You are purposely misinterpreting what he wrote. He said that it doesn’t matter how you die, it shouldn’t whitewash you. If you were radical and widely considered dangerous to the fabric of society, your death doesn’t magically absolve you of that or erase everything you said while alive.
Sorry if you misunderstood, it is a nuanced take, I'm saying acknowledging one as a terrible person in response to flowery embellishments of their life isn't celebrating that death. My statement wasn't about political violence, rather, we shouldn't be punishing people for pointing out the false depiction of the dead. I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
> I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
I have a nice little trick for it: when you go to a funeral of a person in your family, or close to your family, who was an asshole, I bet you won't be saying to other people "yeah, sad, very sad. But, please remember, he was an asshole". Right? I would not -- not the time, nor the place.
Yes, Kirk is not a family (probably not yours, and definitely not mine), but the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
These people aren't at a funeral, they are online, responding to false glorifications of him. These comments obviously aren't directed at the family but the news publications and media's handling of his passing. If that's not the appropriate space for that criticism when/where is it? Just after the public not ever knowing their real action's in life have moved on with a false glorified image of the person, move on and aren't paying attention anymore?
That is not a fair characterization of what they are doing, no. (Besides which, "glorification" is subjective. People thinking Kirk was a virtuous person because of things they consider virtuous but you don't, is not "false".)
> These comments obviously aren't directed at the family but the news publications and media's handling of his passing.
None of the example comments I have been shown reference supposed news or media bias. Many of them have straight up described the murder as a good or morally just action. Some have even expressed a desire for the same to happen to others in Kirk's orbit.
We aren't at his funeral and he's a public figure. It was Voltaire who said "We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth". I tend to agree. He's a public figure, he's fair game to criticise. He didn't magically become a good guy by virtue of having been murdered. If I were somehow at his funeral, I'd absolutely show respect and not mention all the weird and nasty as fuck shit he said.
> the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
> I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
Perhaps I missed the part where Charlie Kirk organized a group of guys to hijack a bunch of planes with civilians on board, and then crash them into buildings.
On a serious note, if you cannot see a difference between these two, I have no idea what to say.
Let me be more specific, how much division, hatred, pain, and violence does a person have to be responsible for before it's socially acceptable to express an opinion that the world is better off without them?
How much before it's okay to party on the streets after learning about their death?
Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
If people are whitewashing his history then it's to be expected that other people will speak out to set the record straight. That's how free speech works and trying to silence it on the basis of "decorum" is dishonest and manipulative.
> Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
To answer this question, we would have to first agree on the term "hate", and what does it mean to be a "merchant of hate". Then, we examine the evidence, and arrive to the conclusion.
So, what is "hate"? What is "merchant of hate"? Why Kirk, in your view, was one?
Are you really this unfamiliar with his work? Because if you agree with his ideology then just be honest and say that, don't try to drag people into these quasi-intellectual debates about what constitutes hate.
> Hate is calling for violence against transgender people and other minorities "like in the 1950s and 60s".
Can you provide me a link to a source where he calls for a violence against transgender people and other minorities "like in the 1950s and 60s"?
The article you provided does not prove it at all. Instead, they take something he said, and provide an interpretation of it that fits their narrative. Alternative interpretation, which is way more likely given what he said, is that man today are not as decisive w.r.t. matters of what he considers "right" and "wrong", i.e., letting transwoman compete in woman sports.
You can take these six words (i.e., "like in the 1950s and 60s") out of almost a minute monologue, and make your own interpretation (it's a free country after all). However, if your goal is to show me that he was calling for violence, then you kind of failed, because he did not do it there. If there is a video or an article where he did so, please share, I would like to learn more.
So far, I do not see hate towards minorities or transgender people.
I'm not the one trying to rationalize clear calls to violence under the guise of oh gosh we can't possibly know what he meant in any one of hundreds of examples, but your continued gaslighting attempts have been noted.
You can't claim that things are being taken out of context when you can't possibly come up with context where his statements mean anything other than a call to violence when context is added.
There are HUNDREDS of these statements, but your idea of a debate seems to be declaring complete ignorance over the unambiguous meaning of most of these statements and declaring victory when the other person realizes what stripes you're really wearing and backs out.
Just to make a point, I think people like him should do what Hitler did in the end. What do I mean by this? I guess you'll never know.
I am not a product of US school system, so, perhaps you know more than I am.
However, calling for violence is not what I've heard there. You, of course, are entitled to your own interpretation. Just do not expect others to agree.
Neither am I, but you don't have to be American to know that 1950s and 60s were a terrible time to be "different" in any way.
If you were trans in the 1950s and 60s you were persecuted, criminalized, physically brutalized by society who viewed you as a freak, pathologized and involuntarily institutionalized in places where they tortured you with hormonal drugs, chemical castration, electroshock "therapy", and lobotomies that permanently harmed people beyond recognition and killed them. I'll repeat - against their will.
To say that trans people need to be treated like they were in the 1950s and 60s is a coded, but unambiguous call to violence. There's no interpretation that you can possibly come up with that's favorable or peaceful for that group.
I don't expect you to agree because I know that you're not engaging honestly, nor is anyone else who's painting Kirk as a peaceful figure.
>I'm not the one trying to rationalize clear calls to violence under the guise of oh gosh we can't possibly know what he meant in any one of hundreds of examples, but your continued gaslighting attempts have been noted.
>You can't claim that things are being taken out of context when you can't possibly come up with context where his statements mean anything other than a call to violence when context is added.
It's all from the bigot's playbook, as Sartre observed:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Keep that in mind. Your blood pressure will thank you.
We live in a time where accusing someone of engaging in bad faith is against the guidelines, expressing an opinion that the world is better off with a hateful figure being dead is inhumane and shameful, and such opinions are to be forcibly repressed if one is to be allowed to participate in discussion.
My blood pressure isn't affected by individual bad actors, but our bizarre society where it's acceptable to sow hatred and incite violence as long as you dress up nice and speak in a polite, coded language. If Hitler was simply a top-level advisor and never issued a direct order he would be hailed as a peaceful debate person by the same people who now smugly use "humanity" as a stick to beat those who actually have it.
I would upvote you, but my ability to do so has been taken away without an explanation.
