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Notes -
More political violence
From Tim Pool:
One might think back to oft made historical analogs like Weimar Germany, and see the steady escalation of violence between communists and anti-communists and proclaim Weimerica to be just like that. But these acts of violence seem so... Aimless? Random? Poorly thought out? I mean, the degree of distortion that drives one to shoot at Tim Pool. I don't get it. Even the excuses that Charlie Kirk was a fascist theocracy enabler that would genocide the trans felt far fetched. How do you justify the glee of seeing Tim Pool murdered?
If the official narrative is to be believed, a lot of these acts of political violence are coming from ideologically ambiguous social media addicts. Be that the killer of Charlie Kirk, the Trump shooters, the attacks on ICE agents and facilities and more. Gone are the days of a regimented left/right brawl in the streets like we got around 2017. Or a good old cops(presence optional) and robbers BLM riot. To that extent, I think a lot of people have completely lost sight of the media backdrop of peoples lives on both the left and right.
For context, Candace Owens is talking about global conspiracies and the involvement of TPUSA in the killing of Charlie. This has been ongoing for weeks, and she averages around 1.5 million views per show. That's including ridiculously high live numbers no one else is coming close to. At the same time the biggest mainstream internet personalities on the right have been cozy-ing up to Nick Fuentes. With Steven Crowder now joining the fray of Tucker Carlson and many others, giving him a long and cordial interview.
On the other side, the largest streamer on the left, Hasan Piker, along with many others, have made it a routine to skirt as close as they can around calls to violence. And sometimes not bothering at all. With the government starting to ask questions after the murder of Charlie on the topic of radicalization.
The Wild West days of the internet are seemingly back. With Hitler memes on Instagram instead of 4Chan, Qanon conspiracies having their own show on Youtube all whilst the leftist revolution is being streamed live to millions on Twitch.
Centrist minded people like Tim Pool like to talk about the pendulum swinging back and forth. But inherent to that analogy is the idea that there is a fixed point where the pendulum will stop before swinging back each time. But it seems like that's not the case. The pendulum can swing back and forth, but also faster and farther. And with the antifa being completely unwilling to engage in discourse or compromise, and the right being completely inept and unable to stop their radicalization and acts of violence, 'faster and farther' seems to be where we are going.
For about ten years now, leftists have been on a crusade against misinformation. It was vitally important that misinformation be at least countered, if not outright removed, because it would lead to societally harmful outcomes like racism, misogyny, transphobia, and other bigotries. If it can be countered with the truth, then we can finally create Heaven on Earth; no more bigotry, because everyone was educated out of it and gave it up on their own recognizance.
As the years have gone by, this has proven to be totally untrue. It's a very useful philosophy to take for political rallying purposes, at least until it runs into something that's actually true. The Hunter Biden laptop story could be taken down because it was misinformation. Oops, it was real. It's just misinformation that black people commit more crime, you're taking some examples and characterizing tons of people with them. No, you can't use those FBI statistics to back it up, that's bad too. Women can be just as good as men at being a police officer or an infantryperson; again, grating to leftists when you use statistics. Hateful rhetoric about transgender people is supposed to be baseless, which is why Jesse Singal is the most blocked person on Bluesky.
I think the commonality that I'm trying to demonstrate is that the real crime here isn't about being hateful or not being based in truth. It's simply about being opposed to what they want to do. There is no actual way to push back without seriously pissing people off. Everything has already been tried, and it doesn't matter how respectful you're being. That's why there is no detectable difference in the hatred that leftists have between Charlie Kirk and someone like Nick Fuentes. The actual rhetoric doesn't matter, just that they're opposed.
While I'm on this topic: Charlie Kirk discourse is still insanity-inducing to me even though it's been 3 months now since he died. The average redditor will say everything nasty that's possible about him, they'll say that he was hateful and said disgusting things on a regular basis, that he made the country worse, that his words were violence against people, that he increased the amount of people ready to commit violence against minorities, that he needed to shut up and get off the campus, that the world is now better because he is dead. But to make it better, they'll say that murder is wrong, so they disagreed with his murder. Well, redditor, you did not convince me at all. You gave me several absolutely fantastic reasons to kill people like Charlie Kirk, but just one really weak reason to not do it (because murder is bad) for reasons that you didn't list out. Do you really believe that murder is bad? Why? Explain it to me, in your own words, fellow American.
No one that isn't already on the right wing understands just how radicalizing that entire affair was. It was easy to believe that yes, they'd ban you from everywhere for having beliefs that 50% of the country hold, and yes, they'd slam you as a bigot and a racist, but that it was all just words. No matter how much I explain it to people, they want to bring up like, 5 quotes and call them hate speech and justify why people hated him so much. And they reject that this hatred would ever make someone want to shoot someone else, even though that's the entire reason why rhetoric attacking trans people, gay people, black people, women, or immigrants was bad in the first place. So they never believed in the concept of stochastic terrorism in the first place, because they never shut their radical friends down when they cry out for more blood. It's all so awful, and there's nothing you can do about it, except cut off all those former friends who dismiss everything you have to say simply because of who you are or who they suspect you to be.
