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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24228 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of the Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

“For the first few weeks, the only safe thing to say was praise,” he said. “When you mandate reverence on a medium built for irony [the internet], you don’t freeze the image, you load the spring. A lot of the mockery was that pressure releasing.” Previously, it used to take years for tragedies to become fodder for cynical internet humor (9/11 being one example). With the power of generative artificial intelligence and image-doctoring, however, Kirk was meme-ified in a matter of weeks.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.

As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

After the 2020 election, it became crystal clear to me that 99% of the grumblings about civil war are not serious. Something like half of Republicans claim to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Republicans are a heavily armed demographic. Yet there were almost no violent incidents in response to the supposed election theft.

The violence-promoting subset of the left is equally unserious. Hence the famous Twitter post: "People on twitter will really be like 'you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart' and then not firebomb a Walmart."" Yes, there are occasional incidents of left-wing violence, but given how many people there are in the US and how easy it is to get guns in the US, these incidents are actually extremely uncommon.

Which is not to say that civil war or uprising is impossible, but it gives one a sense for how away we probably are from it that even a widespread belief or professed belief that the election was literally stolen from millions of people's preferred Presidential candidate led to almost no violence.

Given that I have spent the last hour or so reading the trial coverage and have also been quite public about how Charlie Kirk's murder, or more accurately some of the reactions I observed on this forum motivated me to spin up this account after over a year of mostly lurking, I suppose I should weigh in.

I didn't know Charlie, but I know people who did, and by all accounts he was a stand up guy if a bit of a dweeb. I suppose being seen as a dweeb is just the price of being earnest in this day and age. I regret to say that i had largely written him off as just another talking head and TPUSA as just another PAC didn't really become aware of how popular he was until after his death

As for the idea that "His legacy is cringe". What does "cringe" even mean in this context? That he's a meme? As @OliveTapenade observes, Charlie spent the better portion of a decade being a meme before he was killed. When people say that "his legacy is cringe" are they saying that they find his legacy overly servile? (Somehow I think that he may have found that amusing) Or are they saying that they find his legacy disgusting, something to be recoiled from, denigrated, and disposed of. If so, I don't care. Thier boos mean nothing to me, because I have seen what makes them cheer.

What does "cringe" even mean in this context?

That "ew kill it kill it kill it" feeling some people get when they see a bug in the bathroom.

So the third option.

With the caveat that it's more "why would we boo you when we can 'Pop. Goes. The Kirkoid!'"

(One doesn't usually "boo" vermin.)

But I quibble.

(I do wish downvoters would remember that quote marks are for quoting other people... I heard that one quite recently too.)

I wasn't entirely sure Charlie Kirk was a real person or what he really looked like before he died. I was vaguely aware of someone named Charlie Kirk and something called Turning Points, but I had knew nothing about him and had no real opinions on him or his organization.

Then he got shot, and suddenly he was everywhere. Conservatives were passing around hadiths of things Charlie had told them before he died as authoritative statements on any given topic. His name and his face were all over. He was the leader of the future. People were on here saying that his assassination was an effective strike against the Red Tribe because he was irreplaceable.

The whole phenomenon reminds me of nothing so much as when a singer with three top-40 hits in the 80s dies, and suddenly everyone is telling us how they were "the voice of a generation" and "meant so much to so many people." And every radio station is playing her two hits over and over. And it's like, nah bro she was pretty good, but there were a dozen other singers in the 80s on her level, and she was mogged by Madonna throughout her career.

The result of the Charlie mythos being so rapidly built and so thoroughly overshot was that the gap between the myth and the reality created opportunities for humor. This can occur even with a really serious tragedy (9/11, the Holocaust, the Soviet purges), but it's even easier when the gap between the publicity and the tragedy is bigger.

Cyndi Lauper's dead??

j/k

I was actually thinking of Whitney Houston when she died like fifteen years ago, and I remember going to an Abercrombie and Fitch and hearing an A&F techno-dance remix of I Will Always Love You in the dressing room trying on a pair of chinos, and thinking to myself: Jeez suddenly she's everywhere. And joking about with my gf, now Mrs. FiveHour, that you just can't get away from her since her death while I hadn't thought about her at all beforehand, and neither had anyone else in an Abercrombie, teenage customers or teenage staff.

Which is probably a good example of the dynamic in that, on reading her wikipedia, my assessment of Whitney was kinda incorrect, she was a Big Deal when she was big. It just happens that she wasn't big for me, and as such the whole situation struck me as humorous and over-cooked, even though it made perfect sense to the people doing it. For me at 19, it seemed like they were way overdoing their tribute to a mid-tier diva, to boomers who knew her from her peak, it seemed just and fair for The Voice to be so honored. And both things can be true for each of us in our own perspective.

You weren't Kirk's target audience.

A poll of 1030 college students found 94% of college students were aware of Charlie Kirk and that 30% of them engaged with his content at least a few times per month. The guy was popular enough to get a parody of him made in South Park. Why would there be so many people that was absolutely gleeful at his assassination, if he was some nobody?

With the singer comparison, I think it would be relatively easy to point to another artist who is currently more popular with young people. Which politician/activist other than Donald Trump is more popular amongst right leaning young people? Maybe Asmongold, but he's not really a politician or even an activist, more of a streamer/commentator who occasionally says things left leaning people don't like.

I think this is indicative of the gap between young people on the right and the older generation. Kirk may not have been a thought leader creating new ideas for republicans to rally around, but he was certainly very effective at getting their message out to the younger people. Who are the young people listening to now? Kirk's death is clearly a big loss for the Republicans.

Kirk having niche popularity with a subset of the population, but not mainstream notoriety of the type I would be aware of, still creates the cognitive dissonance and room for a punchline I'm talking about, among the subset of the population that wasn't really familiar with him.

If Jalyx Hunt were suddenly in every Gatorade advertisement on TV, and "who the hell is Jalyx Hunt?" became a punchline online, that every serious Eagles fan knows who he is (a beloved local event planner for the city) or that he's actually a pretty underrated edge rusher doesn't alter the situation for people who have no idea who he is beforehand.

I’d argue Kirk was the most well-known politically-active non-politician for Americans for under-25. If you typed “politics” into tik tok you would see either Kirk, someone trying to dunk on Kirk, or someone criticizing Kirk. All of the other contenders (Hasan, Withers, Nick Fuentes) were responding to something Kirk-related on a weekly or monthly basis. His videos were everywhere.

All I can tell you is that I read two newspapers a day, see probably three or four hours of varied cable news a week thanks to boomer parents, I'm politically active in the local R party, and I'm active on Twitter and here, and I barely knew he existed. It's possible he was this niche icon in my blind spot. But that would still create that contrast I'm pointing to.

I was aware of him as the head of TPUSA and occasional guest on various programs, but ignorant of his popularity and wider body of work.

I remember finding out he had been shot via a text message from a family member, and my immediate reaction after "Oh Fuck" was being surprised that this family member (who has never been particularly political) even knew who he was.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

It's always grating to read inaccurate descriptions of things I remember quite well, made worse in this case by the author trying to fit in a "just desserts" narrative. Charlie was murdered in cold blood and this prompted a wave of liberals cheering his death as justified for his basically-normal conservative opinions.

But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy

This is leftwing gaslighting -- Charlie was martyred! The gaslighting here is the idea that joking about his death is blowback to conservative overreach, we didn't want to be so disrespectful, it was simply necessary because the conservative reaction was even worse than Charlie's death! Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.

Even JD Vance isn't immune.

The claim in this article is extremely vague, all it seems to say is that Vance thought there might have been more to the murder than meets the eye, which is trivial really. I award bonus points for the laugh-out-loud tut-tutting when the New Republic scolds its readership with the line, "Vice Presidents should not have that much time on their hands".

made worse in this case by the author trying to fit in a "just desserts" narrative.

"Just deserts" (same root as "deserve"). "Desserts" are food, and the article author thankfully did not suggest that people eat his ideological enemies.

Even JD Vance isn't immune.

I would think less of him if he weren't at least a bit freaked out by the sectarian killing of a close friend

The white sheet set made a lot of dank may-mays about Dr. King’s untimely passing too. Twenty years later they were bankrupt, universally hated even in their home towns, and their leader was popping and sizzling in the electric chair.

There were also people who thought there was more to King's murder than it seems, even still to this day.

