Posted by Geekette 9/13/2025
If you say "Democrats suck", don't expect them to buy your product. If you say "God doesn't exist," don't expect Christians to come to your business. If you say "I hate gays", expect to get fired from your medical clinic job.
Have free speech, but use it wisely.
Having free speech serves to diffuse social tension. It ensures we don't wind up as cattle, like in 1984. Just don't expect that you can praise the death of certain people and expect everyone to love you for it.
Maybe above all you should be kind. Regardless of your politics. Articulate what you don't like with your free speech, but don't be an asshole.
Unfortunately social media encourages fast engagement with little nuance, so we see a sewer instead of a noble land of open thought and debate.
But we shouldn't throw free speech out with the bath water.
Appropriate consequences.
Death is never an appropriate consequence for this.
Loss of employment is only appropriate where the speech demonstrates an inability to do the job properly.
It raises the suspicion that the surgeon might fail, consciously or unconsciously, to work at full capacity for a patient who happens to resemble the victim in some way.
"Offend" is subjective, and US Citizens should not have punitive governmental consequences as a result.
But private organizations, should be able to make their own decisions on all the above.
By the government? I doubt that “speech is violence” comes from the government.
When an order to harm is given and followed, the harm was caused proximately by the person following the order; and ultimately by the system in which the speech was to be taken as an order, and was followed. It was not caused by the speech itself.
Where American law makes an exception for "incitement to imminent lawless action", this is a recognition that something more than mere "speech" is going on.
Did I just kill a civilian, or did I just say some words?
I think it's clearly the former.
Another case: someone takes private nude photographs of your wife and then uploads them without her consent to social media. Is that "free speech" or sexual assault?
I'm pretty close to free speech absolutism, but there are some things that go beyond just being speech or opinions. Libel and defamation (whose scope is very narrow), shouting fire and it leading to injury or death, influencing or instructing someone to kill another person, spreading non-consentual sexual imagery, etc.
It is therefore not valid to say that "you believe speech can harm people", any more than "you believe breathing can harm people" (since breathing is a prerequisite to being alive, which is a prerequisite to giving an order).
No.
What I am saying is very simple and I find it very hard to believe that it could be misunderstood in good faith. But I will try one last time to make it as absolutely clear as possible before ignoring you.
Giving an order is an action. The action has properties. One of those properties is that it is speech. Another property is that exercises power, to compels someone else to do something. Because the action is compelled, the order-giver can be held responsible for it.
But these are both properties of the order. The speech, itself, does not have the property of exercising power. Words used for other purposes cannot compel an action. When an action is compelled, it's because an order was given, not because words were spoken.
There is a mountain of precedent for this in US law, too. In general, the fact that doing a wrong thing required speaking does not constitute a defense against the wrong thing. If you call emergency services and knowingly make a fradulent claim about an emergency — for example, "swatting", or making a nuisance 911 call — then you commit a crime, and the fact that the crime was put into effect by the act of uttering words will not defend you in a court of law. Penalizing these crimes does not in any way constitute a ban on any form of speech.
The same is true of "time, place and manner" restrictions. For example, if you cause hearing damage to someone else through inappropriate use of a loudspeaker, you may still be found guilty of a crime; the question of whether you spoke into the loudspeaker or used some other sound source is irrelevant.
Your original claim, in the flagged and killed comment, does not hold water. Hitler used his power to compel his subordinates to kill Jews (and others). To exercise this power, he communicated in natural language (specifically, German). This does not constitute "speech" harming people. It constitutes the use of that power harming people.
You may argue for restrictions on the form of speech such as yelling into someone's ear with a megaphone, but that doesn't apply here since ordering someone to kill someone is a matter of content, not form.
Unconstitutional precedent does not become constitutional simply because it's precedent.
2. People getting fired for simply pointing out that Kirk is a victim of a system he helped build are getting fired, which is a completely different situation.
