banned
- The UK (Terrorism Act 2006, Section 1 - "Encouragement of terrorism")
- Germany(Section 130 StGB (Criminal Code) - "Incitement to hatred" (Volksverhetzung))
- France (Article 421-2-5 of the Criminal Code)
- Spain (Article 578 of the Spanish Criminal Code)
- Italy (Articles 270 quater and 270 quinquies of the Criminal Code)
- Poland (Article 255a of the Polish Criminal Code)
- Austria (Section 282a of the Austrian Criminal Code)
- Belgium (Article 140bis of the Criminal Code)
- Cyprus (Article 12 of the 2010 law on combating terrorism)
- Bulgaria (Article 320(1) and 320(2) of the Bulgarian Criminal Code)
- Lithuania (Article 250(1) of the Lithuanian Criminal Code)
- Luxembourg (Article 135(11) of the Luxembourg Criminal Code)
- Romania (Act 187/2012, amending Law 535/2004 on preventing and combating terrorism)
- Slovenia (Article 110(1)(1) and 110(1)(2) of the Criminal Code)
Most major European nations have laws on the books for this, and there are two EU directives and frameworks expressly referencing "glorification" in a "public provocation to commit a terrorist offense" that may be banned within that framework.
It's a norm that has a long past in Europe (since you know, we've not exactly been a peaceful continent), and though there are exceptions and enforcement varies, free speech that includes support for terrorism has essentially never been the norm in Europe.
FarmReadyElephants
1d ago
My opinion, already expressed on this thread, is that celebration of assassination is something we should have a bipartisan "cancel culture" about, because it's a load-bearing taboo that allows the rest of freedom of speech to function. This is similar to how Lee Kwan Yew banned the communist party in Singapore at a time when SE Asian countries were falling to communist revolutions. A 99% commitment to liberal norms is more durable than one that commits to 100% with obvious loopholes for bad actors to end the liberal system.
Cancel culture for other things are bad, since it cordons off plausibly true ideas from public discussion. You shouldn't be cancelled for "misgendering", or stating FBI crime statistics, or making the okay sign, or having once made racist jokes, or donating to a conservative cause, or saying riots are bad.
The effect of cancel culture over support for assassination is to preserve liberalism. The effect of cancel culture for slight deviations from the Left platform is to end liberalism. This isn't hard.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/365663?context=8#context
roystgnr
1d ago
This guy needs to be banned.
Only took another hour, albeit for a short ban.
He states views that are basically unfalsifiable.
The failure at "making beliefs pay rent" is ironic when juxtaposed against moaning that "This place used to be LessWrong and SSC", but epistemology is hard and sometimes you can come up with an idea that's falsifiable in principle even if you have trouble figuring out how it might be falsified in practice. I think the point where he really went off the deep end was the thread where one of his claims actually got falsified and instead of taking the opportunity to literally become less wrong he started misinforming everyone about the response and insulting the respondent and calling correctness "pedantry". I've seen people speed-run the decay that LessWrong described as "pass from lying about specific facts ... to lying about the rules of reasoning" before, but I've never seen someone doing it while approvingly citing LessWrong!
who the fuck would say that if Kirk was more “gracious,” the shooter wouldn’t shot unless they were tacitly explaining away the murder?
But, to be fair, this is exactly the sort of distinction between causality and blame that autism-adjacent LessWrong-type folks have no trouble making correctly. There is no logical incompatibility between positive claims like [if you hand over your wallet a mugger is less likely to shoot you] or "if Kirk had been gracious in his response, the Tyler may not have even shot at all" and normative claims like [the mugger is completely at fault and the victim not at all at fault for the negative consequences of the mugging] or "I'm not contending any of this was remotely justified", even if the positive claims feel like victim blaming.
SnapDragon
1d ago
Blame the "interesting, intelligent" posters who got themselves permabanned because they just couldn't help making everyone else's experience worse. The rules aren't arbitrary or hard to follow.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Is this what you mean by "Interesting, intelligent people being banned for petty rule violations"?
You are filling the mod queue with these obnoxious attempts to bait people. I'm sure in your own mind you're a brilliant debater pwning the chuds. I am not impressed.
I'm not going to permaban you. I'm going to ban you for two days. In your own words: "Do better."
zeke5123a
1d ago
This guy needs to be banned. He offers a stupid theory. He then insults people whilst focusing on minutia. He states views that are basically unfalsifiable. And, he implicitly justifies (though he denies it) murder (who the fuck would say that if Kirk was more “gracious,” the shooter wouldn’t shot unless they were tacitly explaining away the murder?)
Some people are confusing my argument. It’s much more practical than me playing the morality police. Celebrating and praising political assassins is a step on the path to ending a liberal democratic society. You gotta have some degree of sanction against it for the same reason LKY banned the communist party in Singapore.
If you want to craft a maximally free society, don’t start with an absolutely free society and look on in a stupor as people find the exploits that will bring it crashing to the ground
until we get total numbers at year's end) has had fewer visitors in 2025 than 2023, an astonishing fact when you consider the earth's population has grown hundreds of millions over that time period.
