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Buddy why are you conflating a hypothetical with evidence? Obviously my model is not “evidence” and I never claimed it was.
My evidence that the American Right would not act with restraint were the tables turned is that it’s the kind of people who liked Rush Limbaugh and elected Donald Trump and mocked Paul Pelosi.
Propriety and restraint is certainly not a standard part of the MAGA package and it’s remarkable to me that such an obvious fact is being contested, as if the Left is full of hateful hooligans and the Right is just peaceful folk who mind their own business.
If you think it so self-evident, it should be trivial to point to the evidence. You mentioned the mockery of Paul Pelosi. In what ways was this comparable to what we've seen with Kirk's murder? Was it similarly widespread? Was it similarly vicious? Are the incidents themselves comparable? Where the people engaging in the mockery comparable?
I definately will argue that the left is full of hateful hooligans, because they have repeatedly engaged in widespread celebration of ideological murders and attempted murders committed by their percieved allies. Luigi's trial is going on right now in New York, and there are large numbers of people celebrating his tactical legal victories in court.
I have not seen the right do that. If you think you have seen the right do that, please point to what you're seeing and explain why you think it is equivalent.
Paul Pelosi was attacked and it was very common to propagate a false narrative about it being a relationship issue and jokes were rampant. Very bad taste. Seems suggestive of the Right’s attitude toward violence against its political opponents.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-11-01/editorial-gop-responds-to-pelosi-attack-with-cruel-baseless-jokes-its-shameful
You’re hilariously trying to establish a required level of evidence that must be equal, instead of being able to extrapolate from incomplete evidence. The counterpart of this would be for me to point out you can’t prove the negative if an exact case on the other side has not yet happened. I suggest you try reasoning from impartial evidence instead of trying to incorrectly try to win a logical argument.
Here’s an interesting fact that turned out to be a bit predictive:
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2022/03/the-rise-in-political-violence-in-the-united-states-and-damage-to-our-democracy
Also there’s the fun phenomenon of GOP officials fearing right wing violence.
https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/video/2025/04/retaliation-is-real-why-republicans-in-congress-wont-stand-up-to-trump
https://apnews.com/article/house-speaker-jim-jordan-threats-54eeecef0188edfcb9903e45019f190f#
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/politics/threats-us-public-officials-democracy-invs
I don’t believe this is common among Democrats.
So yeah, I think it’s preposterous to pretend that the present American Right doesn’t have a political violence problem, even if it’s not exactly the same or as large as what we are seeing from the Left re: Kirk.
Your links are spin. They are deliberately mixing up fear of "retaliation" (meaning standard politician stuff), Internet death threats of the type every celebrity gets, genuine death threats that are not from right-wingers, and maybe something that actually qualifies but is cherry picked.
Yeah, that's cope right there.
Especially given that GOP officials are on the record about it.
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Unless they’re
jewishon the wrong side on Palestine.Ah yes good point.
Islamic terror/violence used to be neither right nor left-coded, but as of late it’s pretty left-coded.
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Do note that as Ben Shapiro found out, that large number of working class right wingers are also pretty much on board with Luigi. It is not a right/left issue it's a working class issue. Ben's video (which he even had to change the title on) got 8.5K likes and some 45K dislikes, on his own channel. Very different than his usual ratios. I think Charlie Kirk had a similar thing with his comments but given all the noise about his murder I can't find that right now.
Check the comments about it if you don't believe me. That's why Luigi is getting so much support because struggling with health insurance is a bi-partisan activity.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uJC_2zh21YI
Some excerpts (and this after they start deleting negative comments, but obviously gave up as their were so many).
My dad has voted Republican in every local, state, and federal election since I was born in the 1980s. I was with him when this news came out and he said “about time”. Read the room, Ben.
Ben, you're rich. Enough. Stop. You do not experience the implications of what denial of healthcare means for poor Americans.
I have never seen the left and the right be so united since 9/11,
Bro’s getting roasted here for defending a scam health insurance CEO. Did Ben actually think we would take his side?
Voted trump 3 times in a row and laughed my ass off at the news This isnt a left or right thing, its a populism vs establishment thing. You can't complain about the government wasting the tax dollars we put in, and then turn a blind eye to insurance companies denying necessary care from a pool we pay into. It's the same thing, and it's been happening for too long
Ben you're waayyyy out of touch. "Just don't choose United healthcare" " just don't work for an employer that has United healthcare". is the same thing as saying. " Just don't be poor" "just don't struggle in life" its your choice.... It is not because the reality is I have to pay bills in order to survive!!! I cannot just pick my health insurance!
