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It’s like Trump said “They’re not after me, they’re after you! I’m just in the way.”
If you’re understandably skeptical of that coming out of Trump’s mouth, it’s ten times more credible when you shift the subject to Charlie the relatively milquetoast debate bro.
All over social media seems to be the common refrain; “If leftists wanted Charlie Kirk dead, they want you dead, too, they just don’t know your name yet.”
If people are asking Charlie Kirk of all people to defend their views, they've got problems much more fundamental than that. Charlie Kirk was good for the establishment right. He wasn't good for philosophical conservatism. He was a polished product marketed to people, in the same way Ben Shapiro was the "cool kid's philosopher."
Allow me to rephrase;
“If someone is glad that Charlie Kirk, a moderate conservative squish, is dead and deserved to be killed for what he believed, they’d be ecstatic if I or people like me died / were killed based on what I believe.”
This thought occurred simultaneously to maybe tens of millions of people all at once yesterday.
Kirk apparently said the following:
This is, in fact, as far as I've understood, a very, very radical view in the American political sphere on a key issue, one which some might call the defining issue of American politics. It's not the one that would have been shared by the Trump admin: when Trump issued his anti-affirmative-action EO, the framing was that CRA was good and that the things he was banning were going against its spirit. And as the quote says, Kirk himself calls it a radical opinion!
Of course, for many or even most of the leftists celebrating Kirk's demise, the point is not any of the race-based stuff but his strong Christian conservative opinions, such as opposing abortion including for rape and underaged kids, but the people doing that stuff do not do it because they believe Kirk to be a moderate.
I've also seen a number of far right types on social media saying that Kirk was a moderate when he started his career but had been evolving rightwards towards being "/ourguy/" before his tragic death.
Which is strange. As a european who never had much contact with blacks outside of hollywood movies, when I first learned what the Civil rights law actually was, I rejected it. Why can’t they have their own diners? It goes against the basic right of freedom of association. If whites are so oppressive and racist, why would you want to sit next to them? I don't try to get into gay bars or irish bars, because I know they'll taunt me. And if they were known to take away my voting rights and lynch me, it'd be even weirder to suggest attending their bars and schools at the solution to my problems.
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For these things I've learned to go straight to the video. Especially after the NYT had to release a revision because they quoted Kirk as saying something he was actually rebutting.
From what i can tell, the article is referencing the event TPUSA's "America Fest 2023". I have watched the video and couldn't find the quote. I have tried to find other videos of this event with Kirk but couldn't. I asked Gemini to help but still can't find the quote on video.
If he said it, based on other things he said that day on the video I could find, the context was probably something like "The Civil Rights Act didn't go far enough to protect all people of all races, whites included." Because on camera that day he's decrying racism against all peoples.
There's a video where he confirms that the quote is true. He says that they talk about why the Civil Rights Act was a mistake once a week. He also confirms that he thinks MLK is a bad guy, which is also a radical view - the latest polling I could find indicates that 81% of Americans think that MLK had a positive impact on the country, with polling division indicating that at least some of the other respondents (for some reason Pew doesn't indicate how many of the others answer in the negative and how many say they don't know) would be black people who think that MLK wasn't radical enough.
If the meaning was as you speculate, why would he call that a very, very radical view?
Because from Elementary School on kids are indoctrinated into treating MLK Jr. as an American saint who saved us from our sins of racism. We study his pastoral letters and speeches while teachers coo about how enlightened he was. Even saying, "he was a good man, but not perfect," would be radical. And he wasn't perfect. He plagiarized his PHD dissertation and a lot of his speeches. He cheated on his wife with multiple women, one of whom he struck. He still likely had a positive impact on the country, because most of these pecadillos were not widely known during his life or even today. But if more people knew these details about him, I don't think it would become a very radical thing to say that MLK Jr. was not a good man.
Thank you for turning up more than I could, but I wish I could watch a video where he actually goes into what his beef is with the Civil Rights Act so I don't have to strongman him myself.
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This is a pretty silly way of trying to paint him as a radical. Comparing a summary of his position to answers on a poll is a terrible measure of disagreement, and "I disagree" and "this is too radical" are two completely different things.
They are at least material against the claim that Kirk can be best described as a "moderate conservative squish".
The only part of that statement I'd disagree with is "squish".
Anyway, what is even the point you're trying to make here? When people are talking about his views they're trying to say that he wasn't saying any crazy extremist "fighting words" shit, and that he was trying to persuade his opponents by means of civil debate. If that's so beyond the pale that it warrants cheering for his death, than what the hell is supposed to be an acceptable way of being a conservative and participating in politics?
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That's part of it, though, isn’t it? Most people I see celebrating lump him firmly into the far right. Not saying their perception is correct, but that's where he lines up in their view.
... Don't ask me what they'd consider a moderate conservative to be; they might very well say there is no such thing, or that it's someone with the social views of circa 2018 Obama.
I suspect to the people who label Charlie Kirk as a “far right white nationalist” (apparently that’s what it says or has said in the past on Wikipedia) whatever constitutes a “moderate” conservative is purely functional; it’s just by definition a conservative that plays within their framework and they can control and don’t feel threatened by.
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It's always been in poor taste outside of the ghetto to celebrate over someone's death, but I'd be lying if I said the reports of someone's passing has never made be smirk before.
Sure, there’s gradients to this whole thing.
When I learned Osama Bin Laden died I went out and had a celebratory beer and enjoyed it in quiet, satisfied contemplation. He was unambiguously and directly responsible for the mass murder of thousands of my fellow citizens, and I was glad he was dead. But even then I didn’t gloat or grab a megaphone and shout it from the rooftops.
The behavior I see from leftists en masse from the death of even the mildest right wing figure is so routinely ghoulish that I’ve come to expect from them that I struggle to think of these people as actually human. This isn’t new, either, it’s been this way basically my whole life.
I’m not expecting his political opponents to theatrically shed a tear for him, just not acting like literal demons cackling with glee would suffice to temper my rage towards them. I consider it well earned at this point.
You're thinking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. but yeah.
I grew up in an environment where you either become desensitized to everything or you learn to develop a very thick skin. Leftists can have their parades and celebrations if they like. It doesn't bother me, nor should bother anyone who bought into the "leftist snowflake" or "lispy pussy" rhetoric. On a personal level there are days I feel like Christopher Hitchens did on the debate stage, "Love and peace? Very very overrated in my view." Call me immoral or immature if you like. Likewise I'll celebrate internally when one of theirs gets knocked off and they shouldn't have the gall to complain about it for the same reason I didn't complain about them. I’ve had a couple of moments in my life where I’ve felt a little too good about the death of some people who were truly assholes.
Civility is one thing. Moral policing is another. When I was growing up people just seemed to have so much more of a thicker skin than they do today. Nowadays you call someone faggot here, they act like a pearl clutching moron who looks at you like you just pulled out a gun and shot their dog. Which is odd because that's what the left-wing of old used to attack and criticize the right-wing for, because the stereotypical image of them was of a bunch of straight-laced white people that behaved like soccer moms. We didn't call that "being offensive," we called that "letting off," and most of the community kept quiet in the knowledge that sometimes people really did deserve it and had it coming to them. And it actually toughened those people up and caused them to shift their behavior for the better. I actually miss those days sometime.
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