Fred Rogers getting shot would have been a lot worse, and great mourning of his passing more justified, than Charles Manson getting shot. Clearly this is neither of those cases, but, as clearly, we don’t regret the murder of every famous person equally, even if we would rather the murder hadn’t happened in each case.
The canonization effort around an only-known-in-certain-circles propagandist has been utterly bizarre to watch. Air Force 2 escort? What, pardon me, the fuck.
[edit] I’ll add that the fawning wall-to-wall treatment and coverage has been especially wild to watch when it occurs so close, time-wise, to a murderer with a kill-list shooting two democratic politicians in their homes, killing one of them plus a spouse (and a dog, as everyone always seems to add) before being stopped, which news was so barely-covered and left the news cycle so fast (and saw the same kind of callousness from the right that they’re now perceiving from the left, including, as always when it’s this guy, from the President of the United States) that, when I’ve brought it up or seen it brought up after this event, it’s been easy to find people who didn’t even know it happened.
Yes. Yes, it is a tragic event. Apart from it being simply morally utterly reprehensible, it is an extremely primitive and counter-productive way to fight against ideas and the messengers of those ideas.
Again, morally reprehensible and it doesn't fucking work. It only shows 'the other side is just as bad/worse', turns the messenger into a martyr, and galvanizes support.
> What is actually tragic is that spreading lies, as he did
Unlike many others, he invited anyone to the mic to prove him wrong. Hardly qualifies as lying. Anyone could have gotten to the mic and debate him. Sure, you may don't like his beliefs, but there is a huge difference between lying, and defending (even incorrect and unfounded) claims in public.
Even if he believed that himself, anyone who came to the stage to dispute him would receive death threats. Read the audience. He knew what he was doing.
Let me document five very serious lies from him:
1. On Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble, Kirk repeatedly promoted the false claim that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy declared Floyd had died of an overdose.
2. Ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Kirk spread falsehoods about voter fraud, and immediately after Trump lost the 2020 election, Kirk promoted false and disproven claims of fraud in the election.
3. Kirk called the public health measure of social distancing prohibitions in churches a "Democratic plot against Christianity".
4. In the 2020s, Kirk was a Christian nationalist who called the separation of Church and state in the United States a "fabrication".
5. Appearing at a Trump campaign rally in 2024, he said: "This is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way."
There are innumerable more. For the record, the February 2023 Brookings Institution study found Kirk's podcast contained the second-highest proportion of false, misleading, and unsubstantiated statements among 36,603 episodes produced by 79 prominent political podcasters. [1]
Contrast it with the way in which truth is actually spread; it is by citing good-quality references.
> Even if he believed that himself, anyone who came to the stage to dispute him would receive death threats. Read the audience. He knew what he was doing.
This is far fetched. People who have sent the death threats are lunatics. If the number of people who are sending death threats is our new standard for the quality and importance of debates, then we should simply stop the debates. There are always unhinged people around. Where does it leave us?
> Let me document five very serious lies from him:
Sure. Some are maybe lies, some are his opinions, some are misleading claims, and the rest are his own beliefs. Still, anyone could have went in front of the mic and debated him for it. In my opinion, someone is a liar when they have a platform to lie, and no way for the public to engage, debate, and correct them. While Kirk's beliefs are very far from my own (e.g., I do not believe that election was stolen), I still think that what he did is needed today: speaking your mind, and being open to be challenged in public.
It is bewildering how the Republican voters don't realize that the party cares exclusively about those who fund the party, not about those who vote for it. The votes are gained exactly on the basis of lies. If the party actually cared for its voters, it would send all the non-immigrant work-visa employees back home immediately if they don't have a PhD degree in their field of work.
The footage I have seen universally depicts a cheering, entertained crowd that expresses nothing I could interpret as hateful towards anyone.
> Kirk repeatedly promoted the false claim that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy declared Floyd had died of an overdose.
Two autopsies were performed, and both involved at least one medical examiner. One of them found that fentanyl and/or methamphetamine may have been a complicating factor. But this is understating the case. Floyd is known to have taken a very high dose of fentanyl (https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/evide...), which is commonly understood to be a very dangerous drug. The other autopsy, commissioned by Floyd's legal team, did not include a toxicology report.
> ... voter fraud ...
This is, of course, hotly contested. People on the other side of the aisle, from what I can tell, sincerely believe that the people "disproving" these claims are fabricating their evidence and/or ignoring supporting evidence.
Regardless, believing a falsehood to be true is not the same thing as lying.
> Kirk called the public health measure of social distancing prohibitions in churches a "Democratic plot against Christianity". In the 2020s, Kirk was a Christian nationalist who called the separation of Church and state in the United States a "fabrication". Appearing at a Trump campaign rally in 2024, he said: "This is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way."
This is the same thing repeated three times, and it is an opinion, not a claim. He was not saying anything about what the law or Constitution provides. He was describing what he considers to be the general order of the society around him.
Many political thinkers across the spectrum have disputed that the US implements real separation of church and state, irrespective of what the laws and Constitution say. There are many simple ways to make this argument.
For example, giving preferential tax treatment or legal recognition to married couples is a clear mingling of church and state; government didn't come up with the concept, existing religious traditions (including paganism; I am not agreeing with Kirk's opinion on Christianity here) did.
For another example, from the Constitution:
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...
It's hard to fathom, given the identities of the people involved, that "Creator" here refers to something other than the Christian God.
> There are innumerable more.
Again, the reliability of "fact-checking" institutions is in question. I have personally encountered examples of sites like Snopes and Politifact giving significantly different truth ratings to the same claim when it was made by different politicians. There are other sites out there dedicated to cataloguing such examples.
What we need is for politicians to not keep labeling their opposition with violent rhetoric. Everything from punch a Nazi, to death to communism, we've got to get the violent rhetoric out of politics. Too many unstable people.
Both sides have their nut cases. And you can’t actually restrict nut case speech with our current constitution at least, you can’t even prevent them from being elected.
Didn’t the President of the United States say he didn’t care about bringing the people together, and has wished violence upon people who don’t support him politically?
