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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.
A long time ago I heard someone observe that progressive messaging makes a lot more sense if, whenever you read "misinformation", you mentally substitute "blasphemy".
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