frequently provided a place for fringe right people to circulate with the larger Republican sphere so while there were worse groups, they certainly weren’t trying to fight that trend.
> I’m not pretending Charlie Kirk was a saint or planning to livestream the funeral but it does puzzle me how people who share far more political DNA with the Nazis keep declaring that others are the "modern Nazis" or Goebbels equivalents.
Other than Fuentes and his farther-right faction that historically has attacked Kirk for being too wishy-washy and soft in his White nationalism, who do you think this “share far more political DNA with the Nazis” description concretely applies to?
It suspect you either have taken things out of context (or refer to someone else who did) or you are writing things that didn't happen.
You mean people like Mohammed Khalil or Rumeysa Ozturk?
They weren't shot, but they were arrested, imprisoned without trial and threatened with expulsion for their opinions.
This isn't a "when did you stop beating your wife?" gotcha attempt. Rather, it's an attempt to point up that many of the folks (I'm emphatically not saying that you are one of those folks) who are making the same argument were all in favor of silencing Mr. Khalil, Ms. Ozturk and even argued for stripping Zohran Mamdani of his citizenship because he had the temerity to run a successful primary campaign for mayor of NYC.
If we're (the general 'we') going to make the argument that free expression is important and that we should see differing opinions as a normal part of the process of society, we need to do so for everyone. Even (especially) those whose opinions are objectionable.
And so, as long as we're willing to make the same statements for everyone, I'm in 100% agreement with you.
Those who are only willing to make that argument WRT opinions with which they agree, and again I am emphatically not accusing you personally account42, are not acting in good faith or with intellectual honesty.
Unfortunately, there are far too many folks who fit that description. And more's the pity.
Why did Donald Trump order flags to be lowered to half-mast for 5 days for this media personality ?
The Second Amendment fantasy is that you should own guns, so that you can kill people in the government and who are adjacent to the government. That means shooting real people with real bullets to kill them.
I think their reply is a criticism of the Second Amendment fantasy, rather than a remark that this is a worthwhile avenue for fighting fascism.
As others have pointed out, Charlie Kirk built a career on the Second Amendment fantasy, even explicitly delineating Democrats as targets he believes are acceptable to shoot and kill.
That said, I do disagree with the assumption that the shooter is necessarily opposed to the Trump administration or even to Charlie Kirk's rhetoric.
While the cost of the second amendment is high, it might prove to be a better political stress release valve than I thought.
If anything, I wonder if the increased political violence will eventually cause conservatives to reconsider their lack of support for Red Flag laws.
Straw man. Maybe that's your fantasy?
https://bsky.app/profile/chrisjustice01.bsky.social/post/3ly...
He was asked this question: "When do we get to use the guns?" "How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?" [sic]
I think it's best to watch his answer in full, and decide the nuances for yourself.
From my PoV, he agrees with the spirit of that comment. His response to "When to do we get to use the guns?" is to concede: "We *are* living under fascism. We *are* living under this tyranny" [sic]. In the context of that 2nd Amendment question about shooting tyrants, he identifies President Joseph Biden as a tyrant.
It's not ambiguous who these people think deserve to be shot.
I think it's highly remarkable that in that answer, Kirk actually never once condemns political violence. Listen to it and hear: not a word breathed to say killing political opponents is wrong, or immoral, or abhorrent to civics or American democracy, or, well: murder. His non-response is in a qualitatively different direction: he explains to the "When do we shoot them?" guy that murdering leftists would instigate a draconian law-enforcement response (by that same US government he had identified as "fascist" and "tyrannical"), and that that would set back far-right causes. That is, beginning to end, the entire substance of his response to "Why not shoot them?": fear of consequences.
We see increasing authoritarianism and decreasingly functional institutions, including the electoral system.
Identifying the problem is key.
That is also a very predictable response if you live in this country.
Regardless of your political bent, this sort of shit is sickening and genuinely disturbing, particularly when it occurs at (as this did) at a university whose ostensible raison d'etre is to ventilate different ideas, offensive or not. I realise this event wasn't a 'debate' per se but nevertheless it's the ethos and optics that matter.
There's also the incredibly myopic immaturity inherent in using violence for the sole or primary purpose of silencing the speaker and signalling to others that violence is somehow an acceptable form of dialogue. The myopic absurdity of this is of course that it is a cycle that can never end if all participants share that view, ensuring that it is inevitably self-defeating. Violence can make sense under certain circumstances - coups, revolutions, wars - but in the context of mere rhetoric it's abhorrent to witness.
Just a grotesque reflection in a long list of them that we as a species, or very many of us - perhaps more than we want to admit - are extremely violent and brutal.
Sickening and sobering, and again you could plug in any speaker/polemicist from whichever part of the political spectrum in here and it would be no less true.
This may have been an offensive reply to the original comment:
It's important for Me to play Devil's Advocate, here, because the original statement overlooks the amazingly constructive qualities humanity offers.
Overlooking == under-capitalizing. Which is an error. And judgement is important to hang onto in a crisis.
This is a crisis.
Despite all our fancy gadgets and fancy thinking and fancy philosophies, we aren't really all that different from those who lived a thousand or ten thousand years ago.
the question about gun rights, the "prove me wrong" tent, the "constitutional carry" state the event is held in
I also doubt that Kirk hadn't accepted or considered a martyrdom outcome like this.
I didn't agree with his religious convictions that underpin much of his arguments, but that's because I'm not religious. He presented other arguments on various social issues that sounded sensible. He also respected anyone who fronted his events, listening & engaging intellectually in a civil manner.
Apparently his last word spoken was "violence" (unconfirmed). Anyone celebrating his death is an extremist, and if that turns out to be a lot of people, then we have a bigger extremism problem than people care to admit. How to fix that? We need more bipartisan condemnation and unity across the floor - in my country too. Sounds like they couldn't even agree on a moment of silence without a shouting match. The division is fuel for extremism.
Do you think the people they attacked with their speeches were without any fear of violence, let alone death?
Or take some from his last words
>At about 12:20, he is asked by a member of the crowd: "Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?"
>He replies: "Too many."
Do you think he would have said the same when someone would have asked the same question about gun owners or would have said something like: "I think 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 is a prudent deal. It is rational."
Or pick one of those quotes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
He recommend the one about 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
None of this has anything to do with threatening or inciting violence.
This is, of course, a condensed depiction.
And talking about the spread of misinformation, Kirk spread the lie of the stolen election that led to the January 6 riots and caused multiple deaths.
BTW maybe you can comment under some of the other commenters where I try to explain than words aren just words and can cause damage, you seem to have the same opinion, whereby my reach is far below Kirk's so I think I have a much lower risk of creating a deranged individual than people like Kirk have.
>For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals,"
>This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."
That from the same guy who painted all immigrans as pet eating, drug trafficking rapists.
But I'm the one accused of spreading misinformation.
Even in his message on TS after Kirk's death Trump can't stay with the truth
>He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.
The first part is obviously nonsense
He has definitely caused more violence than I.
Kirk and others boost people like those here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S-WJN3L5eo
Show one who got influenced by me. That would be really interesting.
That I spread misinformation has to be proven.
He referenced the 50s and 60s on purpose, the good old times and he knows his peers and what the associate with that time period. So he either knew exactly what association he sent with that or he was naive. I don’t think he was naive. Given all what he said there is a clear subtext you try to ignore.
> So he either knew exactly what association he sent with that or he was naive. I don’t think he was naive.
I disagree - you're extrapolating from very little. If you take into consideration his whole life and the context of the conversation, it's very clear that he did not believe in violence and did not advocate it.
Does that look like someone who wishes violence against gay or trans people? Be real.
>Anyone who knowingly spreads misinformation is a bad guy in my book. If Kirk did, then that applies to him as well.
Interesting change. Don't forget my reach and his. And I never spread the lie about the Great Replacement.
The first clip sounds more like don't tell than real acceptance and it's quite ironic that accoring to this clip he says people aren't defined by their sexuality but every time a homosexual couple is show in a kids movie right wingers whine because now they have to talk about anal sex with their kids. What they don't have, like you don't have to explain hetero sex if a hetero couple is shown. The right is obsessed with the sexuality of gays. And calling it a lifestyle, that's one of the biggest misinformations often used to blame the victims of anti-gay violence for their bad "choice".
Maybe watch this clip where he quotes Leviticus 18
https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1800678317030564306
But of course just saying. We all know you can say anything if you add "just saying" or "no offense".
The second clip frames being trans as a mental disorder packed in clever words.
Again that clip you linked was just him pointing out the irony of using Bible verses to support homosexuality while ignoring other very violent verses towards them. He was not literally advocating the stoning of homosexuals.
FWIW, I disagree with Kirk on probably most topics (e.g. guns, religion, abortion, homosexuality being a bad "lifestyle") so there's no need to debate me.
I'm glad you wrote "was not literally advocating the stoning of homosexuals", because I never claimed that and it seems you realize that there could be an non literal advocation.
His work definetly doesn't justify his murder, it would be ironic if I think so because I'm against the death penalty, but he helped create the battlefield he now died on.
I guess the only reason why the current murderers are more likely from the left side of the political spectrum is because the right-wingers are in power. They can send the military or ICE to get rid of their opponents. If that changes we will see more right wing murderers.
He does the exact opposite of "completely ignoring the contradiction". He explicitly uses it to make his point.
Seems right wingers know the old testament pretty well but rarely quote the new one and even rarer live by it. It's often that authoritarian god, you know, the one who gave us the rainbow after multiple genocide and who said later on
>Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Let's see those Christian values in action when they catch the shooter.
But you apparently expect "this is a dogwhistle" to be taken on faith.
This is not a fair, consistent or reasonable standard.
When Nancy Pelosi and her husband were targets of political violence, Charlie Kirk's response was to suggest that whomever bails the attacker out would be a national hero. [1]
To her credit, her response to the attack on him is much more dignified than his was.
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[1] "Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, 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 (David DePape) out..." - Charlie Kirk
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-...