3. The Trump admiration openly going after people is infringing on freedom of speech.
Trump orders all flags in the nation at half mast and Kirk is being treated like a fallen statesman and hero, the State Department claiming it will revoke the visas of any immigrant who speaks negatively of Kirk, the breathless media coverage, Trump ranting about "leftist violence", the right wing's endless calls for violence and war on social media (going entirely unclamped-down upon,) and the narrative being created that Charlie Kirk was a peaceful intellectual scholar and activist of the likes of MLK Jr and Jesus Christ.
It's obvious a stage is being set here. And of course when whatever happens happens, it will be blamed on the left.
We all have to fight to undo the Obama Smith-Mundt Modernization Act that allowed the executive branch to create domestic propaganda.
That was the first big test of whether we were going to enter a new era of normalized political violence, and we (his voters, but collectively we as a country) flunked it. Wave of violence it is, I guess. Reckoned at the time it wouldn’t be much fun, and go figure, it ain’t.
One person killed Heather Heyer.
Even Snopes doesn't endorse the "very fine people" narrative (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/). There is a single-page site dedicated to the topic: https://www.finepeoplehoax.net/. The Politifact coverage (https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...) makes it very clear that Trump's position was not at all consistent with the narrative you are trying to run with.
As Snopes and politifact confirms, Trump made the following statement about the "Unite the Right" protestors, a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis who had staged a violent rally followed by a vehicular murder: "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides".
I meant to link exactly what I linked. The articles do not confirm your point.
You did not make a claim that he simply spoke those literal words. You used a paraphrase that misrepresented who he was referring to.
The sources do not say that he made this statement "about the 'Unite the Right' protestors". They also do not support describing them collectively as being all of those other things you call them.
I do not believe you are engaging in good faith, because someone engaging in good faith ought to notice the clear logical holes in the argument you are making. Especially since it has already been explained to you repeatedly by myself and others.
> of course he was talking about the "Unite the Right" protestors.
There were many protestors with a wide variety of views on many topics among them, who conducted themselves in a wide variety of ways. (All the same is true, of course, of the counter-protestors). To say "there were many fine people on both sides" is to say that each group contained people who were worthy of praise.
You say they were "a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis", but not all of them were racists, not all of them were anti-Semites, not all of them were KKK members, and not all of them were neo-Nazis.
Your initial claim was:
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
This means that you are saying that he described murderers this way; and then you went on to conflate "right wingers" with a variety of other terms of abuse.
This is blatant and flagrant logical fallacy (the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition). It is not logically valid to take a statement made about people "being on a side" (i.e. in a group) and represent it as a judgement of the "side" in general, nor of other people on that "side".
James Alex Fields Jr. killed Heather Heyer. "Right wingers", objectively, did not. "Unite the Right protestors", similarly, objectively, did not.
Donald Trump did not call James Alex Fields Jr. a very fine person. He did not refer to racists as "very fine people". He did not refer to anti-Semites as "very fine people". He did not refer to KKK members as "very fine people". He did not refer to neo-Nazis as "very fine people". He did not describe murder, racism, anti-Semitism, KKK membership or neo-Nazism as virtuous.
He also did not refer to "right wingers" as "very fine people", although of course he presumably believes there is nothing wrong with being politically to the right.
As said by Snopes even in the article headline, Trump did not "call neo-Nazis and white supremacists 'very fine people'. As explained in the article, he explicitly "condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists outright and said he was specifically referring to those who were there only to participate in the statue protest." As shown in the original quotation, he explicitly described the violence as "vicious and horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch". Immediately before the pull quote, he explicitly said "and you had some very bad people in that group" (meaning the Unite the Right protestors). He explicitly elaborated the point: "But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly." When the reporter went on to ask a rhetorical question hinting at the same fallacy of composition, Trump explicitly distinguished the people he was praising from those he was criticizing: "The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest". Which is to say, he explicitly agreed that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are "rough, bad people", which is in fact the opposite of calling them "very fine people".
You use this as a talking point because you are trying to paint Trump as someone who praises murderers. But you know, or at least reasonably ought to know, that your narrative is contradicted by the evidence, because the evidence has been shown to you multiple times. The plain meaning of what Trump said is very nearly the opposite of what you're presenting it as.
