Posted by Geekette 9/13/2025
You just discovered why dog whistles exist.
Since he is talking a literal fascist talking point (execute the undesirables) there is no way my right wing friends can support him talking for them, since they HATE to be associated with fascists/called fascists.
Advocating that men should "take care of" trans people like they did in the 50s: https://x.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1626672143617384472
Saying that a "patriot" should bail out the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband: https://archive.is/SE3y7
From Wikipedia: On January 4, 2021 (the day before the Capitol attack), Kirk tweeted that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 “buses of patriots” to Washington, D.C. to “fight for this president.”
On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
Sounds plenty violent to me. I'd have to agree with those who say there are grounds for seeing Kirk as someone who frequently advocated for violence.
Was it clear 2 days before Jan 6 that it was going to be violent, or does this hinge on the "fight" wording?
>On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
See: >except perhaps the government monopoly on force (e.g. to speak in favour of the death penalty).
"Expect perhaps" now seems as only so much weasel words. Whipping? What manner of government monopoly on violence needs to include whipping?
No, you have not demonstrated any such thing.
I think it’s prodding people to do something dangerous and illegal and a risk to democracy herself, and I’m not really sure what else it could be.
(Why… would Trump hold a rally in DC on that particular day to begin with? And why did he and other speakers choose to say what they did? None of this is mysterious, it’s easy to read, but it still seems to be eluding a lot of folks in ways that it don’t think it would in any analogous situation that didn’t involve partisan politics)
The same, non-violent thing that it means in the stock phrase "fight for your rights".
> None of this is mysterious, it’s easy to read, but it still seems to be eluding a lot of folks
Other people are not unaware of the possible connotations you describe. They have evaluated the evidence for themselves and concluded that those connotations were not intended.
We can conclude with very high certainty that joining this clamour with promises to send busloads of people to fight was a call for violence at the time.
Even taking your claims for granted (none of this sounds familiar to me) there is no reason to suppose Kirk would have had any knowledge of it. For that matter, the FBI and DHS believing something about an ideological group doesn't make it true.
> We can conclude with very high certainty
No, we cannot.
I don't think the median person in the 50s and 60s even had any mental concept of "being transgender" in the first place. In those days, it was considered an exceptionally rare condition (I can remember seeing a figure in the ballpark of 1 in 30,000).
Oh, the people he's referring to had no problem understanding the simple mental concept that the best way to deal with a f** or a cross-dresser was to beat the shit out of them, while the authorities look the other way.
If you disagree, do tell me, pray tell, what do you think he meant by that statement? How does his well-documented history of playing identity politics that explicitly attack trans people fit into your interpretation?
(Which was certainly a bit better than the 40s, where a large number of people felt that the best way to deal with them was chemical castration or an extermination camp.)
> Even after taking the quote that far out of context, coming up with that meaning requires extensive, uncharitable interpretation.
I'm getting rather tired of the expectation that far-right media personas saying sick shit requires us to bend over backwards to take the most charitable view of them and their attacks and dogwhistles, while random nobodies griping about them are held to a Caesar's Wife standard of civility that the targets of their ire don't even try to meet.
Just look at what happened to Brian Kilmeade the other night - nothing. But heaven forbid someone says a harsh word about him or someone else equally repugnant...
That's an interesting question.
Countless people had an opportunity to ask him to clarify. To the best of my knowledge, none ever did. If someone had asked, and he said anything that confirmed the narrative people are running with, I'm sure it would have been shouted from the rafters. So I can only assume that either nobody asked, or he meant something that simply doesn't support the narrative.
Alternately, you could write to TPUSA and ask them.
Many others have offered plausible interpretations that don't advocate for violence; I see no need to rehash that here. But the main point here is that Kirk's objection was very clearly not, in context, to transgender people simply existing. The objection in that instance was very specifically to trans women competing alongside cis women in competitive sports, on the grounds that this is unfair to the cis women for physiological reasons (the same ones that motivate separating women from men in most sports in the first place).
When I try to search for information on the quote, I find even more misrepresentations, so I can't really just quote you an analysis. One article lede claims:
> He went on to say he blamed "the decline of American men" on trans people.
This is blatantly incorrect; he blamed this putative decline for a willingness to accept such competition rules.
> How does his well-documented history of playing identity politics that explicitly attack trans people
He has no such history. There is a history of people representing his quotes in this manner. Considering them in context makes it very clear that he did not "attack" trans people and did not wish them harm, especially not physical harm. He simply disagreed about which/how many people are trans, what forms of care would be best for their well-being; and he furthermore had concerns about people (especially minors) being convinced of being transgender when that wasn't (in his view) actually the case.
> I'm getting rather tired of the expectation that far-right media personas saying sick shit requires us to bend over backwards to take the most charitable view of them and their attacks and dogwhistles, while random nobodies griping about them are held to a Caesar's Wife standard of civility that the targets of their ire don't even try to meet.
Civility is expected for everyone. But people making strongly worded political claims that you disagree with is not incivil. Calling someone else's opinion "sick shit" is not. A claim about a "dogwhistle" is inherently saying that you know someone meant something worse than what was actually said, while denying that you have any burden of proof. You do have a very strong burden of proof for such things.
There is no double standard. Holding views on these "culture war" issues is not what gets leftists censured; endorsing extrajudicial violence is. The rightists I know do not take clips of leftist speakers out of context, and are happy to give detailed arguments against those positions, rather than letting quotes stand on their own. They do not argue that it's immoral or disgusting to have certain beliefs — only that the consequences of the corresponding policy would be immoral or disgusting.
There are no clips of Charlie Kirk telling the students at these debates that they believed or espoused "sick shit" or anything of the sort. He didn't even call them stupid, or otherwise insult them. He just wasn't that kind of guy. When students at the mic complained that he was setting people up to look dumb, he would simply point out that they weren't bringing specifics that could be debated in any meaningful way, or didn't seem to know his actual position, etc. And in point of fact, they all had ample time to prepare, had they been in interested in talking about issues with Charlie Kirk, rather than in trying to make points about what he believed while addressing him.
It's not at all "bending over backwards" to apply the basic charity required. It's not a matter of searching for possible explanations of a phrase that aren't horrible — except for those who have not developed an understanding of the underlying mode of thought. Rather, it's a matter of listening to people who offer such explanations, learning how easy it is to make people sound bad out of context, and not immediately jumping to meanings that are horrible simply because they would be convenient for your argument.
PS: Take a deep breath before you reply. Don't let me ruin your day.