Including most of the King family themselves. They even visited James Earl Ray in prison and tried to help him get a new trial because they believe he was innocent.

  • The Guardian is a leftist/progressive word-product-extruder. They have a credible claim neither to pop-culture insight nor to journalistic credibility. Like many nozzles studding the meta-Blue-Tribe superstructure, they say what they feel will be convenient to be seen saying at this moment in time. They arrived at simulacrum-4 many years ago, and are unlikely to ever leave.

  • It is not in the perceived interest of anyone involved in the extrusion of this particular word-product that Charlie Kirk be perceived as anything but a joke. It is not in their interest for people to take Progressive political murders seriously. It is not in their interest for people to take broad-based, grass-roots support for political murders of sympathetic victims seriously. Thus, it is important to them that the victim not be perceived as sympathetic. Unfortunately, a lot of people took both Kirk's murder and the obvious, undeniable and very widespread support for his murder quite seriously, and so this is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

  • The memeing of Kirk is the desired outcome of those managing this particular extrusion. They are not impartially reporting a fact of interest, they are selectively reporting whatever facts or slogans seem to make their desired end-state more probable.

The above three points cover the large majority of what it seems to me is useful to say about the article itself.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

Yet! Growth mindset. On the other hand, his death did, I think, have a permanent and in my view highly salutory effect on intra-right wing discourse, creating large amounts of useful common knowledge within Red Tribe that move the conversation forward in a useful way.

Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death.

Agreed. And yet, consensus on this point could not be achieved within our society, and common knowledge on that point likewise was generated within Blue Tribe. When the shoe is on the other foot, you are going to see large portions of Red Tribe responding to mirrored demands for unity against hate responding with quotes from prominent Blues from the Kirk aftermath, and flat rejection of the "unity" frame. If you would like an example of this process in action, check the discourse over the recent anti-immigrant riots in Ireland. Social cohesion is not an unlimited resource, and things like this are how it goes away.

Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted.

It kind of was though, wasn't it?

But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message.

Another way to frame this is that the right called on the ancient bonds of brotherhood and unity, and the reply was a brief period of initial, halfhearted opprobrium quickly transitioning into complaints about how these appeals to bedrock principles of social comity were all just "going too far".

Blue Tribe had no interest in allowing Charlie Kirk a legacy before his death, and they certainly have no interest in allowing him one after his death. Obviously, it is in their interest if Charlie Kirk's legacy is as a ridiculous meme, and to the extent that anyone anywhere is treating him this way, they will report it, and to the extent anyone anywhere takes him and his death seriously, they will either mock them or ignore them as seems most immediately advantageous. That is not my understanding of Kirk's legacy, nor the understanding of other Reds I encounter. I have no reason to prefer your interpretation to mine, nor to believe their interpretation is more accurate than mine. As for the youtube-slop video... I do not think your or the Guardian's read on such portents is accurate.

On the other hand, his death did, I think, have a permanent and in my view highly salutory effect on intra-right wing discourse, creating large amounts of useful common knowledge within Red Tribe that move the conversation forward in a useful way.

Can you please make this more explicit? Specifically, what common knowledge was established and how things have moved forward? Because from where I stood, it seemed like the Right squandered a generational opportunity to actually root out the violence-promoters on the left, instead deciding to flounder and squabble thanks in part to conspiratorial nonsense peddled by people like Candace Owens.

Can you please make this more explicit?

Blue Tribe is incapable of coordinating meaningful control over their partisans' support for lawless political murder of the outgroup, and as a consequence popular support for lawless political murders against perceived Reds will continue to grow within the Blue Tribe grassroots and leadership for the foreseeable future. This has obvious consequences for Red Tribe strategy for cooperation/conflict with Blue Tribe: cooperation is foolish, serious conflict is likely, and those who wish to avoid it must provide a plan that actually solves this general class of problem.

Sam Hyde's description of the basic situation:

"When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it's funny."

...is more strongly supported by the available evidence than it was prior to Kirk's death. By contrast, normie and grill-pilled assessments generally have a much harder time maintaining credibility because the flow of evidence is so strongly against them, not least because normie and grill-pill arguments had already ceded so much moral authority to the liberal establishment. It's much harder to argue that it's just people saying stuff and none of it matters when so much of our collective political capital has been so obsessively invested into things people saying really, really mattering. This is a manifestation of the wrench, and I perceive the wrench to be very much to Red Tribe's advantage.

Because from where I stood, it seemed like the Right squandered a generational opportunity to actually root out the violence-promoters on the left, instead deciding to flounder and squabble thanks in part to conspiratorial nonsense peddled by people like Candace Owens.

What would this "generational opportunity" actually look like, in terms of policy? What should the Right have done, specifically? Regarding Candace Owens specifically, what should have been done?

I'm guessing...

  1. normal and sane people on the left will celebrate assassinations of right-wingers, and are mainly just too cowardly to do it themselves
  2. normal and sane people (like Robinson) can sometimes assassinate right-wingers

There might be some arguments about #2 but I imagine they come down to question-begging: defining assassination as abnormal and insane.

Why do you think such a generational opportunity existed? It's not like a local version of Pinochet or Franco is in power.

Because the republican party controlled the presidency, congress, and senate.

EDIT: And because while Kirk was a bit of a "debate me" and a bit of a meme, he was also apparently quite an important node in the right's network and much more relatable to normies than someone like Fuentes. The fact that he was a node should have led to a vigorous prosecution of not only the shooter, but the environment that radicalized him; and the fact that he was so relatable to nromies would have given them much broader license to do so.

Is your argument that violence-promoters on the Right are successfully rooted out by strictly enforcing laws against them, so if the same is done with the violence-promoters on the Left then the same result can be achieved?

I don't have a complete answer, but something like that. One alternative example, because I've been too busy to give this the thorough thought your question warrants (sorry): the attack on Kirk, and the failed attempts on Trump's life, seemed to me to come from individuals radicalized by constant fever-pitch online rhetoric, exactly the sort of "stochastic terrorism" the left has been complaining about for several years. So either we agree to call stochastic terrorism terrorism and say that nobody's allowed to use it (a view that's probably incompatible with the First Amendment) or get both sides to put that particular club away (instead of only allowing left to use it against the right). And, regardless of that, having feds in the Discord groups etc where these people are radicalized into action is probably worth doing.

I saw a post (I think on Substack) making the point that the way progressives talk about Kirk parallels Umberto Eco's observation that, in fascism, the enemy must be seen to be both strong and weak. When Trump wants to name a street after Charlie Kirk, progressives tend to roll their eyes and say that he's undeserving of the accolade because he was just some guy with a YouTube channel. But when people are saying that it was bad that Kirk was assassinated, progressives will turn around and say that it was justified, because he was a powerful and dangerous demagogue who used his platform to incite violence against [minority du jour].

Obviously, it cannot be the case that Kirk was both an insignificant YouTuber and an influential demagogue: only one of these things can be true.

But each can be true to different people. To a person who thinks Youtube is new fangled nonsense he can be a random Youtuber for example.

Is it the same exact people saying both? If not you're just running into the fact that the outgroup is not homogeneous and some of them hold different opinions from each other.

If its the same people then your point may stand.

The difference is moot to the person (or group, etc) under attack by different members of the coalition, and this argument sets a bar that makes addressing an enemy coalition impossible. It's asymmetric concern.

MitigatedChaos memorably described it as the distributed hypocrisy of von Wokenstein's Monster though acknowledges it can be performed by any ideology.

Policy is not experienced in isolation from other policy made by the ruling coalition. It’s experienced all at once. Different policies combined together have different effects than the same policies in isolation.

So too am I reminded of this chart. Are they literally the same people saying white flight and gentrification are bad, that cultural appropriation and being chauvinistic are bad?

Well, probably, but who wants to waste the time collecting receipts on hateful people? Let's assume for the sake of argument they are separate people in a big-tent coalition.

That they're separate people doesn't matter to me! What matters is that [coalition] has no acceptable state of being for outsiders.

The difference is moot to the person (or group, etc) under attack by different members of the coalition, and this argument sets a bar that makes addressing an enemy coalition impossible.

Not at all, it's treating it as a monolith that makes it unadressable. If you target the specific elements with specific arguments/actions that's a solid method of putting a fracture in the coalition.

A libertarian, a MAGA Rust belt Red Triber and a Blue Tribe Catholic conservative may all vote for Trump but the specific concerns they have are different and may in fact be at odds.

