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So we just had an emergency lab meeting about the Charlie Kirk situation. Someone screenshotted an instagram story from one of my fellow lab members and sent in anonymous email to my PI (professor/supervisor). The instagram story said basically that Charlie Kirk's death was a good thing, actually. PI didn't name names, and it was also unclear what exactly the anonymous emailer wanted, but did caution us that this is a dangerous environment to be posting this kind of thing. EDIT: He also said that he STRONGLY disagrees with this position, but he's very in favor of free speech and would defend unnamed individual from the university/public if push came to shove, despite disagreeing with their politics.
I have a couple thoughts about this. Firstly, it's legitimately pretty scary that internet posting is now important enough to warrant an emergency lab meeting. It feels like we rapidly are descending into an authoritarian anti-free speech environment (not that universities were bastions of this to begin with). My own social media and blog are extremely clean, but it's trivially easy to link this account with my real name, and I've posted some not kosher things here before.
Secondly, universities/leftists have kind of done this to themselves. This is the old Cory Doctrow/ Freddie DeBoer stick. Trigger warnings, anti-racism and cancel culture have all led to this kind of environment where speech can be policed in this way by the state and doesn't look hypocritical.
Thirdly, and I hate to say this, but whichever one of my colleagues posted this is a fucking idiot, along with most of the left in my generation. I still think of myself as a socialist, perhaps less so recently, and I want to shake this person and ask what good this kind of statement actually does for our cause. Do you want more vigilante killings? The right is going to come up on top with that one, as most lefties in this country are strangely anti-gun. Do you want to win elections? Advocating for murder isn't very popular with most of the electorate. Do you want continued science funding so you can have a job and accomplish the things that you think are so important you dedicated 8-12 hours of your day to, every day? Then stop tarnishing the reputation of universities and science in general with your crazy politics: our stipends come from taxpayer money. As I've written on earlier, scientists are woefully naive about politics. This is not how you win political victories, which makes me think that the goal isn't actually political victory, but some kind of LARP/ in-group signaling game.
I was just reading a bunch of threads of people screenshotting Kirk shooting social media posts and sending them to the subject's employers. Legitimately fascinating to hear of the back-end effects so soon.
Objectively, I think the left's reaction to the Charlie Kirk shooting is less extreme than the left's reaction to the Trump assasination attempt or the Brian Thompson shooting, but the backlash to the reaction to the shooting seems a lot more intense this time. I wondered why, then reading your post it hit me; "Trump is president now." Right-wing cancel culture is now backed up by the implicit threat of government sanction. Employers don't inherently care about their employees' personal lives. For better or for worse, they are being made to care.
Politicians are fairer game for political violence, getting shot at by nuts is a small if regrettable part of their jobs. It's already getting seriously dangerous if the shots come from sane people. But this is worse.
Shooting Kirk is like shooting your republican Grandpa, he was effectively just a dude with milquetoast normie republican beliefs with no office or power beyond talking to people and organizing events to talk to people.
Anybody to his right, and that's half or more of the United States population at this point, can only take supporting his assassination as an existential true threat.
I disagree with the "Charlie was like your Republican Grandpa" argument. He may have had similar political positions, and he definitely should never have been shot, but Charlie was definitely in the political game in a way that gramps wasn't. He founded TPUSA, he organized events, he ran streams, debated people to change the public's mind, and judging by the heartfelt tributes that have come out he was an important node in the institutional right's network.
I think the following propositions are all true:
This is true, but the celebrators don't say he deserves it because he was in politics, but specifically because of his opinions.
Effectively grandpa is only safe because they don't know his name. You can't share a society with people who hold this belief system. Not one where you're free anyhow.
The left needed to purge people who believe this, or widespread violence becomes inevitable. And I've been saying this since before this forum existed. Too late now.
Fair point, that's unfortunately where the escalating cycle of "punch XYZs"/"everyone I disagree with in an XYZ" ends up.
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