They've seen a YouTube video and don't understand. To actually pull it off you have to be on time of your game and people don't realize that 1st Amendment auditors often orchestrate the interaction from the start. They are purposefully being belligerent to try to illicit a lawsuit. The am am 'I being detained?' is an important demarcation point where they will alter their behavior. They will get very physically compliant and often verbally compliant once the words are said.
Never going to convince anyone in these measuring contests. The heuristic I use that strongly indicates that society is institutions are bent to the left is the ration of self-identified Marxist/communist professors vs Nazi professor. Communists have practically infinitely more power and influence in this country than Nazi. When a fascist terrorist get's tenure maybe I'll change my view of the world.
Can’t quite pinpoint it - maybe a preference cascade or something more. The online left can’t imagine it, but for a non-negligible chunk - maybe even most - of the Professional Managerial Class, Charlie Kirk wasn’t beyond the pale. Justifying his murder as a “Nazi/fascist/white supremacist”? PMCs paused: “Wait, Kirk’s fine. I like him, or someone I know respects him. You’re okay with us getting brutally murdered?” It’s not exactly what Kimmel said, but the smear’s are everywhere. Kimmel spread an obvious lie. PMCs bought into the “motte” of woke, but now they see hundreds of thousands cheering the brutal murder of a normal family man. “The right lied about the election to steal it? These freaks lie to justify killing.” I’ve been preaching here and in real life: This isn’t the fight. Normies run on vibes, and the vibes are against the left on this one.
The state removes them from the country under threat of violence. Are you a pacifist? I'm sure you know this: Political action is about desires we want enforced with violence. The debate is over the bounds of legitimate violence, in this case what "normies" see as justified. They don’t think in those terms, so they’re wildly inconsistent, driven by vibes. That’s why horror-movie levels of blood hits hard. Few normies think it’s okay to start stacking bodies over calling illegal immigrants “invaders.”
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13d ago
I don't generally like using emotive language but I'm going to in this to try to make some points.
This gets into the almost impossible "measuring contest" of who commits the most violence. The recent shooting directly challenges the narrative. How many Republicans, conservatives, or right-wingers support killing Black or Latino people just for being Black or Latino? Or, to make a fairer comparison, how many would say anything close to, "I'm against killing Blacks in a grocery store, but..."? The left has branded Charlie Kirk a "Nazi white supremacist" for citing crime statistics. As far as I know, he's never hinted at genetic causes; he uses standard boomer-con it's about culture, claiming intact families would reduce crime and that affirmative action places some Black women in roles they're not qualified for. That's why you can't make the right eat Crusius and Gendron. @Stellula. Any right-winger who said, "...but despite making up 13% of the population, Blacks commit 50% of violent crimes," would be shit-canned before they could take their next shit.
What making the left eat this is after a man with a young, beautiful family had his throat blown open, with so much blood gushing out that if it wasn't real people would have thought it was slasher-horror film excess - not just random nuts, but professors and teachers - said, "...but."
While I don't think it would matter to many (arguably hasn't mattered) inversing the ideologies, it probably should be noted that Crusius is full on crazy (schizoaffective disorder). Decarlos Brown Jr probably is similar I have seen it asserted that he was poisoned by anti-white rhetoric but the main thrust is that progressive policies kept him on the street.
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13d ago
These Romney conservatives were willing to buy into the Motte of DEI and Woke - especially in finding Trump crass and distastefully - but in the face of the worst 2 weeks for the left I've ever seen large portions of the left decided to throw a party in the Bailey.
From Different Worlds
I’ve written before about how 46% of Americans are young-earth creationists, and how strongly that fails to square with my personal experience. I’ve met young-earth creationists once or twice. But of my hundred closest friends/co-workers/acquaintances, I think zero percent of them fall in that category. I’m not intentionally selecting friends on the basis of politics, religion, or anything else. It just seems to have happened. Something about my personality, location, social class, et cetera has completely isolated me from one particular half of the US population; I’m living in a non-creationist bubble in the midst of a half-creationist country.