The libertarian might want no tariffs and low taxes, but the MAGA Rust belter wants tariffs and taxes to redistribute back to the Rust Belt that was harmed by laissez faire economics, the Catholic wants to target abortion but cares much less about 2A rights and so on and so forth. Which means who says what and spends political capital on what is extremely important information if you oppose them.

The coalition doesn't want anything at all, it's an emergent entity out of all the various groups and sub-groups. So if some progressives think Kirk was just a nobody Youtuber so it was no big deal, that is a very different action space than for progressives who think he was a huge dangerous threat to democracy. If you want to try and persuade people that maybe shooting Youtubers is wrong, that's a different argument than arguing Kirk was not a huge threat to democracy.

You're assuming your conclusion. Because they are a coalition with different opinions therefore there is no space to exist. But what if it is is "Because they are a coalition with different opinions therefore there is opportunity to put wedges in place so to create space to exist." We call this a culture war for a reason, if you want to create space for outsiders you have to make it so. That's what created the progressive project in the first place. And they did that by piecing together a coalition and peeling some of them away from prior coalitions.

Coalitions are not unassailable cosmic entities that exist beyond space and time. They shift and change and break. As we have in fact seen in recent memory.

That they are separate people SHOULD matter to you. If they are fundamentally a monolithic entity then that is much more of a problem.

Ok fine if I want to spend my life to try and change people that hate me, it matters that they are separate people that might be able to be changed.

As a griller, I don't want to do that, I want to live my life and have my family and not be bothered too much, so the coalition, whether or not the component parts change, matters more to me. "Progressive Democrats are bad for schools and my family" stays the same even if they're bad last year because of braindead "anti-racist" racism, and next year because of braindead knockoff communism.

Also, generally speaking, I'm the exact opposite in every dimension of the kinds of person those people will listen to. I'm not some arrogant piece of shit high on my own supply that's been coddled in the rich parts of big cities and attended Harvard; I'm a lower-middle straight-passing cis white guy that attended a mid-tier state school. I have not structured my life or been blessed with the privileges that will cause progressives or liberals to listen to me; if I tried to convince them of anything, most likely they don't listen at all and at worst I've negatively polarized them into being even stupider than they were before.

If you want to try and persuade people that maybe shooting Youtubers is wrong

I can't say I care much about Youtubers as an open season class, but I would be pretty bothered if people started taking shots at Alec Watson or Norm Nakamura.

Coalitions are not unassailable cosmic entities that exist beyond space and time.

Egregores are not unassailable, fair enough. Cosmic is questionable.

I'm a lower-middle straight-passing cis white guy that attended a mid-tier state school.

Me too. My grandfathers were a subsistence farmer and a cattle inspector respectively. I'm now teaching at a low tier school in the US. Though I did have a career in the Civil Service in between. It's fine. Progressives and liberals listen just fine to white guys. I chair several of our committees, Indeed, when I turn up to the Women's book club I get gushed over. "It's so brave, so nice to see a man taking an interest". Indeed I would say being a straight white male around liberals is extremely high status right now. We are in high demand!

Because ,spoiler alert, almost everyone is a "griller" on your side and the progressive side. Maybe not the elites, but there are not very many elites (though of course they have an outsize influence!). Most people just want to get on with their lives.

When I lived in a small Red town, I had my Blue academic colleagues over to mingle with my Red Tribe neighbors on a few occasions for BBQ's and there were no issues at all. Well an argument over whether turkey burgers could be as good as regular burgers notwithstanding. They even all agreed charcoal was superior to propane (Hank Hill would be unhappy!).

As an outsider in the US, things are simply not as divided as many people here seem to think, in my direct experience. And I am from Northern Ireland, so I know divided! My wife's family reunion was last week and I was the only white person out of 250 black Americans (and one Asian lady!) from all over the country, I had no problems at all. Their family shirt was even an American flag with a bald eagle superimposed over it and 50 out of 250 emblazoned on the back (It was their 50th family reunion and the 250th anniversary of America).

If people aren't persuaded by arguments it's not because you're a straight white man, it's because most people do not reason themselves into their positions and so can't be reasoned out of them I think, no matter who is doing the talking.

Well an argument over whether turkey burgers could be as good as regular burgers notwithstanding.

What kind of unforgiveable heathen thinks turkey burgers can even come close?

Ostrich makes for an interesting burger, but like bison (and turkey) it's too lean to be properly juicy.

Their family shirt was even an American flag with a bald eagle superimposed over it and 50 out of 250 emblazoned on the back (It was their 50th family reunion and the 250th anniversary of America).

That's awesome.

In my experience black Americans are way more 'normal' about most stuff than white progressives, my experience of whom comes from academia and nerd spaces.

When I lived in a small Red town

Yeah, that matters. I live in Raleigh, NC, and the city does not, in my opinion, have much of a personality of its own to withstand certain issues. In the white progressive milieu of mostly-newcomers, there's a distinct sense of embarrassment, that they live here but they're a bit ashamed of that, and feel a need to overcompensate for being in "the South."

What kind of unforgiveable heathen thinks turkey burgers can even come close?

Well my wife does make an amazing home made turkey burger, which is what fueled the debate.

There is a lot said on this site about how black Americans haven't assimilated but I think that's untrue. They just assimilated to a particular type of American culture which is descended from my own Ulster-Scots/Scots-Irish borderer culture, which is what was often around them, in the South. In many of my wife's family events the beats are very similar to being back home, even if the details are different. My wife was a hit with my rural working class uncles because she was raised in a similar environment culutrally even it it was thousands of miles apart. It's a rowdier, more overtly "masculine" culture than the WASPy American culture in the North East or even the more genteel Southern Cavalierish one in the South. Which is why comments here about how white people don't like noisy sports celebrations and rowdy behaviour always make me laugh. It's kind of totalizing the American experience to a very specific subset of American upper middle classish white people.

I would agree that white progressives can be much more performative (in my experience anyway), possibly driven by white guilt (and exacerbated if from the South). Having said that, when I first moved to the US I dated a scion of what used to be a pretty powerful Southern family (the type who still have debutant balls and the like) whose family did own plantations and slaves in the past, and that did appear to be something they truly were guilty about rather than a performance so its hard to tell sometimes. There is a particular kind of American who feels that America should have done better in holding up its founding ideals (all men created equal et al) and that this is a real and enduring fault.

Progressivism grew out of real issues and real problems which is how it was able to build a coalition so quickly, because there are a lot of true believers who had indeed witnessed/experienced actual injustices. My wife's grandmother was a locally prominent civil rights organizer and it's hard to judge a distrust for white people when reading her diaries. Having said that even she on her deathbed recanted her prohibition on my wife "dating out" so things can and do change.

I think it is a standard tactics of ideological defense in depth, where arguments are used as soldiers. You can have simultaneous and contradictionary propaganda aimed at different parts of the population. In modern information environment, you have simultaneous message for different audiences. Maybe you know the "narcissistic prayer" meme:

  1. That didn't happen
  2. And if it did, it wasn't that bad
  3. And if it was, that's not a big deal.
  4. And if it is, that's not my fault.
  5. And if it was, I didn't mean it.
  6. And if I did, you deserved it.

You have a message for everybody. Loyalist can be in denial in order to prevent infohazard and keep ideological purity - everything that was said by opponents is Conspiracy Theory, just focus on our message. Moderates and apologists can be equipped with minimization arguments, which can even be linked to one another, just to flood the infospace and make truth hard to discern. And the last message can be aimed at radicals and fanatics in order to generate more of the things that supposedly did not happen - with plausible deniability generated by moderates.

In a sense it is a brilliant information warfare strategy.

That's because "Everyone I don't like is extremely dangerous and must be destroyed. But they're also, like, a total loser, man." is a general feature of human psychology.

(Very effective tactic too. Great way to get your lynch on when that needs doing. Justice, consequences, accountability, you know the drill.)

Exactly. Let's not give Eco more respect than he deserves. He's an astrologist who doesn't even read your star chart. He just calls you a fascist and pushes you out of the tent.

There are certain varieties of loserdom which are compatible with being extremely dangerous. Riad Bouchaker was both a loser (his stated reason for his violent outburst was that his social welfare application was denied) and extremely dangerous to the young girls he permanently maimed. Likewise Vickrum Digwa, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. or any school shooter you care to mention. Just about any able-bodied person with a knife or a gun can pose a legitimate threat, no matter how ineffectual or pathetic they otherwise are.