There's a reason I selected average of 2021 to 2023 as the criteria. We skip 2020 because the Biden admin was not in charge then, so we include the remaining 3 years where pandemic-excused policies were relevant to tourists, though by 2023 they were pretty weak but not entirely absent.
You're welcome to provide data for the average of 2021 to 2023 against 2025 for Vegas.
Regardless, I specified "Visitors to the US" because the initial discussion was about international tourism, and "Visitors to Vegas" is a poor proxy for this because of domestic tourism. Most numbers I could find on the percentage of visitors to Vegas that are domestic tourists puts it somewhere between 70% and 80%.
To decouple the chilling effect from the desire not to travel during a pandemic is quite simple, just compare the total decline to the specific decline in places with legal restrictions, the difference will tell you approximately how many people didn't travel because they were banned, and how many didn't travel because they were afraid of the deadly global pandemic.
"Afraid of the deadly global pandemic" is not something independent of government policy, but instead the product of government policy. If a government makes people afraid to travel by telling them covid will kill them if they do, that's still the government's fault.
This is something we could agree on, but probably won't: The chilling effect of both covid restrictions and ICE deportations is the direct result of government policy, not something that happens without. Yet for some reason you think the chilling effect of covid restrictions is merely an organic "desire not to travel".
A good example seems to be Egypt, a country that is a tourist destination, centrally located, and had very light corona virus requirements (Between August 15th 2021 and June 16th 2022 you just had to show a negative test within the 3 days before arrival).
Not a comprehensive account of tourism restrictions, you need to also consider domestic restrictions that would affect the activities that tourists can do once in the country.
But regardless, we can use your method, with the actual source Wikipedia is using for these graphs.
Egypt's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 28% 2021: 62% 2022: 90%
Mexico's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 55% 2021: 71% 2022: 85%
Australia will be an example of an extreme restriction country. Numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors via this dataset as OWID is incomplete: 2020: 19% 2021: 3% 2022: 39%
That some countries had returned to 90% of 2019 tourism numbers by 2022, while Australia remains down at 39%, strongly suggests that the overwhelming majority of the decline in tourism can be attributed to government policy. If the decline in tourism was instead mainly due to fear of covid, then tourists would have no reason to continue visiting Egypt while refusing to visit Australia.
Shrike
2d ago
What is the clear evidence that an afterlife belief is instrumental? Afghanistan of the 90s and before was possibly the most theistic country in the world, and all Muslims believe in an afterlife. Bacha Bazi is an Afghan costume that coexisted alongside Islamic belief for a millennia until the Taliban banned it.
What I am suggesting is that without the belief in the afterlife, that Taliban would never have done what they did, which makes it instrumental. The fact that other people believed in the afterlife is immaterial to the question of whether or not belief in the afterlife was instrumental for the Taliban.
But if you like, we can take another angle: we've already discussed (and agreed) that religious people give more to charity. Surely belief in an afterlife is at play in at least some individual cases?
This argument falls short because the Christians who do not have dependents also don’t give all superfluous possessions to the poor, neither do the wealthy Christians with dependents usually live austerely after providing for their relatives.
"Give all superfluous possessions to the poor" as such isn't really a clear Christian teaching (which the exception of some sects, I think) so, again, if we are judging Christians by their own standards I don't really see the issue here. (Might be different for the specific sects).
I think criticizing Christians who do no charitable works at all (and I am sure such Christians do exist) is fair. But also they are (arguably) not supposed to be ostentatious about donating, so it can be tricky.
we see condemnation in the Church Fathers about nearly every conspicuous expression of wealth, even rings.
Sure, but setting aside the fact that the Church Fathers said a lot of things, many of which many Christians do not hold to today (unless they are in Scripture, they are not considered canonical, although they are often considered helpful) criticizing displays of wealth is not the same thing as saying wealthy people will go to hell (as you seem to suggest above).
then it should follow that those who believe in the greatest reward imaginable for all of eternity should be able to put up with a few decades of poverty. I’m at a loss for why this wouldn’t happen unless the belief is not quite fully believed.
Well, first off, this does happen. There are nuns and monks and religious orders and missionaries. Those all exist. There are still people being persecuted and even executed for their faith. That actually happens. But secondly you seem to think that Scripture says "be poor and you get into heaven" which isn't the case. Really, your soteriology isn't in line with what most major Christian congregations teach.
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus...Luke 12:33...Acts 4-5
In all of these cases I think you are stripping out some context. Your gloss of Acts 5 is misleading; it's very clear from the text that Ananias died after Paul's rebuke because of dishonesty – here's Acts 5, versus 1 - 10:
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
There's probably a good argument that Luke 12:33 ("Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.") applies to Christians broadly, particularly viewed in light of 12:15 (" Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.") and it's often viewed this way. But we should also consider the context of Luke 12 is that Christ is preparing the apostles for persecution (see e.g. Luke 12:11 "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.")
