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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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As I mentioned back in July, every month in our office canteen, a member of the HR team hangs up posters on the noticeboard of notable days or commemorations which fall within that calendar month. A lot of these are harmless days and observations that no one could take exception to (World Friendship Day, World Chocolate Day etc.), but a significant number this month were of a more... strident nature. In descending order from the top of the notice board:

  1. Movember
  2. Time to Talk About Mental Health
  3. Transgender Awareness Week (November 13th-19th)
  4. International Men's Day (November 19th)
  5. International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25th)
  6. International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (November 29th)

Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 are unobjectionable (curious if I'll hear the "ugh, every day is International Men's Day!" joke two weeks from today). With regard to #3, my immediate thought was "for God's sake, how many days do you people need?" But my primary reaction was a feeling that 3, 5 and 6 are all in tension with one another, and that anyone who thinks about this for long enough would realise how unstable the coalition is.

  1. Trans — Palestine: The absurdity of the "Queers for Palestine" slogan (and facetious comparisons to "turkeys for Christmas") has been well-enumerated and I'm not going to relitigate the whole argument. Suffice it to say that a given LGBT person is much safer in Israel than they are in either Gaza or the West Bank, and leave it at that. Accuse me of pinkwashing if you must, it doesn't make me wrong.
  2. Trans — violence against women: My opposition to violence against women is precisely why I am opposed to housing convicted male rapists with intact genitalia in women's prisons, or allowing male sportspeople to compete in women's contact sports.
  3. Violence against women — Palestine: As a rule, the woke coalition adopts a maximally credulous approach to women's claims to have been sexually assaulted — unless the women in question are Israelis who claim to have been raped by Hamas squaddies on 07/10/2023. (As one commentator ruefully put it, it's "#MeToo — unless you're a Jew".) The entire reason I'm uncomfortable about the idea of solidarity with the Palestinian people is that the activists are constantly muddying the waters about whether they support solidarity with the Palestinian people or solidarity with the Palestinian cause; if the latter, there's another layer of intentional ambiguity about whether it's support for a Palestinian state via peaceful activism or via armed resistance. If the latter, this logically implies that adherents support Hamas squaddies gunning down unarmed women at a music festival. And even if you have zero sympathy for Israeli women, even within Palestine, women are treated spectacularly poorly relative to their Israeli peers.

More than anything I'm reminded of Scott's evergreen post "Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle":

In the hospital where I work, there’s a RESIST TRUMP poster on the bulletin board in our break room. I don’t know who put it there, but I know that anybody who demanded that it be taken down would be tarred as a troublemaker, and anyone who tried to put a SUPPORT TRUMP poster up next to it would be lectured about how politics are inappropriate at work. This is true even though I think at least a third of my colleagues are Trump supporters.

Were I to argue that male rapists with intact penises don't belong in women's prisons, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace, but observing Trans Awareness Week is just being a decent person. Were I to point out the shockingly brutal acts of violence against women Hamas committed on October 7th, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace*; but announcing that you "stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people" is just being a decent person.

I don't know. I'm frustrated. I'd have no problem with a "don't talk about politics in work" rule, provided it was applied consistently.


*Even if I prefaced it by saying that Israel's response was disproportionate, and acknowledging that Israel has also committed crimes against humanity.

Maybe I am typical minding too much but I think if you tried describing these "tensions" to people who support both the things you identify as in tension they would come off as non-sequiturs.

Trans — Palestine

Violence against women — Palestine

My impression is that most of the people celebrating something like "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" likely believe there is an ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, going on in the West Bank and Gaza. Carried out by some combination of the Israeli government and private settlers. I would be surprised if their objections to this state of affairs evaporated on learning that Palestinians were anti-trans or misogynistic. The two things do not seem connected to each other. I don't think people's objection to Israel's treatment of Palestinians is premised on those Palestinians having progressive politics, though I am open to being wrong about this.

Trans — violence against women

When people are thinking of something like "Transgender Awareness Week" they are thinking about struggles trans people have accessing healthcare. Or discrimination they might face in employment in housing. Similarly when people are thinking of "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women" they are probably thinking of the elimination of, like, intimate partner violence. Assault by strangers. "Male rapists claiming to be trans to access women in prison" are just not salient to either groups conception of what the events are about.

I would be surprised if their objections to this state of affairs evaporated on learning that Palestinians were anti-trans or misogynistic.

Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion. It's probably a safe bet that Kirk was less misogynistic and anti-LGBT than the modal Palestinian.

When people are thinking of something like "Transgender Awareness Week" they are thinking about struggles trans people have accessing healthcare. Or discrimination they might face in employment in housing.

I don't think they are. I think they're primarily thinking about the main culture war flashpoints, almost all of which involve male people in women's spaces.

"Male rapists claiming to be trans to access women in prison" are just not salient to either groups conception of what the events are about.

I agree that they aren't salient. My argument is that they should be. My argument is that it's incoherent to claim to oppose violence against women and yet support policies that put women at greater risk of physical harm for the benefit of men.

Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion. It's probably a safe bet that Kirk was less misogynistic and anti-LGBT than the modal Palestinian.

While I am not one of these people (and think that Kirk's murder was wrong for both fundamental ethical and dumb for strategic reasons), you are equating political assassination with what is perceived to be genocide.

If the IDF only used snipers to take out public figures who expressed pro-Hamas sentiments, or if Kirk had been killed by a rocket along with his family and neighbors as collateral damage (whose intendedness could be disputed), your comparison would be more on point.

Well, the word "perceived" is doing the heavy lifting there.

That is why I wrote my 2nd paragraph. Again, if the woke mob decided that every American who is a member of an anti-abortion organization deserves to be bombed, and that if others die in the bombing attacks that is acceptable, and turned most of the US into rubble in their quest to eliminate all the abortion opponents, then you could claim that the woke mob is hypocritical when opposing the IDF. But if it is just the odd assassination, that is very different in scale.

My argument is that it's incoherent to claim to oppose violence against women and yet support policies that put women at greater risk of physical harm for the benefit of men.

I don't see it as particularly more incoherent than when right-wingers, who are generally hardly known for wanting to improve the lot of imprisoned criminals, develop a strange and very isolated compassion towards women prisoners who are forced to share their prison tracts with men.

It would be easier to make sense of the sentiment if it were presented as outrage at the MtF criminals getting off lightly/getting to enjoy a fox-in-the-chicken-coop scenario, rather than the appropriation of care foundation language we are getting. (Something about using the master's tools on the master's house?)

Both are perfectly coherent.

The traditionalist view of this is man vs. man. Criminal women are still women, and as such still retain their primary value to [traditionalist] men. Thus, we should avoid actively enabling men, and above all criminal men (they claim to be women, but that's not relevant beyond the surface culture-war that raised the question) to damage that value.
That society holds a reserve of otherwise perfectly-functional women is supplemental to this group's power.

The progressive view of this is woman vs. woman. Criminal women are still sexual competition due to the above, so their getting raped by men reduces the average woman's sexual competition. Thus, we should actively enable criminal men (they claim to be women, but that's not relevant beyond the surface culture-war level that raised the question) to damage that value.
That society holds a reserve of otherwise perfectly-functional women is detrimental to this group's power.

People who aren't listening to their instincts like that are pretty boring by comparison; they think prison rape is bad, but if societal consensus is that prison rape is good it might as well be equal-opportunity. They're more likely to resemble progressives in this matter since their actions increase the number of women being raped in prison, but they're more likely to resemble traditionalists on the mirror image of this question, which is "should violent men go to prison at all?", for the same reason.

Improving things for prisoners is a regular low priority hobby horse for the christian right. They're much less loud about it than progressives but unlike the latter, they actually get around to trying it.

but unlike the latter, they actually get around to trying it.

What do you mean? The most effective way to improve things for a prisoner is simply to release them rather than putting them in prison; progressives have been wildly successful at doing that.

Sure, it's worse for the community, but criminals most often target men so women have at best (1/how often men are more targeted) the incentive to care. In the event a criminal does target a woman, it's the job of men to die in their defense (preferably unarmed), that woman will find another. And in the very unlikely event a woman does die, well, less sexual competition.

right-wingers, who are generally hardly known for wanting to improve the lot of imprisoned criminals

That's mostly because what is "known" by the mainstream is a very carefully curated view of reality. In reality, the biggest effort to reduce prison rape in my lifetime was the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Spearheaded by George W Bush and a coalition that was largely comprised of Southern Baptists and the NCAACP.