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
Trump did not call the killer a fine person, nor did he call everyone involved on the right fine people. He explicitly stated that there were, "some very bad people in that group." The "very fine people" was referencing those who were peacefully protesting both for and against the removal of historical monuments. If you watch the original video instead of the selective reporting this is all made very clear. You can watch or read the transcript of the "very fine people" press conference here: https://www.veryfinepeople.info
> When they killed Brian Sicknick, he called them heroes and pardoned them.
Brian Sicknick was not killed by anyone. The medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes. There is no evidence that he was killed, which was reflected in the difficulty the prosecutors faced, and its why nobody was ever convicted of murder.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-sicknick-capitol-riot-die... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick#Misinf...
On the topic of Sicknick, I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted. The timing alone is strong evidence that the two are related.
Even if it was "merely" an assault on a police officer, it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter. You opened this door.
No, he was not. That is not what the words meant in context, and he also said many other things in the same speech that directly contradict you.
> it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter.
This does not follow, and making assertions like this is entirely outside of civil discussion.
I again strongly encourage you to go watch the video or read the transcript since it directly contradicts what you are continuing to claim. Trump explicitly said that that the neo-Nazis should be "condemned totally." A total condemnation is exactly the opposite of your claim that he was "excusing" or trying to "minimize" the events. I will also note that I find it quite odd that you claim to be upset about Trump allegedly downplaying violence, but then go on to downplay and minimize left-wing extremist violence. I believe that all political violence should be condemned, its unfortunate that you appear to believe otherwise.
> I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree here, I don't find it likely that I will be convinced to ignore the medical expert who examined the case and the corresponding documentary evidence that points against the idea that Sicknick was killed.
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.
In my view, he said this and more, plainly and as comprehensibly as can be expected.
> Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
He said very directly and explicitly that he was talking about the non-violent protestors:
> There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there was some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest — because I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
He draws a very clear contrast between who he considers "rough, bad people" and who he considers to have "innocently protested".
> Problem is, that second point clashes hard
Only because of a human tendency to assign people to ingroups and outgroups and commit the fallacy of composition. Logically speaking, there is no contradiction whatsoever.
> I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies
It shouldn't, first off because they were seen and documented (even if some of the footage may have been suppressed) and second because of a general base-rate assumption that protests have a reasonable basis and are mostly conducted by non-violent people (and fair, intellectually honest discussion doesn't throw that assumption away just because the idea expressed is in the "wrong" general direction).
Put another way: the consensus estimate is that the George Floyd protests in 2020-2021 caused close $2 billion in damages (mainly to property), including over half a billion within Minneapolis–Saint Paul, along with (per Wikipedia) 19 confirmed deaths and over 14,000 arrests. However, this became a global phenomenon with protests spread across thousands of cities and towns, with probably millions of people involved (I can't readily find an estimate) directly in the streets and many more simply taking actions such as putting BLM logos on their webpages. So even with that extent of violence and damage, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a "moderate protest group actually existed". Right-wingers like to meme about news networks (CNN in particular as I recall) speaking of "mostly peaceful protests" against a background of widespread arson and looting seen on camera; but as it turns out this is not actually a contradiction.
> if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd
I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews". In some cases, the "Y" may have sounded somewhat like a "J" because of interference from the trailing "s" of the previous iteration of the chant. But I didn't hear an "s" on the end of the word. That would come from a mental auto-correction after already hearing "Jew" and realizing that "Jew will" is ungrammatical.
> I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews".
I believe your personal experience, but you didn't see the whole story. Both chants were given. Hilariously, one possible explanation is that a subset of the protestors performed mental auto-correction: hearing the "you" chant coming from other protestors, filtered through their own biases, they heard "Jew," went "Oh, we're finally doing this!" and started chanting "the quiet part loud," as it were. Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted, it may be reasonable to infer that at least a subset of the protestors had mental priors that would make that substitution likelier than not.