In my experience Protestants do take Luke 12:33 seriously, but not literally – that is, they do believe (and act as if they believe) that giving alms is good, and giving possessions to charity is good, and stores up rewards in heaven, but they also don't try to liquidate everything that they have immediately to give alms – perhaps because they often have or aspire to have families, perhaps for the same reason they don't expect to be taken into the synagogues and questioned, perhaps in some cases as you suggest because they don't really believe, perhaps because they have reasoned their way out of the application of the verse through various means. (The standard line in Protestant denominations, I think, is that "you should tithe.") And certainly it's quite arguable that while the principle of giving alms is good, the context of the passage suggests the specific instruction was meant to be acted on by the Apostles. Now, maybe you don't find this persuasive! And maybe Christians who would argue that are wrong and you are correct! But contextualizing it like that is not crazy.
As for the story of Lazarus, I think the closest suggestion to rich = hell is this line:
Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
A full reading of the parable might lead one to wonder if his sin was being insanely wealthy, or not doing alms to the beggars outside of his gate. Considering that the moral of the parable seems to be as follows – "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." – it seems likely that the actual thrust of the parable was aimed at the Pharisees (see Luke 16:14 - 18) who would not hear Christ's message even after His resurrection. That doesn't mean that there's no theological information about wealth here, of course, but again the context needs to be kept in mind.
To step back for a moment, I think what's happening here writ large is that you're taking a (not necessarily incoherent) reading of Scripture – which I do think some Christians share – and then insisting that all Christians are hypocrites for not sharing it. (Notably absent from your collection of verses: the many verses in Scripture that celebrate accumulating wealth and offer concrete advice on how to do so.) Setting aside the fact that your methodology here is unmistakably Protestant (and thus your root assumptions are not shared by many Christians!) it's just true that Christians' reading of Scripture and what it means varies considerably and that it might be more parsimonious to assume that most Christians simply do not share your interpretation of Scripture, rather than insisting that most Christians are hypocrites. Certainly (although a great many Christians are hypocrites) it's a bit more charitable, I think.
I want to circle up on this entire thing by saying, firstly, apologies for the late reply (I've been busy, but I found our conversation thought-provoking and I appreciate that!)
Secondly, to circle back on the broader point – you've been arguing that nobody is convinced by Scripture in the Year of Our Lord 2025. But the reasoning you offer suggests at best that few people believe this. (Which some Christians would agree with emphatically, citing Matthew 7:14!) Moreover, your original point was that it's harder today to believe than it was in the past. But all of your arguments (that Christians don't truly believe in the teachings of their religion because they engage in conspicuous displays of wealth) were true throughout most of the history of the Church. The problem of hypocrites and pretend believers was real even in the 1st century, and the accumulation of wealth and power by the Church over the course of history – which you seem to suggest is downstream of a lack of conviction on the part of Christians due to modernity – happened long before modernity and the scientific method as we currently would identify them posed an ideological threat to Christianity as such.
At one point, it seemed like Destiny was making good faith effort to engage in discussion with the other side. He went into debates with people on the right like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Actual Justice Warrior, etc. Talking with high profile right-leaning individuals is in a sense more courageous than talking to random students. I haven't seen Destiny go viral for debating random students. Does he even do live open mic events? I've only seen him in on like discord calls.
As it turned out, it was not done in good faith and it was just an attempt to get more people over to his side. It seems Destiny is no longer interested in maintaining decorum with members from the opposite side. Destiny literally mocked the firefighter killed at Trump's rally. Kirk didn't mock anyone dying on the other side. I don't think Destiny has made any attempt to reach out to the right in a long while.
EDIT: See @eee solid criticism's below on my take on Destiny. I have crossed out my previous statement and updated with clearer statement.
KMC
2d ago
Bluesky is the official twitter replacement for people who hate Musk (aka, Democrat voters). Reddit, one of the biggest websites on the internet, has essentially banned twitter in favor of bluesky via moderator coordination, and so now theoretically apolitical places like /r/nfl and /r/mlb will only link to bluesky.
It's the representation of Democrat voters online. Maybe not as a whole, but absolutely their online presence.
NullHypothesis
3d ago
A willingness to talk to the other side might be a low bar, but it seems to be a bar that so many have difficulty meeting. How many people in the realm of politics are making the effort to reach out to everyday people of the other side and have a discussion? Even if one were to think he's an intellectual hack creating viral moments by dunking on uninformed college students, do not regular everyday college students have the right to talk to someone with a different political perspective? What conservative voices exist in college and universities, which is populated by professors of increasing left-leaning ideologies? Universities invite left leaning speakers all the time without having to constantly worry about protestors against said speaker. Kirk died talking to students on campuses.
I don't know how I feel about flip-flopping criticisms. On the one hand, yes, a certain type of flip-flopping can be evidence of a lack of pillar of values shaping a world view. On the other hand, that's an uncharitable way of describing people that update their views and change their mind based on new information or changing circumstances. There's flip-flopping your core values, and then there's flip-flopping the results of applying your core values.