If you/society see the performance as beyond the pale, inciting violence then you should arrest the person and give them due process, or change the laws to reflect your beliefs
You seem to implicate "you/society" as the issue, but I didn't shoot anyone. So really it's society's issue, and we're in this situation because the Overton window is so irrevocably wide. Moreso than ever before, our bipartisan system is chock-full of extremists. People who want to kill CEOs, people who want to kill politicians, people who want to kill minorities.
The ordinary response is always "well, some gun violence is tolerable" but that doesn't seem to be reflected at all in this comment section. Many people are treating this as entirely unacceptable - so, from square one, how do we want to legislate a solution?
Condolences to his young family and everyone close to him.
He used the less talented debaters to ridicule the opposing side.
Do you like this outcome, croes? Be honest... It's the internet so you can speak your true feelings
What's disingenuous is substituting my "this" for whatever one pleases, when in context it was obviously the concepts referred to in the post it replied to - debating for one's own advantage, and milking wins against weak interlocutors.
Very few will like where this leads.
I hope cooler heads prevail and pray for him and his family.
[1] - https://www.newsweek.com/tyler-robinson-roommate-charlie-kir...
[2] - https://www.newsweek.com/tyler-robinson-charlie-kirk-shootin...
Debunking The Biggest Lies Told About Charlie Kirk [2]
[1] - https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-t...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N14ywRyTWVI [video][56 mins]
It’s interesting that these kinds of things happen in the US, the very country that keeps blaming and justifying interference & invasion in nations where similar events occur
So, which country should now deploy its military to the US in an attempt to restore law and order?
> extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
I don’t need to “rule out” nation state actors. The onus is on someone to prove it involves nation state actors (and which nation is pretty important, too).
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/18/would-be-assassin-may-have-...
I mean, sure, it could've been a crazy ex or a former business partner or whatever. But how many crazy ex's can one guy have? And he's pissed off god knows how many people by saying things? Strictly by the numbers this was almost certainly someone who hated him for what he said.
Statistically most people don't go out like Ozzy (i.e. spend a good chunk of your life doing something likely to be the death of you only to get dead by something completely unrelated)
Please do Obama now. All U.S. Presidents from both parties have been doing these sorts of interventions for decades.
I think it's unwise to be reflexively dismissive when norms that were previously taken for granted turn out to be ephemeral. I find a useful heuristic/gut check is to imagine explaining news from the previous week/month/year to someone who had just woken up from an extended coma.
if that was their goal, it would have been better to never explain the conflict in the first place. just start in medias res, with asemic dialogue and references.
I wish they'd try again and do better.
The shock seems to be the point.
Quite different from all the documentaries my dad was really into about the US civil war. (Many of which lionized the southern generals.) Or annoying "states rights" points that he seems to have picked up from some YouTube gutter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/22/us/politics/political-vio...
I think it's better to look at the actual incidence of violence than to extrapolate from weakly correlated leading indicators.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-poli...
His choice of getting in to the middle of people and answering anyone's questions in a situation where there's no re-takes, no edits, even if he might've felt overbearing, was quite a fire test of the commenter's arguments versus his counter-arguments.
His assassination really is a direct attack on debate itself.
There really isn't a world where the sick people cheering this have any real respect for democratic values of a free world full of all kinds of thinkers. Maybe for something more akin to that one dialog "choice" in Avowed. You know if you know.
I find it weird, at best.
Browsers don't show the page updating, easy to imagine that it's flickering on and off several times a minute at this point.
Edit: it's official, he's dead (it wasn't confirmed when I originally posted this). Condolences to his wife and small kids.
Why do some people celebrate his death? This was not a person who was declared as an enemy of the state. He was someone holding a public political debate. Can't they see that this incident is going to have extreme repercussions on their own welfare and the values they stand for? Can't they see the fear, pain and tears on the other side, that's gradually getting replaced by outrage and resentment? How do politics make people so blind to the suffering of the others? Doesn't the nation exist to support opposing ideas without such carnage? I know that Kirk has expressed opinion that downplayed the value of human life (like in case of gun rights). But how does that make the side that advocated for dignity, equality and empathy just suspend those values in his case?
You can't seriously convince any opponent with violence or hatred. And guns aren't the best tools for genuine persuasion. The mockery of their pain will only lead to their conviction and resolve. And at some point, it will become irreversible. Please don't let politics and bias cloud your judgment. This isn't a victory for your cause.
And no matter what sort of a person Kirk was, his role in this world is over rather abruptly. His grizzly demise displayed around the world leaves terrible wounds in the psyche of his family, friends, followers and numerous others. I hope that their pain doesn't mutate into destructive energy. I hope that they find the strength to overcome it and find peace.
They feel that someone communicating ideas that challenge theirs is such an affront - such a disturbance to their self-assured sense of personal rightness and superiority - that that person's death is a good solution.
Or to put it another way - they're like this because they're confident they won't receive comeuppance for being so. It's like a "what you gonna do?" frolic.
It's like an entire generation is suffering from a serious emotional malady. It feels like the entire society got derailed morally and ethically. What happened? Did education fail everyone that much?
His supporters are getting a taste of their own medicine. As you said 'the fear, pain and tears on the other side [is] gradually getting replaced by outrage and resentment', but so what? Outrage and resentment has been the staple food of the right wing for decades. So has laughing at the suffering of others, for example: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/rush-limbaugh-s-true-l...
The right is already well on the way to turning the US into a police state, and I've lost count of the number of mass shootings where people were murdered because some right winger hated some aspect of their identity, whether that's religious, racial, sexual, whatever. Sometimes the two combine; in Florida, the state recently decided to paint over a rainbow crosswalk that the state itself had put in place to commemorate the victims of a mass shooting, and now they're arresting people for replacing the memorial with chalk: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/pu...
As far as I'm concerned, the right used up all their forgiveness tickets quite a while ago. If they dislike the position they currently find themselves in, maybe it's their behavior that needs to change.
Yeah we all know violence has no place in our society and gun's are controversial and politics should be more civil.
There are very few countries that ban firearms outright. The type of weapon used in this attack was a bolt-action hunting rifle. You can buy that sort of weapon on the basic firearm license in Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, etc.
The entire gun debate in this country which usually revolves around tightening restrictions on handguns and semi-automatics is not really relevant to this case. Virtually nobody running for public office, even among Democrats, is talking about a total ban on private firearms ownership.
Definitely:
> "I think the Democrats do not believe in the nuclear family, and they've already destroyed it in the macro, and now they're trying to destroy it in the micro."
And this is what I found in 10 seconds. Really fostering that political diversity. He's just another twitter/youtube pundit in the Fox News classic style, and there's endless hours of him talking just like this.
lol that just means you agree with him, not that he's encouraging a marketplace of ideas.
Your claim was "he was promoting tolerance to more diverse political points of view". Saying "your political point of view has and is destroying the nuclear family" isn't promoting tolerance of it.
> Really fostering that political diversity.
Yes? Agreement is not diversity.
I always wonder if media hiding gore allows people to not get more upset about violence. The lynching of Emmett Till would not have had the same impact without his mother having an open casket funeral. Would things have gone differently if more people had been exposed to images from Sandy Hook?
People hear of kids dying in “bombings” but ignore the reality that it means they were: crushed, burned to death, dismembered, etc etc.
Even though I have an extremely negative opinion of Charlie, I'd feel too bad thinking about the pain his family would be experiencing. The family (especially children) don't deserve that.
It is graphic and shows how fragile we are, how it will go down if you are in that situation
Gore definitely made me a depressed person in grade school, but the only reaction I'm having to this is concern about: - conservatives getting ready for violence - the state getting ready to use this to further erode civil liberties - the left fanning the flames for conservatives
If we saw death up close and personal, perhaps we could become a bit more empathetic. I seriously wonder if, for example, we published the horrific photos of the aftermath of a school shooting, that would result in more honest discourse in this country on gun control.
Shouldn't we respond to the almost daily mass murder and political gun violence? Australia turned the corner on guns. We can too.
Or do you want 5yo children to grow up with active shooter drills?
For those who want to know without exposing themselves: He's sitting in a chair when he takes a round to the neck. Clean exit. It's over within three seconds.
Excessive exposure to shock images from forum trolls back in the '90s.
You feel sick because you cannot process reality.
Yes, I feel sick because I cannot process all of reality, and increasing the burden of what I have to process does not make that task any easier.
News manipulating footage to cast aspersions to historical boogeymen is routine. All it takes is one pundit mentioning an imagined similarity to play the edited B-roll.
The same way it did for the last 250 years as the world's oldest Democracy. By respecting and upholding our Constitution, especially the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
There's just less tolerance for discussing or exhibiting "extreme" or highly unpopular opinions, nowadays, it seems. Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.
I mean, you're almost there realizing the recency bias. The 1970s, when the Skokie Affair occurred, were arguably the high point for political violence in the post-WWII US.
It’s going to sound absurd, but right now, USA’s global image is a very good counter-ad towards “complete” freedom of speech.
We are also an example when a people becomes completely divorced from their cultural and religious heritage. Without a moral anchor, we are a people cast adrift, lost in confusion, calling evil good and good evil, all trying to do our own thing and benefit ourselves, consumed by greed, by self-interest.
Freedom of speech, or lack there-of, plays no role in what is happening in the United States. This country and its founding charters were written for a moral people. That the country is byzantine, crumbling, has more to do with a people who have lost their way than it has to do with this-or-that law that the government no longer heeds.
what moral anchor do you think we need?
Sure.
But the overwhelming majority of people called "nazis" by their political opponents have objectively not chosen anything remotely of the sort.
If it was just a matter of people internalizing that killing fascists is fine and thus that calling people fascists is dangerous, then we would not see the same sort of violence being perpetrated against other politicians not getting the same label.
Kirk himself suggested that a "real patriot who wanted to be a midterm hero" should bail out the man who nearly killed Pelosi's husband. The rhetoric around political violence in this country has been ratcheted up to an insane degree, with or without any accusations of fascism, and this will continue or get worse as long as that remains the case.
