nomenym
5d ago
The problem is that normie progressives are increasingly becoming like moderate Muslims.
nomenym
13d ago
Depends on how quickly you act. But sure, if he had already way overstayed his student visa before getting married, then it would not have been easy to get a green card.
nomenym
18d ago
Right, what is the optimal level of anti-social behavior in a society? The downsides of too much are obvious and well-understood, but the downsides of too little are perhaps obscure and pernicious in their own way.
I really don't much like the idea of forcing all groups into some kind of equity in murder rates. Real diversity demands diverse outcomes, or it doesn't mean anything, but large differences between people in the same polity are clearly an issue.
nomenym
18d ago
why stop at black vs white?
Because that's where the biggest gains are to made at the lowest cost.
I don't actually advocate for doing it, but it's obvious why someone would focus on that first.
nomenym
18d ago
Those anti-social underclass whites exist in America too, but they're not as anti-social per capita as blacks of the same class. For pretty much every class, education, income level, blacks commit more crimes. Infamously, low income whites have lower murder rates than high income blacks. There really does seem to be a general ancestry effect independent of other social factors.
Of course, this does not mean there are not sensible policies that could not reduce these discrepencies, including reversing counterproductive progressive attempts to solve the problem.
However, it seems to me that parity between whites and blacks in anti-social behavior could only be achieved under circumstances where blacks were significantly less free than whites. I value freedom highly, so I am disinclined to take that trade-off. But that means accepting large discrepancies that fuel racial prejudice and discrimination and make it difficult for diverse cultural groups to coexist and share the same public and political institutions.
I see no solutions to this quandary except perhaps widespread use of advanced genetic engineering or embryo screening to breed out these differences over a few generations.
nomenym
18d ago
Yeah, progressive cancellations would occur over issues where the population was 80-20 against. What would that even look like on the right? I guess if they started cancelling people for saying that global warming is real or something.
nomenym
20d ago
This reads more like a godless liberal visiting a godless liberal church and being horrified at the cultural appropriation.
nomenym
20d ago
Woke progressivism wears many once venerable institutions like a skinsuit. It consumes all their social capital and then moves on to the next victim.
It's that he did things that are acceptable ways of spreading ideas in a democracy.
I don't think progressives believe that anymore. His ideas were unacceptable in a democracy, and so there is no acceptable way to spread them, and so Kirk's political activism was illegitimate. They do appear to sincerely believe this, and that illegitimate political activism is an acceptable, or perhaps even inevitable, target for violent push back. After all, if you're going to oppress people with words (no sarcasm), don't be surprised when they fight back.
nomenym
21d ago
From the point of view of Progressivism, Kirk was profoundly harmful to society. He successfully advocated for views which were obviously wrong, and likely did so while knowing he was wrong. He was a persistent purveyor of disinformation. Even supposing that he did not understand the fascist nature of the views he espoused (which he likely did in private), enacting his political and cultural ideals would, in fact, result in fascism. Preventing fascism is the most important goal of democracy, and Kirk was daily working to undermine that. His kind of political activism was inherently illegitimate, since it sought, wittingly or not, to demolish liberal democracy and its protection of minorities. Tolerance of the intolerant is not a virtue. Kirk did far more harm to society than most "violent" criminals locked up in prison, and yet he was allowed to walk free and spread his hateful ideas unchecked. That he was typically polite cannot hide that his ideas were inherently hateful. Kirk was "nonviolent", but he was the propaganda arm of a system that every day uses violence to control marginalized people. Without people like Kirk, that system of violence cannot survive, and so Kirk is responsible for a great deal of systemic injustice.
The chat log doesn't read genuine. It feels off, staged. Rumor has it the roommate was no shrinking violet but quite vocal in their extremist politics. [EDIT: Specifically, the chat log reads like bad exposition where one party asks stupid questions so the villain can explain his dastardly plan to the audience].
My guess is that you have a local trantifa group, mostly online, immersed in far left ideology but veiled in ironic internet meme culture. They talk about assassinating Kirk and egg each other using innuendo and cryptic memes and such. They make plans, but there is no mastermind. One or more of them say they are going to do it. The others encourage the assassination but are unsure whether they'll follow through, because such discussions about violent action happen often in these circles but rarely does anyone actually do it. A few people in this group post suggestive messages that something big is about to happen for internet clout. The shooter and his roommate, meanwhile, agree to obscure the roommate's role in the planning by staging exonnerating chat logs.
While thrilled with the assassination, the other trantifa are genuinely surprised that the shooter actually did it. Usually people chicken out. They might not have posted those suggestive messages if they knew, so now they scramble to scrub the internet of any evidence of their complicity or foreknowledge. The roommate "cooperates" with the police as part of their plan to obscure their role in the murder.
No, I don't think Kirk is a Nazi, and I don't even agree that actual Nazis can't be negotiated with, but rather I am expressing a common sentiment in our society.
nomenym
25d ago
The facts of this event are increasingly looking like AI slop. It's all too on-the-nose. It would be bad writing in a TV show.
nomenym
25d ago
You don't negotiate with Nazis. Chamberlain tried that, and so did Stalin. Nazis may pretend to negotiate, but it's just a ruse to get you to lower your guard.