I don't see it as particularly more incoherent than when right-wingers, who are generally hardly known for wanting to improve the lot of imprisoned criminals, develop a strange and very isolated compassion towards women prisoners who are forced to share their prison tracts with men.

Maybe I'm so tough on crime I just don't want men escaping to a comparatively nicer female prison.

(I do truly think a significant amount of the backlash and the gulf in male-female trans support is legitimately just disgust that some men, specifically the sort of man other men know to distrust or contain, think they get to defect)

develop a strange and very isolated compassion towards women prisoners who are forced to share their prison tracts with men.

There's nothing incoherent about thinking the punishment should fit the crime. When a woman commits a crime, her punishment is to be sent to prison. Her punishment is not to be penetratively raped (and possibly impregnated) by one of her fellow inmates.

How does prison rape happen? Presumably if you can forcefully penetrate your fellow inmates and get away with it, you can also do all sorts of other violence to them. Anecdotally, this happens a lot, including in single-sex prisons. Is that part of the "fitting" punishment? What about male-on-male prison rape? I have never heard anyone on the right take up a crusade to reduce those things, and surely, in the age of robotics, tasers and $50 HD CCTV we could easily shut down all physical forms of prisoner-on-prisoner violence in no time if a critical mass of people didn't think it's all part of the punishment.

It's a bit too convenient if of all unscheduled tribulations of prison, the only one that you think urgently needs to be addressed happens to be one where the indicated solution would be to grant you a symbolic victory on a culture war topic that otherwise has nothing to do with prisons.

Yes all male prisons also currently suck for the residents as a result of the efforts of the same people (or their forefathers intellectually) who are trying to expand that problem to female prisons. That does not appear to me to be a good argument.

For deep-seated reasons rooted in evolutionary psychology, almost everyone feels an intrinsic protectiveness towards women, even in cases where the woman in question has broken the law. Most people feel more horrified when hearing about a woman being penetratively raped than they do when hearing about a man being penetratively raped. This is probably related to the fact that female people can be impregnated against their will, and are systematically weaker and less able to defend themselves than male people are.

You don't need to agree with this, or think it's fair or logical, to understand the instinctual reaction. I think "instinctual horror against women being mistreated" has a great deal more explanatory power than immediately jumping to the conclusion that conservative opposition to trans women in female prisons has nothing to do with a desire to protect female inmates, and is solely rooted in hatred of trans people.

Do you assume women's prisons are meaningfully less violent than men's prisons? After having seen an assortment bodycam videos of female criminals getting arrested, I would find that doubtful. Were you aware of headlines such as this?

None of this other mistreatment seems to trigger the same instinctual reaction in right-wingers, at least not to the extent that I have even once seen them bring it up. All I am asking is that you apply the same standard that, in your opening post, you wanted to be applied to the "woke coalition": that if they visibly care about and campaign against one instance of a bad thing but are apparently indifferent to another which is so adjacent that you couldn't possibly miss it if you looked at the former, this is prima facie evidence that their true principles entail approval of the latter regardless of what their stated principles say.

I don't even think you are wrong, in your diagnosis of the "woke coalition". It's just that you earn no points for recognising that your outgroup is hypocritical and unprincipled. Do not even the 'publicans the same?

Do you assume women's prisons are meaningfully less violent than men's prisons?

Without bothering to look this up: obviously yes. Do you have compelling prison violence statistics that show the opposite?

Do you assume women's prisons are meaningfully less violent than men's prisons?

Yes, and even if they weren't they can't do as much damage as a man, even on hormones.

Do you assume women's prisons are meaningfully less violent than men's prisons?

I don't assume, I know:

One data point: in the period 2001-18, 1,251 male prisoners were murdered in US prisons, while the equivalent figure for female prisoners was 7. Based on the size of the US prison population in 2022, that works out at 104.29 murders/100k population among male prisoners, 7.59 murders/100k population among female prisoners. A male American inmate is nearly 14 times more likely to be murdered in prison than a female inmate. This shouldn't come as a surprise given what proportion of the male prison population is serving time for violent offenses vs. what proportion of the female, or the obvious differences in aggression and propensity to violence between the sexes, or the obvious differences in physical strength between the sexes (which are only minimally explicable by differences in body mass).

Given that your article is from the UK, it won't surprise you to learn that the story is much the same over there as far as homicides go. It appears that not a single woman or trans person has been murdered in prison since at least 2015. If per capita homicide rates between the male and female estate were identical, you would expect two women murdered in the period.