However, being dangerous by virtue of being such a compelling and seductive public speaker that you can persuade an army of anonymous footsoldiers to do violence against your enemies through words alone is not compatible with being an insignificant loser. Anyone charismatic and persuasive enough to amass an army of thousands (whom they've never even met) willing and able to do violence on their behalf is definitionally not a worthless loser. It takes considerably more skill and intelligence to persuade someone you've never met to stab someone than to stab them yourself.

is not compatible with being an insignificant loser

"lol he's such a loser he totally deserved it" seems to be working well enough with the relevant people, empirically. How else?

The point is reasonable enough, but my observation is that Umberto Eco's writings on the nature of Fascism are straightforwardly bullshit. A supermajority of those engaged in conflict at any scale are going to see their opponent as a threat ("strong") and also both deeply flawed and weak enough to be defeated ("weak"). There is no contradiction here; "Strength" and "Weakness" are not objective criteria, but rather meta-poles in a fuzzy, highly-multidimensional space.

From what I've seen, the rest of his analysis is shot through with similar problems.

Yes, the definition is broad enough that just about everything is fascism if you don't like it.

Charlie Kirk was a meme prior to his death, though, surely? Those edits with the TPUSA slogan, and the tiny-faced Kirk? After Kirk's death I remember a wave of articles explaining that, contrary to what many on the left thought, he was not just a meme, but rather a significant and influential political organiser. As the immediate aftermath of his death fades, I am unsurprised that he is a meme again.

KYM has a page on TPUSA going back at least to 2017, thank you Internet Archive, and it includes pictures of Charlie Kirk used for meme purposes. Part of it, I suspect, is just that Kirk had a kind of silly-looking face, and when he tries to look serious, it always comes off slightly askew. I've since seen videos and he was a lot more natural-looking and sounding in person, but the goofy pictures of him made him easy prey for meming, and that hasn't changed.

Those memes had a message though. They were anti-Turning Point. They existed in the first place because Kirk was an influential political organizer. There is no message behind "put Kirk's face on everything and create new slang (lowkirkenuinely)", it's just irony poisoning.

Kirk was both a minor celebrity (because of his "I will debate anyone" college speaker tours) and an important political organiser (because of the work TPUSA did recruiting, training, and placing the next generation of GOP staffers). The work as an organiser was more important, but was not visible outside the organised GOP, so most people think of him as the "debate me" meme guy.

Kirk's opponents hated him because he was a "debate me" bro who expected members of oppressed groups to do the work of countering his hateful message. Kirk's dumb supporters loved him because he was willing to take the core movement-conservative message to a hostile audience. His smart supporters feared and respected him because there were already enough young GOP operatives who owed their career to Kirk to staff a future Kirk for President campaign.

For some reason your comment reminded me of my own complicated relationship with Charlie Kirk. As a libertarian who graduated from Conservative, Inc. finishing school around the time TPUSA was founded, I was not a fan. I viewed Charlie Kirk as the guy whose organization absorbed the beautiful little counter-cultural college Republicans club I had worked so hard to build and turned it into an arm of the MAGA movement/Trump political machine. So it's always been weird talking to younger conservatives who hold him in such high regard. He's such an important figure to them, but to my generation of activists, he's that dweeb who degraded the intellectual quality of our interns. I recognize the success he had spreading conservative ideas on college campuses, but resent the low quality of that conservatism.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

Not only random shitposters, but even the most serious esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist who at the time correctly disavowed all conspiracy theories and called it what it was, act of self radicalized lone wolf, predicted this event to be the turning point, end of debate.

America will not have a Years of Lead moment as the age of armed ideological cells is over. Contrary to popular opinion, organizations like Ordine Nuovo and Le Brigate Rosse were not wholly created by intelligence services but were ALLOWED to operate by intelligence services and/or political backers at the vertices of state power. It is the blind eye that facilitates groups like this, even more so in the age of mass surveillance. Kash Patel is not going to allow armed right-wing extremist groups to operate with impunity; nobody in the GOP is ballsy enough to allow an American NAR. Antifa is allowed to operate when the DNC is in power because Democrats ALLOW them to. Having Lumpenproletariat foot soldiers deployed to punish your enemies is rational. Killing Charlie Kirk while they are not even in power is not.

Instead, the age of American political violence will be lone gunmen blowing someone’s head off on camera every couple of weeks.

Well, 10 months after, even this did not happened, no copycats so far on any side.

There just aren't so many people willing to sacrifice their lives who are so functional they can track single even moderately protected target (instead of random indiscriminate massacre).

It all turned out to be one big nothingburger. Is current situation still far from revolutionary conditions, or modern culture of circus and spectacle just lacks the seriousness necessary to create martyrs?

or modern culture of circus and spectacle just lacks the seriousness necessary to create martyrs?

What about George Floyd though?

Only existed as a martyr for a few months (and what months!) of astroturfing and now the butt of a recurring joke about how absurd it is to see world events through the prism of a lowlife fent addict.

He got a literal golden casket, but nobody actually looks up to Floyd in any way, nor did any lasting social change occur in his name. BLM took the money and ran, people clamored back for the police once it was gone, and all that remains is a landmark of peak woke.

Kirk is, ironically, the butt of a similar joke despite his death being inherently political (as opposed to an instrumented banality) which is why I think OP is right and martyrdom cannot survive in the postironic memetic condition. If Primo de Rivera died today, people would be making sneed edits within minutes.

He got a literal golden casket, but nobody actually looks up to Floyd in any way, nor did any lasting social change occur in his name. BLM took the money and ran, people clamored back for the police once it was gone, and all that remains is a landmark of peak woke.

Nah, peak woke is this.

Far more inspiring than St. Floyd festivities and with universal worldwide appeal.

And it is still open whether it is really over, or if it will return after Trump with vengeance.

even the most serious esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist

I'ma let you finish, but E. Michael Jones is the greatest esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist OF ALL TIME.

Eh, I'm more than happy to make fun of anything - 9/11, rape, my own crippling need for validation from strangers (especially women).

But frankly I'm still pissed that he got killed and that the bloodthirsty circlejerk online and IRL went largely unpunished. The double-standard for violence between the right and left is untenable. I was, perhaps, even more furious with this than Trump's first assassination attempt, and I considered Kirk a bit of an edgelord previous to his murder.

Is there really that much of a double standard? If Hasan Piker was shot to death by a lone gunman tomorrow, I would expect the same thing that happened with Charlie Kirk, just with the tribes flipped: many people on the right would cheer and make memes, many people on the left would act outraged and try to cancel the right-wingers, people would murmur darkly about civil war, etc.

In short, I believe there is a significant double standard right now. The left is very comfortable advocating for celebrating violence. Poll after poll confirms this among the rank and file, and then this is filtered again through the media apparatus.

than Trump's first assassination attempt

I doubt you mean the first one.

No, I do, I think the shooting was more real than the golf course stalking and the storming of the correspondent's dinner. It also had a lot of "I wish he'd aimed better".

Unless you're saying there's another I'm missing? I count 3.

Of course it was a much more serious event - he actually got shot - but the golf course stalking and the storming of the correspondent's dinner (both of which happened later) also go in the category "assassination attempts". But yes, I'm saying there are others you're missing; there've been Trump assassination attempts going back to at least 2016.

There's been a minor news story recently after a teacher got well over a million bucks in settlement money, and there's a strong argument she shouldn't have gotten fired originally... and then you think about everyone who got fired and didn't get anywhere near the compensation or an order of magnitude under that, didn't get their jobs back, and didn't get the fawning political coverage, for something far less charged than saying the target of a political assassination (and his family!) deserved it.

But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk. Trace is back from his internship and has a lot to say, and can't quite get his dander up about the forum he built because TheMotte didn't respect the humanity of spree criminals and arsonists can't reflect on the humanity of a guy who talked. There's no serious investigation of all those Tesla arsons, nor are we getting lawsuits by people fired for supporting the Tesla arsons. Damore isn't independently wealthy; he got judges informing people the law required his speech be infringed. William Kelly probably got his job back, and if he got anything else it was a rounding error, for 25 USD in Rittenhouse donations.

We know what happens when people do things that progressive leadership oppose. It's not a surprise when it didn't happen here.