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Such a powerful message Trump sent when the very first thing he did in January after the inauguration was to pardon the people who tried to murder his vice president and did beat cops with an American flag. He pardoned people convicted in a court of law of seditious conspiracy against the United states. That was a permission slip.
So I agree, there's a direct line from the political violence on J6, to the political violence we see today. If there is any lingering doubt, the the message from the President is clear: he literally said he doesn't consider violence from the right to be a problem. Right wing extremists are just people trying to reduce what they see as crime, according to him.
I was borderline, almost, kinda, 10% rethinking whether I was actually wrong to label MAGA fascists.
Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
I mean, that’s literal Nazi shit. They say literal Nazi shit, this isn’t isolated. What do you call it? WTF. Elon sieg-heils twice at the inauguration and they don’t disown him. What is it going to take before we get folks who still think calling them fascists is the problem, actually, to blame the party that twice elected a guy president who told his supporters they could shoot his opponent if she won?
> Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
Yeah, it was an escalating suggestion from what another host had put on the table, which was the once-far-right “if they refuse help, lock them up” (the missing step here that someone from the left-leaning-middle would want to perform, is being curious about why homeless people refuse help and seeing if that’s something we can address without the very-expensive and sharply illiberal [classical sense] step of imprisoning them) but I guess now we have to call that moderate right because even the part of the far right that’s within Fox News’ window is saying “do Nazi stuff”.
Granted, you’ve been hearing little suggestions like this for a long time from ordinary republican voters, if you’ve been in their spaces much, but hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
> hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
Meanwhile, another Fox News host has been promoted to Secretary of "War", and is busy drone striking random boats and straight up murdering people.
While yet another Fox News host has been charging people with crimes that juries refuse to indict because they're so preposterous.
It seems we have a serious problem with Fox News hosts and podcaster bros running this government and directing policy. Remember, Fox News isn't just talking to its audience -- it's talking to the President, he watches religiously. He pays more attention to them than all his cabinet and advisors combined.
The most disconcerting thing about this murder is that it seems like the killer was relatively normal beyond being excessively involved in online politics. In many of these things there's fairly obvious symptoms of major mental illness, or at the minimum it's some guy who's basically way down out in life. This was a young seemingly smart guy who just decided to throw his life away, and murder somebody else, probably as a result of spending way too much time in online circle jerks.
Have you actually watched any of his content? Like many I'd literally never even heard of him until today, and now I'm watching his videos. [1]
He was going into generally extremely liberal areas and willing to openly debate and discuss his generally conservative and Christian values in 'real time', while encouraging his opponents to use the internet, chat bots, and whatever else they might like to try to get a zinger off on him. And it was real debate - not the media/talk show nonsense where two people just scream at and interrupt each other, with no real debate happening. He happily let people go off on their monologues before responding, and without resorting to typical fallacies you see online like ad hominem, straw-manning, etc.
I don't really agree with a lot of his values, but I think he is an absolute icon in terms of how political discussions should happen. This is how democracy, debate, and more broadly - an Open Society should work, and he was killed for pursuing this. If this isn't the path forward for debate in society, then what is?
If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024
If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022
Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023
'Prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people' – video
On debate
Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025
The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024
We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
Charlie Kirk in his own words: 'A Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic' – video
On gun violence
I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025
The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024
The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025
We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.
– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025
There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
I think it's telling that for a guy who spent years debating and publicly speaking on highly charged topics that those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context. For this to be the sort of comments that somebody wants to murder over, they seriously need to take a breath outside their echo chambers every once in a while.
For instance, due to said echo chambers you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical. In reality, it's referencing a real situation. The Biden administration turned the world upside down to try to get Britney Griner, a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" released from Russia after she was arrested for bringing marijuana into the country. We ended up trading Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer who has since become a member of Russia's parliament, for her. At the same time we left Paul Whelan, a US Marine who was arrested in Russia for allegedly spying many years ago, just rotting away. He was eventually released in a multi-prisoner exchange after Trump took office.
People spoke of 'rage' regularly in this thread. Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
>Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
I don't need to imagine. 80% of domestic terrorism is perpetrated by the right, They certainly aren't quiet about their grievances, even when the grievances are imaginary.
There were numbers published about this until Trump ordered them taken down.
Regarding the Griner thing, it's telling that when the right decided to compare two humans value the first thing the went to were her gender, race, and sexual orientation wasn't it? Personally I'd have stuck with her job, which was the bit that actually mattered. Instead, they made it about identity politics in order to spread rage.
To be clear, I'm saying that Biden fought for Griner because she was famous, not because she enjoyed cannabis and liked the ladies or whatever it is Kirk seems to think. Spies aren't famous by definition.
It's reasonable to disagree with Bidens choice, but it's rage bait to make it about her skin color and toilet-part preferences.
Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable, but I want to take a more fundamental approach to this. I really like Kirk's style of simply asking questions that make people accept their own views. There are two reasons to this - the first is because you may not even realize what you believe, and the second part is because my assumptions about what you believe may simply be wrong.
Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her? Would you approve if the same was done for William Elliott Whitmore, in the case where he was busted bringing drugs into Russia? For context he's a random celebrity (excellent musician), mostly the equal but opposite of Griner, but certainly at least as famous.
> Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her?
Mostly I dont care at all. It's one of a thousand tiny decisions every world leader makes every day that would have been on page 15 of the newspaper 25 years ago. However, I can see why you would disapprove. It's reasonable to disagree with politicians, unless you're doing it because you're some kind of bigot.
Now explain why Griners genital preference is relevant if the point wasn't to enrage people and imply that a black lesbians life is worth less than a hetero mans. Again, he was comparing people and these were the attributes he chose as important qualifiers.
> Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable
Is it your stance that actual spies are more widely known than WNBA players? I mean, that's a hilarious burn towards the WNBA, but it's literally not true. It's only anecdata, but i knew more about Griner than the other person. Still do.
It's also weird that you focus on this one person as if they were the only possible alternative to Griner. They weren't. That's just the one the right trotted out because it was the only one anybody had ever heard of at all.
Both sides were playing politics with lives, and it was gross. It was worse that Kirk made it about how black and gay Griner was. He did it to get views and it worked, but it had a cost.
>William Elliott Whitmore
Frankly, I also wouldn't care about whoever he is unless someone framed it to be a comparison between a black, gay, pot smoker and a 'normal' person just to piss me off. Identity politics are evil.