On Epstein:
Here is a video of Kirk saying all the Epstein files should be released. This was just a few days ago. https://instagram.com/reel/DOda98IEjzx/
Does this shift the needle in any way? Is he a flip flopper or someone that just kowtows to party lines? I guess this could be considered more evidence to the flip-flopping allegation.
Foreign Policy:
The Iran situation was not in the public consciousness when Kirk made his comment in April. His comment about a war in the Middle East is applied to a different set of circumstances than to that in June. If I recall, in the end the US did not deploy a large number of ground troops in Iran and the whole thing wrapped up relatively quickly compared to something like Afghanistan. I imagine when people say US involvement in a war in the Middle East, we're trying to avoid another Afghanistan or Iraq. It's hard to say the situation with Iran is similar in the reasons that might have motivated Kirk to say we should avoid another war in the Middle East.
TikTok:
This does seem like a valid example of flip-flopping. To play some defense though, Kirk's demand for banning TikTok is preceded by fan accounts being banned for hate speech, so I suppose he might have had a TikTok is not a free speech platform angle here. By the time he changes his mind, he acknowledges TikTok can be used to reach out to millions of zoomers. I think a more thorough examination into the reasons why Kirk may have wanted to ban TikTok can make this a better example of flip-flopping.
De Santis:
After a certain point you rally behind the candidate that has the greatest chance of wining. This is politics 101. I don't think this is a great example of flip-flopping. It's a stupid move to continue to support a weaker candidate in an attempt to be more principled, which would result in an increased likelihood a candidate from the opposite party who holds even less values you agree with becomes president instead.
Mail-in Ballots:
The article you linked does not strongly support your claim. Kirk made a post that he thought was evidence of mail-in voting shenanigans. I think a more valid criticism would be that he didn't do his due diligence to fully vet the source. It's absurdly stupid to make up something false because it can be so easily proven false, so it's more likely he jumped the gun on spreading a story that he thought was real.
I don't really know about Chase the Vote. Did they get people to do mail-in ballots? I checked Arizona and that state has early in person ballots. I guess if they ended up getting early votes via mail-voting this could be considered a strong example of flip-flopping considering how much of a role distrust of mail-in voting had for the republican side. That being said, nowhere in the article you linked does Kirk say should only vote in person.
Political Violence/Pelosi
Here's more of the Paul Pelosi quote
I'm looking at Politico.com, I looking at the New York times, I'm looking at all these places, and there's a little bit of mention here. For example, Politico says, ‘top Republicans reject any link between GOP rhetoric and Paul Pelosi assault.’ Of course, you should reject any link!
Why is the Republican party — why is the conservative movement to blame for gay, schizophrenic, nudists that are hemp jewelry makers, breaking into somebody’s home or maybe not breaking into somebody’s home? Why are we to blame for that exactly?
And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out. I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions. I wonder what his bail is? They’re going after him with attempted murder, political assassination, all this sort of stuff.
I’m not qualifying it. I think it’s awful, it’s not right. But why is it that in Chicago you’re able to commit murder and be out the next day? Why is it that you're able to trespass, 2nd degree murder, arson, threat a public official, cashless bail, this happens all over San Francisco. But if you go after the Pelosis, oh you're [???] immediately
Note the last line. Actual murderers and other high stake criminals go out on bail all the time. You're trying to spin this as evidence is his endorsement of political violence, but Kirk is making his statement in context of a city that literally bails out criminals all the time. I didn't see anything in here that endorses political violence.
4doorsmorewhores
3d ago
Just to update you on this bet, Las Vegas (the city that it's easiest to get tourist data for, until we get total numbers at year's end) has had fewer visitors in 2025 than 2023, an astonishing fact when you consider the earth's population has grown hundreds of millions over that time period.
Here's the source for the numbers
3.5 mil in 2023: https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-hits-highest-july-tourism-number-since-pre-pandemic-with-35m-visitors
3.1 mil in 2025: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/vegas-tourism-is-down-some-blame-trumps-tariffs-and-immigration-crackdown
My understanding is that a drop in Canadian tourism has hit northern cities the most, unlike relatively isolated Las Vegas.
To decouple the chilling effect from the desire not to travel during a pandemic is quite simple, just compare the total decline to the specific decline in places with legal restrictions, the difference will tell you approximately how many people didn't travel because they were banned, and how many didn't travel because they were afraid of the deadly global pandemic. A good example seems to be Egypt, a country that is a tourist destination, centrally located, and had very light corona virus requirements (Between August 15th 2021 and June 16th 2022 you just had to show a negative test within the 3 days before arrival). You can see the numbers drop off a fucking cliff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Egypt#Statistics
The same is true in Mexico, a country that apparently (correct me if I'm wrong) had zero corona virus travel rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Mexico#Statistics
Based on this data it seems virtually impossible that you can attribute the massive drop off of tourism to a chilling effect, but we know that since last year the Trump border stuff is leading to a 10-20% decline.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Why not just let them come back?