I'm a bit confused regarding the mentions of involuntary commitment and involuntary medication, although this might possibly be because I can't follow your old.reddit links anymore (Reddit recently blocked old.reddit without a login, and I don't have a Reddit account). Would you mind explaining what you're referring to as the counterexample?

I don't want to rest my position on that, specifically, since involuntary commitment and medication are rare (and a little unprincipled), while TheSchism or anti-arson or anti-discrimination laws were all supposed to be consistent and universalist by their own terms. But Nicholas Decker and Ken White's posts are within the bounds of stuff that has historically gotten a lot of negative attention, including warrants or arrests on their own, and when paired with other behavior or insufficient deference, escalated to commitments or medication.

Unfortunately, that sorta stuff usually doesn't get much attention (tbf, probably because it's not a great thing to publicize for either the nutjob's sake post-medication / calm down time, or for the general populace given contagion risks, in the cases it does turn out to be serious), so examples tend to be jank. So if you want a clear-cut example where it's clearly defensible speech, I'm not going to have one. All I've got are people about as crazy as Ken White.

I'll note that Decker did get investigated for that post, even if he seems to mostly have benefitted from it. And for all his hyperbole, the criterion of "revolt iff democracy abolished" is a popular one. Ken White (and thanks for being precise this time, as Clark Bianco was about median Mottizen before being kicked out) went a lot further.

and then you think about everyone who got fired and didn't get anywhere near the compensation or an order of magnitude under that, didn't get their jobs back, and didn't get the fawning political coverage, for something far less charged than saying the target of a political assassination (and his family!) deserved it.

Welcome to the difference between public sector jobs and private sector jobs. https://www.fire.org/research-learn/what-free-speech-rights-do-government-employees-have

But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk.

Because their speech is protected from the government under the 1st amendment. They did not make a True Threat. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/true-threats/ https://www.fire.org/research-learn/how-and-why-true-threats-are-unprotected-speech

Their speech would not be protected from private actors, such as a future (private sector) employer or their friends or whoever else.

  • -16

Welcome to the difference between public sector jobs and private sector jobs.

In case you missed the reference

Because their speech is protected from the government under the 1st amendment. They did not make a True Threat.

That stops a conviction (maybe). It does less than nothing against a warrant. Moderators here have been Very Concerned about warrants for speech that would easily avoid Brandenberg.

Moderators here, quite properly, have decided that they don't want fedposting on their forum. Even if it wasn't a legal risk to the mods, tolerating fedposting makes the forum less able to fulfil its stated purpose.

That doesn't mean that the mods receiving a warrant for a common or garden fedpost is particularly likely.

Amadan has specifically and repeatedly noted concerns about a possible warrant to Zorba as a major motivating factor. Whether it's "particularly likely" enough for you to let it count, it's clearly enough for an actual person who actually hosting a website to care -- but only for one political allegiance.

Maybe related: the "contact us" page has a warrant canary saying no warrants have yet been received in 2023.

Probably just forgetting to update, it, but you never know.

This isn't the first time it's been noted.

I don't get it. Is fedposting against the right allowed on this forum?

Nope.

But there's a lot of places it was tolerated, and not only did their management have no concerns about lawfare, more importantly, literally zero have shown up in the news having been hit by or having to resist that lawfare. There's no sequel to ARFCOM; there's no even a sequel to 'Discord Channel Shut Down for making fun of George Floyd'.

This isn't perfect information, just like there are limits to our ability to extrapolate from the lack of Brendan-Eich-facepunching aimed at modern day interleft-battles. It's still information.

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I'm fully on board with this - I wouldn't accept a small risk of attracting police attention for a fun online hobby either. But that remains a reasonable decision on the part of Zorba even if the risk is very small indeed.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision on Zorba's part. I even think it's a perfectly reasonable calculation on the part of progressive-leaning forum.

I'm critiquing the process, not the people reacting to the result.

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In case you missed the reference

They came to an agreement about it https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/norfolk/norfolk-resolves-issue-police-officer-william-kelly-fired-donating-to-rittenhouse-fund/291-045c4a2f-444d-4d1f-9d13-0bb9619b4b90

In an email to 13News Now on Monday, Hogge said the "matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties," but he would not specify how that resolution had been reached.

13News Now reached out to Norfolk City Manager Chip Filer, as well as spokespeople for the City of Norfolk and Norfolk Police Department for clarification and comment. The city's reply was: "The matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties."

Clearly whatever the result is, Hogge is fine with it and did not wish to pursue further. I imagine it's probably something like a reinstatement (or promotion?) with a significant pay raise, but who knows. Still, if he wasn't happy with the result he could sue and would likely win so it must be considered good enough for him.

That stops a conviction (maybe).

In the US, it absolutely does.

It does less than nothing against a warrant.

It does a lot against warrants. Blatantly anti first amendment abuse like that is very rare in modern day America, and typically from lower level government officials in smaller towns and cities when they do happen.

Moderators here have been Very Concerned about warrants for speech that would easily avoid Brandenberg.

The moderators can decide whatever caution level they please, it doesn't mean this properly reflects US law. Also of course, not everyone here is an American and they would have to obey the laws of their own respective country.

  • -15

Clearly whatever the result is, Hogge is fine with it and did not wish to pursue further.

Hogge's the lawyer, giving lawyer-speak for 'I can't even say I won'. Kelly got his job back, so he's not complaining and definitely not doing it somewhere where the department could get him fired for doing it, but there's no evidence he's come out of things with a million or even a hundred thousand bucks.

In the US, it absolutely does.

Party presentation rule, anyone?

It does a lot against warrants.

I would be fascinated to see you explain what procedural protections are present in an ex parte warrant hearing in front of magistrate judges, where police and prosecutors don't even have a duty to present exculpatory evidence. The standard of probable cause means that even a warrant focusing on arguably protected speech is fair game for that 'arguably' result in a search warrant to be evaluated post-ante at trial, and that's before we get to the continuing effort by lower courts to water down Brandenburg.

Hogge's the lawyer, giving lawyer-speak for 'I can't even say I won'. Kelly got his job back, so he's not complaining and definitely not doing it somewhere where the department could get him fired for doing it, but there's no evidence he's come out of things with a million or even a hundred thousand bucks.

We don't know the circumstances, but obviously Kelly and his lawyer are fine with the outcome and didn't seek more. If they are fine with it, what's the complaint?

Party presentation rule, anyone?

The only real modern example I can think of where blatantly anti first amendment abuse of the criminal justice system happened would be James Comey, who wasn't convicted. It's an incredibly weak indictment that basically every legal expert expects to get thrown out.

  • -12

We don't know they're fine with it; we just know that they think it's the best strategic choice. Which is probably true, since they don't have a friendly administration on the other side of the lawsuit.

But there's another bit I'll highlight. The time from April 20, 2021 to February 27, 2023. Can you guess whether the college staff was fired for her speech longer, or shorter, than Kelly?

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Lol. The satire is how you know it's working.

Humour is a coping mechanism. The medievals had an entire holiday dedicated to making fun of the church(it's evolved into mardi gras). Even the schizoid Candace Owens acid trips about Egypt and a french hit squad wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a recognition of the cultus of Charlie Kirk. His faction won and that's why people make fun of it. The Byzantine emperors developed a tradition of accepting mockery of themselves to show they were too important to be bothered. That's what we're seeing.

"His faction won"?

I wouldn't say that Kirk's faction has "won" but I do believe they have the momentum

Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?

If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.

The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.

And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.

Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.

  • -15

"Aura" might be my favourite word in zoomer lingo, I can't think of a non or pre-zoomer equivalent. Aura dramatically shapes hagiographies.

When a high profile target is killed by an underdog striking against overwhelming power, the killer earns significant aura bonus for themselves and their cause. David striking down Goliath was a heroic act of resistance. The power asymmetry makes the killer look righteous.

On the flip side, when the assassin is understood to be the more powerful or unprincipled actor - like blood soaked royals murdering dissidents - that creates a martyr narrative for the victim's side and makes the killer look like a coward. Maybe blaming Israel raises his martyr standing, the insinuation being that he was especially threatening to ZOG world order. And painting George Floyd as an example of systemic oppression harkens back to civil rights era resistance narratives.