Ok, so you don't care. I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
The Biden administration was obsessed about race and sexuality. And in this case, they blew our highest value prisoner to get somebody out of prison who unquestionably brought drugs into Russia - exceptionally rapidly, while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned. Yet this person we got out, on the double, just happened to match the exact race and sexuality characteristics that the Biden administration was obsessed with. Do you think this was just a coincidence?
Yes, and there is no reason to believe otherwise that I am aware of.
I provided many quotes showing that Kirk played the race, sexuality, and religion cards frequently. I beleive he did so to provoke rage and engagement, and the evidence seems to support my stance.
Can you provide even a single quote that shows Biden considered her lesbianism, blackness, or other 'controversial' characteristics as the deciding factor here? From where I sit it looks like he just did what his constituency demanded. Kirk on the other hand made unsubstantiated claims about all of the above to drive engagement.
> I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
I'm only discussing this particular case because you chose it as the most defensible from my long list. Even then, you are struggling to justify the divisive language Kirk chose. Had you chosen the one about black pilots this would be even more open and shut.
Okay, you think it's just a coincidence. I'll again continue to pretend to believe you. Now can you understand why lots of other people believe it is not a coincidence?
And no, this quote is hardly the most defensible. On the contrary it's one of the more outrageous until you realize he's referencing an event that literally happened.
> while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned.
So this part stuck in my craw, and I looked it up. Almost nothing about the way you have described this situation is accurate.
Biden tried to have Whelan freed as well, but Russia refused due to Whelan being considered a spy while Griner was perceived as only a low level criminal. At the time Biden was quoted saying that Russias reasons were "totally illegitimate" and that the US would "never give up" on trying to have him released.
Further, Griner was only one of several prisoners Biden tried to have released during this first swap. The others were not black lesbians though, so you didn't hear about it.
Biden later lived up to his word, because in 2024 Whelan was released as part of the 2024 Ankarta prisoner exchange, which Biden and Harris negotiated and which was considered to be one of the largest and most complex prisoner exchanges in history. It was NOT Trump, as you claimed earlier.
The entire narrative as you know it was WRONG, and the dichotomy was even more false than you've been led to believe.
Not only do I stand by my earlier statements, I feel even more convinced that Kirk was not just kind of a jerk, he was a full bore jerk. He likely knew Biden was working that deal, and turned it into race baiting hate speech anyhow... and you believed it.
Russia freed Griner because they got Viktor Bout in exchange. He's a polyglot international arms dealers with connections to weapons and smuggling around the world, who was known not only as the "Merchant of Death" but also as "Sanctions Buster". And as mentioned he is now literally serving as a Russian politician. Them giving away some drug addled ball player in exchange, undoubtedly had them laughing their assess off in private. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, it's difficult to imagine a more ridiculous exchange.
Had Biden tried, he could have gotten vastly more for Bout. In terms of thinking about US interests, and not his election campaign, he probably should not have even been releasing Bout anyhow - since that guy is very much the real deal. Thanks for the correction on the timeline! I was probably conflating the story of Whelan with that of Marc Fogel. Though it's funny reading the details of the Ankara exchange exchange as well:
----
Freed as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West, the opposition figures, Andrei Pivovarov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, had mixed feelings about the deal.[63] Kara-Murza stated that article 61 of the Constitution of Russia forbids to deport citizens if they do not approve. None of them did so or was even asked to do so. Yashin added that he is Russian, a Russian politician, and sees himself as a patriot, whose place is in Russia.[63]
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Russia gets to deport activists who don't want to be deported, and that they couldn't otherwise constitutionally deport, and gets back, amongst others, a global FSB assassin.
Again, it's reasonable to debate Bidens decision, or anyone else's. Hell, I might even agree with you that he could have done better with the negotiations. In the end his plan worked, but it's possible a better negotiator could have gotten there more quickly or for less.
It's not reasonable to drum up rage about it through bogoted hate speech, which is what Kirk did. Despite Griner being only one of several prisoners Biden advocated for Kirk rambled about her sexual preferences and skin color then made up a fairy tale about how it was being done at these other prisoners expense. It wasn't.
Kirks claim that she received special treatment as a black lesbian cannabis enthusiast was just a straight up lie.
Griner was part of a larger package that included the other prisoners Kirk was concerned with. Kirk knew that fact, and ignored it in favor of devisive rhetoric.
Ultimately Biden got all of them released, and Kirks rhetoric did nothing but give the rightwing bigots and leftwing zealots both more rage fuel along the way.
America is in a bad place, and people fabricating lies like Kirk did are one reason for that.
I don't think your post here is in accordance with the facts. Biden released arguably the single highest value captive we had in order to solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had, and he started this process almost immediately after she was detained. That is indisputably extremely special treatment.
At this point we loop back through. Biden was absolutely obsessed with pandering based on race and deviant sexuality, largely as a means of furthering his own political ambitions which relied heavily on these two demographic, which were expected to (and indeed did) prove critical in the 2024 election. And in this case the completely unprecedented and special treatment he offered was granted to somebody to happened to fill out every checkbox he sought to pander to.
And you want to claim it was, instead, because of her alleged "fame" as a WNBA player. Okay, that's fine - and I can't prove you wrong because outside of private conversations it's not like Biden's going to pull an LBJ and openly rant about strategic racebaiting. But what's not fine is you then claiming that anybody who accepts the most probable explanation is suddenly lying or engaged in divisive rhetoric is, itself a lie. And in fact you'd also be pointing to the overwhelming majority of Americans as only 38% of people approved of this action [1], which is obviously going to be disproportionately made up of heavily partisan Democrats who are not exactly being impartial.
I think I've had enough of this conversation, but I did want to add one more thing before I call it quits: Thank you for taking the time to engage with me. I know there were more fun things you could have spent this time on.
One thing Kirk got right, was that we all need to be more open to engaging with each other in a civil way. He didn't always get it right, but nobody does and he didn't deserve to go out the way he did. I hope that the person responsible faces serious consequences, but more importantly I hope that we all find a way to respectfully disagree with each other and can find the grace to bend enough to meet somewhere in the middle.