1. People who believe they could never become Nazis are often the most unknowingly susceptible to it.
2. People who believe they can confidently identify a Nazi are often wrong — a mindset akin to witch hunts, where everyone is seen as a witch.
Circa 2017 during then “punching Nazis” era of social discourse, I started a new job. The first week in I went for lunch with a Junior teammate and was told “violence against ‘Nazis’” is fine, it’s justified. I asked how. I was told, my brain is a part of the body, so if someone says something so stupid that it ‘hurts the brain,’ the speech is now assault, so counter-violence is justified.
I, with hint of irony, told my new coworker that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard and asked if I should now assault them for hurting my brain… and was met with hostility.
I don’t quite known I’m going with this exactly, but I feel folks are not giving the world around them an honest assessment, no matter their Ivy diploma. Politics isn’t a “gotcha game” and please stop tying to make it such.
Just like "neoliberal" this is a kind of buzzword that generates a particular emotional reaction for those on the left. Meaning people being labeled with them are not just bad but really bad.
I think George Orwell was right when he said it has lost most of its meaning
https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...
>It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless
>By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.
But I hate so much attacks on freedom from governments that will always choose freedom of speech.
The main downside of abusing the words nazi and fascist is that it gives an out to the actual fascists out there. When it comes to gun violence, there are a lot more (self proclaimed) neo-nazis killing innocent people than people killing them.
every one of those victims is infinitely more deserving of attention and sympathy than this absolute chucklefuck
He could have been aiming for the skull for all we know. He could have been aiming for the chest. Hell, he could have been aiming for someone behind Kirk.
In my nonprofessional opinion, that is crappy aim. I can hit an apple from 100 yards away, with a black powder rifle, with an unriffled bore, with iron sights, standing up, repeatedly. I would expect a modern rifle with a riffled bore and a scope and a larger target to be much more accurate from a prone position.
The shooter had 1 target, and he delivered a 100% kill shot.
You could say "it wasn't impressive", but you can't say it was crap...
It was crap. I highly doubt the neck was the target. If the head was the target, then the same distance but in another direction, would have missed.
Regardless, it's still sad that someone died, especially in this manner (regardless of politics).
Anyway, the point is that it's really not a difficult shot at all, and only requires very rudimentary training that is readily available to anyone who can make a few trips to the range.
I've killed deer beyond 200 yards sitting on a stump with a cheap rifle, it's not actually that hard if you've shot a bit before. The nerves though... you're right there, I couldn't imagine.
At say 3000fps velocity, time to target is less than 450ms.
This is almost point and shoot. It’s entirely possible someone fairly untrained just aimed at the forehead and ended up with neck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmteh_NChOQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrackingPoint
Between that and cheap quadcopter drones, I expect political assassinations to skyrocket in the future.
So this is a outlier only in that someone was equipped and trained to a fairly serious degree. Someone on the order of a squad designated marksman (SDM) is certainly capable of this. The US military has a few thousand active duty personal trained to that level across the several branches, and there are 10's of thousands of veterans. There are also many SWAT and other LEOs and an uncountable number of enthusiasts and serious hunters with sufficient training and weapons.
No serious training or equipment would be required for this close of a shot. I've taken deer over 200 yards away with my $500 rifle, no training other than shooting on and off since I was a kid.
High pressure.
Under pressure, a poorly trained person is unlikely to be capable of this. It takes some degree of training to simultaneously deal with this pressure and still perform.
Yes, this is the level of training I imagine as sufficient. A match applies pressure: you're on a clock, there is an audience, you have a safety regime and people scrutinizing you on it, and at the end, there is a score. I don't claim Fort Benning sniper school is necessary. Only that you likely can't just wander out of a gun shop with your scoped deer rifle at any price and snipe targets at range under pressure: there is more to it than the weapon.
> Combat trained random people are probably more common than you think.
I listed a wide variety of people with the training I believe is sufficient.
Training.
All I'm saying, is that if I was a US adversary, I would absolutely be spinning up a million LLMs to post the most provocative possible stuff. The technology absolutely exists - just yesterday sama@ was talking about the dead internet theory. I'm worried that someone is going to see that horrifying video of the shooting, and then see all these horrifying comments online, and do something equally horrifying.
You'll see people fawning over Kirk like he was a prophet. Dear leader stuff.
They have already been doing this for years -- over a decade -- with meatbag posters before LLMs were widely available.
How do you think we got to the current political climate in the first place?
""" When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts.
When marriages stop talking, divorce happens.
When civilisations stop talking, civil war ensues.
When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.
What we as a culture have to get back to, is being able to have reasonable disagreement, where violence is not an option. """
This belief in the power of conversation over conflict defined Charlie’s work. He didn’t just preach ideas; he lived them, fostering discussions that encouraged understanding despite disagreement. I did not agree with all his standpoints, but what I admired most was his insistence that dialogue could bridge divides.
One thing that’s shifted in my lifetime is the polarization of US politics. Republicans edged somewhat left because several outspoken anti-gay senators were later revealed to be gay. But Democrats swung much further left, and it’s been costing them elections. The polarization worsened as Democrats regularly dehumanized and attacked Republicans as fascists and racists. My expectation is that the recent attack of charlie kirk by south park is a key factor in this political assassination.
Charlie’s mission was to break that cycle. He stood for open discussion without violence. He often said the great failure of today’s politics is that Democrats and Republicans can’t even talk to each other. And when husband and wife stop talking, they end up divorcing.
The democrats/liberals ended that yesterday. There's no 1 entity to blame here. But how can anyone risk their NECK trying to have proper democratic conversations and debate anymore? You cant. The conversation is over. Divorce is coming.
To the rest of us, his "open discussion" was clearly and obviously rhetorical. The public performances that made him famous were undoubtedly designed specifically to incite college students into making clumsy arguments they weren't prepared for. Not only is that bad faith and predatory in the context of political debate, but Steven Crowder came up with that schtick.
Blaming democrats/liberals for his death is also curious. Could you expand on how you're so sure about that? As far as I know, no suspect nor motive is known at this time.
The engravings have nothing to do with "transgender and antifa ideology". They are all "online" troll phrases/codes.
EDIT: The ATF has apparently subpoenaed Steven Crowder for posting the claim you are referring to: https://x.com/scrowder/status/1966236010381193388
Obviously i recommend watching the countless videos that confirm and prove this mission correctly. I'll never debate this subject.
>To the rest of us, his "open discussion" was clearly and obviously rhetorical.
You're speaking for everyone? Or do you mean you think. He had open mics that let anyone speak any subject really. What's rhetorical about it? Are you confusing him with steven crowder who has a 'change my mind' on a specific issue that he has deeply researched and knows he's correct?
If your mission is to have democratic debates, this is how you do it.
>The public performances that made him famous were undoubtedly designed specifically to incite college students into making clumsy arguments they weren't prepared for.
So you're against this? You're against having democratic discussions which lead to greater understanding? Im guessing your point of view are out of context 30 second funny clips of the dumbest comments. Those go viral sure, but isnt representative of many hour long events.
>Blaming democrats/liberals for his death is also curious.
when i use a general label, im not saying all even vaguely identifying liberals in canada are responsible for the death. I'm saying the institutions of the Liberal party of Canada and Democratic party in usa are responsible for the political violence.
I can of course be more specific. John Stewart probably is your original root cause for the polarization of the left wing. His style of discourse is funny from him in his comedy show but when people took his style into proper democratic discussions, it falls apart very quickly into polarization.
South Park's recent attack on charlie kirk no doubt is the recent incitement to violence. Yes they pulled the episode. They are likely to be paying hundreds of millions of $ to Kirk's family in a few years from now. Their publishers likely ending their contract for south park now. The lawyers yesterday and today are putting together the settlement offer before they even get served no doubt.
I can also blame the democratic journalists who lie and convinced their readers to hate charlie and republicans as racists and fascists thusly justifying murder. Good on MSNBC to fire Dowd immediately after his outrageous comment.
A great deal of people got fired yesterday and even more are getting fired today. Liberals losing their jobs are only going to radicalize them more towards violence unfortunately.
>Could you expand on how you're so sure about that? As far as I know, no suspect nor motive is known at this time.
When i wrote that comment there was no motive, but political assassinations are trivial to conclude as political.
There is a motive now, ATF leaked that it's a trans shooter. I will be shocked if there arent massive consequences for trans people in the usa.
I will note as well. Lets not forget Melissa Hortman. The political violence is on both sides now.
The way to fix this was Charlie's mission of having conversations. That's impossible now. Nobody can deradicalize the liberals from their violence now. IT will now escalate.
Another note since we're both Canadian. In the summer, Sean Fuecht tried to have simple public performances. Liberals used government power to silence his speech. That's not something you're allowed to do; but they violated his charter rights based of "safety" concerns. Which were valid, there was multiple bombs at his shows by antifa.
The liberals in Canada are as violent.
> Democrats regularly dehumanized and attacked Republicans as fascists and racists.
But how many of us can say that they died for what they believe in? [1] Isn’t this really a personal victory for him at the end of the day?
> I think it's worth it. I think 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.
I hope he had solace and peace in his final moments, knowing that he kept true to his words right up until the end. Thanks for the sacrifice for our god given rights to stand up to a tyrannical government!
[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-20550...
I am in the unfortunate situation to have found myself a victim of hatred — nearly got abducted — found myself threatened and discriminated against on the basis of my sexuality and appearance, had people spread rumours about my birth sex, and I wonder, do the perpetrators of stochastic terrorism ever feel any remorse? Are they capable of seeing us as fellow humans? Have they a heart that can feel pain for people they can’t relate to any more than just being other people?
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c...
Let's say it wasn't witchcraft thing but something more widely accepted like prayer session at mainstream church/mosque or something of this sort. Wouldn't the devout people see this as a contract killing? What if the soother says he felt possessed? Shouldn't then he be let go in a religious society?