But the resistance narratives don't work in either case. Charlie Kirk's killing is pattern-matched to his final act of defending 2A at a college campus, add to the fact his killer seems to be a schizo with murky motives. Tragic, certainly. But heroic? Not really. Re Floyd, the resistance narrative cannot hold up when it was your (not YOUR "your") side rioting and burning small businesses for an entire summer, and cancelling people left and right with the entire media ecosystem defending your behaviour. I do agree that the memeing was organic in both cases though.

Sigh. Look man, modhat off.

You're getting reported a lot, of course, but none of your posts are really rule-breaking, they are just... obnoxious. Because you're doing this schtick where "no one actually celebrated Charlie Kirk's death" (yes they fucking did) and the left wing media atmosphere is definitely as tuned to outrage slop as the right wing one. I don't think you are a troll or a Darwin alt, but you generally do not post good or interesting thoughts, just very weak equivocations. As someone who's been accused of that myself because of my squishy liberal sensibilities (now decaying like a gangrenous sore), what offends me about your posturing it that it often seems fundamentally disingenuous and I don't trust that you are being entirely sincere and not just trying to farm outraged responses yourself.

I am aware a lot of the celebratory posts about Charlie Kirk getting shot were obtained by skimming the worst people on X and reddit, which is always a goldmine of really bad takes if you're trying to assemble a wall of Chinese Robber mugshots, LibsOfTikTok style. But in my own social media orbit (i.e., people I know), I saw a lot of takes along the lines of "Well, murder is bad, but he did cause harm to marginalized people..." Or a smirking repost of his quote about how the 2A was worth a few dead children.

Do I personally know people who would outright celebrate an assassination? Noo... but a whole lot who would "read the news with pleasure."

I think this is bad and cause for worry and it's why I tend to put a boot on "fedposting," even if @gattsuru thinks I am overzealous about it. People who celebrate death, who advocate murder, who think it's funny when someone on the "other side" dies, who want violence, are bad people.

Being happy that someone ended up dead is fundamentally different than supporting their death. Everyone here must understand that distinction, else Trump's comments on Mueller would be more than enough evidence to condemn "the right wing" on this.

Someone I want dead would be like, Putin. I've said before I hope Ukraine wins enough they can drone strike him or give him death sentence or something. Someone I would not care if they died and maybe even be a little cheerful for but don't support their death for would be like, Logan Paul.

  • -10

You believe that Putin is some sort of magical villain that killing him solves everything? There is some chance that that would give result like you want, but there also is the chance that Russia will get more competent leader, or the chance that it will eventually lead to nukes flying, that would damage your well-being.

It's just a matter of Russell conjugation.

There are many people I dislike and would not be sorry to see go. I personally consider it gauche to celebrate death, even someone like Putin or the Ayatollah, though I certainly wouldn't be sad about them. But first of all, wartime deaths are fundamentally different. Second, I'm talking about people who are happy to say they think someone deserves to die for being on the "wrong" side politically. Or even openly advocating for violence.

but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst

I think this is just cope -- the left would have taken any reaction from conservatives as justification to mock Kirk's death. There really isn't some noble pro-modesty faction that would have been nice and respectful, if only the reaction hadn't been so bad. Conservatives pounce! We can just admit that a lot of leftists are glad Charlie died, because they said so, that was what started this thing in the first place.

Your argument in fact falls down by simply noting that a lot of liberals were cheering Charlie's death or going even further and cheering for more deaths of more conservatives. Come on, we all remember it.

This would be far more convincing of an argument if the only people making Kirk jokes were the left. But I know and have seen many people who aren't particularly political who have made jokes about him, in the same way I know plenty of people who aren't particularly political that talk about "goyslop". NYT even wrote an article on how it's just become zoomer slang. It's not just the anti Israel people making that joke, it's tons of normies who find it funny.

Unless all the kids these days are hardened antifa supersoldiers, there's gotta be another explanation for why so many normies have made and shared silly Kirk memes and that explanation is that they're shitposters who make fun of cringe and take on funny memes. And when you act cringy and don't behave seriously, you invite the shitposting.

  • -11

There's a big difference between post-ironic edgelord jokes about Kirkenator and lowkirkenuinely (which even the right enjoys) and leftists saying that they're glad Charlie died he deserved it. Conflating the two is part of the gaslighting.

Honestly Agartha Charlie Kirk is more entertaining and a better argument than anything else I could say here.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBjL9xOuHyY

I grew up in Arizona. It upset a lot of people and was really, really gruesome. Edgy hasan orbiters were outright gleeful about it right after. I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass, but a lot of the ‘martyrdom’ was coming from ‘why exactly was a somewhat edgy college debater murdered?’ and ‘why are people snidely saying he deserved to be murdered?’

I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view.

I'd also mention that in other similar situations the normie woke-adjacent line of thought is usually that people mourn in all sorts of different ways, you don't know what they're going through, it's petty and cruel to openly mock and criticize their attitude etc.

I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes. This is part of why Kirk cringe snowballed, because getting upset at the youth's memes just make them meme harder.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass,

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

  • -18

There's a pretty big difference between joking about something dark to be edgy, and joking about something dark because you well and truly celebrate it.

Part of what made people joke about 9/11 is the fact that there is such a widespread consensus that the speaker knows the listener will probably not interpret them as actually feeling good about the tragedy. Comedy is about breaking expectations, not reinforcing them. If you interrogated the average 9/11 joke-sayer about how they feel about the gruesome details, they would most certainly admit that it was awful. That's why it's funny when such a person will spin a bit of dark comedy out of the situation.

What makes Charlie Kirk's assassination incomparable is that the reaction was open celebration. Leftists joking about Charlie Kirk is less like Americans making a 9/11 joke, and more like if an Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist did so. Such a person is clearly not advancing black comedy, it's just somebody who dehumanizes his opposition celebrating bloodshed. That's the same as what you're effectively defending.

Or do you think chuds joking about "41% of trannies commit suicide" as they celebrate a bridge where a specific 14 year old transgender girl jumped off are exactly the same as random black comedy too?

You come off like you're running cover more than anything else, denying that such ugliness can possibly exist, driving a false equivalence narrative to argue that it's silly to call it out. Comparing this to generic dark humor is convenient to mask the actual, very real hatred.

None of the jokes or memes I’ve seen have been from perspective of ‘Charlie deserved it’, just usual bizarre post ironic references, so I don’t really get what you’re saying. The whole problem people had was with the initial jubilant reaction towards the actual act of violence and people earnestly saying he deserved it.

The only stuff I’ve ever seen people get mad about is mean spirited stuff where people do a finger gun to their neck and intimate that some person deserves what happened to him.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes.

An interesting position.

Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity....

Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat.

Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day[.] Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this[.] “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,” In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.

Damn, check that out, a whole additional post and extensive comment thread where you very much seem to be attempting to frame this as a really serious, chronic problem that demands action! Can you point out any place in either of these posts or the subsequent threads where your critique of "old fart behavior" or "wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe" impinges on your analysis?

Let us speak plainly. I don't think you actually believe anything you write here. You are a committed Blue Tribe partisan, and in each post you say whatever you think will advance your short-term partisan interests in the immediate context, with zero concern for any sort of long-term principle or consistency. You will (and have!) argued in favor of free speech when you perceived free speech to be of benefit to you, and you will (and have!) argued for censorship when censorship is of benefit to you. If you have anything recognizable as actual principles, I do not believe you have ever shared them here; certainly I do not believe that I have seen them.

Now to be very clear, I do not think you are breaking the rules by behaving this way, and as far as I am concerned you are perfectly free to continue as long as it pleases you. This place is for arguments, and you certainly bring arguments. To the extent that your pattern of argumentation is viewed as obnoxious by others, I encourage them to simply remember the things you have said, and repeat them back to you, and those who agree with you, when the moment becomes opportune. As an example, I think it is pretty likely that Blue Tribe is going to, at some point in the next few years, start experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of actual, motivated, grassroots political murder. And when that happens, and when Blues here discuss how prominent members of their tribe being publicly murdered worries them, I am going to quote them this line right here:

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

...along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?

Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

I would never accept this sort of dark humor from an employee, regardless of their age, while at work and in work related groups. They can do what they want in their own time, but they're getting talked to if they joked about 9/11 or Kirk on a work email. That is unacceptable. Kids making humorous Nazi memes is one thing vs professionals in a work related chat, they are different categories and I suspect you must work at a very low level position where no one takes your business communications seriously if you don't grasp this concept. If I had a 30 year old just start talking about their love for Hitler at work, no matter how levels of irony shitposting they want to claim they're being, they're gonna be written up if not fired.