I think that our conversation here is further proof that it can be done.
Sure thing, and agreed - I think at this point we're probably just going to go around in circles so there's not much more to say. But it's always great to be able to just wrangle ideas back and forth in a civil fashion, particularly when people see things so very differently.
I think if more people did this, we could get back to being a much more united country, not necessarily in agreement - but simply in acceptance of each of us having our own different takes on things that aren't necessarily wrong - even if they might be largely incompatible with what we personally happen to believe to be true!
> solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had
Again, that is NOT what happened. You have the facts wrong, likely because Kirk and everyone else in right wing media lied to you.
The negotiation was for several prisoners, that happened to include Griner among them. In the end Biden didn't get a great deal, but Griner and another named Sarah Krivanek (who hadn't officially been convicted yet and was just listed as "deported") were released in the first round. More importantly the first round opened the door to the later negotiation that allowed for the release of 26 additional prisoners, including Whelan - who you used as an example of someone that would have been worthwhile earlier. Sometimes negotiations take more than a single round.
It's probably worth noting that Whelan was booted from the military for larceny, and wasn't exactly an upstanding fellow himself, but it's irrelevant to this conversation in the same way that Griners sexuality and race are.
> completely unprecedented and special treatment
I have seen no evidence to support this claim. I have seen evidence to the contrary (IE - Biden negotiated for others at the same time). I'm not sure what else there is to discuss if it's become a matter of "faith" rather than one of evidence.
> the most probable explanation
The most probable explanation is the one supported by the facts, not the inference of Biden's motives based on right-wing talking points. There is no evidence to support the theory that Biden allowed Griner's race or sexual preferences to play a factor in his decision and there IS evidence to the contrary.
EDIT - Also, your statistic is misleading at best. If you do the math only 46% disapproved. So it was an 8% difference. The rest, like me, probably just didn't care.
> those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context
In what context is it okay to say this?
> Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
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> you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical
This is a strawman. They think pointing out that someone is a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" is hateful and unnecessary. The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated in a way that a United States Marine should not be denigrated.
No, he's offering a vivid illustration of how efforts to combat racism can end up overtly racist themselves. Take the exact situation and simply reverse it. We have a highly qualified and upstanding black marine (make them a lesbian if you fancy) imprisoned in Russia for years for "spying." And the government just kind of shrugs. Then along comes a this dope headed white guy athlete who gets arrested for unquestionably bringing drugs into the country. And suddenly the entire government apparatus kicks into action to get him out, to the point of offering who is perhaps our single highest value Russian prisoner, an international arms dealer, in exchange for him - all the while continuing to just shrug at the black guy (or gal) left lingering in prison.
You would obviously find this sort of behavior repulsive, wouldn't you? I mean I certainly would - I think anybody would. Yet when you flip the script and change the races suddenly there's this segment of society that's like 'Yeah, this is okay.' No, it's not okay. His reason for opposing this action is not because of her race, but mostly the only reason some people found it acceptable was because of her race - so it became a relevant component of the story.
Just as a data point, as a Canadian I had never heard this name before, and I couldn't possibly name a single other WNBA athlete, whereas I could name international female athletes from many other sports. Here in Toronto, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_League_(women%27s_football) (which infamously included a former mayor's niece) is probably better known than the WNBA.
By contrast, the mere words "United States Marine" paint a clear picture of a very particular sort of individual that is instantly legible, internationally.
That may just be a regional thing. I certainly couldn't name a single X league player.
Regardless, she was certainly more famous than some spy whose job required that he not be famous or even memorable. Right choice or not, Biden likely just made the choice that got him the most positive attention, as one does when they're a politician.
No, someone who says "you probably think" is not thereby strawmanning. This is an attempt to guess what someone else's position is (granted, guesses like this are often not very charitable, but that in turn often results from a genuine inability to understand the other side). A strawman is when someone goes on to argue against that position without waiting for confirmation. GP's argument goes on to justify the quote. The justification does not depend on whether the guess about GGP's position was correct.
> The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated
No, it is not.
It is lamenting that a WNBA player may be (in Kirk's view) praised more than a USM despite (in his view) a lesser achievement, and in spite of smoking pot, because of a system that (in his view) treats black people and lesbians preferentially.
I give thanks here to GP for the context, which makes it entirely clear why Kirk would hold this view and give this specific object example. It also makes it obvious why my view of the statement is correct, but I already knew it would be something like this anyway before seeing the context. In fact, I wrote the above before reading GP. (In fact, I also realized this going in; qv https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45233308 .)
It's very easy to understand things like this by understanding the fundamentals of the arguments being made and policies being proposed (here, something like an objection to "DEI") and considering the speaker's statement within the speaker's own evidenced framework of morals and values, rather than your own. You appear to think, fundamentally, in terms of whether groups are being "hated" or described as superior or inferior. Someone like Kirk thought, from what I could tell, fundamentally, in terms of whether rules are being applied consistently and fairly to groups, and about whether the rules are acceptable in the abstract.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
My evidence is that my interpretation is consistent with many other things I have learned about viewpoints like Kirk's, from observing him and others over a period of many years. It is not a matter of "plausible deniability"; my interpretation is plainly and straightforwardly the one that makes the most sense to me, by far.
As noted upthread, the example also clearly maps to a specific object example.
Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
> Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
That's kinda wild. You've not seen much of the anti- black, female, gay, and/or drug-using rhetoric that people use. It is an obvious dog whistle.
By "it", I mean the things that you are referring to, which people including yourself claim to be such rhetoric.
I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation, and concluded that the people showing them were frankly incorrect in a large majority of cases. The words, commonly, simply do not mean what they are represented as meaning. They are only understood as having that meaning because they are processed by ideological opponents with unwarranted priors, in some cases seemingly resulting from psychological projection. (The pithy statement of this notion is "if you hear dog whistles all the time, maybe you're the dog".)
This is mediated by attempts to listen to the other side in their own words, and ask them pointed questions. I have used these to build a coherent model of several "right-wing" or "conservative" belief systems which I have found in the past to be consistent; new observations rarely give any rational reason to doubt my previous conclusions.
