WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
WandererintheWilderness
15d ago
Abstractly, yes. But so long as they believe cops are instruments of the would-be fascist blah blah blah, and absolutely cannot be trusted, then they cannot countenance the government actually doing anything to make the riots stop. (This is in many ways just a larger-scale version of the broader piece of BLM wisdom about how you should never ever call the cops on a situation involving a black person unless you want their death on your conscience - which is thought to apply even when wrongful actions genuinely have been committed.)
WandererintheWilderness
15d ago
WandererintheWilderness
15d ago
This is a fair counter to the innocently-unaware angle, but not to the more layered second option I presented, where people were aware that there was violence happening, but thought it should be tolerated for the sake of the protests, because allowing the government to use the excuse of the riots to suppress the (purportedly historically important) protests themselves would be even worse.
WandererintheWilderness
15d ago
In the most literal, straightforward way, supporting protests while excusing the times they devolve to riots as understandable excesses is basically the central way for someone to support rioting.
I wouldn't think so. There are certainly more radical, revolutionary types who actively support riots qua riots, violence and all, as the just deserts of white supremacy yada yada. This seems to be to be a very different ideological position from the belief that protests are very important and if the government's support of them is suspect, then it's better not to have them intervene at all than to risk their suppression. A moral stance of "I would rather (n) murderers walk free than have one innocent man behind bars" is not the same as support for murder.
WandererintheWilderness
16d ago
Blue Tribe collectively wanted them to do it
No, Blue Tribe wanted there to be protests. Most people fell on a spectrum going from "sincerely believes that the reports of widespread violence are Republican lies" to "grants that some protests devolved into riots, but thinks it's more important for protests to remain untouchable than to stop the riotous excesses".
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
'fuck I hate all these fentanyl zombies!' (I actually don't get how that one is supposed to be used to incite violence at all so I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting it)
It's less about "hate", more that the archetypal thing about zombies is that they're functionally dead already and the only kindness you can do them is put them down. I've always parsed the "fentanyl zombie" term as similarly implying that the drug-addicted homeless are a lost cause who should be regarded more as a walking pestilence than human beings in need of rescue. (Which is halfway-relevant to a certain recent viral scandal.)
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
I mean, that's all very well, but half the country still manages to be Republican. Millions upon millions. What are the odd that doesn't include any crazies? Why wouldn't those crazies take action vaguely suggested by Red rather than Blue memes?
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
You could use the exact same logic to dismiss every instance of single right-wing violence.
Yes, you could; and should. I don't think either side should be blamed for its murderous crazies.
Being wrong doesn't make someone crazy
No, but being unable to consider obvious outcomes makes someone crazy, as does being suicidal. The average ill-prepared murderous gunman is either failing to account for the chance that he'll be popped in the head by the FBI or at best sent to prison for life, bringing negative publicity to his own cause in the process; or he is aware of this but has decided to take the shot anyway, in which case this is just a special case of suicide-by-cop.
I think there is a halfway-tenable case that Mangione wasn't crazy. (He made a pretty efficient getaway, had he remained at large his deed could believably have advanced his political agenda in a meaningful way, and while the way he eventually got himself caught was deeply stupid - and possibly deliberate self-destruction - it was long enough after the murder for his irrational behavior to plausibly be caused by the traumatic experience of committing it, instead of the irrationality being a preexisting condition which factored into his decision to commit the murder.) But Crooks was obviously insane, and all signs point to Robinson having been too.
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
and a certain [political rhetoric] is consistently producing much more virulent and destabilizing memes that are super effective against Schizo-type mons (i.e normalization of "fascist" as a label)
I still find this claim… strange. The online Right is constantly making up memes which, taken over-literally, seem just as likely to encourage murder as the "fascist" talk. I'm not even talking about race stuff. Woke is a "mind virus" "destroying America", drug addicts are "Fentanyl zombies", Biden and anyone else implicated in the supposed election fraud is a "traitor"… hell, all kinds of people on X were semi-seriously talking about dubbing the Democratic Party a "terrorist organization" as a reaction to the Kirk shooting.
I'm genuinely not sure why the "punch Nazis" stuff would snag so many more would-be-murderers than those. Are Blue-coded memes simply more widespread? Do right-wing nut-jobs trust the GOP to handle things more than left-wing nut-jobs trust the Dems? Or maybe schizophrenics are just more likely to start out Blue before they go completely off their rocker, because the Blues are more welcoming to the mentally ill? I'm genuinely curious what your theory is, but I don't think the answer can be that left-wing memes encourage violence more than right-wing ones do.
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
if literally writing "catch this fascist" on a bullet intended to kill a prominent public speaker is still not considered "enough" to have political implications by a large majority of people, what is? What would it take to falsify this belief?
Evidence that the killer was sane - that they reasonably expected the killing to further their political aims, ideally meaning they took steps to get away with it (both because self-preservation indicates sanity, and because getting caught neuters a great deal of whatever political gains an anonymous assassination would achieve in terms of optics). Or if this that they were deliberately manipulated by someone sane.