And with our Supreme Court, who knows if they'll say witches casting spells are assassins after all.
Many of the witches who believe in this stuff also believe that what you put out into the world will come back to you, typically with a multiplier.
Presumably, some of the Christians who believe in this stuff also believe "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and that ultimately God alone must and will mete out punishment with the wisdom of divine omniscience.
None of this stopped people who claim to be witches from taking money to curse a guy, and in my experience, people who claim to be Christians love judging others and their zeal for punishment often seems fetishistic
Everything and everyone involved does incredible stuff, IMO.
Wikipedia says the pilot was filmed in March 2001, and production began in July 2001, so the broad strokes of the show were maybe mostly written prior to 9/11, but most of the actual filming likely happened after (which means writers also had time to rewrite at least some things).
As far as I can recall it was a very convoluted prison-break for someone thought to be dead that included an attempted revenge assasination, distraction bombing of a federal agency, kidnappings and multiple double agents.
Wow!
It's all been about the politics and ramifications of the assassination. But nothing about the man himself and how he positively impacted the lives of others, no matter how small.
I'm certain this is my filter bubble, but it's still strange nonetheless.
If anyone has any positive things to say about the man, I'd love to know them. As I'm on his political opposite, I never really engaged with his content or knew much past any controversy that boiled over.
The other guy was mentioning how he loved to debate, not just in the forums like the schools, but even with his friends. And how he’d debate them even harder in private, and was willing to change his mind, searching for truth.
They also talked about his faith for a while.
I didn’t watch for too long. When I was switching it off they were brining a woman on and it sounded like she was going to tell some of her own stories about him.
I think these people were actually friends with him vs the talking heads on many other networks reporting who only knew him through his work. If you want to hear the real stories, you need to get them from the people who were closer to him.
He also had a wife and kids, I can only assume he has some positive impact on their lives. His kids would have no concept of what he is professionally, he’d just be “dad”.
I'm going to hug my family a little tighter tonight. 46th school shooting of the year, and the 47th also happening in Colorado.
But regardless, the specific mechanism of his death is clear. He died by gunshot.
This is very different than bleeding from, say, a major artery in a leg. In that case the issue isn't loss of piping to the brain, it's losing blood until the total blood volume in the body isn't sufficient to maintain a workable blood pressure, and yes that can take multiple minutes before a person loses consciousness.
1: https://biologyinsights.com/can-you-live-with-one-carotid-ar...
That snippet is referring to the circle of Willis*, which is a "backup" circuit that can route around a blockage to the blood flow to the brain on one side.
The thing is the circle of Willis is tiny and near vestigial (there is a substantial fraction of the population where it doesn't even make a full circuit), whereas the carotid is one of the largest blood vessels in the body. The circle of Willis isn't nearly large enough to reroute all that flow. It has to be made bigger over time through a process called collateralization, and that's a process that happens over months to years, not minutes or seconds.
In short, the circle of Willis will save you from years of high cholesterol that lead to a huge cholesterol plaque completely blocking off one of your carotids. It won't save you from your carotid being severed by a bullet.
*And some other tinier vessels, but mainly the circle of Willis
(Very, very graphic death) https://x.com/_geopolitic_/status/1965851790714482943 (not safe for life / NSFL)
[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).
For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.
Could you expand on this? What does neurological "fencing" response mean, and what in the video indicates this is it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response ("Fencing response")
Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.
There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.
Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole
Also: smaller assault rounds like 5.56 can in fact do more damage than larger ones in some case because of its tendency to bounce around in the body.
But also, no, the smaller rounds don't have a "tendency to bounce around in the body". It sounds like you're referring to the phenomenon known as tumbling, where the wound track ends up being curved because the bullet loses stability as it hits. This happens because bullets are heavier at the base and thus unstable; while in air, they are stabilized by rotation imparted on them by the rifling, but once they hit anything dense (like, well, human body) it would take a lot more spinning to keep them stable, so all bullets do that. It does not involve any bouncing, however.
Light and fast bullets like 5.56 are particularly unstable and will do it faster, though. But even then, for 5.56, the primary damage mechanism is from bullet fragmentation: between the bullet being fairly long and thin, and high velocity of impact, the bullet literally gets torn apart, but the resulting pieces still retain most of kinetic energy. Except now, each piece, being irregular, travels on its own random trajectory, creating numerous small wound channels in strong proximity, which then collapse into one large wound cavity. But, again, this is mostly a function of bullet velocity and construction (e.g. presence or absence of cannelure), not caliber as such.
I mean, people are watching (I haven't) and wishing they hadn't.
But I also recognize it can possibly trigger anxiety (overwhelming, in some cases) for some folks, even if you don't realize that it might (until it's too late).
Not suggesting we turn to censorship. But at the same time, I guess I'm mostly looking out for folks that may not be aware of the effects it could possibly have (e.g. naive and/or not taking warnings seriously enough).
He was shot in the neck because the shooter is amateur and didn't account for the bullet drop on this distance.
> An estimated 62–153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-t...
Hard disagree. Ignoring it is what allows systemic injustice to persist -- why do we care, today, what Eugenicists in the early 1900s had to say? Jim Crow implementers and supporters? Daughters of the Confederacy?
If the reality of history undermines your respect for American philosophical thought, then perhaps the American philosophical thought is not quite worthy of the pedestal it was placed on.
That said I think it’s important to separate good ideas from their troubled past and use them where they still apply. People are not perfect, but a good idea is good no matter where it comes from. Those good ideas shape culture and shape the destiny of nations. That’s what happened in America, and there’s a lot to be learned from the past. Unless the point is to undermine the recipe that made America into what it is today, then it doesn’t make sense to measure people who didn’t live in our time by our sensibilities, morality or ethics.
We can learn their good stuff, and improve on what they didn’t do well.
Seems extremist to take that view, especially when all nations have just as bloody or dark histories.
But a lot of what shaped initial American thought were Enlightenment ideals, primarily the works of John Locke. So the foundation is solid enough, but is there more that can be done to produce effective implementations? Definitely.
It’s important to note that there are good ideas everywhere, and no one culture or nation has had hegemony or monopoly on producing the best works over time.
I personally also like the fact that the way the American revolutionaries thought shaped the progress of American science up to the 20th century. Here’s a recent lecture on this, but there’s no recording that I can find.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/visit/events/americas-scienti...
https://www.usahistorytimeline.com/pages/the-impact-of-the-r...
Second, the Scottish enlightenment wad wonderful! Not unique to America, so recognizing that the darkest parts of our history are decidedly not representive of the Enlightenment, my classical liberal ideals, and I suspect yours too, does nothing to the case that America did a good job adopting some of the ideals of the Enlightenment in the constitution. We could have gone the French route with the horrors of Robspierre, but we didnt, whether due to lack of population density, aristocracy, or any number of factors.
We agree completely that cultural differences, known as diversity, have outsized benefits.
I'll review the science idea.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. We really aren't far apart. I simply see slavery, genocide, and other horrors of the American past as necessary to recognize in order to set context, and in no way does that diminish the astonishing success of our American experiment. Indeed, in spite of these stains on our history, we remain a nation that does the right thing, as Churchill puts it, after exhausting all other options. And that's a uniqur thing to history.
In my view, if we can't acknowledge our past deficits, in no way can we comprehend the present flaws sufficiently to motivate action and collaboration.
https://casbs.stanford.edu/genocide-world-history
It’s better for people to acknowledge that such a problem can span all types of people and cultures, so we can perform root cause analysis without being biased or disingenuous.
There’s also the question of when we classify group killing as a war vs. as a genocide. There are schools of thought on this https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2020.1....
For example, see the hesitation of scholars in classifying Mongol invasions as a genocide. Is it the case that only white settlers committed genocide across history? If we think of it that way, then we’re ignoring atrocities committed by inter-group violence (war crimes), or same ethnicity violence. The goal should be to prevent violence between groups of people.
Regarding slavery, again it’s a problem that has occurred across time and cultures. Why were different ideologies and cultures unable to prevent slavery? It’s a disgusting stain on human history.
https://historycollection.com/the-evolution-of-slavery-from-...
[1] https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2025/8/7/widesprea...
Judge people by the ways in which they push their society's morals forward, not retroactively after hundreds of years of morals evolving.
I don't think dismissing chattel slavery or it's ramifications on the modern day will improve the morals of society either.
I refuse to accept "it was just the way things were at the time" when there were people opposed to slavery thousands of years ago. Aristotle wrote about them:
> others however maintain that for one man to be another man’s master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.
There were abolitionists in the first days of the United States through to the civil war. People knew it was wrong or had ample opportunity to hear it argued that it was wrong, and furthermore, the inherent wrongness of it should be obvious to anyone that encounters it, and I don't give a moral pass to anyone that brushes it off because it was common any more than I do for American politicians that brush off school shootings because it's common.
Really, not much different from how we view factory farming today.
Would you like to argue that it isn't? The floor is yours. Otherwise your point about consensus is moot. Evil then, evil now, evil forever.
If you think you can judge someone by the morals of today, you must then accept you are evil as well, since societal morals will continue to evolve.
You never answered the question: are you vegan, or do you contribute to the immense suffering and death of ~70b sentient beings a year? The suffering hours inflicted every few days exceed that of any atrocity in human history. It is the industrialized torture of billions of innocent beings for your pleasure.
If veganism becomes the norm, is it fair for future humans to judge your whole life by your consumption of meat, leather, or other animal products when there are so many people today that recognize it as a "unique and horrifying evil?"
It is a strange form of exceptionalism for you to judge those in the past but not yourself, because the delta will be similar over long enough timeframes, and if you do partake in any of these things you won't be seen as much different.
We can judge them by their peers at the time. The U.S. founding fathers didn’t unanimously support slavery, many of them opposed it but were committed to the idea of unity against England. Part of why we can be comfortable judging the slave owners is because their position was primarily based on greed - if we suddenly discovered that cows were sentient, a ton of people would stop eating beef but there was no doubt or ambiguity about black people in that regard, only ruthless awareness of how rich you could get without paying your workers.