Having strongly held opinion on who lives and who dies are petty heavy opinions one might say, correct? Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
I'm not saying people should necessarily die for their opinions. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that if your opinion, and the political policies you push for, literally result in the life or death of someone's family members, then those people may have very strong reactions to that.
Like if there was an entire town of purple people and I went around saying I want all people purple people to be killed, should I be surprised if purple people might want to cause violence towards me? I mean, I'm just debating and using words, right? But those words an debates are literally about the lives and deaths of other people.
> Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
Can you show me a video/article/blog post where he said that Palestinians should be wiped out? I would like to see/read it myself.
Are you looking for something where he literally says "wiped out"? Or are you looking for his stance that it doesn't and shouldn't exist? I'm not a follower of Charlie Kirk or his positions and I don't support any violence against him. However, finding his position on Israel and Palestine is a very simple google search away. You can hear it from his own mouth right here:
How did this interaction end? Why do you show a short scene from a potentially long discussion?
This one looks like a rage bait more than anything. Pretty equivalent to taking a phrase out of context, and then claiming whatever suits your narrative.
My point was that many of the "debates" Charlie Kirk was having were about who lives and who dies in the world. Doing so publicly with the intent of swaying policy and elections. And the fact that the topics being discussed with "just words" are really discussion of life and death. You seem to be trying to say that these debates weren't really about who lives and dies.
You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
I mean, do you think the follow up to this conversation results in the gentleman he is "debating" to walk away happily and change his views on whether Palestine exists? Because that seems to be what you're insinuating. You seem to be saying, that either his debates really weren't about the lives and deaths of others. Or that his opinions and policies were really "the right thing to do" and people on the other side just didn't understand that yet.
> You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
You took a part of the conversation and showed it to me. Show me the whole thing, and not a rage bait piece potentially taking out of context.
I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith. You're doing a "no true scottsman" argument when you know full well there is plenty out there. But nothing will convince you.
For you it seems like unless there is a video where Charlie Kirk is telling a soldier to pull the trigger and kill somebody directly, you won't be convinced. It's the same argument that Charles Manson shouldn't be guilty because it was just his opinions that caused people to be killed.
Don't you see that one could see you're the one not arguing in good faith? What he's saying is that taking out of context clips do not represent anything. You need to understand the context of what is being said, and why.
For instance earlier in this thread numerous people were claiming he said he disliked the word empathy, completely leaving out the part of the discussion where he said that is because it had been politically weaponized and abused, much preferring the term sympathy which is less susceptible to exploitation.
> I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith.
What? Why?
What you did with your example is that you took a 60 second snippet from a conversation and use it to prove your point. I am not buying this because taking things out of context does not constitute a proof. An example would be saying that Charlie Kirk thought that empty is invented concept (a lot of people repeat it), while in fact if you watch the full video where he said that, you would know that his position was that sympathy is a better choice of a word. Now, when you learn this you realize that a single quote without a context means nothing.
This is why I am asking you to show me context.
We started this conversation when you mentioned strong opinions on who should live or die. Then, you proceeded with an example of wiping out Palestinians. Then you said that he said it "doesn't and shouldn't exist". To prove your point, you showed a short cut from a much longer discussion. I am willing to engage with you on the merits of the evidence you provide, but I think we should conduct this discussion based on the full video, and not a piece that was cut out for a rage bait articles or tweets.
This is why. In the other reply to me you said "This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that." So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences. I take your combined arguments to either be that everything Kirk said was objective (as if it being objective would automatically mean people can't be insulted). Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue. Does that mean he should have been killed? Absolutely not. But again, it is quite obvious that saying things that insult people can lead to consequences. And those consequences can vary because people vary.
You intentionally disregarded my first statement in that comment that clearly differentiated between opinions and incitement for violence.
> So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences.
It seems to me you cannot differentiate personal insults (e.g., saying to a dude in a bar "your wife is ugly!" -- as you suggested), and opinions about ideas, e.g., "capitalism is a bad system". Are you saying that arguing the point of why capitalism is bad should be treated as an insult to people who think capitalism is better?
The difference between making a personal insult (the key word here is personal), and arguing why something in aggregate should or should not exist are completely separate issues. However, in the world of identity politics these two are inseparable.
> Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
Or, let's listen to the whole conversation and not a rage-bait excerpt, and see if it was what you say it was.
> If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue.
Arguing ideas is not an insult. If you believe that any challenge to any claim is an insult, then it basically kills any sort of discourse unless the point made is in full agreement with your beliefs.
The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Your current iteration is trying to differentiate between insulting a person (ie. the ugly wife) and insulting people in aggregate. And arguing that ideas about an aggregate is not insulting a person, and therefore, the aggregate cannot be insulted or offended.
Then you jump to a logical fallacy that if you challenging some ideas is offensive, then challenging all ideas is offensive.
You do realize that co-workers discussing whether we should use AWS or Azure as our cloud provider could be a rich debate on the topic. But is highly unlikely to result in someone becoming offended and evenly less likely to result in some form of violence.
But this is altogether different from other kinds of ideas. We can discuss ideas along the same topic and at some point we transition from rational debate to offense. We can start with the idea that people with blue eyes are fundamentally different than those with other eye colors. That's not too offensive. Let's take it further, people with blue eyes are inferior to all other eye colors. This might offends some people. What about, people with blue eye color are so inferior that we should expel them to "blue-eyed people island". How about, people with blue eyes are so inferior that they would be better off as slaves for people of other eye colors.
What if I went on a tour across the country to debate blue-eyed people on the topic. Did I incite any violence? Did my ideas offend any aggregate? Would you be surprised if my ideas resulted in violence against me?
If you replace "blue eyes" with other things, you can see the number and ferocity of the aggregate changes depending on the topic at hand. Your ideas are so provably contradictory to the ways of the world that I don't understand how this isn't obvious to you. Wars have been waged over the idea that one religion is superior/inferior to another. Galileo was imprisoned for his idea that planets revolved around the sun. I can go on and on.
> The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Mental gymnastics about what? I am pretty consistent in my messaging: opinions and incitement for violence are two completely different things.
You, on the other hand, full of straw mans.
Any claim can be offensive, as I said earlier with my example about capitalism. According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
PS are you applying the same standard to “From the river to the sea” chants? Or offending Israelis and denying their rights to exist is totally fine?