Were you aware of headlines such as this?

Interesting that the UK is one country in which male inmates have been housed in the female estate, this is a recent phenomenon, this article comments on a huge spike in violence in the female estate, and yet doesn't mention the sexes of any of the perpetrators of this violence. I'm not saying that this spike is entirely attributable to the relatively new presence of male inmates in the female estate, but it sure is interesting that the source you provided specifically comments on the fact that the current rate of violence in the female estate is discontinuous with historical trends.

None of this other mistreatment seems to trigger the same instinctual reaction in right-wingers, at least not to the extent that I have even once seen them bring it up.

As I said previously, I think a great many people have an instinctive reaction of horror and outrage when they learn about a male person assaulting a female person, and this reaction isn't triggered when they hear about a male person assaulting a male person or a female person assaulting a female person. We can debate whether that's fair, appropriate or logical until the cows come home, but I think that instinctive reaction has a great deal more explanatory power in why conservatives might object to male people in women's prisons or contact sports than the pat answer of "they hate trans people and want to make their lives difficult out of sheer bloody-mindedness".

All I am asking is that you apply the same standard that, in your opening post, you wanted to be applied to the "woke coalition"

What standard am I failing to apply? I am strongly opposed to violence against women, as a consequence of which I've donated literally thousands of euros to my local rape crisis centre and am strongly opposed to male inmates being housed in the female estate. I don't feel any kind of inconsistency.

More comments

and surely, in the age of robotics, tasers and $50 HD CCTV we could easily shut down all physical forms of prisoner-on-prisoner violence in no time if a critical mass of people didn't think it's all part of the punishment.

I'm personally always banging this drum, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that everyone who opposes such measures actively supports the existence of prisoner-on-prisoner violence as part of the punishment. Some do, but I think a great number of them simply feel that criminals aren't worth the expense of the measures that would be necessary to protect them, ie they find the existence of prison rape distasteful in principle and would rather it didn't happen, but don't think honest men's tax dollars should go into preventing it when there are worthier causes out there.

Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion.

I was surprised to run into the same rhetoric IRL from the patrons at that gay bar. Hell, they claimed that the shooter was "right-wing".

I gently attempted to push back, but ended up deciding that it just wasn't worth the hassle.

I was surprised to run into the same rhetoric IRL from the patrons at that gay bar.

You seem to be spending a lot of time there bro 👀

It's the only one in comfortable walking distance, cheap, and my best bud prefers it haha. I keep meaning to try ingratiating myself somewhere else, preferably one with more heterosexual women, but I just can't be arsed to go double the distance most days.

Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion.

First, I think that you are exaggerating what the response was to Kirk's death amongst normies (I agree that there were terminally online people who actively celebrated it, but I am talking about "irl" woke people)

The leftists at my workplace (the kind of place where "Trump is [generally] bad" is just in the groundwater) were very unsympathetic to Kirk. But none of them actually celebrated his death, they (quietly) discussed how he was a bad person, and that he had sort of brought it upon himself (I'm given to understand this is because he was pro-guns) To cherrypick the very worst things said (I'm paraphrasing):

  • Someone said it was a truly "poetic" death
  • Someone questioned how far one is willing to take the principle "we should never commit political violence" - is it okay to assassinate Hitler? (but they didn't explicitly say Kirk was like Hitler, and if if they had, that wouldn't quite be celebrating his death)

But everyone to my recollection affirmed that it is bad that a human being died. And this general direction of discussion was lightly shut down by another progressive.

It's probably a safe bet that Kirk was less misogynistic and anti-LGBT than the modal Palestinian. [therefore if we Kirk is a bad person who deserves to die for his wrongthing, then certainly so are the Palestinians]

But Charlie Kirk was an individual, who personally held the "misogynistic" and anti-LGBT beliefs of a "modal Charlie Kirk" - not all Palestinians share the sentiments (or crimes) of the mode. I'm not saying group punishment is axiomatically immoral, but it is clearly a gray area because it involves punishing innocents. I think it is much more straightforward morally to support punishing a bad person for personally doing a bad thing (I'm not saying Kirk / Muslims do a "bad thing" by holding these views, just addressing this particular line of inference you drew)

But the above is my own disagreement to your logic. If we are looking at the world through a progressive lens:

  • Kirk is privileged (as a White cisgender heterosexual middle class able-bodied male, a citizen of a developed country, etc etc) - so unlike the Palestinians he has no excuse for his regressive worldview. He never had to worry about starving, getting shot, etc - he had the luxury to educate himself and be a force for good.
  • Unlike the Palestinians, people actually listen to Kirk's views on LGBT, etc. He actually causes harm to the LGBT community in the West, in a way the Palestinians don't.