He's been told, privately and publicly, that we'd probably let him come back if he did so honestly, and promised he'd make some effort not to behave in the same way that got him banned last time. And this is not some special offer for Hlynka: almost any permabanned member, if they came to us and asked to be reinstated and promised to follow the rules, would at least be considered for amnesty. In case @The_Nybbler decides to lie again about what I just said, let me clear: that doesn't mean "if they grovel enough" or kiss our asses or whatever. It means convince us you want to participate in good faith, you understand why you were banned, and whether you agree with the rules or not, you are willing to abide by them. Someone last time I mentioned this got very upset that this implies "permaban" is not really permanent. Like we are not allowed to say "permanent" if we are willing to consider undoing it. I don't understand autists and anklebiters sometimes.
Anyway, Hylnka knows this, and his response has been to say (in various ways) "Fuck you and your rules."
There's another person active in the thread today who's so blatantly a banned user that I'm shocked nobody else has said anything, but they haven't been banned yet.
Generally speaking, we don't ban people we suspect of being banned users without a very high degree of certainty. This is mostly per @ZorbaTHut's guidance (if it were up to me, I'd be quicker to ban newly-rolled alts that are obviously just a troll recycling.) When I see someone beating a very familiar drum I may or may not ban them, depending on how well they are behaving, but mostly we'll let an obvious alt have enough rope to hang themselves with. This of course means we have many alts and returned permabanned users here right now, some of which I am very much aware of and some of which I haven't noticed or who've managed to fly under the radar thus far. No doubt they think they are very clever and have totally fooled us, but mostly we just don't find it worth our time to spend too much effort playing whack-a-mole. But we will whack them when they make themselves too obvious.
I remember an unofficial policy that if someone came back under a new pseudonym and changed their behavior sufficiently to plausibly avoid detection, that was a win too?
Yes, but you also have to not be determined to flip off the mods because you really want to let us know it's you and you're back neener fucking neener. Which is something Hlynka so far has been unable to do.
Not to mention if most people don't realize it's hlynka he can shed all the baggage of people who hated him for his mod decisions.
That would be credible, again, if he asked us. But I suspect Hlynka would never be able to stop being Hlynka. He'd be pretty obvious to most people quickly enough.
And I know you're reading this, Hlynka, and I'll say again what I've said before: I regret you had to be banned, I wish you hadn't forced us to do it, and I wish you would try to come back under honorable circumstances. But it's never going to happen while you're determined to show us how much contempt you have for us. It doesn't hurt my feelings, but I see no reason why we should consider amnesty for someone who very intentionally keeps trying to stick thumbs in our eyes.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3d ago
ugh, not that Austin Powers guy again
Making a note that if I ever get banned, I'll come back saying "groovy" and "shagadelic" in every post.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3d ago
Why not just let them come back? There's another person active in the thread today who's so blatantly a banned user that I'm shocked nobody else has said anything, but they haven't been banned yet. I remember an unofficial policy that if someone came back under a new pseudonym and changed their behavior sufficiently to plausibly avoid detection, that was a win too?
Not to mention if most people don't realize it's hlynka he can shed all the baggage of people who hated him for his mod decisions.
Charlie Kirk believed it was part of God's perfect moral law that people who are my friends, my family, my coworkers should be stoned to death.
I don't know the guy or any of his beliefs, and there's a lot of this sort of "he was a violent transphobe" etc. rhetoric online. So can you direct me to where he said that (like the quotes about gun deaths and the 2nd amendment rights) or is it just "well he was a Christian, therefore he believed in the Bible, therefore he accepted what the Bible says about X/Y/Z, therefore he wanted me stoned to death" chain of inference?
EDIT: I ask this because I remember the fighting over gay rights where people on all sides were quoting Leviticus, and it was considered a killer put-down to ask those against gay rights "so do you wear poly-cotton mix clothing? do you eat shrimp? because those are banned too, you know!" and to say 'if you don't keep all the laws and taboos, you are being a hypocrite and don't have religious objections'.
However, those on the liberal side (generally liberal Christians) also liked to quote, in the context of illegal immigrants, the parts about "Do not ill-treat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would a fellow-Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God", except you know - that's in the same list as the mixed materials and anti-witchcraft, so are they stoning witches to death? no? then they're hypocrites and not acting out of religious belief!
People cherrypick parts of Scripture all the time; it would be entirely possible for Kirk to be anti-gay marriage but not want gays stoned to death.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Though it must be frustrating for you mods, I have to admit I find it kind of fun that there's a sort of game of subterfuge going on with old banned posters re-emerging under aliases. Like a classic spy novel.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
Here is where I suppose the American public at large has not yet noticed the extent to which things have come full circle.