People eat beef mostly because they’re used to it and they think it’s good for them. Everybody knows cow are sentient, there’s a strong intuition (why wouldn’t they like other animals ?) but also tons of literature. There’s not much doubt about it neither.
I agree with the slave owners, however the spectrum of acceptance is large where it’s part of the society. What about someone that make profit by doing business with the slave owner? Someone that buy products coming ~probably~ from that work?
Or someone assisting an "indigene showcase" because they know nothing about this humanoid that look, speak and act differently than the people they used to known (that are from 100km away max). Not different than a zoo, and both are tremendously cruel.
So the cases are not dissimilar at all because your contemporaries do call this out. If causing such immense death and suffering for pleasure in the face of easily available alternatives is not greed, what is?
You are only highlighting my point how you are seeing something as acceptable that will probably be viewed as an unspeakable cruelty in the future, and yet you feel comfortable judging past humans by an increased standard whereas you clearly are not comfortable applying an increased standard to yourself.
You are a product of your society as much as the slave owners of the past were of theirs. This is why it is senseless and hypocritical to paint past peoples acting within the accepted mores of their society as evil - as if we are any better, relatively speaking!
It makes sense to celebrate those that push things forward, as opposed to condemning those that are simply doing what they know to be normal.
We can judge past slaveholders. The shared humanity of another human is self evident the instant you behold a slave, whether 300 years ago or 3000.
Everyone that participated was wrong to do so.
Torture is bad no matter how you cut it, and it's especially bad if you torture a sentient being for your own pleasure. Can we agree on that?
Saying whether it's better or worse than slavery is like playing the oppression Olympics, they are both atrocities and demonstrably evil actions.
When you kill an animal, you can see it struggle, cry, suffer, die. You can hold and see its pain in your hands. To do so for your taste buds is another level of evil. To make it live an entire life of suffering? That's really not much different in terms of badness.
The fact that you can't acknowledge this highlights the double standard you apply to people that came before you but not yourself. Everyone is wrong to participate in the systematic torture and murder of 70,000,000,000 sentient beings a year. Does that make all the participants evil?
I'm not trying to engage in oppression Olympics, I'm just saying, slavery is basically the worst things people can do, so far beyond the morality of whether or not it's ok to kill animals, or even torture them, that I'm just confused why it's brought up as if it's relevant.
I don't think killing animals is a great thing to do, and factory farms are awful. But humans are humans, and constantly just hitting this "what about animals" things is bizarre to me. I'm not trying to be rude, I just simply don't see the relevance. Slavery being just about the worse thing humans can do means that all the other bad things pale in comparison.
I'm not saying it's always valid to apply modern ethics to people from various time periods - it's bad, but understandable, that people used to beat their kids, or waste food by sacrificing animals and leaving them out to rot "for the gods." My point is that slavery simply is a massive exception, it's second-to-second murder, taking a human and trying to make them not-human. So that's why anything you could throw at me that we do today that people in the future might say is wrong - jailing people, not housing the homeless, killing animals for sport, engaging in capitalism, you name it, none of them come close to slavery in terms of sheer evil. And my point is that this isn't modern ethics, this is as self-evident a moral fact as is possible for morality. Many things in morality are grey, debatable. Not slavery. It's the One of Two things that are bad in every century, alongside rape. The wrongness of slavery, and rape, are immediately evident no matter what culture or era you come from.
And the reason people do this is usually to justify slavery. "Well they didn't know any better, so they had slaves." Justifying slavery with ANY reason is also bad. So I refuse to accept any attempt to do so, including comparisons to other things that happen to be bad, or possibly considered bad in the future.
The humanity of a human is self evident to any other human instantly. The humanity of an animal is debatable to this day. That's why slavery is inexcusably bad - the badness of it is also immediately self evident upon encountering it.
I'm glad you brought up suffering, I'm realizing better now why so frequently I hear these two ideas brought together by people inadvertently finding themselves on the same side as folks minimizing slavery in attempts to argue against harming animals (by engaging in debate about moral relativism). Purely from a suffering standpoint slavery doesn't necessarily have to be "that bad."
Drawing comparisons between it and arguments against harming animals are nonsensical because we're not talking about suffering, we're talking about other things that can only possibly involve humans. Thank you for sticking around and exploring your viewpoint with me so I could understand that better.
There would be no functional stock market without strong values and trust in them
Depending on your interpretation of "effective" I'm not sure I entirely agree. Political campaigners on both side of the political spectrum have a lot of respect for Charlie Kirk and his ability to raise funds and make a difference in his political activism. From what I've heard, the stuff he did on camera was actually the weaker part of his skill set, its his off-camera work that the GOP will sorely miss.
What society are you referring to? And what values? I’m trying to gauge if you’ve looked in a history book ever.
Slavery, patriarchy, indentured servitude, excessive religiosity, monarchy, rejection of other cultures, all these seem to be good things to leave in the rearview mirror.
I don't agree with a lot of the things Charlie Kirk said, and as someone who is not an American, there was also a lot of things he said I simply didn't care about because they didn't apply to me. I also found that his way of communicating was more geared towards encouraging discussions that would generate views. But despite all that, I can appreciate that he was a man who was willing to have a (mostly) civil conversation with all sides, something I wish more people would try to do.
American politics isn't politics, it's one step short of being like football hooliganism for supposedly smart people.
And the news networks eat that shit up. They love a boogeyman, because it's good for ratings.
You're right, though. Americans actually agree on most things [1]. In that sense, there is really only one "side." Yet the media exploits the small differences that people don't agree upon to create a giant divide.
Anecdote: I firmly believe Trump is going to destroy our democracy, or at least put it to its absolute limits. Yet, I have many friends who voted for Trump. They're great people. We don't ever talk politics, but whenever we talk about economics, or society, we actually agree about most things. If we didn't, we probably wouldn't be friends.
Yet the talking heads on TV would have us believe that democrats and republicans are enemies. And that may very well be a self fulfilling prophecy.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ap-poll-democracy-rights-freedoms...
You could imagine a different algorithm that promoted peaceful, thoughtful interactions. But that would have led to the death of Facebook, twitter, news networks, etc.
We may in fact be here due to sheer greed. The media companies have profited by creating discontent in our society rather than content.
- talk to each other about politics (as we used to) so as to moderate each other's opinions
- stop exaggerating moles into mountains.
May we actually do this.
could you give some examples of good, civil conversations he's had with people he strongly opposed? I'd like watch them. I think it's a skill we all need to cultivate.
It could be a random crazy person, a Democrat, Trump supporter pissed off that Kirk was trying to help Trump move past the Epstein stuff or any number of in-betweens.
And you can knock off the white washing of Kirk’s political life. In recent memory, he has advocated for military occupation of US cities, making children watch public executions, and eschewed the idea of empathy. This “well, he said it in calm voice” handwaving is spineless.
I don't understand this. Sport is just sport - just watch, enjoy, have a good time. And the better team that day wins - enjoy and go home. What's with "defend them no matter what"? Defend from what and why?
In my experience, a lot of sports fans love to debate and argue, claim some strategy was "unfair" when used against their team, argue whether some penalty was justified or not. People who are die-hard for their team will usually defend their team no matter what.
> Sport is just sport - just watch, enjoy, have a good time
This is the thing. Politics has basically become a form of entertainment these days. You have talk-shows covering politics and making fun of the political news of the day, you have YouTubers and streamers who make a living off of making political content. Artists make comics that are varying degrees of witty political satire and, in America at least, the democratic and republican conventions are basically a political sideshow circus. To top it off, how many people have taken this situation as a reason to post on social media? Regardless of if you like or dislike Charlie Kirk and his idea's, using his death as a reason to post something on social media, positive or negative, is just using the situation for entertainment purposes.
How many people these days can honestly say they engage in politics to talk about policy, and not as a form of entertainment?
So no, no one is talking about "sideS." A single, cohesive group of people has been building an unearned narrative of persecution and victimhood as a pretext to lash out at and antagonize every person who isn't them.
- "I strongly disagree with Charlie Kirk, but [...] Condolences to his wife and small kids"
- "I have scant philosophical agreement, but..."
- "While I'm not a fan..."
Says something about the level of polarization that people are so afraid of accidentally being mistaken for a supporter, even in these circumstances. He was not a particularly niche character, his views are probably similar to a decently sized share of the American population. The American people are struggling so hard to find any kind of unity.
I am not American but looking at society trust falling down does not feel good man.
On campuses today, there’s no shortage of professors, student activists, and guest speakers beating the drum of modern liberalism, but very few brave enough to take an alternative view.
So I respected him for getting students to question and defend their beliefs.
The most horrible people in history did not do any physical harm to other people themselves. Many were also very nice to hang out with and had lovely families. But they definitely inspired and ordered others to do unimaginably horrible acts.
The only thing I can think of that the government can do is to clamp down hard on violence, including speech which advocates for violence (e.g. glorifying Luigi Mangione, calling everyone a Nazi/fascist, etc.). Freedom of speech ends where it actually turns into violence.
Reducing rights to speech that advocates for violence makes some sense, but what I'd like to see is reducing the lies and disinformation. Install a duty of candor to everyone who speaks in greatly public ways
you might have some blind spots yourself though. the biggest set of spiritual sickness and violence are whats happening to immigrants by ICE, and the support americans are giving to israel to do mass horrors to gazan civilians.
theres tons of violence going on thats much more current than talking about luigi or calling somebody who is a fascist a fascist
It's unlikely they would have killed him anonymously, from 200 yards away, and be still at large a day later.
From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".
I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.
It looks like Trump's term is going to end in either the end of America as we know it or a constitutional convention anyways. Anything is on the table given how America is currently being torn apart anyways.
I actually think it’s possible a national divorce makes the problem worse. Lots of these killers have not had clear motives or “sides”
Leaving a Midwest rump state run from.. Chicago?
Assuming welfare as in healthcare and food subsidies, money to low-income individuals.
