nomenym
2mo ago
From the point of view of Progressivism, Kirk was profoundly harmful to society. He successfully advocated for views which were obviously wrong, and likely did so while knowing he was wrong. He was a persistent purveyor of disinformation. Even supposing that he did not understand the fascist nature of the views he espoused (which he likely did in private), enacting his political and cultural ideals would, in fact, result in fascism. Preventing fascism is the most important goal of democracy, and Kirk was daily working to undermine that. His kind of political activism was inherently illegitimate, since it sought, wittingly or not, to demolish liberal democracy and its protection of minorities. Tolerance of the intolerant is not a virtue. Kirk did far more harm to society than most "violent" criminals locked up in prison, and yet he was allowed to walk free and spread his hateful ideas unchecked. That he was typically polite cannot hide that his ideas were inherently hateful. Kirk was "nonviolent", but he was the propaganda arm of a system that every day uses violence to control marginalized people. Without people like Kirk, that system of violence cannot survive, and so Kirk is responsible for a great deal of systemic injustice.
The chat log doesn't read genuine. It feels off, staged. Rumor has it the roommate was no shrinking violet but quite vocal in their extremist politics. [EDIT: Specifically, the chat log reads like bad exposition where one party asks stupid questions so the villain can explain his dastardly plan to the audience].
My guess is that you have a local trantifa group, mostly online, immersed in far left ideology but veiled in ironic internet meme culture. They talk about assassinating Kirk and egg each other using innuendo and cryptic memes and such. They make plans, but there is no mastermind. One or more of them say they are going to do it. The others encourage the assassination but are unsure whether they'll follow through, because such discussions about violent action happen often in these circles but rarely does anyone actually do it. A few people in this group post suggestive messages that something big is about to happen for internet clout. The shooter and his roommate, meanwhile, agree to obscure the roommate's role in the planning by staging exonnerating chat logs.
While thrilled with the assassination, the other trantifa are genuinely surprised that the shooter actually did it. Usually people chicken out. They might not have posted those suggestive messages if they knew, so now they scramble to scrub the internet of any evidence of their complicity or foreknowledge. The roommate "cooperates" with the police as part of their plan to obscure their role in the murder.
No, I don't think Kirk is a Nazi, and I don't even agree that actual Nazis can't be negotiated with, but rather I am expressing a common sentiment in our society.
nomenym
2mo ago
The facts of this event are increasingly looking like AI slop. It's all too on-the-nose. It would be bad writing in a TV show.
nomenym
2mo ago
You don't negotiate with Nazis. Chamberlain tried that, and so did Stalin. Nazis may pretend to negotiate, but it's just a ruse to get you to lower your guard.
From their perspective, Charlie Kirk "denied their existence" every time he got up on stage and talked about transgenderism, and so they naturally decided to deny his existence in return.
The left has definitely been intensifying its long standing equivocation between speech and violence. Indeed, even silence, the act of not speaking, has been described as violence. Nothing except eager agreement and affirmation is interpreted as a violent attack that should be responded to in kind.
There is a flattening of responsibility across complex systems. Every utterance of criticism or mocking remark is stochastically upstream of persecution and pogroms, and so they are to be treated as morally equivalent.
This kind of left-wing rhetoric has been getting more and more extreme across my lifetime, and it now seems orthodoxy on too many college campuses. While there have been people expressing these kinds of sentiments since the 60s, it is now more mainstream than ever before. While for many such words are mere political hyperbole, for too many, especially those who are too young to remember otherwise, this rhetoric is just the political reality of the world they were raised in.
The scary part is that within this worldview, all political action is fundamentally violent, and even the personal is political. There is no distinction between politics and violence, speech and murder. The only reason not to use murder to achieve your political objectives is a lack of power, and every public utterance is just an attempt to tilt the scales of stochastic violence against your opponents.
nomenym
2mo ago
This is all true. However, it's also true that ideologies will evolve to exploit these people to spread the ideology. If there are more people with weak immune systems today than before, then pathogens will adapt to that new ecosystem in novel ways. What we consider the real "cause" depends on which part of the system we think we can most easily change. The plane crashed because of gravity, of course, but we can't do anything about gravity, so the "real cause" of the crash was the improper maintenance back at the airport.