WW1 (yes) and WW2 propaganda clarified that resistance to and the ultimate defeat of the Nazis was a moral imperative. Post-war Germany adopted this, at the Allies' command, and went full hog - youths were indeed taught that nazism was the ultimate evil, and that even the most minute form of it was a germ from which the Third Reich could rise again. And with no narrative to actually counter this, since any opinions to the contrary were banned either in law or in practice, this view grew ever more extreme over the generations, and ever more wide-spread, and could take uncontested hold of many public institutions. You may have heard of the Frankfurt School and the philosophical underpinnings of modern American leftism coming from Germany. But please understand - the practice of modern leftism, its modes of operation and expression, its lines of thinking and of everyday argumentation, its symbols and axioms, have also been grown here, in our youth clubs and universities and cultural centers. And then, though I know not how exactly, they made their way back across to America. It's no coincidence that you now have "Antifa".
What you have now is a synthesis of all this; American propaganda filtered through generations of German self-hatred and nationally enforced anti-nazism, and all the weight of WW2 and the Holocaust behind it. And the spearpoint of it is this - that it is better to burn down the entire country and everyone in it than to permit even the smallest expression of nazism, than to risk a repeat of the greatest atrocity that ever was.
You don't need any more strong evidence to prove that violence is justified to stop nazis, because there's the 20th century to prove it. Are you ignorant of history to deny it? Do you secretly hate the jews to downplay the unique horror of the holocaust? Are you just unworried because you aren't a minority? Are you uneducated, or unintelligent, not to see what all good people agree is the case? Such is the dominant discourse in Germany, as imposed by the victors of WW2, and you're getting a taste of it now.
... But the liberal system and norms that we enjoy in the US, which the First Amendment is part of, is why you largely don't have to worry about sitting in jail for your political opinions...
Eugene Debs would've disagreed.
To what extent are people allowed to leverage their political opinions to evoke meaningful political change in their country? Even China doesn't go around commonly jailing people for their privately held convictions and beliefs, even when they express said views openly, absent those opinions forming a real call to action among other people. The US is largely a place where you're free to act out your privately held beliefs whether personal or political to yourself or behind closed doors so long as you aren't effectuating real change. If most political protests had the impact of something like the January 6th riots, protesting would be significantly curbed or outright banned overnight.
This liberal system in all it's glory also leads the world with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Even within the most progressive pockets of the country.
FistfullOfCrows
3d ago
This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.
You know, I guess I'm fine with anti-liberal. People shouldn't have freedom of association with a gang.
And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?
Infinite jail time. Yakuza tats? Forced to have them removed or stay in jail, same for the random MS-whatever tats or tears on the face tats. The tats are a costly belonging symbol, tune the cost to infinity. They've already banned the confederate flag and decided it's open season on people wearing trump hats.
FtttG
4d ago
I cannot express an opinion on whether or not anyone has been acquitted using the "gay panic" defense, as I have simply haven't investigated it. I have investigated the question of whether anyone accused of murder has been acquitted after using the "trans panic" defense, and have been unable to find even a single example of a case meeting this description. In all of the examples cited on the Wikipedia page, all of the people who used the "trans panic" defense were still convicted. I have searched high and low, and I'm open to correction, but until someone can show me a specific case in which
- a trans person was murdered
- the perpetrator admitted to having killed the victim, but defended themselves by claiming it was a panicked reaction upon learning that the victim was trans
- a jury accepted this defense and acquitted the perpetrator
then I think the only reasonable response is to assume that this is just a myth ginned up from whole cloth.
It's also interesting that the Wikipedia article includes paragraph after paragraph about the various jurisdictions in which the gay and/or trans panic defense is formally banned. How strange to put so much legislative legwork into banning a criminal defense which seems to have a 0% success rate.
Tribes pick stories that suite their narrative all the time. This is not particularly insightful commentary. Furthermore, the comparison to the Democratic senators in Minnesota has key differences that need to be considered.
How popular was Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman? You didn't even mention their names. I couldn't recall it either. I had to look it them up. Are they effective targets for assassination to advance your cause? Suppose you're a radical planning to assassinate someone. Why would you target a non name senator over someone more high profile? There is some evidence indicating Vance Boelter's reason was due to a call from Tim Walz which to me sounds like he was just an insane person. Melissa Hortman has 14K followers on Twitter. Also, Hoffman who was the senator survived, Hortman who died was a legislator.
In contrast, Charlie Kirk was extremely popular. He has 5.5 million followers on Twitter. He was popular enough to be parodied on South Park. His appearance on Jubilee "debating 25 liberal college students" has 31 million views, making it one of their most popular videos. I'd argue Charlie Kirk was extremely effective in getting people behind the agenda he supported, and killing him is a huge blow to that movement. The guy was 31 and had decades ahead of him to accomplish whatever he wanted to accomplish in the political space. Even if you think he's just a mouthpiece for a machine pushing an agenda, killing serves the purpose of warning anyone else who wants to spread ideas through popular open dialogue. If you're a political-motivated assassin, he seems like a good target. I bet if some random Republican senator got killed, there also wouldn't as big of an uproar.