The truth is the US has been seen periods of extreme rhetoric and even political violence, including most obviously an actual civil war, and also key periods like the labor movement and civil rights movement. It will happen again even if things cool.
Political violence and assassinations are obviously terrible and should hopefully not happen as debate allows consensus or at least compromise to be reached, but the reality seems to be if you allow the people a stake in their government, passion and anger will be instilled in some subset of those people cause government policies have real world implications, and the end result is extreme acts, many of which are detestable like this one. I don't see a way forward other than to prosecute crimes and let the debate rage on.
The best we can hope for is that the convulsions will be short and sharp and no foreign power takes advantage of our convalescence. In 1945 the Germans learned a hard lesson about fascism, and learned it well; we can hope that Americans will learn something too, and at less cost.
Strongly disagree with "most".
Margins on many recent elections have been so low they'd be too close to measure a generation ago.
I think that's relevant, a hard check on the idea that an overwhelming majority of Americans are getting what they voted for. No.
(FWIW I agree with your other points. I miss the era of Walter Cronkite consensus. Not clear that it was better. But less terrifying.)
However, both the established parties seem to have become totally incompetent to do that, in very different ways. One party got taken over by people who make public statements on a daily basis that would have been immediately disqualifying at any time since 1950 or so. The other party is so bad at doing politics that they're beaten in elections despite running against those people.
Many of us don't vote either. And our two party systems have created extreme partisanship. I wish it could be different because I do love this country, but our politics are so broken by the two party system, fueled with misinformation through these partisan news networks + social media algorithms (the way Youtube turns one person into an extremist of either side is an example...)
that might be where youre running into problems?
A lot of people here are no better than reddit. Worse in some ways because they wrap their gravedancing in an additional layer of pseudointellectualism.
Prior to social media, or the internet in general, it was quite difficult to amass large numbers of people in your echo chamber without becoming a person of power (like a president or equivalent). But today, it isn't uncommon for someone with views towards conspiracies or extreme viewpoints to become a "popular" voice in social media. In fact, one might argue that it is easier to become popular by being divisive. Even though most people aren't on either side. The ability to grow a "large enough" side is enough to become an existential threat to the other side. And they end up justifying their own existence.
I don't know what the solution to this is. I don't even know how to reduce it at this point.
Personally I think there needs be laws regarding social media, perhaps limiting the number of followers/viewers for anyone engaged in social or political commentary, and/or making promotion of political content illegal if it is false or misleading. Something akin to the fairness doctrine that used to exist for television prior to 1987.
So the algorithms that prioritise engagement reward outrage, and the social media users who want to be engaged with tend towards posting outrage
It leads to people sitting around being angry at something or someone for hours on end, multiple days a week (if not daily)
It doesn't lead to a healthy mind or a healthy society
When people say the north fought to preserve the union, I always thought it meant the physical union. But recently, I saw a lecture by Gary Gallagher at the UVA that shone a brighter light on what union meant in 1860. It's worth a listen, search for it on YT.
More recently, selfishness has taken second seat to hurting the “other” (whatever other happens to be) even to the detriment of one’s own self interests. America is not built for this.
I’ve left out which side is which, because I think it works both ways.
You censored conversations about the genocide in Gaza because "this is just a tech blog" but now we can talk about this (an assassination that I consider a tragedy BTW)
Aime Cesaire called it “imperial boomerang”; Malcolm X said “chickens coming home to roost”.
Yet the only form of violence that legible to the bourgeoisie is even the prospect of resistance & counterviolence - most of the recent attacks upon capitalists & those labeled as “right wing” seem to have not come from “the left”.
What if Trump is behind this, and he had him killed to distract from the Epstein files business? He could also blame it on the liberals and the left, and make his own party look like victims.
Interesting to see the 100x(!) attention that this gets on HN, likely representative of similar media reach on more mainstream channels, when it's not even lawmakers in this case.
> not even lawmakers
But he was more famous than those lawmakers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208037
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208072
The comparison with the Minnesota lawmaker murders submission sounds political and you seem to care about this aspect a lot to mention it 3 times
If you’re genuinely curious why this event is likely getting so much attention, I’d wager it has less to do with politics than it has with the fact that this occurred in front of thousands of people, mainly young students, and was recorded by many on their phones. It was also being broadcast I believe. Multiple angles of a very graphic video of a person getting murdered are all over the internet
It’s terrible when innocent people are murdered. In this case, many people watched it happen too
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.
edit: be
More directly, when violence becomes a normalized means of politics, it doesn’t benefit the bourgeoisie.
I meant the bourgeoisie as in the middle class. A lot of idiots think rolling out guillotines will hurt the rich and help the poor.
It won’t. It almost never has in the last millennium. If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
I actually wish that were the case.
The problem today is that we've scaled up the damage that a single attacker can do. I won't go too far into it, but think of it this way, what happens when someone wakes up to the fact that they can use autonomous ordinance (e.g. - Drones)?
We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious that it set us on a slippery slope.
I remain a fan of bringing back the Athenian institution of ostracism. If more than a certain fraction of voters in an election write down the same person’s name, they’re banned from running for office or have to leave the country for N years. (And if they can’t or won’t do the latter, are placed under house arrest.)
Yes. The bourgeoisie don’t get away. The aristocracy do.
If you work in tech, you’re part of the American bourgeoisie. If you have a college degree, you’re bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the middle class.
What does the middle class even mean nowadays?
By Marxist definition, the bourgeoisie are the business owners, the landlords. The class that owns the means of production. If you need a salary to survive, you're working class.
A lot of people in tech are salaried employees. They might have some money in investments, but not enough to live off of. Many tech workers are just highly compensated members of the working class.
The bourgeoisie can't. The aristocracy can. That's the point.
I can tell you my stories. But I always wonder what is the alternative when someone like me is attacked? Should I give my left cheek? Should I attempt to be a pacifist?
People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged because they never have to witness someone’s head roll down. So they don’t know how it feels to be the receiving end of suffering.
I think you misunderstand the point. My argument is that each act of political violence ( especially on a national stage ) further degrades existing society. That ongoing degradation is a real problem and, yes, individual suffering is irrelevant to it, because, society is a greater good.
You may say those say it are privileged, but to that I say that I like having working society. It keeps being us civil. I like it to stay that way.
If you feel otherwise, please elaborate. It is possible, I am misunderstanding you.
I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
Crookes basically handed the election to Trump.
Rising up with your fist clenched right after you were shot isn't something you train for either. That's a natural reaction from instinct.
It's morbid curiosity to analyze it, but I don't think it would have had the same net effect if it was Harris.
A man was killed that day.
I haven't noticed a fundamental change.
US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports.
I know plenty of people who will be giving NeurIPS a miss _on the advice of their governments_. This _did not_ happen during his first term.
Apologies, but "citation needed"?
(As a non-US citizen) I flew into JFK earlier this year and did my (first) Global Entry interview. It was the shortest and most polite immigration interview I've ever had anywhere, and I've had a few.
He and his enablers played that argument during his 2024 campaign as well, but everyone is missing a crucial aspect of it. During his first term, he was surrounded by a large number of career administration staff, who put guardrails around him. This time it's all 'Yes men' and his well-wishers. Notably, no one from the previous admin staff had endorsed him for 2024. That should have given a clue to people. But, nope.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-trump-officials...
You mean that time when millions of American citizens were placed on the No Fly List with no recourse essentially at random? You can't be serious. After 9/11 was far worse.
I've been in and out of the US several times this year through several ports of entry and it has been hassle-free so far. They don't even ask me questions, they just wave me through.
His entire schtick, since the day he announced his campaign in 2015, has been based around grievance politics.
I would like to hope that you recognize that registration of political affiliation is just one data point. Spring it does not make. You know how I got registered as a republican? I got incorrectly registered as one during judge election volunteering.
I am not saying it means nothing. What I am saying is: some nuance is helpful in conversations like this.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Timothy McVeigh, Jim Adkisson, Dylan Roof, the Tree of Life shooting, J6, the 2022 Buffalo shooter, Jacksonville 2023, Allen, TX 2023, etc.
Nearly all political violence in the US is committed by people espousing right wing ideology, so if it walks and talks like a duck, is telling you it's a duck...
In the past year-or-so we have seen two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the assassination of the CEO of an insurance company, the assassination of Rep. Hortman, and now this. That's five political assassinations/attempts in a year.
It would seem fair to argue we are now firmly in a state of contagion which is unlike the situation in 2012 when Giffords was shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Capital_Jewish_Museum_sho...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Boulder_fire_attack
Additionally, I’ve seen a troubling amount of online sentiment positively in favor of the Trump assassination attempts, the murder of Brian Thompson. The sentiment in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder looks like it might be similarly troubling.
January 6 was mass political violence, and I my unprofessional opinion is that the pardons marked a turning point in how engaging in political violence is viewed; all is forgiven if/when your team wins.
Hyper-partisanship, and choosing not playing by the rules when it benefits you will be America's downfall. At some point, people on the other side of the political fence stopped being seen as opponents,but became "enemies", I think cable news/entertainment shoulders much blame on this, but the politicians themselves know outrage turns out the vote. I wonder if they'll attempt to lower the temperature or raise it further.
There has been widespread discontent for a while now - it's the vein Obama and Trump tapped to win their respective first terms. AFAICT, it is an evolving class war[1], with American characteristics.
1. One could argue which side tore up the social contract first, and quibble with the definition of what counts as "violence"
https://www.kff.org/mental-health/do-states-with-easier-acce...
"Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. The availability of firearms has been linked to suicides in a number of peer-reviewed studies. In one such study, researchers examined the association between firearm availability and suicide while also accounting for the potential confounding influence of state-level suicidal behaviors (as measured by suicide attempts). Researchers found that higher rates of gun ownership were associated with increased suicide by firearm deaths, but not with other types of suicide. Taking a look at suicide deaths starting from the date of a handgun purchase and comparing them to people who did not purchase handguns, another study found that people who purchased handguns were more likely to die from suicide by firearm than those who did not--with men 8 times more likely and women 35 times more likely compared to non-owners."