As has been remarked on several times in the last culture war thread [1] [2], it appears Charlie Kirk was outside of most Motteizen's bubble. I was more aware of Fuentes and Groypers, which is ironic in light of all the people who heard of them 30 seconds ago and are now talking like experts.
From friends and family (And now Not the Bee), some prone to exaggerations, some not, I've heard multiple reports of churches having attendance exceeding Easter/Christmas levels. A friend of a friend claimed 1,300 attendees over normal, though this seems rather implausible, but several anecdotes mention standing-room-only situations and cars parked down the street from churches as people drove to their own. I was not able to go to church this Sunday, but I'd be curious if others have personal anecdotes. I'm guessing attendance at the Seven Sisters was normal.
Another anecdote that I want to share would be better if I doxxed myself. In the past, I have commented about my experiance with the Professional Managerial Class believing the Motte of wokism. I wasn't in the meeting, but I am told that the owners of said company were quite shaken upon hearing about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
I'm still getting the vibe that those on the left aren't groking why this is a big deal.
Aside: As someone who has made this mistake before, Ruby Ridge was under Bush Sr.; the Attorney General was William Barr.
P.S. Last thread appears to be the most comments in site history:
Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025: 3,000
Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022: 2,781
Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022: 2,775
Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022 2,708
Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023: 2,601
I’ve said before that I don’t think these people should be fired, and I will expound in a way that will convince no one: antifragility. Since this issue seems to be coming up with a lot of teachers, I’ll focus on them.
I don’t think conservatives know how to effectively address the problem. In the long term, simply firing the “dumb” ones can actually make things worse. Because of that, I like that teachers feel free to got mask off. It has been very difficult to convince normies how many extreme leftists have infiltrated our institutions, and I want to know which teachers are radical leftists.
I suppose I shouldn’t jinx myself, but I’m confident in my ability to have more influence over my kids’ values than their teachers do, and I want to bring other parents along with me.
Now if we want to actually crush the entire institution of public education then I'm here for it.
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15d ago
Do I have to follow him now?
9:48 AM · Sep 12, 2025
"notices bulge OWO" means that Tyler Robinson is a chaser (also known as GAMP). He is a man who is sexually attracted to transgenders
I think the source on the casings was ATF, again all rumor, but I think this one is said to be FBI. Supposedly the roommate who showed the FBI the discord chats is actually his... girlfriend (MtF)?
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15d ago
Has anyone fallen farther than Ken? Trump derangement syndrome wrecked him.
I think a lot of these posts are missing the horror that I am feeling.
You're sentiments are what make this a huge fucking deal. What ever circle most people on The Motte exist in, I think Charlie was outside of. I had heard his name but when I heard "Charlie Kirk has been shot" I asked "Is that that guy who sits at the 'Change my mind' table? Wait no, that's Crowder? Is that the guy where they mess with his eyes in the meme?"
My wife messaged me telling me how she was struggling and was crying. My sister sobbed her makeup off. Not calling you necessarily a normie but Kirk was a conservative of the normies. I've said or alluded to this many times in the thread, but that's what the Left isn't getting. There are people like @JeremiahDJohns or @ArmandDoma [1] [2] who are very critical of the far left, but also seem to not understand how Kirk isn't "far right".
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16d ago
I don't much care what the Courts has to say when it comes to what I believe. I think private businesses should be able to fire anyone for any reason. I personally would give people a lot of leeway when it comes to off the clock speech. I think government entities should have virtually no speech restriction.
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16d ago
In one case it was a private tok that a contact released. She was in a school shirt which I would say is a big no no, but still I believe warrants a conversation and being put on notice.
That feels less like magic because it's done completely in the open. I guess most people can't put it together. What I think is more of a trick is sound engineering. I didn't watch enough of Kirk to know if it was happening at his events, but it happens on the radio all the time. The host has a big, strong, clear voice with everything tuned, while the caller is speaking through a shitty phone mic, speaking at half the volume with horrible sound quality and the host has a mute button if they don't want to just straight talk over the caller.