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?

Oh no, you're going to correctly respond that worries over random lone wolf nutjob violence are hyperbolic, I'm so scared.

  • -16

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

There were lots of professionals posting under their real names that they were glad Charlie Kirk was killed. And Young Republicans signal group is not a work-related chat.

There were lots of professionals posting under their real names

"Under their real name" is not the distinction unless you're like mid level management or more typically, above really. I personally wouldn't care if a fry cook is posting edgy memes on their own Facebook, just don't do it at work and don't share it on slack.

But some people do, and lots of them got fired as was their employer's right (if they were private sector).

And Young Republicans signal group is not a work-related chat.

Sure seems like it was given the number of higher up officials in the organization (and even including some politicians from my understanding?) in the group chat. It doesn't seem to be like fry cook John and night shift Henry share shit posts with each other on discord tier chatting, it seems to be something for the organization proper. That's the sort of thing I would fire many employees for, if they were sharing their edgy memes in "the company I work for" group chat that included the CEO and clients.

  • -16

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

Which of these are people getting "canceled" over in regards to Charlie Kirk?

I think accusing Magicalkittycat of having beliefs in an overreach. Fairly high confidence it's just a work of contrarian performance art moreso than actually occupying any particular part of the political spectrum

Fairly high confidence it's just a work of contrarian performance art moreso than actually occupying any particular part of the political spectrum

If anything that seems like more of a reason to cast him into to the shadow realm rather than less.

Send me a few links to where he did that to liberals or progressives, and I might buy that. Niche independent online fora are weird place to do "contrarianism".

People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap.

No, not all sorts. What you're describing hasn't been believable for over a decade.

It's so believable that dark humor jokes exist that this video is from even more than a decade ago. The internet making fun of your sacred cows is not some new phenomenon and wanting to be immune to it is again, just another form of cringe.

I'm saying dark humor, at least a certain political flavor of it, has become haram somewhere in the 2010's, so you finding an old video of an instance of dark humor that is not offensive to the side that declares things haram proves... what exactly?

Anyway, FFC pretty much proved your "tee he, it's just edgy jokes" facade is just an act.

Oh if you're saying the opposite and that dark humor isn't allowed anymore, then you're even more wrong. I see plenty of 9/11 jokes to this day, I see people constantly joking about suicide and self harm, and remember this whole thread is about how kids are joking about Kirk.

Or let's say, Epstein! Endless jokes about him, and he raped a bunch of children. I simply can't take the claim that dark humor isn't allowed anymore when Five Nights at Epstein's is a real game.

Oh if you're saying the opposite and that dark humor isn't allowed anymore, then you're even more wrong. I see plenty of 9/11 jokes

Or let's say, Epstein!

Like I said: "no, not all sorts". There used to be period on the internet where you could run wild with all sorts of offensive humor, but it's long gone, and I don't know who you think you're fooling by saying we're still in it.

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Enlightened centrist hat on: Leftists are hypocrites about this, but so are pearl clutching rightists when the dark humor is about Kirk and not minorities. Everyone has their sacred cows.

Ok, but don't tell me then it's just "le edgy zoomer humor" when you know an analogous joke from the other side will get you banned from any mainstream platform that is not Twitter in, like, 5 seconds.

George Droyd and such are still freely available on tiktok/youtube/insta.

People are literally spamming the N-word all over Instagram Reels. I think the userbase of The Motte is just too old, and their feeds aren't serving them all the edgy vertical videos that Gen Z and Alpha are consuming. Naturally, they end up with their pearls clutched and panties in a twist over fucking memes.

Plus making fun of sacred topics like Trans Suicides gets a totally different reaction from the Left

Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens...

This maybe one of the most egregious examples of outgroup homogeneity bias I've seen in a while.

Yes, Candace Owens joined TPUSA claiming to have renounced her woke ways in 2017, but then she attempted a hostile take-over of the organization in 2024, got kicked out as a result, and seems to have been nursing a personal vendetta against Kirk's wife Erika ever since.

Meanwhile, Carlson and Hanania were only ever "allies" of Kirk in the sense that they were all ostensibly Republicans, A a party that both have been working to distance themselves from for some time now.

Your standards seem ridiculously high if "former employee of 7 years with such a clear crush that people gossip about it" and "guy who literally spoke at Kirk's own funeral alongside the president" somehow don't count.

At that point who does?

If a scorned woman nursing a personal vendetta against the man and his family is your idea of an "ally", you have no standards at all.

If a scorned woman nursing a personal vendetta against the man and his family is your idea of an "ally", you have no standards at all.

They were close before he died, she literally worked at his company for 7 years and only left a year before his death. They frequently appeared together. They were so close that again, people gossiped about whether or not they had an affair.

And I'd also like to point out once more that Tucker Carlson, the other example, spoke at Kirk's funeral. He was considered especially important, near par to the president given that they were both guest speakers. So even if you want to say Owens should not count because blah blah blah, Carlson definitely does. If he wasn't considered an ally, why was he there?

she literally worked at his company for 7 years and only left a year before his death

Yes I know, I adressed that in my prior comment.

If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him. Right-wing George Floyd 'I can't breathe' memes are scrubbed off the internet, while Kirkist mockery stays online because of leftist bloodthirstiness.

Tu quoque?

Even George Droyd has been banned off most major platforms, including X. It's less about bloodthirstiness and more about who controls the censorship apparatus. Some left-wing employee at YouTube or Meta is the one deciding which accounts get pulled for "harmful content" and which are allowed to continue existing as permitted political expression.

If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him.

"Discredit" is the wrong word entirely. Kirk has not been discredited by being turned into a meme, people still widely think it was wrong to kill him (as you can see by the fact his alleged killer is on trial and likely to be sentenced).

BLM was a largely serious reaction by people who mostly took themselves seriously. The Kirk aftermath was silly and hyperbolic by people who didn't even believe in their own words. People like LOTT or Steve Bannon saying "this is war" are not serious. They did not and have not picked up arms or done serious protests (of what exactly anyway? Robinson was caught). They claim war, and yet do nothing. They do not mean what they say.

This goes up to the highest levels even. When we have JD Vance searching for conspiracies to believe in, and guests at Kirk's own funeral making it into a joke, how is anyone else supposed to treat it seriously?

  • -17

BLM was a largely serious reaction

lol it was a scam artist buffet and a free for all for violent morons.

they definitely took themselves too seriously, though.

Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it. (The other says its a bad thing, but also deplores what he said, thus negating the virtue of the first.) Virtuous centrists are a rounding error.

Maybe you are sincere. But there are certainly players that are not, and I am tired of listening to the snide and back-biting commentary of the partisans of the other side. You take it seriously because a man is dead because he was killed for speech, a right that he had every freedom to exercise. Nothing can diminish that, although you've certainly tried.

If you applied the same lack of charity to Donald Trump's poasting that you need to get to "half of the left wing said it was a good thing", then he would be at the business end of a noose. Trump repeatedly shitposts about beating up demonstraters, molesting teenage girls in locker rooms, suspending the Constitution, celebrating political violence against the Pelosis, deporting US citizens, invading NATO countries, and running for a third term. Fundamental to the case for Trump is that this is just shitposting, and Trump's opponents who take it seriously are either dishonest or mentally ill.

"Every premature death is a tragedy, that of Charlie Kirk less than most" is not a belief I hold (I feel more commonality with people doing the work of politics on the other side of the aisle than I do with my own allies who stick to shitposting) but it is one that is entirely compatible with a commitment to democracy, free speech, the rule of law etc. Unlike the Cult of Luigi, I do not see any comparable sympathy for Tyler Robinson, which is what you would expect to see if large numbers of normies did in fact think the murder was a good thing. Essentially everyone on both sides of the aisle's attitude to Robinson is "please let him not be one of ours." What I saw was a lot of shitposting in violation of de mortuiis nil nisi bonum, which is a rule of etiquette and not of law or custom.

Is the claim here that the President of the United States should be held to a lower standard of public decorum than a classroom assistant in Minneapolis, or is it that it is different when it is our guy doing it?

Even more so as I constantly have to point out, there's a difference between professional conduct and private citizen conduct. A government employee shitposting in their private time is way different than shitposting on their official government accounts.

