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How do you suggest that I express my opinion if I do believe that so-and-so is literally Hitler but I also genuinely don't want that person assassinated? If I keep adding a "…but we still shouldn't murder the guy, because murder is morally wrong and socially corrosive even when we're talking about the literal scum of the Earth" disclaimer at the end, I'll look like I'm just doing the Julius Caesar speech. If I don't then I'm open to ordinary stochastic-terrorism accusations. It seems like a bit of a catch-22. Yet if you seriously believe that a public figure is literally Hitler, clearly you have a duty to communicate that in some way.
Don’t lose.
A successful traitor is a Patriot.
If you literally believe someone is Hitler then you should want him assassinated. And when you aim at the king the important thing is you don’t miss.
A stochastic terrorist who wins is the Administrations favorite pundit they leak things to on MSNBC.
Not necessarily, for the reasons I discuss here. And anyway, even if we disagree on the literally-Hitler case, there are surely levels of badness that a public figure can be where I don't think it justifies extrajudicial murder, but I do think it justifies public outcry, and some idiot could potentially think it justified murder. Wherever you draw the line of how bad someone has to be before you should want them assassinated, it is almost certainly case that there will be people who draw it closer to home.
I still think is “don’t lose”. You don’t kill 1930’s Hitler because he was Hitler without power. It’s the same reason I don’t go around killing internet communists living in their mother’s basement. They have no power.
But I do support Pinochet killing a bunch of communists because the communists threat was real and other countries had become communists.
Kirk is stochastic terrorism because he did in fact have political power. Something is terrorism because it’s using terror to attempt political change. So inciting people to kill Kirk is terrorism. There are real political motivations.
Perhaps you say this is just word salad. But I do think in the case of Kirk there is a difference between his ideas are bad and here’s x,y,z why they are bad and using incitement language. And yes of course all partisans do incite in the current environment. I am not saying one side is innocent of stochastic terrorism.
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Perhaps you could clarify that you're a hardcore pacifist, and that it would have been wrong to murder Hitler as well?
Not sure that would work. "Here is how bad this guy is; honestly, he's so bad I'd kill him if I did not hold murder to be absolutely taboo in literally all cases… and surely none of you would ever countenance committing murder either, no matter how evil the target… would you?" is still very easy for my enemies to spin as stochastic terrorism.
Also, I don't think you need to be a "hardcore pacifist" to believe that it would have been wrong to murder Hitler in 1930. Whether it can be ethical to assassinate a totalitarian dictator is a different question from whether it is ever appropriate to assassinate someone who doesn't hold absolute power because they could commit horrible crimes if they ever acquired absolute power. I interpret the "John Smith is literally Hitler" meme as more like "John Smith is literally 1930!Hitler" than it is like "John Smith is literally 1943!Hitler" - the implied claim is that if John Smith had free rein he would be as bad as Hitler, not "John Smith, at this very moment, represents as immediate a threat to the free world as Hitler did at the height of his power".
I think that is a potentially legitimate opinion to have about a modern politician, and one which it would be urgent to convey without understatement if it's true; but that it still wouldn't justify an assassination. Absent supernatural foreknowledge, this would have applied to Hitler prior to his rise to power - we can say with the benefit of hindsight that it would have been a good thing for some nut to put a bullet in his brain in 1930 but there was no way for our 1930 gunman to know that for certain, before or after the crime.
(Important disclaimer: I don't think Charlie Kirk was literally Hitler even in the 1930-Hitler sense. I don't even think Trump is; I suspect he would make himself dictator-for-life if he were ten years younger and had the means to do so, but I don't think he would use that position to declare bloody wars of conquest or organize genocides. I'm very much speaking about general principles here.)
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