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Well, when you thought the week was boring...
Charlie Kirk was just shot at an event, shooter in custody. There's apparently a video going around of the attack, but I haven't a desire to see it. People who have seen it are suggesting he was shot center mass in the neck, and is likely dead. That makes this the second time that a shooter targeted a conservative political figure at a political event in two years. If Trump hadn't moved his head at the last second, it would've been him, too.
I've never followed the young conservative influencers much, but Kirk always seemed like the moderate, respectable sort -- it's wild that he would be the victim of political violence and not someone like Fuentes.
I fear this is what happens when the culture war is at a fever pitch. Political violence in the US is at heights not seen since the 1970s, from riots in the 2010s and especially 2020 over police-involved shootings, to the capitol riot in 2021, to the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, to the United Healthcare killing, to finally this murder of a political influencer. I fear for my country when I look at how divided we are, and how immanently we seem to be sliding into violence.
I guess I just find politics tiring nowadays. I vote for a Democrat and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. I vote for a Republican and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. Whether J.D. Vance or Gavin Newsom wins in 28, there will be no future in which Americans look each other eye to eye.
I actually believe things are much better in this country than people think: our economy is surprisingly resilient, we've never suffered under the kind of austerity that's defined post-colonial European governance, our infrastructure, while declining, actually functions in a way that most of the world isn't blessed with, our medical system is mired in governmental and insurance red tape yet the standard of care and state of medical research is world-class, our capacity to innovate technologically is still real and still compelling, and one of our most pressing political issues, illegal immigration, exists solely because people are willing to climb over rocks and drift on rafts simply to try and live here.
We have real problems. And intense escalations on the part of our political tribes are absolutely in the top five. We also have a severe problem with social atomization -- and these two things are related -- which has led to our intimate relationship and loneliness crisis, the rapid decline in social capital, and the technological solitary confinement of the smartphone screen which dehumanizes people like real solitary confinement while confining them to the most intense narrative possible. "If it bleeds, it leads" means that many will be led into bleeding.
I don't know how we rebuild the world, or come to a point where Americans of different views can view each other as well-intentioned. But Kirk is just the latest victim of a crisis that I don't know if there's any way to solve.
I'm gonna admit, I'm feeling some simmering rage.
Years, YEARS of being told that right-wing violence vastly outstripped the amount of left-wing violence. Which was even technically correct if you consider prison gang murders to be ideologically motivated. Which is to say, a perfect motte and bailey. "Right wingers are more violent [in prison], therefore we should crack down on right wingers [outside of prison] because they're more of a threat."
But in real life, especially the past few years, the majority of the stories I actually find is lefties shooting politicians, threatening politicians, engaging in riots, or some rando popping a CEO (I admit that MAY not have been ideologically motivated). Oh, yeah, that recent attack on ICE Agents that many have already probably forgotten. Sometimes the lefties self-immolate instead, which is something you almost never catch righties doing.
J6 was indeed an example of right-wing 'violence' but of course only one person died in that event. Who was in fact a rightie.
I'm old enough to remember:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
So Trump gets shot... and has multiple other attempts on his life. Lefties more or less OPENLY suggest that it'd be morally good to kill him and his associates. Punch Nazis. Where "Nazi" is anybody who believes what the median voter did circa 2007.
And then Charlie Kirk, whose WHOLE FUCKING SHTICK is that he tries to win debates and spread ideas rather than push for fighting, gets popped by what will probably end up being another lefty type. I'm prepared to be wrong on that, but I'll take bets with any comers at this point.
And all of that might not piss me off, if it weren't for lefty media running constant cover, tacitly agreeing that the violence was justifiable and refusing to actually lower the temperature surrounding these events.
I'm tired. But not in the "won't it all stop" sense. More in the "when do we actually fight back and do something about it" sense.
For the time being, stay strapped.
EDIT: oh, I forgot, someone took a run at Nicholas Fuentes, too. I don't even like that dude but its exactly more of my point. Lefty commentators are not in the crosshairs.
As it turns out, the shooter in this case was a Trump supporter at one point (with donations to boot. Edit: Fake claim, it was actually a guy who lived on the same street and had the same name), and was posting groyper or /pol/ or /k/ memes. Preemptively assuming he was probably a lefty seems like a pretty big stretch. You should update your argument and assumptions given this new information, no?
Nice try.
Is "Hey fascist! Catch!" a /pol/ or /k/ meme?
Did he write it on his bullet casing ironically?
Can you provide me a single reason why a Trump Supporter, groyper, /pol/ or /k/ poster would want Charlie Kirk dead?
What about the statements of the family:
Oh and I haven't seen evidence that HE was a Republican at any point:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wl2y66p9o
I'm updating against him being trans, but much, MUCH more in favor of him being a brain-poisoned Zoomer with lefty sympathies.
Do you want to register a prediction right now as to which sort of Discord communities he was active in?
I am going to say its mildly ironic that the most competent/effective assassins that the left has are heterosexual young white men. Interesting message that sends.
But, the right has a LOT more of that particular demographic than the left does.
Textual analysis on individual phrasings when it relates to online meme groups is haphazard because of the self-referential, ironic, and (sigh) even post modern nature of the discourse. People often use phrases meant to denigrate them (Think of mocking "Orange Man Bad" phrases used by Trump supporters). The Ciao Bella thing is a good example because it's literally a leftist/communist rally song but has been remixed and featured in Groyper playlists and youtube videos(Or so the reporting goes, it could be wrong like my above political donation claim).
Probably, yes. If you were arguing the opposite point you'd pick the example of "If you're reading this you're gay LMAO", does that sound like something a leftist would say? Did he write it ironically? Maybe he wrote some ironically and some not ironically.
I would guess that 98% of people who use this website are aware of all of the above annoying ironic quirks and you're probably being a little bit bad faith.
As to his political leanings, we know he dressed up as Trump (without any apparent animus, but as above irony is always possible) for Halloween. Complaints about spreading hate aren't really unique to any side with how gotcha-focused discourse is (especially online). Even in this thread yesterday you can find half a dozen examples of posters here saying this is an example of how leftists are the real violent terrorists not the right.
Pegging someone's exact political views is hard because a) people change over time b) people's politics are inconsistent c) reasoning and motivations can be opaque, but that all being said it seems very likely that he wasn't a garden variety leftist of BLM or Kamala or Joe Biden or I dont know Dennis Kucinich(obviously) or some transgender activist and so on. More details will come forth and I'm happy to be corrected where wrong, but the general tone and attitude of this thread yesterday seems to have been largely disproved.
Edit: I'll even take a more extreme claim and say that guy that got fired from MSNBC for saying that Kirk's own rhetoric about hateful actions leading to this violence ended up seeming more true than most of the upvoted opinions provided in this week's thread.
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I thought that was deboonked (they got the wrong guy, and doxxed someone completely different in the process)?
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