The other break in your statistic is people who own guns and commit suicide, and people who own guns and have a family member steal them to commit suicide. The later is far more common. Which suggests that part of the issue is unrestricted access to firearms by children in the home of a gun owning parent.
Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
"The rate of non-firearm suicides is relatively stable across all groups, ranging from a low rate of 6.5 in states with the most firearm laws to a high of 6.9 in states with the lowest number of firearm laws. The absolute difference of 0.4 is statistically significant, but small. Non-firearm suicides remain relatively stable across groups, suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to get."
This is perhaps one of the worst ways of looking at it. People kill themselves slowly by many means, including alcoholism, smoking, risky activities (reckless driving, etc.). These are grouped broadly under the term "Deaths of Despair" (see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8221228/). It may be more informative to look at other countries, such as Russia, Norway and Finland, which have incredibly high rates of alocholism leading to a high rate of deaths of despair.
There are many ways to reliably kill yourself. Guns are just the quickest. A serious discussion on the topic cannot avoid this fact.
I cannot give myself chronic fatty liver disease or lung cancer that quickly. I think you know this.
To put it in perspective, California (a state with notoriously strict gun control) has experienced the highest rate of increase of opioid overdose deaths (see https://www.shadac.org/opioid-epidemic-united-states). More generally, deaths to firearm suicide and deaths of despair occur together in rural communities (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...).
Are those "suicides" in the classical sense? No. But they are deaths of despair, and from a public health and policy standpoint, must be approached in a manner similar to suicide.
I don't believe you have even attempted (or acknowledged) an opposing point exists on this topic. Your points amount to banal agenda pushing as opposed to seeking to understand the root causes of many challenges today. This is emblematic of (and partially why) there is such division in the USA today: a lack of willingness to study and understand societal problems, particularly those that are multifaceted and require broader reasoning about the topic.
Sure. And my very clear point is that guns help make temporary - even momentary! - despair turn into a permanent end.
I don’t find the pro-gun crowd all that interested in improving social services outside of distracting from the gun issue.
The debate is largely over where to draw the lines. Virtually everyone is fine with limiting access to certain weapons, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
The US is at 120.5 guns per 100 civilians, and Canada is at 34.5
I think being ~4x the ratio of guns per capita, (and 30x the total!) has to do something, right?
Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.
Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.
Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.
This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).
No one really knows how many firearms there are in the US or who owns them. Just the fact that something like 15 million firearms are sold every year in the US gives a sense of the scale. The number of firearms in the US is staggering, no one knows the true number, and they have an indefinite lifespan if stored in halfway decent conditions.
Australia: 0.854/100k
USA: 5.763/100k
i.e. about 1/7th the amount of intentional homicides.
Disclaimer that this is early and I may be wrong, but I read that he had a security detail (which seems rather likely). I doubt an attacker with a knife would have had success.
Guns aren't as generally useful as knives. So it makes little sense to have 1.2 guns per person, or really any private gun possession. The price of mass murders, shooter drills, and firearm accidents aren't worth what marginal benefits guns may bring.
The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.
My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.
It's not some statistical difference between almost no violence and no violence. It's night and day. Orders of magnitude. Teens walking back from parties through the middle of the city at 1 am with their parents permission vs clan wars.
I don't believe this is the same thing.
One is an adversarial problem where a living thinking being is evil and trying to attack you.
In traffic, most people are just trying to get somewhere, and then accidents happen.
Do you think traffic lights help if someone goes out with the explicit intent to kill others via their car?
There's a long funnel of all the things that could happen, probability of each, and total resulting probability. That's no different for being in a car wreck or being shot at.
Now, on a moral level, sure, malice is different from negligence is different from coincidence.
The motivation is not the important part. Sentience is. This person is playing a chess match trying to defeat you.
Consider biology. Cancer is a hard problem to solve, but it's not scheming against you with an intelligence. What about someone in a lab engineering bioweapons?
> Yamagami told investigators that he had shot Abe in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church (UC), a new religious movement to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002.
> The assassination brought scrutiny from Japanese society and media against the UC's alleged practice of pressuring believers into making exorbitant donations. Japanese dignitaries and legislators were forced to disclose their relationship with the UC, (...) the LDP announced that it would no longer have any relationship with the UC and its associated organisations, and would expel members who did not break ties with the group. (...) [The parliament] passed two bills to restrict the activities of religious organisations such as the UC and provide relief to victims.
> Abe's killing has been described as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in recent history due to the backlash against the UC that it provoked. The Economist remarked that "... Yamagami's political violence has proved stunningly effective ... Political violence seldom fulfills so many of its perpetrator's aims." Writing for The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth described Yamagami as "among the most successful assassins in history".
This is so tiring. No shit, sherlock. Medicine doesn't prevent death or sickness either so maybe just give up.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion as to why letting the status quo be is a good thing. The path society is on is clearly towards a cyberpunk distopia, than anything that would unburden and improve the human existance of the many.
We're talking about the same site that constantly has submissions from politically biased sources alluding to various ways that the orange man is bad, where comments pushing standard right-wing talking points are frequently flagged and killed within minutes, and a recent Ask HN seriously entertained the question of whether HN is "fascist" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44598731) because the "orange man is bad" posts get flagged?
If you can catch posts you think are unfairly flagged as they happen you can also send them to hn@ycombinator.com. Even if it's a day late they can unflag it, second chance it, and/or watch the comments.
The mods hold a strong opinion that making the moderation log public in some way (so these kinds of things can be seen directly) would cause more problems and discontent than it would solve. I strongly disagree, but I respect that the mods have always delivered satisfactory answers for me when using the emailing process - which is their main counterpoint to the need for a public log.
Another shameless note that this is the kind of thing I think a public moderation log would really help.
A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered and another attacked by the same man only a couple of months ago, back in June. How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?
My cynical side suspects we are about to hear a lot about "violence from the left" in a way we did not about the right back in June.
The far right developed stars, stallions and philosophers that are effective in the popular culture no matter how vile some of those can be. There are up and coming leftist Americans but they will need to hustle to develop intro strong leaders. The mainstream figures from the American left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are just too lightweight.
Edit: funny how this comment fluctuates between 0 and 2 points. This edit will probably tip the balance though :)
This is a meme that needs to die. Its just not true.
The Democratic party in the US is right in line with Labor/Socialist/Whatever Mainstream Leftist Party you want to point at in Europe. It has members who end up on various sides of the left-wing spectrum. There are no "far left" parties in the US because we have a two party system.
There are obviously topics where this is not true. But that goes both ways: almost no country on Earth has the level of abortion access that the Democratic party in the US demands. And there are examples of European right wing parties who fight for zero abortion access, which is not the GOP platform currently.
- Nearly all European countries have and support a very high consumption tax (VAT). In the US, nobody would be really for this (although some conservatives favor such taxes), but US liberals would be extremely against it due to the regressive nature of consumption taxes.
- The majority of EU countries institute voter ID laws, something supported only by conservatives in the US. States with voter ID laws almost always allow some valid voter ID to be gotten for free, but they are still opposed by liberals.
There are plenty of other examples when you start thinking about it.
European socialists usually advocate for direct state ownership of certain industries, sector-wide union contracts, universal (not means-tested) child allowances, fully public health care, wealth taxes, free college, etc. There are a handful of elected Democrats that sign on to some of these views, but these have never been in the actual party platform, since the mainstream of the party roundly rejects these. Democrats are only somewhat radical in certain social/bioethical issues like abortion and LGBT rights (although the latter is being tested, with some influential Dems defecting); otherwise, the better European analogue would be Macron's Renaissance party (formerly En Marche), the UK's Lib Dems, the Nordic countries' social liberal parties.
The US does have child allowances, by the way - during Covid, it was even increased and paid out monthly instead of annually. Increasing it as of late seems to be an "R" policy, at least on the Trump wing.
Are there European countries that offer free college regardless of academic achievement during high school?
The Democratic party is just as, if not more socially progressive than many European "left wing" parties on certain issues, that's true, but that's not what anyone is talking about. Issues like abortion and LGBT rights concern personal freedom, they're orthogonal to the left-right axis.
When we say that the Democratic party is to the right of every European left-wing party, and to the right of most right-wing parties, what we're talking about are the economic policies that affect the lives of everyday people.
US democrats can't even get behind table stakes leftist issues like universal healthcare, social safety, progressive taxation, and wealth inequality. They know who pays for their re-election campaigns and who controls the media - it's not the working class. Democrats aren't leftist, they're liberal, which is a night and day difference.
I couldn't have named Kirk if I saw him or heard about him before he shot and it entered the news. Not sure what that tells us -- we should know more who our representatives are, or know about various "influencers" in politics and such?
EDIT: I saw you initially mentioned two representatives who were murdered but now it looks like there is only one. So even though you criticize others for not knowing who these murdered representatives were, it seems you don't even know who they were or if they were even murdered.
> Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but...
Well this is how usually talking in bad taste early starts ;-). It's kind of like saying "No offense, but ... $insert_offense_here".
She had power in MN, but had not become a "national" politician (yet).
I suspect that unless you live in New Mexico, you have no idea who the speaker of the NM House is. That's not a diminshment of the office or the person holding it, it's a recognition that while such positions come with significant power within the context of a state, they are quite hidden from residents of other states.
For instance do you know Brandon Ler, the Montana House of Representatives speaker? Or, say, Nathaniel Ledbetter, the Alabama House of Representatives?
Are they "niche" politicians? In their states, no. But, absolutely yes when it comes to people from other states and more so from across the world.
It doesn't justify death, but it certainly makes it less surprising and more understandable.
Imagine if a democrat went into the deep south and said "The confederacy was a stupid joke you should be ashamed of, it only existed for 4 years, get rid of the flag already." etc etc and posted it to social media while talking over people trying to engage in debate.
Then that would be an apples-to-apples comparison. Not an elected representative.