I don't think they are. I think they're primarily thinking about the main culture war flashpoints, almost all of which involve male people in women's spaces.

The bathroom stuff is only one of the flashpoints. Respecting pronouns, concerns about the growing anti-trans (or "transphobic", if we are pathologising it) sentiment, access to hormones, trans children, trans men, non-binary individuals - these are all pretty clearly "flashpoints", and none involve males in female spaces.

My argument is that it's incoherent to claim to oppose violence against women and yet support policies that put women at greater risk of physical harm for the benefit of men.

As I suspect you are aware, progressives assign a different meaning to the word "woman" and "man" than you do. It is a reference to one's gender identity, and can be unrelated to their chromosomes, sex organs, appearance, etc (i.e. "transgender")

None of these policies benefit men - they benefit (trans) women (at the expense of cis women) One can argue that this is a bad definition, but it is the definition used by progressives - it is what they mean when they say "man" and "woman". So there is absolutely nothing "incoherent" about being feminist and pro trans rights.

Also, on top of that, it's not even incoherent to oppose violence against AFABs and support trans rights. It is possible to have multiple moral goals, for those goals to come into conflict, and to have to choose one over the other:

  • Is it contradictory to want gay rights, but also to be anti-racist, given that POC tend to be more homophobic than Whites?
  • To value women's bodily autonomy, but also be opposed to abortion, if you believe that fetuses are humans too?
  • To value people having freedom and pursuing happiness, but also supporting the incarceration / execution of a criminal who finds his bliss via serial rape, robbery and assault?
  • To oppose male violence against women, but also oppose the mass extermination of the entire male sex?

First, I think that you are exaggerating what the response was to Kirk's death amongst normies

None of my colleagues strike me as terminally online, and yet the day after his death I heard several of them listing off his "problematic" opinions about abortion and gun control, the clear implication being that he got what was coming to him.

But none of them actually celebrated his death, they (quietly) discussed how he was a bad person, and that he had sort of brought it upon himself... To cherrypick the very worst things said (I'm paraphrasing):

  • Someone said it was a truly "poetic" death

I don't really understand the distinction between celebrating someone's death and saying that their death was "truly poetic".

so unlike the Palestinians he has no excuse for his regressive worldview

Soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again.

He actually causes harm to the LGBT community in the West, in a way the Palestinians don't.

How did Charlie Kirk cause harm to the LGBT community? Meanwhile, how many LGBT Palestinians have been executed (judicially or otherwise) because of their sexuality or gender identity?

these are all pretty clearly "flashpoints", and none involve males in female spaces.

Agreed on trans children. Several of the examples you listed (such as "non-binary people") do involve males in women's spaces. Others don't really strike me as "flashpoints" in the same way: for entirely understandable reasons, female people wanting to enter men's spaces doesn't inspire half as much ire as the converse. The main reason for this is that it doesn't really happen: trans men and non-binary female inmates are hardly clamouring to be housed in the male estate.

Also, on top of that, it's not even incoherent to oppose violence against AFABs and support trans rights. It is possible to have multiple moral goals, for those goals to come into conflict, and to have to choose one over the other.

You're correct. I just wish that progressive people would acknowledge that conflicts and trade-offs between terminal goals like this exist, instead of loudly insisting that they don't and that anyone who claims they do is a crypto-conservative. That's what I meant when I said that "trans awareness" and "opposition to violence against women (or AFABs, if you must)" are "in tension": some of their goals sought by TRAs and by people who want to minimise violence against female people really are mutually exclusive, and this should be acknowledged and discussed openly instead of ignored.

None of my colleagues strike me as terminally online, and yet the day after his death I heard several of them listing off his "problematic" opinions about abortion and gun control, the clear implication being that he got what was coming to him.

As I conceded to @gattsuru, I was being unreasonably skeptical to your claims. I now believe that progressives (even in the UK) care more about the whole Kirk thing than I had thought.