Political leadership, especially the president, is a 24/7 jobs. It's a job so important that it's even in some sense lifelong and we expect (or at least expected) even the former presidents to have some form of decorum about them. Bush takes it ultra seriously, beyond what I even think is necessary, and won't even comment about ongoing issues.

Anyone who seriously thinks low level small town government employee posting on their private accounts should be held to higher standards of etiquette than the president on his official accounts used for serious announcements has the world flipped on its head.

Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it.

Comments celebrating his death were actually quite uncommon. They were so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that was being passed around had to cast a web so wide for a decently sized list that it includes people saying things like I hope there isn't more violence in response, dark humor jokes, and comments literally saying it was awful he got shot. That's how far the digging had to go, it includes people who literally said it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk and think it's hypocritical to care about him but not dead children. Outside of the generic internet edgelords who say edgy things about everything, there wasn't really much actual pro violence talk, and we can't take the edgy shitposters seriously given that they're edgy shitposters.

Of course if you choose to cast a ridiculously wide net of nonsense, you get a lot of fish. But most of them were not what was actually looked for. If you actually look at what political leaders were saying, anti violence was the general rhetoric from the left.

  • -17

There wasn't much "more please", although there's some nuance there because most of the fully-mindkilled ones were in full denial and claiming the murderer was a fascist (also, most people aren't risk-tolerant enough to endorse terrorism in public, though Destiny arguably was). There was a fair amount of celebration, though, including that newsroom whose backstage got caught cheering in a broadcast. I would count some of the jokes (though not all) as celebration (including e.g. this) - I mean, telling jokes is one of the main ways you celebrate in a text format where you can't organically cheer/clap/laugh/hug/fist-pump.

"Half" is an exaggeration, though, and I agree the actual Democratic Party leadership condemned the shooting.

Come on. You're doing the thing that every edgy leftist is doing, and pretending that their not-so-subtle mockery wasn't concealing their glee at getting him. It does not convince, no more than 'in minecraft' is a defense against conspiracy. No comedian ever went on television and said that George Floyd was probably killed by a commie, and certainly no con was going around saying he deserved to die because he punched a pregnant woman (which is something he actually did.)

And yet, Kirk's assassination is deemed his own fault because of some amorphous harm to leftist causes, or something.

I'm not stupid. I can see the winks and the smiles. Your argument is unconvincing and insults the intelligence of anyone credulous enough to extend you the benefit of the doubt. The people who called him a Nazi have blood on their hands. People who use that word to rile up extremists to kill their political opposition have blood on their hands. If this isn't stoastic terrorism, it is at the very least 'turbulent priest' levels of wishcasting.

It is not too far to suggest that you have some infinitesimal part of his blood on your hands.

Come on. You're doing the thing that every edgy leftist is doing, and pretending that their not-so-subtle mockery wasn't concealing their glee at getting him

"If I substitute what you're saying with this imaginary thing you didn't say, it's just like you said the imaginary thing"

Yeah I guess so.

The people who called him a Nazi have blood on their hands.

Damn, not only are words dangerous they can kill too?

If this isn't stoastic terrorism, it is at the very least 'turbulent priest' levels of wishcasting.

Not a thing. It's never been a thing. You can tell because it's a modern invention for something that if it was real, should have been an established concept already. It's what gets said when people can't claim incitement (a legal term with actual standards) but still wanna whine about name calling or insults.

  • -18

If you can't see that the memes about Kirk postmortem come from the desire to rile up the genuinely aggrieved right - that you stubbornly insist that the fig leaf is an burka - then there's no point to arguing with you. We simply don't share the same reality. You may skirt the rules of the Motte in doing what you're doing, but I refuse to let you bait me any further. Even if I did write a well-written, precisely worded argument, you'd just duck out and say that you didn't have time in your busy life to respond.

I'll merely reiterate what FCfromSSC said already, and add on: it's easy to win arguments when you run around the field with the goalposts. Or, in other words, you have already contradicted your past positions, and it's hard to see if you have any principles whatsover.

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Damn, not only are words dangerous they can kill too?

You say this sarcastically, but there are contexts where yes, the full moral responsibility of murder attaches for words. Ordering a minion (or, I suppose, a machine that takes text/voice input) to kill is generally considered murder or something that amounts to it (absent the usual affirmative defences).

I don't think that calling Kirk a Nazi is one of those contexts - though one can argue whether it's culpable to a lesser degree, as e.g. slander/libel - but you're overreaching here.

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What's the last update you heard in the news about Goode or Pretti? Or is the slop diagnosis something that's only goes on direction, or only means something one direction?

The Right does not know how to do martyrdom culture. It’s sad because Kirk could have been a great conservative martyr. But we just don’t know how, apparently. We lost the technology. The, the spirit of a martyr should be carried through reverent rituals and heart-moving music. They tried to carry it with pyrotechnic displays, a colorful widow in too much makeup, really silly events, etc. Just terrible. Tasteless and senseless. You needed a song like Horst Wessel Lied that could be sung in a mass gathering under reddish hued lighting. You needed dedicated photographers to only present the experiences in the most powerful frame. You needed to associate his death with weeping women. George Floyd was effectively martyrized because the Public consumed his image intermediated by emotional actors (TV anchors), saddened women replaying his death, and cool people telling you to join them in a march. But the Left immediately de-martyred him through a face-swapping meme and the intentionally humorous “we are Charlie Kirk” anthem. Just plain social engineering that the right can’t compete with.

Are you specifically talking about the current American (Republican) Right?

The Right of the entire West, it seems.

Horst Wessel was killed by members of an organised Communist paramilitary. That is an easy martyrdom story (although Christianity doesn't count soldiers who die due to enemy action as martyrs, so by the Christian rules he wasn't one).

The Republicans failed to make the martyrdom thing work because they didn't convince anyone outside their own filter bubble that Kirk was a victim of organised left-wing political violence. It isn't clear to me whether this is because he obviously wasn't, or if it is because they overreached in the aftermath of his death by trying to claim that school librarians and HR ladies shitposting was political violence.

It's undoubtedly more accurate to say that he was a victim of a self-radicalizing cultural milieu that normalizes leftist political executions.

Robinson was part of a leftist community online, which is why his bullet had the words “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao” on it. I’m sure more information on this will come out after or during the trial. Christians do consider soldiers martyrs, depending on the cause. Also denomination dependent. There are many cases of American martyrs whose stories are just completely made up, like Matthew Shepherd who died from a meth-related incident.

There are many cases of American martyrs whose stories are just completely made up, like Matthew Shepherd who died from a meth-related incident.

I think made-up martyr stories are a lot older than that...

You needed to associate his death with weeping women.

Okay, I know what you mean there, but that was the

colorful widow in too much makeup,

it's just that the other side proceeded to vice-signal it away by reveling in it and vilifying her, what you're calling "de-martyring" him.

Widows should wear black and take on the role of a victim, but she wore a white girlboss suit and presented herself as a new leader. This is not the liberal’s doing, it was just a tasteless and irresponsible choice. Also, the addition of conscious artifice to mourning is old. Like ancient Babylon and Old Testament old, where the family of the deceased would hire ritual female weepers. The problem is not so much that Erika was artificial as that her artifice was tasteless. Not to blame someone going through the worst event of her life, but her team should have stepped in and commanded her what to do.

I think this is part of a wider pattern. In a world where political violence is not, in fact, acceptable (very much including the one we live in), a ghoulish but rational response to your own ally being assassinated is "Excellent - this is a huge pile of free political capital. Let's celebrate." Letting on in public that this is how you feel means you lose the free political capital you were hoping to celebrate. Erika Kirk's behaviour makes perfect sense if she is rushing to capitalise on the political capital of her husband's death while it is still fresh, which she was. And she wasn't the only Republican who very visibly saw the assassination of Kirk as more of an opportunity than a tragedy.

I have to wonder if they were looking at the numbers in the background and felt they had to find a new anchor ASAP to keep people in their jobs.

I don't think it would have mattered. More than one appearance sobbing would have gotten a similar reaction. Kirk's murder was just too much. And, in a partisan environment, that actually means people are less likely to back down. Backing down on the dehumanizing rhetoric and mockery implies you have something to be guilty for and nobody wants to pull on that thread, especially if it means rounds of right wing cancel culture.

Your "verdict" link is broken because you forgot to include the "https://" part at the beginning.

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