WandererintheWilderness
17d ago
I mean, the guy was de facto mentally ill. This kind of assassination is an essentially suicidal act - self-destructive at best - and all for extremely dubious practical gains even if Kirk had been utterly and unambiguously evil, given his relatively minor role in the grand scheme of American politics. There is a valid question of whether ideology sparked Robinson's madness, but mad he is.
If a given political rhetoric is causing people to go out and commit murder, then the peddlers of this rhetoric share part of the blame for the resulting death, and measures ought to be taken. If the same schizos would kill the same number of people, however measured the rhetoric they'd heard and whatever its alignment, then not so much.
This is what's salient in the discourse right now. Is the impact left-wing thought-leaders had on Kirk's murder more like someone whipping up a lynch mob then ducking out of the actual deed and acting innocent? Or is it more like a psycho happening to be within earshot when I grouse about my fucking neighbor who never trims his fucking hedge on time, then going out and decapitating the neighbor "on my behalf"? The second is unfortunate but I don't think it's an argument for me to stop kvetching about rude neighbors in public. I don't have much to feel guilty about, and the law should certainly not be changed to forbid irritated citizens from using heated language about rude neighbors (ie even "I could fucking kill that guy!", in its proper context, does not amount to incitation to murder even if a schizo overhears it and takes it literally).
WandererintheWilderness
18d ago
whether it is politically motivated seems to be a scissor statement
I think a more precise way of putting it, which ties in with Freddie's argument, is that the debate is over whether it was politically induced. There can beno serious doubt that there was a political motivation within the killer's own mind - the question is whether his murderousness was induced by the political rhetoric of his tribe, or if his political affiliation simply influenced his choice of target without especially affecting whether he'd ever snap and kill somebody.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
the people saying get over it are the same people who convinced this person to kill.
The stochastic-terrorism angle doesn't convince me as a unilateral sin of the Left. A right-winger going on a rant about how wokeness, or some specific faction of it, is an unprecedented existential threat to Western civilization which must be destroyed at all costs, sounding every bit as shrill as the most hyperbolic rhetoric about the dangers of Trumpism... that's basically what the Motte calls "Tuesday".
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
Well, it sounds like you live in a city. That was probably your first mistake. Cities are a distorted parody of "the world".
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
There are instances where I might cut you some slack (e.g. NYers cheering OBL's death), but it is not wholesome.
I should clarify that I meant that by "it is perfectly wholesome" I meant that in the context of the film it is treated as perfectly wholesome, and that no one questions this when talking about The Wizard of Oz. I didn't mean that I thought celebrating someone's death in real life was "perfectly wholesome". As I started by stating, I personally disapprove of it, just as you do. My point is that it is commonplace and benign - that it is in the vast majority of cases disconnected from any genuine desire to encourage vigilante killings - with the uncontroversial Wizard of Oz scene being an example of this sentiment and its broad harmlessness.
But yes, unrelatedly, absolutely agreed with your second paragraph.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
As corny as it sounds, appealing to people's better nature, taking the moral high ground. Don't go on the attack trying to look for ulterior motives and ideology behind the cheering - just call out the cheering as unkind and inhuman at the rawest level. The approach should be to shame people into self-reflection within their own consciences. "This? This is what you want? This is righteous? Are you sure? I don't believe that. I don't believe that deep down, you or anyone decent can believe that. We wouldn't wish it on you or anyone on your side. Truly we wouldn't. Please don't darken your own hearts by going down that road." Above all else keep the clip in circulation, with all its visceral, disquieting pathos. The idea that Charlie Kirk Is Dead can be thoughtlessly celebrated, but the actual sight of it - no, not unless you're a sociopath.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
This doesn't ease concerns or my condemnation. Don't celebrate murders is a good norm and weakening it among a significant, visible category of people raises the risk we see predictably bad outcomes
I agree, but the two different cases call for two very different responses. I think accusing everyone who cheers of actively encouraging assassinations is ineffective. First, because it's correctly perceived by the cheerers as inaccurately modeling their mental state, and therefore as wrong-headed criticism that can be written off altogether. Second, because it has a significant risk of Streisanding the idea of actively supporting assassinations among people who currently don't support them, but might conceivably come round to doing so if critics accidentally create spurious "common knowledge" that everyone on the left supports them.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
I agree, but again I see a great deal of difference between "deserves to be killed" and "fair dos if other people are relieved when they happen to die". For a trivial analogy, if someone buys the lot opposite mine, and builds a huge concrete eyesore that ruins the view from my patio, then my neighbor in no real sense deserves to have their home destroyed, but it would be perfectly fine for me to drink a toast the day the house collapses by happenstance. Those are very different things in my book.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
Yes, people mistake fiction for reality, they think that Kirk is evil like the characters from their books and movies
Are you arguing that there's no such thing as evil people in real life? "Evil" is obviously a tough thing to define rigorously, certainly I doubt there's anyone who's monomaniacally wicked in the way cartoon witches are "evil" without a single trace of benevolence anywhere in their hearts. But for sanity's sake, understand it here as meaning the semi-tautological "sharing whatever qualities the Wicked Witch has that make celebrating her death acceptable" for the purposes of this question. ie, are you arguing that there's no one in real life close enough to the archetypal fictional depictions of "evil" that a Ding Dong The Witch is Dead parade would be an understandable and unconcerning emotional response upon their demise? Genuine question; I initially understood you as simply saying that a normie family man with conservative opinions was "obviously" not an example of that class, not as decrying the very concept as unrealistic/incoherent.