I wouldn't call a fundamental axiom of morality, indeed, one that has been regarded by the Abrahamic faiths as an explicit divine commandment for over three thousand years, a weak reason. And the tacked-on "Why?" at the end seems particularly odd to me - most people's reply to "why is murder wrong?" will be a confused "it just is"; they don't hold murder to be bad for instrumental reasons, but to be inherently unethical. For a majority of Westerners, that is the most important reason not to kill someone, and it is self-sufficient. "Why is murder wrong?" cashes out as "Why is badness bad?".
More broadly, what do you expect someone who disagreed totally about Kirk's politics to say, here? Do you really expect each comment to go on a lengthy digression about the underpinnings of moral philosophy? I can entertain the idea that in such a case (ie "a man you consider horribly evil has been murdered, but you genuinely don't want to come across as supporting murder"), the most decorous, moral thing to do is simply to keep silent and not opine on the event at all. But by definition, left-wing redditors who take that high road are not going to show up in the comment threads you describe. This leaves only the ones who feel compelled to speak at all, and I don't think you can fairly or realistically expect them to say anything else than what they do.
They're all natural things for someone who hated Charlie Kirk to say, yes. The problem is more the extent that they hated him, so much that they internally are rapturous that he is dead. This is not simple disagreement here. I'd expect something like the redditor response to John McCain's death in that case, where they acknowledged that they disagreed with him entirely, but still really respected him and are sad that he is dead. Not so, here. Here, they really did hate the shit out of him, hated his rotten, stinking guts. For a moderate conservative voice, that's absolutely unacceptable. They would want me dead, too, if I was effective enough at expressing myself convincingly to millions of people. The feeling does not go both ways. I can't really think of any left-leaning people that I utterly despise in the same way, and I can think of many that I like and respect, such as Ana Kasparian, Jesse Singal, or many personal or online acquaintances that are more tepidly liberal because they just watch TV occasionally or have other liberal friends.
Edit: I'd also add that to say that you're glad that someone's dead and the world is a better place without him has a lot of other added meanings when that person was assassinated by someone who feels similar to how you do. If you can't prevent yourself from saying those things after an assassination by someone who thinks like yourself, then yes, you do actually need to say why murdering is bad, because you just encouraged your friends to murder someone.
The "still really respected him" part seems off. I'm not talking about "simple disagreement"! Sometimes you really do just think a guy sucks. That's fine! That's nothing new! Most folks have people they hate to some degree - and I'd say even more have people they have zero respect for even if they don't actively hate them. That doesn't mean they all support wanton murder. Having nothing nice to say about someone (beyond "he was a human being and as such had a certain inalienable dignity" which is so general as to be meaningless) is perfectly normal, and we shouldn't normalize asking people to lie about this in the event of something unfortunate befalling that someone, on pain of being assumed to be pro-murder. That's just a demand for large-scale hypocrisy.
(Which is precisely how I've always felt about mealy-mouthed statements eulogizing people you were calling anti-American mass-murdering fascist commie crooks ten years ago, to rapturous applause from your base, as having somehow been great respectable statesmen all along Even If You Had Your Disagreements™. If Trump says something nice and respectable about Biden when Biden croaks, I will not believe he means a word of it, but that doesn't mean I think Trump wants Biden killed.)
Though again, I can get behind the idea that if you have nothing nice to say, you should simply say nothing.
But again, what if they genuinely do just believe murder is bad in and of itself, for no more elaborate reasons than feeling "Thou shalt not kill" is carved upon their conscience in letters of gold that no circumstances can alter? What do you expect someone like that to say?
In most cases, the same people would celebrate killing someone if a certain threshold of evil is attained. Ask them if, had Japan not attacked first, the US should have gotten involved in WW2 in Europe (so endorsing killing not in self-defense but in defense of others or of principles). Or if Operation Valkyrie was righteous. It's not that it would be wrong of them to say yes in either or all cases, it's that if you couple it, the idea that some level of evil needs to be opposed by killing if necessary, with a tendancy to frame every political opposition (even the tamest) as maximally evil, you're constantly creating the justification for murder.
I think most people draw a difference between organized killing in war, and murder. Mark that I repeatedly said "murder", except when directly quoting the Sixth Commandment - not "killing".
Fun fact, the proper translation of the Sixth Commandment is "thou shalt not murder," not "thou shalt not kill." As in, thou shalt not kill anyone outside the accepted bounds of the legal system or war.
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