Still, and maybe this is just nitpicking, I think there is a difference between thinking he was a bad person (who the world is better off without) and celebrating his death. In your own account, you say they call him out for his right-wing positions, but these "impliciations" are dicier and usually requires some level of psychologisation of your interlocutor.

I'm not trying to be willfully obtuse here - obviously what your coworkers are doing is exactly what someone who does support assassination of the outgroup would do. But it's also reasonable that they think he was a bad person, who didn't deserve to die, but still a bad person, and it's unfair for [insert members of progressive coalition] to let down on the criticism, lest the ideas he advanced be given undue legitimacy (an example of the kind of stance I am referring to)

I don't really understand the distinction between celebrating someone's death and saying that their death was "truly poetic".

Firstly it was said by a Russian person, so the language was a bit awkward. Maybe I misread their tone, but it sounded more like: "Due to pro-gun influencers like him, there have been so many pointless deaths, and now, ironically, he himself died as a result of what he preached (killed by a hateful right winger) It's all just so sad, why are humans like this?"

Thinking more on it, this is kind of a gray area. If we are being maximally charitable, progressives are just misinformed about what happened (given that the motive was "Kirk spread too much hate" and the shooter had a trans girlfriend, this was actually a left wing act of violence), and you could come to this conclusion by just consuming selected media outlets. But at what point does it just become willful ignorance? A meta-level "hack" where by maintaining ignorance, you can be allowed to support a violent act by your "side" but also not have to openly support violence against the outgroup.

Also the person who said it was a woman (in the normal sense of the word: an AFAB, uterus-haver, etc), so I'm more inclined to believe she wasn't celebrating death.

Soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again.

Well, the facts on the ground are that we should have low expectations from these kinds of people on a group-level. If even the maximally charitable "they are exactly like everyone else, it's just that everyone else treats them badly because [reasons]" counts as "bigotry", then I don't think it's possible to not be a bigot.

How did Charlie Kirk cause harm to the LGBT community? Meanwhile, how many LGBT Palestinians have been executed (judicially or otherwise) because of their sexuality or gender identity?

Broadly speaking, he was a popular political influencer who pubicly and proudly took an anti-LGBT stance. This helps shift public opinion to be more anti-LGBT. And this leads to things that make life materially worse for LGBT people (the general public is less accepting of them, anti-LGBT legislation is passed, pro-LGBT legislation isn't passed, etc)

Unlike a progressive, I concede this is a fully general argument that also means, e.g. Obama caused harm to White people. But I claim this argument is valid (and in particular, is valid in the Kirk x LGBT case)

The LGBT people harmed by the Palestinians are all in Palestine. It is pretty reasonable that LGBT (and their allies) in the West would focus on people who cause harm to Western LGBT people (even if said harm is a lot less than the harm caused by Palestinians in Palestine)

You're correct. I just wish that progressive people would acknowledge...

I echo @PutAHelmetOn. I assume that the smarter progressives (college professors, politicians, etc) are aware of these tensions in their own mind and internally make these tradeoffs. But they also know that, on an open political stage, it is unwise to admit these facts, because it gives legitimacy to people who actually just reject gender ideology wholesale.

But I agree it's an unecessary evil that normies who lack any influence choose to do this too. It would be nice if it were more normalised to "cordon off" these sorts of private interpersonal interactions, and just allow people to sort out the truth amongst themselves instead of having to speak "tactically" all the time.

obviously what your coworkers are doing is exactly what someone who does support assassination of the outgroup would do. But it's also reasonable that they think he was a bad person, who didn't deserve to die, but still a bad person, and it's unfair for [insert members of progressive coalition] to let down on the criticism, lest the ideas he advanced be given undue legitimacy

One thing that helps you tell the difference between A and B here is that if the criticisms in B are made in bad faith, it's a lot more likely that someone really means A. And a lot of the B's here seem to be made in astonishingly bad faith.

Still, and maybe this is just nitpicking, I think there is a difference between thinking he was a bad person (who the world is better off without) and celebrating his death. In your own account, you say they call him out for his right-wing positions, but these "impliciations" are dicier and usually requires some level of psychologisation of your interlocutor.

You are a bad person and the world would be better off if you were shot.

When you read that statement, does it feel like a calm acknowledgement of detached utilitarian calculus?

Or does it feel like a threat?

When I first read it (before I processed you were posing it as a hypothetical) it felt like a threat.

