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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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I think what the left should be doing is taking full-throated ownership of these murders pre-emptively, in a way that shocks the right with how quickly we're jumping to conclusions that we caused this murder, sans evidence of such. This sends a costly signal that we take the potential for violence to be caused by our violent rhetoric seriously, that we consider it more important than our reputation or pride.

This is a hard sell when the right doesn't do this.

"The left" has quite clearly thought of them as The Good People for a long time. Doing things the right doesn't is a big part of that.

I know you can't get everywhere with arguments from hypocrisy and need to stand on your own values. But the level of indignation everywhere in this thread is kind of breathtaking. People are in the same breath declaring that they've been prepared for things to turn to violence and really the whole OP here could have a couple of nouns swapped and read like the leftists calling for oppressed trans women and bipocs to rise to violence that some here seem to fear.

The problem, of course, is that he is fundamentally correct. The Left is not particularly scared at the moment. We have had a long time to acclimate to the idea of fascist violence targeting us, and wile we are very angry about our members of our community being murdered byFascist scum, with their actions cheered on by the Alt right media sphere as a whole, many of us have long accepted the idea that this was going to come down to an actual fight in the end. We do not believe we created this situation; certainly, we did not Create the right wing echo system to normalizing the idea that our political opponents Are pedophiles and satanic cultists sneakily concealing themselves among the general population, whose violent deaths should always be enthusiastically celebrated.

There's a reason the cancel mobs here are going after relatives nobodies and their standard for cancelation is like a school teacher who said Charlie was a bad guy but didn't deserve to die. Kimmel, as unfunny as he was, didn't try to justify kirk's death, only did the same thing that happens on this forum every time there is an act of political violence and try to imply the shooter was on the other side. It's frankly really pathetic. It seems somehow even more hysterical than the awokening.

When talking with a lefty about how they were annoyed that the right fought hard to disown the pelosi hammer guy I pointed out that disowning is a kind of disavowal. It's saying "we don't own this guy, we so don't endorse his actions that we think he couldn't actually be one of us". The fact that "the left" don't want to own the dirtbag that killed Charlie is a pretty normal reaction. They don't think an honest understanding of their beliefs or speech could have led someone to do what he did. You might argue that their fiery rhetoric was indeed too hot and could have led to this but then what leg do the people in this thread have to stand on? You think it's hard to justify rightwing violence from the borderline fed posting going on here?

They don't think an honest understanding of their beliefs or speech could have led someone to do what he did.

Did this person spend 2020 in a coma and blissfully unaware?

On further reflection I think what I have in my craw about this is isn't really the hypocrisy in the demands across the aisle. It's a kind of disgust at the feigned femininity of the whining while also trying to play all big dog masculine revolutionary warrior. If the right was all Mrs. Kirk about forgiving their enemies this whole time and then complained about needing the left to turn down the temperature then fine, that's fair. But then they can't do the whole "I hate my enemies" and "you're going to be sorry because you killed the one of us who was trying to do politics peacefully" bit. Pick a lane, are you the feminine aggrieved martyr, an extremely powerful role especially in our liberal framework, or the brave warrior because you can't be both. It's unseemly. The big bad truth telling warriors parsing the words of a school teacher and arguing over whether what she said was sufficiently deferent to not hurt their fragile little emotions. In a sense a knew many right wingers weren't properly my allies in free speech, that the time might come when I would find myself defending a different class of scoundrels, but I never expected it to be this hysterical this fast.

Well, The Motte has hit a new low with aquota desperately trying to pretend that the violence, hypocrisy and patheticness problems belong to anyone other than himself.

Don't make personal attacks.

ETA: Warning rescinded, I am not sufficiently Kimmel-versed.

To be clear I think this was and took it as a joke about the Kimmel speech.

Oh man, do I have to actually go watch that chucklehead's monologue? I couldn't stand him even before the Kirkening.

Fine, warning rescinded.

aquota

That guy sounds like a jerk, doesn't he know it's O before U except after Q except before TA?

That guy sounds like a jerk

I can't believe that my post was misconstrued to be protrayed as some sort of definitive statement or personal attack. This is so unfair to me, personally, and no one else.

To take this to its logical conclusion I advocate you get a one day ban and then make a highlighted post.

I find that rather perverse. Our commitment to lack of political violence in favor over our own pride or reputation ought not be contingent upon the behavior of people we have determined as being politically inferior to us, because that commitment is a good in itself. Otherwise, that commitment becomes merely a tool to cynically use to help one's tribe win instead of a principle of how no amount of opinions in politics ought to rise to violence.

The left, as far as the democratic establishment goes, has a good record on condemning violence. It just seems totally out of all proportion to be this critical of the exact angle of their kowtowing when most of the people complaining have not minded the log in their own eye. The big figures being critiqued for failing to condemn the violence are like random twitter accounts or streamers while the republican president and undisputed leader of the party goes on about how he hates his opponents and doesn't want the best for them and ratchets things up by claiming every republican is under threat. When the MN democratic state representatives were murdered Trump refused to lower flags to half mast or reach out to governer Walz. The framing is all wrong here.

They have a good record of condemning violence in such a non-descript manner that leaves much ambiguity. Or the final note betrays their real concerns.

"I condemn ALL violence, and especially the Proud Boys and other groups emboldened by Trump's rhetoric" and/or "what is Antifa even?" has never cleared my threshold of acceptability.

That doesn’t speak to your main point of hypocrisy regarding Republicans, which I won't argue against. But this track record you gesture at is superficially thin.

The left, as far as the democratic establishment goes, has a good record on condemning violence.

Less believably than when Republicans condemn racism, and I've never seen the other side offer an ounce of grace on that score. Have any prominent Democrats acknowledged that Robinson looks a lot like a radicalized leftist?

The right has successfully tamed violent fringes on multiple occasions, notably including in the pro-life movement.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks. The people to tame the pro-life bombings weren't the Trump camp and Trump would never in a million years do all the prostration people are calling for in this thread on behalf of a lunatic that did violence against his enemies. Plenty of lefty terror groups that disappeared and went inactive over the years too.

The Right tends to throw off more fringe interest groups for violence. Main catalysts for recent Leftwing stuff seems to be Israel/Palestine, Trans issues and Immigration issues. I don't think there's a ton of room in even the mainstream left to dissent on any of those issues.

This really depends on what you mean by maintream left. I'll remind you the more fringe left was rebuffed by the mainstream left party on their demands for I/P. You're really often comparing what you know to be your fringe with what you think is more mainstream on the other side. Yes, the average dem is to your left on trans stuff and immigration but the violence is coming from people who are often as far or further left of them than they are of you.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks.

This seems like a great opportunity for a mass collaboration.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks.

Could you post these sources? That is not my assessment, and it seems like the sort of thing we ought to be able to debate.

Plenty of lefty terror groups that disappeared and went inactive over the years too.

Speaking historically, they received financial, legal and moral support from the broader left, and many of them were given comfortable sinecures in high-status institutions. That history does not seem very de-escalatory to me.

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