You do kill invaders if necessary, but you don't have to. Invaders often retreat, or they're captured as prisoners. I grant you that "invasion" is somewhat hyperoblic, since it conjures up images of organized armies massing on the border, but it's well within normal political rhetoric.
The problem is that, for the left, fascists and Nazis are the worst thing they can think of--secular counterparts to demons and devils. There is nothing redeemable about Nazis, and they shall be given no quarter. They are like orcs and goblins, enemies you can kill without moral qualms. They are not to be humanized, sympathized with, or shown in any way to be reasonable. Nazis are the villains of your story when you just need someone for the good guy to punch and shoot. Violence against Nazis is always righteous. This is the only culture I have ever known, and this messaging about Nazis has been drummed into me and everyone else by decades of movies, books, TV shows, videogames, and whatever else.
People may call illegal immigrants invaders, but they know they're not literally an invading army in the same way that the Russian army is invading Ukraine. Most left-wingers who throw around the accusation of "Nazi" know that people like Charlie Kirk are not actual Nazis, but unfortunately they done it so much and for so long that a significant chunk of lefties, especially the young, actually believe it. Moreover, their version of a Nazi is likely worse than the real Nazis were. You don't debate or tolerate Nazis, you shoot them and celebrate their death.
nomenym
2mo ago
They're very strategic in their use of violence for PR reasons. They're very aware of how much cover the media will run for them and trying not to step outside of that while still scaring and provoking their enemies. They know full well that their violence will be minimized while the violence of those they provoke will be exaggerated, and they use that asymmetry to control the narrative.
nomenym
2mo ago
The reason the left isn't assassinating Tommy Robinson in the UK is because they can have him arrested and imprisoned instead.
nomenym
2mo ago
I can definitely feel murderous towards my outgroup, but my feelings about it are grim and sad that it has to be this way. I support the death penalty, and I sincerely think that some political leaders deserve to be executed for treason, but the number of people relishing the murder of Charlie Kirk with such glee is disturbing. The woke mind virus is a scary thing, but it does seem that for many people the fever broke with this event.
nomenym
2mo ago
Except the problem was not really his beliefs. They can tolerate him having those beliefs, but not when he brings those beliefs to college campuses, and certainly not when he is effective at spreading those beliefs. That is what they cannot tolerate.
nomenym
2mo ago
I was in the peculiar position of being in the presence of a group of young college educated environmentalist types when this news broke. I didn't know much about them, but they were clearly progressive in their political orientation. One of the women scoffed when she announced the news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, and made a mocking whinging sound. This was followed by a long uncomfortable silence by everyone else present. Clearly they did not feel okay with what she had said, but nor could express that except with silence. Perhaps they felt inhibited by the mixed company.
My redneck friends, on the other hand, are responding to the tragedy by buying more guns and ammo, literally and figuratively.
From my perspective, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women, and so their "dysphoria" is driven more by a desire to prevent adulthood. It's less about what they transition to ("boys"), than what they don't transition to (adults). This makes sense when you assume they've been infected by a highly virulent memeplex that is essentially uses their bodies to reproduce itself and spread laterally (using modern communications technology) rather than generationally. Arresting their development is a good strategy, because it prevents them from wasting time and energy on such irrelevant things as their own reproductive success. I perceive this pattern less among MtF types, but I guess it exists.
Older highly successful memeplexes tended to be much more symbiotic with their hosts, since being pro-natal was a good way of spreading itself. Making children was one of the most effective ways the memeplex's host could make more hosts, but modern communications and transport technology changes everything. This is probably the fundamental reason for collapsing birthrates, and transgenderism is an extreme manifestation of that.
nomenym
3mo ago
Britain should settle Antarctica
I think civil war is actually more likely.