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
I'm not accusing you of deliberately moving the goalposts, but I will say, as far as I can see this is the first time in this thread you've brought up a question of time-frames, where some types of commentary are wrong now but will be fine later. And I don't think that makes a ton of sense, unless you're making these comments right to the face of Kirk's surviving family. Respect for the dead doesn't have an expiry date, or if it does, it isn't measured in weeks. And I don't see how "too soon" impacts on the main topic at hand, ie whether criticizing the victim would or should be perceived as signaling support for assassinations like his.
Probably not. Celebrating when bad things happen to someone is evil, plain and simple. I'm not going to claim I've never done that (I have, I'm not a perfect person), but I regard those occasions as personal failings which I tried very hard to rectify. I would like to think in the future I would be more successful in avoiding it.
I absolutely agree! But even if it's wrong, I think the internal experience of this kind of Schadenfreude makes it clear that it's not at all the same subjective experience as supporting vigilante murder at the political level. One is much more common, much more human, than the other, even if it isn't good. And I don't think it's fair to accuse people who are only guilty of that lesser sin of secretly harboring the explicit pro-assassination view. When I say that we should "have more sympathy" for them I don't mean infinite amounts of indulgence, I just mean affording them the intellectual charity of not treating them as covert assassination-supporters. That's not where they're at. Where they're at isn't good, but it's not that.
"Absolutely" yes, "correctly" no. Again, what else would you expect a sincere Second-Amendment-opposing non-assassination-supporting person to say? "This is why the Second Amendment is bad" is an obvious, vanilla thing for any anti-2A commentator to say when there's been a prominent murder of this kind, whatever the opinions of the victim. Why should it suddenly become verboten just because the victim happened, as icing on the cake, to support gun ownership? And wouldn't it be pretty odd to write around that pretty salient fact?
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
Furthermore, the Wicked Witch is EVIL, which Charlie Kirk wasn't
Well, that's rather the crux of the issue. I am obviously talking about the perspective of people who believe that Kirk was, at the very least, aiding and abetting evil, and most probably significantly evil himself. Granted that someone believes Kirk was evil - as is their right - then is it acceptable for them to publicly display relief that he's dead, without thereby coming across as supporting assassinations? I don't think this is a trivial question. I think people who fall afoul of it are at least sympathetic.
Of course it was something their tribe did, that's blatantly obvious to everyone who's not delusional,
I mean, allocating group responsibility within huge, poorly-coordinated populations is a tough problem, and one with potentially different answers depending on whether you're talking about it as an ethics problem of a game theory problem. I don't think anything about it is "blatantly obvious". It seems as understandable for normie non-murderous Dems to say "we aren't responsible for the Kirk assassination" as it is fair for Second Amendment activists to disclaim any responsibility for the latest school shooting. Certainly it's pretty dumb of them not to anticipate that the Red Tribe would blame them, but it doesn't follow that the Red Tribe is trivially right to do so.
Wouldn't you agree there is a meaningful, important difference between "supporting holocaust denialism" and "not wanting holocaust denialism to be censored by the government, because wrong and dumb as it is, suppressing it is the thin end of the wedge on the government choking out free political speech on a larger scale"? I think that is a good analogy for the mainstream Blue position on the riots. "Obviously looting and arson are wrong, but if we let the police seriously intervene, they'll use that as an opportunity to squash legitimate protests, too, so que sera sera." It seems worth distinguishing, on a moral and norms-maintenance level, from the accusation that Blue Tribe genuinely, actively wanted buildings to be burned and looted. Reluctant tolerance isn't support.
(Obviously this is reliant on a… biased… view of how institutionally untrustworthy cops are. But granting this factually-dubious belief, then it seems coherent to be leery of riots-suppression without properly "supporting" the riots. And in fairness, the validity of that leeriness is not necessarily reliant on the straightforwardly-wrong claims about how prevalent police killings are. Conceivably the police may be tempted to unfairly suppress legitimate BLM protests even in a world where the core claim of the BLM protests was wrong, precisely because it's all the more tempting to suppress your enemies' speech if you genuinely, sincerely believe them to be spreading damaging lies about you.)
Personally I do think there's some amount of illegal violence you just have to grudgingly tolerate, if you want a meaningful right to protest to exist in your country. Crowd control is notoriously hard, let alone in a grassroots, spontaneous movement. In the real world, "Sure, you can protest… but if even a hundred people nation-wide get violent, then we'll send in the troops and condemn the entire movement" is as good as a ban having large-scale protests at all. Now, I think the BLM riots clearly passed that threshold, at least in some states. But it's not a binary. Tolerating some amount of rioting makes sense to me, just on general principle - never mind that cops had plausible motivation to hold special ill will against BLM because their own interests were at stake.
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