(Not terribly important, but as a sidebar: your pull quote is an excellent example of what I mean when I say "word salad" regarding the current President. "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee." is the kind of thing that would make a sentence diagrammer light their own hair on fire. He has a speaking style that leaves his words very open to multiple interpretations).
Entirely plausible. I don't think we have solid evidence, though. People showed me chants where they believed "Jews" was said and I didn't really hear it. At most it sounded as if a minority of them might have been saying it. That would make you technically correct, but I don't think the claims that are generally made accurately represent the situation.
> Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted
I agree that this originates in hateful, extremist circles. I also think that people who hear it could validly assign different meaning to it and use it with that different meaning, and may validly feel that extremists don't get to decide what it means.
In my experience, very few people who oppose immigration (in majority-white or formerly-majority-white countries) consider themselves to hold a belief in the inferiority of non-white races. Certainly many more of them say things that understandably give the impression of such a belief. But many of them are of those races, too, and give no impression of an inferiority complex. If anything, they resent that they abided by rules that are now (in their view, at least) not being enforced against others of the same race.
----
As regards "word salad":
> "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee."
This is just Trump speaking the thoughts as they come to mind rather than taking the time to organize them into proper sentences. Taken literally the overall structure is ungrammatical. They are not a prepared speech being read aloud. But it takes little effort to refactor them. I understood this quote as:
> There were people in that rally who were very quietly protesting the fact that a statue of Robert E. Lee was being taken down. I know this because I looked into it the night before. If you had looked into it, you would know this too.
Please stop following me around to post about this. I already explained why I was not willing to continue the discussion before, and one of your comments in those other threads has already been flagged and killed.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45234112 and marked it off topic.
The full quote said that instead of empathy one should think about sympathy. However, with the full quote the argument looks weak.
Edit: here is a link https://m.youtube.com/shorts/vojXvj2B6RI
I actually have witnessed the concept of empathy used on many occasions for a sort of rhetorical abuse, by alternately demanding it of people and then denying that they are fundamentally capable of it in a given situation due to identity differences. In the literal sense, empathy requires (https://www.simplypsychology.org/sympathy-empathy-compassion...) a deeper understanding of negative emotions based in "putting oneself in another's shoes"; but many will argue that this simply can't be properly done.
A simple example is that men are accused of lacking "empathy" for women who feel endangered in social/dating circumstances where the man might feel empowered. But we simply cannot spontaneously change our perspective on a given circumstance. (And, of course, it is treated as offensive to turn the example around; but that's another discussion.)
Indeed, your empathy is not being expected here by anyone. But your sympathy is. You are being expected to treat murder as a crime and the loss of a healthy adult life as a tragedy. Kirk had many ideas about how people should go about their lives that you might strongly disagree with, or even consider unconscionable. He also had many ideas about the reality of how businesses and other institutions operate, or about what is fair in that context, similarly.
But from what I can tell, nothing he ever said rose to the level of supposing that ending someone's life is an appropriate response to that person having the wrong ideas. (And the bit you're quoting is so incredibly far from that, that it's hard to assume good faith when people make this argument.)
His killer apparently disagreed. And many people on social media also seem to disagree, although they haven't taken action on it.
I would also like to point out there is a very large difference between firing and killing. So no, people getting fired is not somehow equivalent to a killing.
There are incredible numbers of people who support, even celebrate deaths. And we're not even talking about the other difficulties, like perspective (e.g. the death of a Russian father fighting in Ukraine, do you celebrate or mourn?)
This seems like you are feeling quite offended -- to judge (now ex?) friends as "inhuman", and to further alienate them by labeling them as "liberals".
That's certainly over-stating the situation, no?
Is it worth it to have a cost of some deaths every year so that we can have the Bill of Rights? Yes, it is. If you think that makes me callus, you need to develop a thicker skin.
Since GP also made the typo, I don't know if/to what extent a joke was intended here.
(The adjective, here intended to mean "emotionally hardened", is "callous". A callus (noun) is a region of literal thickened skin. Although "callous" can also literally refer to skin which has calluses.)