Since these people seem to make it an axiom that they should never have their funding cut, despite there very obviously being many serious issues with their whole enterprise (which they regularly lament), I am disinclined to weigh their opinions very heavily, shiny medals notwithstanding. Perhaps I'd rather the administration use a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, but a scalpel isn't really an option, so sledgehammer it is.
nomenym
3mo ago
Bulverism is about 50 percent of Marxism, so it's no surprise Freddie indulges. When you have an implicitly deterministic epistemology, you don't have to explain why an idea is wrong when you can explain how it came about by the wrong causes.
It's not pedophilia, but we should still call them pedos anyway. However, there's only so far you can push this socially useful equivocation before it starts backfiring.
A strange situation has arisen over the last 15 years or so where mild sexual titillation became taboo while extreme hardcore porn became easily available. There was such a glaring contrast. Nerds were wrong to enjoy attractive female characters in their videogames, because misogyny, patriarchy, and oppression of women. But at the same time these nerds were two clicks away from the most graphic hardcore pornography that has ever existed. OnlyFans is tolerated if not celebrated while milder forms of sex appeal were being erased. It's almost like the hardcore porn was, ahem, sucking all the sex out of everything else, but there has definitely been a shift against internet porn now as people who grew up with it start to resent it. I wonder if that latent energy is now pushing mild sexual titillation back into the mainstream.
Of course, this taboo was mostly or entirely focused on the preferences of straight white men, so perhaps that alone better explains why it was tabooed.
nomenym
4mo ago
My point being that Israel has another path: re-educating and reconciling with the Palestinian civilian population such that they no longer support Hamas (or whoever).
But why would they do that? If I were a Palestinian, I'd want revenge--terrible, horrible, unconscionable revenge forever, and I'd still go to heaven.
nomenym
4mo ago
The world made a rule that ethnic cleansing was never justified under any circumstances. Unfortunately, the Palestinians evolved a culture to exploit that rule. If they could only be so belligerent that the only way to defeat them would be by ethnic cleansing, then they win by default no matter how militarily superior their opponent. This is effectively the propaganda game they play with the West. It's almost like they're daring Israel to ethnically cleanse them, and then double-dog daring them, and then triple-dog daring them. They know that if Israel breaks the one rule against trying an ethnic cleansing, then they'll lose Western support. They intentionally do not want Israel to have another option. There is no peace, no two state solution, no compromise. If Hamas can just persevere and stay the course then they'll eventually win. Israel can either carry on essentially at war with Hamas for the foreseeable future, or it can just take the risk and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. The latter might be a Pyrrhic victory if the rest of the world turns against Israel.
nomenym
4mo ago
There have only ever been three options: ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing, or forever war. Pick one. All are terrible and wrong.
nomenym
4mo ago
When people talk about tribalism, they're usually only talking about the psychology of inter-tribal competition. The failure mode is xenophobia, and it codes masculine. But when our ancestors started to live in tribes, they also developed a psychology for intra-tribal competition. This is also a kind of tribalism, but it is usually ignored. It's failure mode is oikophobia, and it seems to code more feminine.
The types of people who join geen parties and such seem to excel at the intra-tribal competition. They tend to thrive in institutions, especially when there are few outside threats to their society (which they tend to not recognize and ignore). They join factions that push against or subvert the existing hierarchy, often surreptitiously. But whe they become surrounded by people just like them, their inherent oikophobia kicks in and they start to push against and subvert their own faction and start the cycle all over again. I think it's like a evolved social strategy that is now firing in an evolutionarily novel habitat, and it tends to create a lot of dysfunction.
I don't think progressives believe that anymore. His ideas were unacceptable in a democracy, and so there is no acceptable way to spread them, and so Kirk's political activism was illegitimate. They do appear to sincerely believe this, and that illegitimate political activism is an acceptable, or perhaps even inevitable, target for violent push back. After all, if you're going to oppress people with words (no sarcasm), don't be surprised when they fight back.
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