Actually, there is a case similar to that of the democratic senator and legislator being attacked. The closest equivalent would be Steve Scalise a Republican politician, who like Hoffman, also survived an assassination attempt in 2017. I'm gonna do some lazy research here so bear with me, but I don't think the Scalise shooting even got half as much traction as the Hortman shooting. Looking at the most viewed videos from a news channel on YouTube, the most popular news channel video on Scalise is around 330k, while John Hoffman is at 771K views.
Where did the assassination attempt take place? Charlie Kirk was shot in a public event with hundreds of university students attending. Hortman and Hoffman were attacked in their homes at night. The context of their assassinations are vastly different. The irony of the situation is that Charlie Kirk was actually discussing mass shootings right before getting shot. Some people are trying to spin this as evidence that the assassination was staged or a psyop, personally I think it was just a coincidence considering how many violent stories this week have gone viral but what a darkly poetic scenario to be killed literally as you are talking about political violence.
How did the "other" side react to their deaths? Are there endless examples of people celebrating their deaths? Even in fairly nonpolitical spaces and discords I'm in, there are people celebrating and making fun of the death of Charlie Kirk. These are people I play games with and outside of politics I would consider fairly normal people. You don't need to search hard on Twitter or TikTok to found people gleefully posting themselves expressing enthusiasm of Charlie Kirk. Who was celebrating the death of Hortman? Do you have friends and know people celebrating the deaths of people on the other side of the political spectrum?
What was the general political and cultural climate where these assassinations took place? People on the extreme left openly call for violence all the time with little chastise and repercussion. I dare you to openly call for the death and killing of all leftists on reddit or X or Facebook and see how long it takes before your post gets deleted and you get banned. One side consistently says speech is violence and that the other side are nazi fascists. Extreme leftism is openly supported or at the very least quietly ignored by the moderate left. The demand to be a victim is so high that time and time again people have to make up fake racist hoaxes to create the supply that simply doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, extreme rightists have little place to call home. Even a place like 4chan, which is considered the cesspool of the internet, has plenty of people on both sides now. Last time I went to pol there were just as many pols supporting extreme left wing views as there were right. Simply holding a moderate right wing view makes you an extreme rightist white Christian nationalist in many circles.
We're at a point where people are afraid to openly state their beliefs. From 2023 to 2025 88% of the 1452 interviewed students pretended to hold more progressive views than they believe to succeed social and academically. 78% said they self censor about gender identity, and 72% of students stated they self censor politics. People are self censoring because they are afraid of the repercussions of stating what was once normal, everyday beliefs. The majority is afraid to speak up because a loud minority keeps attacking and harassing people with little repercussion. And I can speak from experience, because it hasn't even been 10 years since I graduated from university and I too self-censored most of my views and beliefs. I engaged in dialogue with my peers who got angry and passionate about women's rights and trans rights. I doubt they were self censoring. Charlie Kirk was a driving force giving university students a place and a chance to not pretend to be more progressive than they actually are.
I actually think a better comparison is George Floyd, on grounds of what event creates "hysteria" as you call it. Police were defunded, cities burned and looted, statues and murals and paintings created to martyr a guy who could be argued to have died to fentanyl. Floyd was also by no accounts a good person. He had been jailed eight times for numerous crimes including armed robbery. So many modern martyrs of the left consistently happen to be individuals with extreme criminal history. The left also reacted in "hysteria" around the Rittenhouse case, which was decided to have been done in self-defense. And here, again, is an example where the victims are people with a history of child molestation and other criminal behavior. The misinformation was so bad, people thought Rittenhouse killed an unarmed black man. Or what about the shooting of Michael Brown, known for "hands up don't shoot". Except that was a lie. That didn't stop the left from engaging in "hysteria". So far the red tribe "hysteria" is just a lot of words; granted it hasn't been a day so we shall see what the future holds but something tells me we won't be seeing mass riots and burning and looting from the red tribe.
I keep thinking back to idea of a scissor statement, a statement so divisive it tears people apart. But I don't think you can provide example of stories that server as scissor statements that only occur if one side willfully ignores relevant facts in the case. When both sides agree something is bad the story doesn't go viral because there is no anger to fuel the algorithmic machine. You can't keep arguing with someone that agrees with you. But if you're engaging in dialogue with someone that has no intention of good faith discussion, who openly dismisses facts and pushes what you believe are outright lies, your only options are to eventually walk away or get mad. You cannot reason with someone that does not use reasoning. If this was just a debate on the internet then whatever, you can walk away easily. But when these stories are used to push policy changes, make excuses for bad behavior, and make people feel guilty of things they should have no guilt for, it's hard to not be filled with rage.
(As a side note, perhaps I too am blind of the facts of the cases of outrage of events from the right, and maybe trying to use the concept of a scissor statement here is inappropriate. If I had to pick something that could be considered a scissor statement where I might biased or the right is the side that deliberately ignores facts, it might be in the area of gun control and the 2nd amendment, abortion, or climate change.)