Do you want more vigilante killings?
Historical speaking (USSR, China, North Korea) leftists don't want vigilante killings they want state-sanctioned killings.
Edit: Also I'll voice here that if you're not acting in an official role I don't think you should get fired for speech. Several young local school employees have been fired in my area, and I think they should have just got a stern talking to.
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16d ago
That's not a debate, that's an ambush.
Kirk's interlocutors chose to walk up to the mic. His appearances are announced weeks (months?) in advance. Kirk had a decade of his strongest arguments publicly available. This is as far from an ambush as you can get.
I keep seeing this take. It's one thing to do 12 hours of "man on the street" and then edit to highlight idiots and owns. I'm sure he edited for owns for clips, but how much screening was Kirk doing on people coming up to the mic? Even if it was a fair amount, unlike man on the street, he wasn't going up to randos; his interlocutors came to him. Where else should you go than universities to take on opponents? The only critique I can see is that with a quick Google (it's very bent towards shooting-related links) he didn't spend a lot of time at truly elite universities. But that said, he went to Cambridge.
I didn’t express this online, so I guess it's not documented, but I did warn some people on the right that they should be careful running too far with the reporting on the writing on the casing. The Annunciation Catholic Church shooter, Robin (Robert) Westman, had a little something for everyone. The problems of instantaneous, constant news consumption are hardly unheard of, and I fall to it all the time. Now that Tyler Robinson has been captured, the culture warriors are combing over his life, and while I think many would acknowledge the problems with Reddit, I still use it as a barometer. If it’s popular on Reddit, it represents a non-negligible minority. With bots and AI, at some point that might need to change. As I maybe should have posted a warning for the right about a rush to speculate before Tyler Robinson was apprehended, maybe the left should hold up? It took some archive shots [1] [2] /r/all. The current top post is titled:
Charlie Kirk’s Killer Tyler Robinson Raised in a Republican Household and It’s Bad News for the MAGA Media Machine.
Another post with 50k net upvotes has:
Ain’t No way in HELL that boy was raise “far left”.
Like… what? I don’t think Tyler Robinson being raised in a conservative family would surprise people. Isn’t the mantra been that schools and colleges are indoctrinating kids (I’m not claiming this happened in this case) one of THE big culture war talking points? It’s just a really odd thing to plant a flag on, to me.
I post this a lot:
When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles. ― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Except neither Democrats nor Republicans are actually into strong principled freedoms.
It's not very far down, but as far as the critiques and quotes from Kirk, I want to point to NullHypothesis post for context.
The sentiment has been expressed many times, so I'll choose this one:
I think cars are a good thing to have even if they do result in some amount of car accidents
Oh so you want to get hit by a car? Huh? Is that it? You're saying it's fine if you get hit by a car?
I made the call that Papa's deer rifle was a very good weapon for this kind of shot, and it looks like I was more correct than I expected. So is the gun control crowd really saying what I've expected this whole time? They really do want to take not just AR-15s but every gun? I can't think of anything more normal than a bolt-action .30-06.
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17d ago
Even if I were to agree 100% that these are bad takes, and he is wrong, these specific claims don't make him a Nazi or a fascist.
And this is a key point many on the Left need to grasp. Charlie was not radical/far right. He is well within the Overton Window of Conservative Republican beliefs. So when you call him a Nazi and at best shrug if not celebrate his death the message is very clear: normie Republican are Nazis and brutally murdering them is within the Overton Window.
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17d ago
I really appreciated this post. I thought about asking in my post in this thread for examples of the worst things Charlie has said. My local subreddit majority a variation of "I'll show as much empathy for the Nazi as he showed for others."
Attacking someone over acknowledging trade-offs is extremely toxic to dialogue. One of my primary criticism of the left (the right isn't much better) for years is that for the left "there are no had answers". Closely related is having little awareness of tradeoffs and unintended consequences.
It also helped that feds seemingly cut back on killing right wing women and children.
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