From their perspective, Charlie Kirk "denied their existence" every time he got up on stage and talked about transgenderism, and so they naturally decided to deny his existence in return.
The left has definitely been intensifying its long standing equivocation between speech and violence. Indeed, even silence, the act of not speaking, has been described as violence. Nothing except eager agreement and affirmation is interpreted as a violent attack that should be responded to in kind.
There is a flattening of responsibility across complex systems. Every utterance of criticism or mocking remark is stochastically upstream of persecution and pogroms, and so they are to be treated as morally equivalent.
This kind of left-wing rhetoric has been getting more and more extreme across my lifetime, and it now seems orthodoxy on too many college campuses. While there have been people expressing these kinds of sentiments since the 60s, it is now more mainstream than ever before. While for many such words are mere political hyperbole, for too many, especially those who are too young to remember otherwise, this rhetoric is just the political reality of the world they were raised in.
The scary part is that within this worldview, all political action is fundamentally violent, and even the personal is political. There is no distinction between politics and violence, speech and murder. The only reason not to use murder to achieve your political objectives is a lack of power, and every public utterance is just an attempt to tilt the scales of stochastic violence against your opponents.
nomenym
25d ago
This is all true. However, it's also true that ideologies will evolve to exploit these people to spread the ideology. If there are more people with weak immune systems today than before, then pathogens will adapt to that new ecosystem in novel ways. What we consider the real "cause" depends on which part of the system we think we can most easily change. The plane crashed because of gravity, of course, but we can't do anything about gravity, so the "real cause" of the crash was the improper maintenance back at the airport.
You do kill invaders if necessary, but you don't have to. Invaders often retreat, or they're captured as prisoners. I grant you that "invasion" is somewhat hyperoblic, since it conjures up images of organized armies massing on the border, but it's well within normal political rhetoric.
The problem is that, for the left, fascists and Nazis are the worst thing they can think of--secular counterparts to demons and devils. There is nothing redeemable about Nazis, and they shall be given no quarter. They are like orcs and goblins, enemies you can kill without moral qualms. They are not to be humanized, sympathized with, or shown in any way to be reasonable. Nazis are the villains of your story when you just need someone for the good guy to punch and shoot. Violence against Nazis is always righteous. This is the only culture I have ever known, and this messaging about Nazis has been drummed into me and everyone else by decades of movies, books, TV shows, videogames, and whatever else.
People may call illegal immigrants invaders, but they know they're not literally an invading army in the same way that the Russian army is invading Ukraine. Most left-wingers who throw around the accusation of "Nazi" know that people like Charlie Kirk are not actual Nazis, but unfortunately they done it so much and for so long that a significant chunk of lefties, especially the young, actually believe it. Moreover, their version of a Nazi is likely worse than the real Nazis were. You don't debate or tolerate Nazis, you shoot them and celebrate their death.
nomenym
26d ago
They're very strategic in their use of violence for PR reasons. They're very aware of how much cover the media will run for them and trying not to step outside of that while still scaring and provoking their enemies. They know full well that their violence will be minimized while the violence of those they provoke will be exaggerated, and they use that asymmetry to control the narrative.
nomenym
28d ago
The reason the left isn't assassinating Tommy Robinson in the UK is because they can have him arrested and imprisoned instead.
nomenym
29d ago
I can definitely feel murderous towards my outgroup, but my feelings about it are grim and sad that it has to be this way. I support the death penalty, and I sincerely think that some political leaders deserve to be executed for treason, but the number of people relishing the murder of Charlie Kirk with such glee is disturbing. The woke mind virus is a scary thing, but it does seem that for many people the fever broke with this event.
Essentially, yes. There are layers.
The violent fringe of the left has always enjoyed more support. More often than not, the media doesn't so much cover left wing violence as cover for it. Left-wing agitators get a lot more institutional leniency and are often treated with kid gloves. They're good kids, with their heart in the right place, but they're just a little too zealous. Moderate left-wingers have a difficult time opposing the radical fringe intellectually, because they don't really oppose the endgoals. It becomes a debate about strategy and how to achieve those goals, and the radicals can rightly accuse the moderates of hypocrisy.
EDIT: Jordan Peterson oft-repeats his observation that even moderate leftists have a very difficult time articulating what it would look like for the left to go too far, but moderate conservatives have little trouble identifying when the either right or the left goes too far.
The radical left is a snake, and the moderate left is the grass that the snake hides in.
Of course, there are layers. There are radical leftists who actively support and commit violence, then there are others who don't act but support and cover for the violence, and then there are a whole bunch of people who are either ambivalent or intimidated by the radicals. They will mumble disapproval but they rarely make full-throated condemnations nor argue back on points of doctrine, mostly because they would lose. The radicals have been able to increase their influence further by controlling institutions.
Of course all large groups and movements have something like this dynamic going on to some degree, but it's becoming more and more a prominent on the left, and it's similar to the problem with moderate Muslims.
More options
Context Copy link