Even if one were to think Charlie Kirk as a faggot, nazi facist, (terms I have heard people refer to him very recently) who only debates unprepared college students and an intellectual hack, he wasn't a wife beater, thief, murderer, or a felon. He also wasn't a politician, or a CEO, or a billionaire, anyone in position of real power. He didn't hold any radical extremist ideas that so many on the left think he did. He engaged in open discussion and wanted to pursue change through dialogue. And now he's dead.
You're right that we don't know who the killer is or what the motive is. But you have to deliberately ignorant to not think an assassination at an open political event is not political motivated. This is not a passion killing. This is pre-meditated and cold and deliberate. If it was something like a personal grudge, wouldn't you rather shoot someone in a quiet place, such as at night? Why would you choose to assassinate someone in a place where there are thousands of people that could potentially spot you and stop you, unless there was some kind of goal in making a statement?
This event is tragic because now it serves as yet another example of how trying to engage in open dialogue with people who have no willingness and desire to do so is a bad idea. I'm here in the motte because I want to believe in the pursuit of truth through open dialogue and debate. But what do you do when people refuse to engage in open honest dialogue? Is it even worth holding a principled stance with people that spit all over it and only use it against you? Enough stories like this and you start to get people wondering if they should become the monsters they keep being accused of. We take so many of the concepts that hold up our modern society for granted, ideas about human rights, human decency, free speech, democracy, equality, these are all espoused as univeral truths and moral goods (at least in America)... and in doing so allowed a poison to come into the public consciousness that continues to threaten and erode all of these values.
Also, is there any event or series of event that could convince you we've passed some sort of threshold? We've already had multiple public assassination attempts on the president with one nearly succeeding. Now a public figure who isn't even a politician is assassinated in daylight. Touching grass doesn't change that, and trying to normalize assassinations as things that always just happened that we are only just now noticing due to the algorithm doesn't make things better. It doesn't matter if political assassinations had been a part of human history, or if they are common in other places. They had become rarer in the USA in recent times and we ought to try to keep it that way.
Yeah, fair. I certainly don't agree with all the downstream effects despite my [redacted], but mostly? Yeah.
Setting the bar pretty low with Adams! No, I'm saying there were candidates passed over because Walz was (thought to be) a generically inoffensive white nobody. Old, non-Group, didn't show up Harris in any way. White wasn't the only requirement, but it was the one he and the campaign leaned into the most in a way that pissed off non-Dems.
Buttigieg had pre-existing name recognition, but gay counts as a Group and apparently is so unpopular with black people it's a statistical oddity. Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard? Maybe Harris didn't want one of the people that did better than her in the primaries. Shapiro, purple state governor that's young enough to have a future, might show up Harris, and Jewish poses an issue to elements of both sides apparently. Bernie, way more name recognition, old, ~white, but definitely shows up Harris when public speaking and again the Jewish problem (ooo that feels unpleasant to type). Charlie Crist could've been an interesting dark horse pick as a former Republican that fulfilled the old and mostly-white requirements.
And that's with like 5 minutes thought of really prominent people. Surely the DNC has a list of potential state politicians since they pulled Walz out of a hat; some of them are undoubtedly less white, less old, less goofy?
Lobotomies and thalidomide eventually got banned, so maybe I should give it a few more years to see if GoF gets banned again? Feels too polarized and no one's even asking the question.
The consequences of the Tuskegee experiments were that 50 years later black people still have much lower trust in doctors and vaccines, nobody seems to have an idea of how to fix that, and sometimes that leads the big brains at Harvard and UPenn to really crazy places.
Guilty as charged. Go weirdos!
Yeah, that's how I feel in liberal-progressive spaces that don't think 2020 was mass insanity and prefer criminals over their victims, and why I've gotten chased out of them. To be clear I did phrase things much more gently back when I was trying, but here among disagreeable acquaintances it's not really the point.
The trans issue has reduced trust in a fair number of family-minded Dems, but not in the blanket way to turn against vaccines in the stupid way a subset of Republicans did. Hopefully it doesn't take 50+ years to fix the damage that experimental mandates did.
There's bound to be a really interesting anthropological study involved in recent polarization dynamics, but nobody willing to would produce something unbiased enough to be worth reading.
And I could've written the question in a less-steamed manner. Mea culpa.
The indifference angle is about as far as I am willing to go to bridge the gap. I recognize that it's not entirely hate in the way that a Grand Red Dragon of the Klan hated black people. The underdog factor is... whatever it is, but after 2020 I don't buy it as sufficient explanation unless we're being uncharitable enough to tag on the soft bigotry of low expectations. It gets pretty exhausting putting up the epicycles to explain why the Occam's Razor explanation isn't right.
Would you do this kind of hedging for someone that really likes posting crime stats and HBD commentary? Would you extend so much charity when they say that no no, they're not actually anti-black? When there's Harvard professors arguing that old white people should die for health equity, Yale lecturers fantasizing about shooting white people, the whole insanity around "being on time is white supremacy," are you able to wonder if it exists and isn't something I (and Jeremy Carl, and others) nightmared up?
I'm with you there, hoss.
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