> According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
Where did I say that? that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that a discussion of capitalism has an entirely different risk profile than discussing other topics. I stand by the first amendment that people can say whatever they want. Where you lose me is your follow-on that what they say disallows people from being offended. And secondarily, disallows people from having consequences for what they say.
Being on HN, it is highly likely you work a corporate job and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know that if you were to debate some of Kirk's ideas in your workplace that you could be disciplined for it. Because your workplace knows that certain topics are extremely divisive and that don't want people arguing and fighting. That is why I said you are arguing in bad faith. And both you and I know we're not talking about the topic of capitalism. Let's be real.
Next time you speak to a woman at work I want you to try this idea out on them:
"Hey X, all kidding and sarcasm aside, this is something that I hope will make you more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, X. You're not in charge."
This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it. You obviously know what topics will get you fired from your job. You obviously know what topics will get you punched in the face if you say things to the wrong person. And that's not even politics, that's just how the world is.
I have no idea what "from the river to the sea" means. Based on what you said, it's some kind either pro-Israel or anti-Israel thing. I am not Israeli nor Palestinian so I don't know enough about the topic to publicly state an opinion on the matter.
All I know is that both Israeli and Palestinian children who have had their parents killed will grow up hating the other side. And if there were some kind of attempt at peace or debate in the future, one of those kind of people will be the one killing the person trying to have the debate. We're talking decades long generational hate from lost loved ones. Someone from the outside thinking they know what that's like to the point of deciding who should be killed can easily become the target of the other side. It doesn't matter which side that is.
> This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it.
I know what point you are trying to make. I hope you realize how ridiculous it sounds. People can be offended by anything. Does it mean we should stop talking?
Ukrainians can be offended by the idea of peace talks with Russians: Russians are aggressors, there is nothing to talk about! Are we gonna stop any diplomatic contact with Russians right now?
For any somewhat important social issue I can find people who will be offended. Should we stop discussion about issues in our society?
He promoted the “Great Replacement Theory” (a “fact” as he characterized it) which is plainly a violent-radicalizing notion, with a long violent-radicalizing history and recent examples of violence done in its name.
He promoted 2020 election denial conspiracies. Moves to mess with due process for voting, or to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power (say, promoting coup attempts) are some of the gravest threats to peace possible in a democracy, as far as speech goes. Lying about such, is right up there.
[edit] sources easily searchable if you have the topics, letting people pick their own works better if search turns them up pretty easily, that way there’s no worry that I’m choosing clips out of context or something.
> sources easily searchable if you have the topics,
So, you made a claim. I asked you for an example of a material that you based your claim on, and instead of backing up your claim you are sending me to find a source that will prove it?
> letting people pick their own works better if search turns them up pretty easily, that way there’s no worry that I’m choosing clips out of context or something.
What is the source material, a video, or a text, that you based your claims on? Is there a chance that you actually never saw the source material yourself?
It would have taken you a lot less time to type “Charlie Kirk great replacement theory fact” into a search box and find his own words than to post on here over and over pretending both to give a shit and like you don’t know how to use a search engine.
You see, I can find some link and read them, but then I may come back and challenge you on what you've said. However, since I've read a different source (not the one you've read/watched), then we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we arguing about different things. To avoid this, people typically cite their references. So, you are not willing to do so, which makes me believe that you never actually read/watched a source material yourself, and best case scenario it was a tweet.
I have no idea why you resort to name-calling, it does not look good on you.
Dude(tte) you’re on HN in 2025 and pretended not to understand how to google. Assuming trolling and that it was pretending is the generous reading of that.
No. Many people have shown me reasons they think I should believe it. In every single case, it has been plain and obvious to me that it's nothing of the sort.
Let's not kid ourselves here. The arguments being made were often opinions on whether one set of people should be killed and another side being saved. For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result. Saying thousands of people should be fired from their lifelong jobs in the federal government means you have had major and long-standing impacts to entire families (and there have been many suicides as a result. You can go on and on like this (Israel/Palestine for example).
Yes, these are just opinions and debate. But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people. That doesn't justify him being killed, I don't support his killing in any way. But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
> For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result.... But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people.
By this standard, so are all political debates. At the very least, if one person's position on a topic concerns "the lives and deaths of real people", then so, necessarily does the position of anyone who disagrees.
> But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
I am a bit confused. Are you saying that now we should stop debate hot topic because opinions/claims we voice during those debates can impact people and cause them to commit violence towards us?
I think you're confusing a few things here. I think you would agree that opinions exist on a spectrum from minimal impact to maximum impact. I could say I have an opinion on my preferred type of ramen noodles and people may disagree, but ultimately, it's not changing anyone's life and killing people. And on the other side of the spectrum you have things that cause harm to people. Like racism, genocide, etc.
If I use my words and political influence to support say genocide, is that a bad thing? Because you could say it is a debate we should have, right? It's just words. But topics like this mean people are literally dying. Having an opinion, especially have a strong public opinion, that people in Gaza should me evacuated, starve to death, etc. Isn't really just words. You're literally arguing those people should be displaced, eradicated, starved, etc.
You are expecting people who are the victims and supporters of death and destruction to be rational. To use words to "debate" their points. That's like arguing Israel/Hamas should be debating until there is a "winner" and the other side concedes. When in reality, there are generations of hate and anger. Neither side is really interested in a debate. And there is likely no realistic solution that either side with peacefully support. But make no mistake, this debate result in the deaths of others. People are literally dying and starving. Just because you in particular are not in that position doesn't mean you words about have no meaning. This is a person using influence to change political policy and elections. To literally choose who lives and who dies.
If you dropped into Gaza right now and tried to "debate" someone that Israel is correct, you might get some resistance, no? It's even highly likely you would meet some violence. This is pretty obvious to most of us. Didn't your parent tell you not to discuss religion or politics in certain settings? These are heated topics with histories of violence. It's disingenuous to think you can make strong public statement on those topics and not meet strong resistance in the least, and violence at the worst.
Now, it shouldn't be this way. And I wish it wasn't. But as long as military's exist and you have people willing to kill to make their points instead of debating, then that is just reality. It's like trying to debate a hornets nest and being surprised that bees aren't particularly interested in debates.