"...cost of unfortunately..." Is that not clear? The context was he was responding about a question about the 2nd amendment. clearly the first order thinking would make it clear it's not the rule, it's the purpose of the rule that's important.
The purpose is so you don't get arrested for some social media comment or other rights, like what is happening in the UK right now.
Note: I believe the 2nd Amendment is really the proof that the founding fathers weren't the super geniuses the mythology has them as, but hey, too late now.
The founding fathers had vastly different ideas for drafting the 2nd.
So, basically, what you are saying is "it is bad to celebrate the death of people, but...".
So, you have to choose what to be: a person who is fine with political violence, or someone who is against any sort of political violence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/we-must-not-posthumously-...
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.
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.
That's alright, reality is what you make it, it's a free country after all.
I hope you realize how ironic this statement of yours is
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/technology/podcasts-steve...
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.
In effect, politics is ruled and ruined by money.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
> Read the audience. He knew what he was doing.
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.
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Ridiculous.
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.
Therefore we will see more of it.
Apply it to current US politicians. Who is doing this, how do you stop them?
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?
See:
* https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-host-menta...
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.
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.
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
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
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
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022
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.
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.
It's reasonable to disagree with Bidens choice, but it's rage bait to make it about her skin color and toilet-part preferences.
That's what Kirk did for a living though.
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.
[1] - https://www.wnba.com/news/wnba-delivers-most-watched-regular...
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.
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.
Kirk wasn't stupid, but he was kind of a jerk.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout%E2%80%93Brittney_G...
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]
----
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Ankara_prisoner_exchange#...
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.
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.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1356203/approval-brittne...
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.
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!
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.
In what context is it okay to say this?
> Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
----
> 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.
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.
Kirk is the one that turned it into identity politics.
By contrast, the mere words "United States Marine" paint a clear picture of a very particular sort of individual that is instantly legible, internationally.
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.
It's a dog whistle. You're falling for the plausible deniability.
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.
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.
Yes, I have. People have been shoving it in my face for probably close to 20 years.
Overwhelmingly, it simply is not what it is represented as being.
And where people have expressed that kind of bigotry, it very clearly works very differently.
> Overwhelmingly, it simply is not what it is represented as being.
I find these statements so juxtaposed to be rather interesting. I can see that you are not representing this as it is.
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.
Right. Those things are misrepresented.
> I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation
I do not doubt this at all. You are surely aware that the best lies are coated in the truth.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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."
See how well the "debate" goes.
Can you provide me with some sort of guide on risk profiles for various topics? Maybe someone composed a list?
> Where you lose me is your follow-on that what they say disallows people from being offended.
People can be offended by anything because offense is a feeling inside persons head.
Why did you ignore my question about "from the river to the sea" chant?
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.
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?
None of it has given me any reason to believe he had the intent of inciting rage.
The specific quotes people are spamming in these discussions especially don't convince me.
Can you provide an example of his material where he incites rage? I am curious to see.
The are a dozen or so here.
In what way do these quotes evidence deliberate incitement of rage?
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.
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?
I assume you never seen anything like that yourself, but rather read a tweet or two that claim that it happened, and you go off of it.
It shows me a bunch of links to various websites. So, which one was the one that you've read/watched to inform your opinion?
You have to click on the links and read, HTH.
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.
you realize it too.
Disagreeing with you is not avoiding anything.
To "realize" something, it would have to be true.
Not going to engage, but you are absolutely burying your head in the sand, bud.
Then commenting to repeat yourself is obnoxious and unproductive conduct.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
By siting in a tent with "Prove me wrong" poster, inviting people to debate him, and then posting it on the internet?
How is that "inciting rage"?
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.
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.
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?
Are you serious?
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 think you are. Opinions are opinions. Incitement for violence is incitement to commit violence.
Completely different things.
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.
[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/693203/ukrainian-support-war-ef...
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.
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".
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.
--
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.
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.
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 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.
He also somehow supported the president "saving" TikTok, and was one of the most prominent influencers on the platform.
Seems really easy to solve this problem. Follow the law. The president must love the CCP or something.