"you know, I could be nice and call him [Governor Walz], but why waste time?"
https://www.startribune.com/trump-says-he-will-not-call-walz...
It was an attempt to quell the No Kings protests scheduled to happen the same day.
The better question to ask is, how many subscribers did the Democratic state representative from Minnesota and the other have?
Just sad.
There was no presidential message expressing sympathy and outrage then and complete radio silence from Republicans in general. And the amount of misinformation from the right was incredible. Even in this thread of nominally intelligent people, they're still repeating falsehoods.
Any expression of shock and dismay from conservatives now is pure theater. The right wing is absolutely fine with violence. Accusations of the violent left is of course a talking point projection as usual.
I don't know - how long did these stories stay in the headlines?
A 26 year old man from Irondale, Alabama was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombing. Prosecutors stated that prior to the bombing, the suspect had been spotted placing stickers on government buildings, displaying "antifa, anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement sentiments" and had expressed "belief that violence should be directed against the government" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marshall#Bombing
Man, 80, run over for putting Trump sign in yard, say police - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1rw4xdjql4o
Alabama Antifa Sympathizer Pleads Guilty to Detonating Bomb outside State AG’s Office - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alabama-antifa-sympathiz...
a man armed with a pistol and a crossbow showed up at Fuentes' home - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes#Alleged_murder_at...
Attempted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Assassin Identifies As Transgender; Hoped To Kill “Nazis” - https://wsau.com/2025/01/30/doj-filing-attempted-treasury-se...
10 arrested after ambush on Texas ICE detention facility [..] When an Alvarado police officer arrived on the scene, one of the individuals shot him in the neck. Another individual shot 20 to 30 rounds at the facility correction officers, according to Larson. - https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-arrested-after-ambush-texas-ice...
Last but not lest, there was also an assassination attempt on Trump, though I concede that one did get plenty of attention.
...and her husband and dog. The killer also had a long list of other targets.
Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.
The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s.
Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result.
(On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time.
And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet.
People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)
No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.
Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.
The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.
Americans have this unfortunate tendency towards exceptionalist self-image. They remember the Revolutionary War and forget the Civil War. They remember World War 2 and forget Vietnam. They believe when they wield violence it is because they are right and the cause is just, when history shows that, even for them, the victor in such conflicts tends to have very little to do with just cause and a lot more to do with dumb luck (or, if I'm being a bit more generous, "material and strategic reality divorced from the justness of the casus belli").
I agree history records fort sumter as the official start of the war, but I guess I was looking at it big picture that "a war was on it's way" regardless of the singular event that sparked full war.
My perspective on the civil war is "good thing it happened and the Union won, otherwise who knows how long black people would have been enslaved". It would have been nice to end slavery without the war, but Lincoln tried to negotiate to this end extensively and couldn't secure it.
Also, yes I agree the vietnam war is severely undertaught. And in the modern era, Afghanistan.
It's also worth noting that most people don't realize there are more black people enslaved today than in the US Civil War, not to mention other enslaved groups.
This isn't in support of the reasons the ties were broken, but I can absolutely see if say Germany leaves the EU, then they'd probably want an EU military occupied base in Germany to leave said base.
(... but that's historical fiction speculation; there's also a case to be made that but for the pressure put upon Britain by the colonies slipping through her fingers, she'd have insufficient pressure put upon her to outlaw it... Especially if she had one of her largest colonies declaring loudly that a full have of its economy necessitated the practice).
Once that happened, it really wasn't up to Congress or the President any longer. The capture of Fort Sumter and declaration of succession moved the conversation from "How much slavery can America tolerate" to "this insurgent government has stolen half of the country's territory." The response to that threat was as self-evident as it would have been if that territory had been taken by another existing nation.
It is strange to me that you take such a fatalistic approach to history, where nothing else was ever possible.
of course at some point there is no turning back, particularly after the deed is done.
If nothing else is possible, what does that say about the current state and our choices about our future? what will be will be? might as well stay home watching netflix and see what happens?
As an example to illustrate your definition, do you believe that it was possible to find peace with Hitler and Nazi Germany without having to fight WWII in Europe?
I'll express my answer on the American civil war with the framing of your definition of 'fatalistic approach to history'.
I'm objecting to the statement that the civil was was inevitable. Full stop. That nothing could be done differently, by anyone, at any time, to avoid it.
To answer the question, I think the civil war was exactly as avoidable as you think world war 2 was. It’s more a question of semantics at this point, given they are unchangable past events.
If we want to turn the stories of the past into questions about what we could do differently right now, that's an interesting conversation to me. "But what if the South had just decided not to get into a shooting war with the North?" is fodder for a stack of books on the "New Fiction" table at Barnes and Noble but not much more.
Turning the lens to the present: I think it is worth noting that decades of negotiation, political horse-trading, and compromises had been attempted prior to the breakout of the War. It isn't that talking wasn't tried, it's that one side got tired of having the conversation every single generation (and were perceiving that the zeitgeist were turning against their position). So one useful question is "What are the divisions in this era that mirror the kind of irreconcilable difference that was 'a nation half-slave and half-free?'" One candidate I could suggest is the question of gun control; I suspect it is not, as practiced in the US, a topic where people can agree to disagree, the Constitutional protection (and judicial interpretation of it) distorts the entire conversation, and I think there's real nonzero risk of one side responding to a sea-change in the zeitgeist conversation with violence.
Which side, I do not yet predict. A major ingredient in the slavery debate was existential fear (the belief in the South that a freed black population would form either a power bloc that would destroy its former masters politically or vigilante posses that would do violence to their former masters). It's one of the reasons John Brown's raid was so terrifying to the Southerners because Brown was a white man who committed political violence in the name of ending slavery; they perceived him as a signal that the North was done talking (even though he was not acting as an agent of the government). In modern America? A lot of Americans are terrified of random gun violence. That kind of terror lowers the bar on willingness to commit violence, because the survival drive runs hot. And, similarly, gun owners are terrified that the government could strip their capacity for self-defense from them and they'd then be vulnerable to violence they could not defend themselves from.
If you're looking for a lesson from the past on how to diffuse such a volatile situation... Unfortunately, I don't think the story of the Civil War will give it to you. That's a story of failing to diffuse it.
Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more.
Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation
“Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah…”
- W. Tecumseh Sherman’s ultimatum to the garrison of this city, December 1864
Sherman’s March to the Sea was an apotheosis of political violence. It deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure.
How long would American slavery have persisted without the march (the war to which it belongs)?
How could non-violence have triumphed in the same crusade?
Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.
To be fair, crazy people will justify their craziness with anything. The problem is less what this may be used to justify and more that it creates a more-permissive environment for further political violence.
> And more may be to come: some GOP lawmakers and officials are signaling their readiness to punish people for their speech. Conservative activists are collecting and publicizing social media posts and profiles that they say "celebrated" his death and are calling for them to lose their jobs.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5538476/charlie-kirk-jo...
The McCarthy period, as comparison, lasted much too long and claimed many victims before it was discredited as immorally crazy.
TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action.
I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire
Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
That pacifism was very much required though. The whole projection of India as this "mystic peaceful place full of peace-loving meditating sadhus that the Beatles and Steve jobs were so enamored by" was instrumental for the way we got independent with minimal balkanization[1], our ability to stay non-aligned in the cold war (which btw, is the original definition of a third world country!) and maintain strategic autonomy throughout the following decades - which we exercise quite well today. Of course, it was nothing but a political image, and we built nukes behind the scenes (by order of the very same politician nehru), but gandhis pacifist outlook and the heavy marketing of this in western countries (see Nehru's rallies in USA at the time), as well as in soviet Russia, was very necessary. People like to say we shouldn't have been socialist back then, but the Soviet help that arose out of that was really useful. In geopolitics there are no morals, so it is also completely OK that we took a U-turn from all that a while later. The only interest is self-interest.
My point is, a lot of these political positions are simply projections cast in order to achieve a certain goal, meaning to look at it from a moral standpoint is useless.
This is true for any political position held in any country anywhere in the world at any point in history.
[1] If you think the partitions were bad... the rest of india would have had a much worse fate had foreign interests gotten involved. Think: other cold war battlefields of the late 20th century. The number of secessionist states at the time in india...the cia and the kgb would have had a field day.
> My point is, a lot of these political positions are simply projections cast in order to achieve a certain goal, meaning to look at it from a moral standpoint is useless.
Claims like this can easily be used justify Nazism (which is alarmingly prescient considering the direction India's been going in recent decades)
I agree that many people use disingenuous moral outrage as a way to drive some political outcome, but many people with moral outrage are coming from a place of sincerity in reaction to the moral bankruptcy demonstrated by the world's leading powers.
This practice of assigning the same label to two things with absolutely no similarity is how words like Nazism lose all meaning. The reason folks like you do this is to try to forcefully elicit the same emotional response one would have to the original situation in Germany, and make any rebuttal sound like a rebuttal against that.
Let's end this discussion here. Not interested in engaging with someone this disingenuous.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
Remember his accomplishments, like fighting for the freedom of the man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
To say he promoted nonviolence is an insult to the things he stood for and the vision he had for America.
Kirk did not stand for or promote nonviolence; quite the opposite. To suggest as much is to forget the things the man did in life.
In much the same manner, he would not want his death used to weaken 2nd amendment protections.
>Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk said of gun deaths on April 5, 2023, "I think it's worth it. I think 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."<
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-qu...
Sounds like you know more than you're saying. So it's someone controlling him or blackmailing him or something? Who's puppet do you think he is?
I never watched him and only vaguely remembered his name when it just hit the news.
A child could write an LLM backed script that filters out calls for violence.
https://x.com/tpointuk/status/1965864882731102215?s=46
Would be incredible if he pulled through. Looked fatal. Who knows if his spinal system was damaged as well.
He has 2 young kids.
The nbcnews website is filled with ad stuff and my blockers basically render the page unreadable.
The only thing to mourn about this guy, is the life he should have lived, not the one he did.
I haven’t seen a single comment on there celebrating.