I'm MAGA, I guess I'm a leftist now
So odd when you say ''the left celebrates'' but i've seen legit everyone laugh at this CEOs death since we've all been fucked over by health insurance, It really shows how out of touch you are with blue collar workers who pay for insurance for years then don't get anything since even a minor health issue can get you denied.
Conservative California here, this is not a left or right issue but every varied political ideology coming together celebrating the victorious policy made from the people and not the ruling class.
It’s not only the left dude, all my coworkers voted for trump and reposted artwork of the shooter in their Twitter.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t feel bad for this guy and I’m as conservative as it gets. I get it’s not all him by any means and he didn’t create the system. But they’ve denied sooooo many claims for greed. While yours or my mother could have passed because of it. This was overdue. Sorry for his children and wife. But these insurance companies are the worst of the worst. If you feel pity you either haven’t researched the issue. Or you’re privileged and never had to worry about healthcare. Watch your mother die before your eyes because an insurance company deemed her dispensable to their bottom line. This is the result sorry not sorry
Not Left yet I Celebrate !
Ben, I’m an avid right winger and this is just a bad take. This is a working class issue! It’s not just the left.
Im a conservative and I completely agree with the Democrats on this one the healthcare system in our country is a disgrace and the fact that luigi killed a mass murderer is not a form of terrorism Just because the wealthy say so
The left? I'm a 3 time Trump voter and I'm celebrating
Idk, I’m a Trump voter and I’m not sad about him dying. Our health insurance in the U.S. is dangerously greedy, resulting in many deaths.
Im on the right and admire Luigi. Media wants us all separated. I just unsubscribed. My grandmother was tortured byUnited all the way as she died. She was Republican too.
Not Ben accidentally uniting us 💀
And so on and so forth.
Solid evidence and a strong counter-argument. Also, even more depressing than previously-depressed man thought possible.
Well sorry to depress you, but if it helps, most of these people also aren't going to do anything violent, and aren't really thinking of Thompson as a person. Just a symbol of what they are angry about.
Just like back home sides celebrate killers but very few want any particular Catholic/Protestant dead.
Dunbar plus tribalism suggests that people celebrating deaths are often not actually seeing those victims as living breathing people.
My uncle hates Catholics (and Muslims actually) but loves my Catholic sister in law.
So it goes.
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I vaguely think the parties are going to realign as populist and establishment and then rapidly collapse when it becomes clear that these lowest common denominator populist solutions to problems don't work and the establishment gets blamed for being wreckers.
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Yeah, MAGA base doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for the guy because most people don’t understand root causes and the healthcare industry sucks for ordinary people.
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Yes, I recall a good deal of sympathizing even here, of all places. I wonder if Kirk’s assassination has caused many of those people to reconsider. Or is it just another case of “no bad methods only bad targets”?
I think it's a matter of, at the end of the day the target does at least influence whether the method is bad. I wouldn't want the government to send assassins in the middle of the night, unless the target is Bin Laden. More like, "There are bad methods, but..."
For Brian Thompson, the belief is there that he took money from people with the promise that he would help heal them when they are sick, then reneged on that promise. Ergo he is harming if not killing people, and suffering no consequences for it. His sins are extreme enough that it's easy for them to reconcile.
Kirk doesn't quite meet that bar. Sure, lefties say that words are violence. But I'd bet money that if it were hypothetically possible to run an experiment where you gathered a large group of hardcore lefties and said, "I'm putting you in a room with Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk. Here's a gun with one bullet." I don't think the results would be even close.
I would take that bet and call it easy money. Brian Thompson was never the target of a proper Two Minutes Hate prior to his death. Kirk was for a decade. There's rationales and justifications (The CEO will be replaced before his blood is cold, whereas Kirk is a critical, load-bearing propogandist for young men!), but at the end of the day lefties know and hate the face of only one of those men.
People who act as PR attract hate because attracting attention is their job, but at the end of the day people still know it wasn't the PR guy who decided to put in day 1 $50 DLC. They know that their hate for the PR guy is a proxy for those who hold direct power. I left off "and the lefties are informed at some point who Brian is" because I thought it was implied. People might not really know him, but when they talk about "late-stage capitalism" derisively they are talking about people exactly like Brian.
I would hardly call Kirk load-bearing either. I acknowledge that political spokespeople have different styles, audiences, and levels of charisma but I don't think they're that special snowflake either.
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Please unfilter the post.
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