I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur. Which, unless you live in a vacuum is simply not how the world works. Why don't you walk into your local bar tonight and walk up to each couple. Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
So would your opinions be inciting violence by your own definitions? You mentioned above wanting to send weapons to Ukraine. Those weapons will be used to kill people, and have frequently been used to intentionally target victims with no military connection whatsoever. They will also be used to prolong a conflict that's not only increasingly obviously hopeless, but at this only being sustained exclusively by locking people inside of a country, making it impossible for them to leave, and then replenishing mass deaths on the front line by dragging random people in off the streets, often through violence.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want the war to end immediately by settlement, which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions. [1] The headline for that article is "Ukrainian support for war effort collapses", while you're here claiming we should perpetuate the war as much as possible, implicitly suggesting you're taking the Ukrainian side. This, by the way, is way free and open debate is so important. You obviously have not really thought to imagine how things might look from somebody else's perspective because you probably simply have not been exposed to that much, if at all.
And it seems it's literally dangerous to expose certain groups contrary view points at this time in society, as they respond to words with bullets.
This is exactly why giving examples isn't helpful. All that does is define what tribe you are on. And each tribe has talking point to defend their position. Where everything I'm saying is agnostic of that.
Without picking any side in the Ukraine/Russian conflict. You can pick one side or the other AND STILL have the other side wanting to inflict violence on you. I wasn't promoting or defending either side. My point was that have a debate, opinion, argument, whatever about something where lives are literally on the line is prone to violence. The violence is what the whole thing is about. Because if Ukraine/Russia could just "debate the idea" of land ownership, then there would be no violence.
Where you're arguing/defending for one side, the other side is in heavy opposition to that. If you want to supply Ukraine with weapons then you shouldn't be surprised if the Russian side wants suppress you. If you're arguing not to supply weapons, then Ukrainians might have issues with that. But the point isn't to pick sides. The point is that some ideas are prone to more violence than others. And if you make yourself the face of one side or the other of those ideas, it shouldn't be shocking to meet violence.
Kirk held opinions on many controversial topics. My argument isn't that any of those opinions are right or wrong. It was that strong opinions on those topics tend to result in violence. I feel like I'm the only person here who it isn't plainly obvious that religion and politics are extremely divisive topics. Especially in our current time.
I think this is increasingly clearly a false equivalency. If somebody took the equal but opposite of every Charlie Kirk position, they could go to the most religious or conservative universities in the United States and feel 100% safe, even without any sort of personal security. They'd probably have to worry much more about a false flag attack than somebody genuinely trying to hurt them because of their opinions. But many of the positions he expressed in ostensibly liberal areas suddenly open one up to the threat of overt violence, up to and including murder. Liberalism in the US has become highly dysfunctional, and I say that as somebody who still identifies as liberal, though I'm not sure for how much longer if "we" continue down this path.
You are again resorting to tribes. This is a tactic used to unite people against a common enemy. In reality, no person should be completely liberal or completely conservative. Most people have mixed views on different topics. For example, would you argue that the current "Conservative" government is fiscally conservative? A true fiscal conservative would have major issues with some of the current fiscal policies. But due to tribalism, they go along with their team because the "other side" would be worse.
It's only when people become tribal that the positions no longer matter. They devolve into the thinking that no matter what their tribe does is the right thing to do. And anything the other tribe does is the wrong thing. That is the problem in today's politics. I would further argue that it is the tribalism that leads to political murder that you speak of.
I consider myself to be in no tribes and make my decisions on what I think is best for me and my family. And from that standpoint, I'd wouldn't mind hearing what specific liberal policies that you think are resulting in overt violence and murder. Because in my opinion, irrational people combined with tribalism is what leads to the violence you're referring to. I mean, irrational people commit violence without even belonging to a tribe. Adding the tribalism just gives them more "enemies".
It has nothing to do with tribes or policies, in and of themselves. It has everything to do with politicians and the media, who are increasingly regularly labeling everything and everyone they disagree with as fascists, threats to democracy, enemies of the state, and every sort of pejorative in between. And these same politicians/media then actively and directly incite violence in no uncertain terms. [1] This is then further backed by an extensive weave of NGOs and other groups that actively agitate young and easily impressionable individuals to violence.
Even in this thread you had somebody arguing that Charlie Kirk being murdered prevented a Civil War, which is just about the dumbest take imaginable, but that's again the result of somebody consuming endless amount of hyperbolic agitprop, often in online bubbles with no contrary voices present whatsoever, so dumb takes never get challenged, which is precisely what produces people like the killer in this case who has not only thrown away his own life, but taken the life of another individual and turned somebody he probably strongly disagreed with into a martyr.
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I'd also add here that the social media response to this is itself also telling. If e.g. somebody like Cenk Uygur was murdered because of politics, you're not going to have conservatives going on social media and cheering it. That's just completely sociopathic and absurdly inappropriate behavior. People can have different opinions, even opinions we strongly disagree with.
I just want to add one more datum to this, because it's a perfect example. Recently Home Depot fired an employee who was refusing to print posters for a Charlie Kirk vigil. Trump's attorney general took this one step further and was threatening businesses with lawsuits if they or their employees engaged in "hate speech" around this event, which would include acts like this.
Did conservatives then rally around the "tribe" and cheer this on? No, obviously not. Because people have a right to their own opinion, even if its wrong and abhorrent. The response to this, primarily from conservatives, was overwhelmingly negative. [1] Again, imagine the roles were reversed. This is not a both sides thing. There is only one side that wants to silence everybody that disagrees with them.
> ... which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions.
No. That's the part you're making up. The mood has simply shifted from fighting all the way to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to forcing Russia to leave Ukraine alone through other means, such as destroying the oil and gas infrastructure that powers the Russian economy. Everyone, even Russian officials, admit that Russia is in deep-deep trouble if the attacks continue.
> I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur.
I am a bit confused. An opinion that states that a violence towards particular group should happen is an incitement for violence.
> Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that.
Inducing rage and anger is what algorithms on social networks are optimized for. So we are sooner or later getting governments to regulate almighty algorithms driving social networks of today.