In this specific hypothetical, I personally (where to draw the line is a gray area) think the statement does count as a threat. "You are a bad person and the world would be better off from your absence" would be okay, but explicitly talking about killing, and a specific mode of execution on top of that, seems to cross the line into "directly inciting violence"

But in general, feeling viscerally attacked shouldn't be sufficient to make something a "threat". Often, harsh criticism can make a target feel threatened or even unsafe, since it indirectly encourages violence against the focus of the criticism (if X is bad, maybe we ought to do something about X?)

I don't think that statement counts as a threat, even meant seriously, in a legally actionable sort of way. I do think it colors in the difference between "thinking ill of someone" and "celebrating a death". And I think when you're at the point of quibbling over how much approval of the assassination of a debate bro counts as "celebrating" then it is past time for you to have the "Are we the baddies" conversation.

Neither. It feels like (paraphrasing their view), "I am not going to harm someone but nor would I mourn one fewer asshole in the world." A threat means you are motivated to cause something to happen, this is either apathy for or emotional relief/positivity that one negative thing in your life has gone away. It's like the difference between being happy to find money laying on the street and stealing money.

The point is that there are implications to statements that go beyond their basic dictionary definition meaning. The fact that someone is choosing to explicitly say that carries weight, and informs the interpretation. You can make reasonable inferences about the character and beliefs of the person who chooses to go around saying that to aquaintences the day after a shocking murder.

Imagine a white man who, the day after the MLK assassination, went around loudly saying to all the neightbors "Well, sometimes things happen to people who won't stop running their mouths." Do you think that would be just some irrelevant banality that no black neighbors should use to further their understanding of the man in question?

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Having had it said to me by a communist in my social group IRL, I didn't feel exactly threatened in the moment but it certainly contributed to making my politics far less forgiving than they used to be.

I just wish that progressive people would acknowledge that conflicts and trade-offs between terminal goals like this exist, instead of loudly insisting that they don't and that anyone who claims they do is a crypto-conservative.

I understand you wish your enemies to be unpractical, but you obviously see why they behave the way they do, yeah? The only reason to notice and acknowledge that they are in tension is to try to break the coalition. Only conservatives want that (Who benefits?). Indeed, since progressive people understand this, the only thing they can do is say the goals are not in tension.

Is there no truth value in pointing out philosophical incoherence? Free pass on that, ends justify the means?

I think that you are exaggerating what the response was to Kirk's death amongst normies (I agree that there were terminally online people who actively celebrated it, but I am talking about "irl" woke people)

I'll second self_made_human and point to KendricTonn getting it in Ohio. There's more terminally online people than ever before, only some of them poast 24/7/365, and these days it's possible to invite them into your home without ever having been aware of their online presence beforehand.

I'm glad you've avoided it, but I'm finding that less and less possible.

I initially only believed that this stuff was happening irl in the US, but not the UK (since Kirk was an American influencer), I was under the impression UK progressives had entirely forgotten about the Kirk thing (the account I gave was the first and last time this topic was brought up irl in my presence)

Since it was just @FtttG saying this (from the UK), and it felt "two steps removed" from my own experience, I wondered if he had misinterpreted things and blown stuff up in his head by overthinking. But then @self_made_human's account was also in the UK.

The most parsimonious explanation is that my progressive coworkers do have these sorts of discussions, but not around me (because we don't spend time together except at lunch), which makes sense. I guess it felt "off" to me (hence that part of my comment) because it seems quite far from how they behave with me at work, but then my behaviour / opinions in private is quite far from when I am at work, so I should expect that they also have some "hidden" part to themselves.

Since it was just @FtttG saying this (from the UK)

I live in Ireland.

I was under the impression UK progressives had entirely forgotten about the Kirk thing

In fairness, my colleagues were only talking about it the day after. I don't think I've heard his name mentioned around the office since.

Half the population of Gaza are children, I don't think most woke people advocate for mass murdering people in non woke countries.

Also Israel's goal is to create a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. In other words, Israel is trying to export Palestine to the west.

Also Israel's goal is to create a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep.

Can you back up this claim? Not just that this is an effect of Israel's action's, but an actual goal that the State of Israel is seeking to enact?

Why?

If nothing else, the heartstrings-tugging about Palestinians has heavily focused on the plight of Palestinian children, who cannot be held responsible for the beliefs of their parents.