Several People Fired After Clampdown on Speech Over Charlie Kirk Shooting
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Several people were fired after celebrating or praising the attempted assassination of Charlie Kirk, sparking debate about free speech, cancel culture, and the limits of acceptable discourse.
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After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
Sure but I live in a few and democratic country and like to think I also have some hand in shaping the direction of society. That's gone if I live a purely reactive life.
From who? And where are they getting their information?
It bears mentioning that you're presently participating in a political conversation on social media.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
The people who tried to change his mind were blind to the trap he set up. No logic would ever change his message.
Of course, he shouldn't have died because of this, but that's another issue.
For instance people trend more conservative as they age, but there's no real simple point where you wake up one day and like 'ok, I now officially love guns, babies, and 'Merica.' It's a very gradual process that's driven by things like life experience and the accumulation of knowledge, all processed on a subconscious level. As you age you'll find that you often will think the 'you' of 10 years ago was a naive idiot, and this never really seems to stop. Yet if the 'you' of 10 years from now talked to you today, it's unlikely he could change your mind on a single thing, even though he is literally you.
When people are young we naturally have this confidence that the views we hold must be true and just, because we are absolutely certain that they are. And so we if we just had the time and attention, we could convince anybody of their correctness, so long as they remained logical. But over time, one learns that people who may believe the exact opposite of you think the exact same thing, and it's not necessarily the case that one side must be wrong. People, no less intelligent than one another, can see the same evidence and simply come to different conclusions.
Seems like all of these shooters get a lot of encouragement and support on discord.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/people-are-calling-o...
No reaction occurred when Melissa Hortman was killed to people doing the same thing as people are doing now with Kirk.
Edit: make things a little bit clearer, AFAIK, no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
And it’s also free speech to gloat about it. Is it legal to sack someone who is gleeful?
The consensus on Hacker News was that New Zealand made an error blocking and banning the video of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
What’s the right way to handle these scenarios? Kirk was a free speech advocate with strong views on gun violence, further complicating things.
Sorry, I’m not American so have little idea how it works.
I also did not agree against the legality of being fired for a social media post. It's been happening since social media first existed.
You also can't boycott an employee. I really don't know what point you are trying to make here.
The default employment rule is at-will, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited. Political affiliation is not a federally protected category.
https://www.professorwatchlist.org
https://www.professorwatchlist.org/tags/anti-1st-amendment
I just randomly clicked one of the professors in that list:
- "Shaviro has been suspended after he posted on Facebook that it would be better for people to kill their political opponents than to protest them. In a now-deleted post, Shaviro wrote:"
- “So here is what I think about free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”
That's straight from the website, which may or may not be accurate or true. The way it looks, is still about the way it looks given the larger context of the rest of its post.
It's particularly relevant given the recent events.
That’s different. ‘They’ don’t have the right to say those things, but Kirk maintained his right to say what he liked.
Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
And what does your article — which basically just establishes "Trump doesn't like Tim Walz and didn't consider Hortman's case as important" — have to do with that?
If you're referring to Senator Mike Lee's comment, I don't think it's anything of the sort. It comes across to me that Lee was speculating that the murderer was a "Marxist" (i.e., anyone he would consider more radical than Hortman). Political football, and offensive, sure. But not the same kind of thing. Besides which, can Senators be "fired"?
Well, gee, it sorta seems like that kind of behavior would be more prevalent when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Did Melissa Hortman say such things?
Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Because if she didn't say stuff like that, then it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
Charlie Kirk has said nothing of the sort, so none of this is relevant.
> Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Kirk's organization is not dedicated to anything of the sort.
> Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Kirk did not say anything about being happy about it; regardless this statement does not support killing people.
> it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
But anyway, this still doesn't matter. Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
"Great Replacement Theory" is an inherently racist ideology that ignores (in the context of the US) multiple centuries of history in favor of an idea that there's an "other" that is going to replace "real Americans." It is, perhaps, a stretch to claim that the organization he founded promoted bigotry, hate, or the superiority of a particular race... But it's not much of a stretch when the organization's founder and leader is making easily-verified racist statements such as this one.
> Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
In general, I haven't seen people making the hard assertion online that his words justified his death and I would agree with you. But I have seen plenty of "I don't think Charlie Kirk should have died, but the philosophy Charlie Kirk espoused shouldn't care if Charlie Kirk died" and I don't think I can argue with that assessment of the legacy of his work.
No, it is neither racist (edit: as described by Kirk) nor an ideology.
It's an accusation about the intentions of others, in a "the purpose of a system is what it does" kind of way (faulty logic — as I've argued on HN before — but not bigoted), based on observing demographic trends, the rate of immigration etc.
It is deeply conspiratorial thinking, but it does not claim that the people being "replaced" are inherently superior. Thus it is not racist even if we establish that the ingroup-outgroup distinction is racial, which already requires a quite broad conception of "race". (And Americans really are strange about that, in my opinion. There have been multiple occasions where I have been told that Americans generally consider a specific person to be "black" and I have deeply struggled to understand how that could be.)
It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that the existing population of a country has a greater right to continue to exist on that land, and for their offspring to live there, than those who are petitioning from abroad to live there. In fact, it's hard to argue that a legitimate nation exists, in a place that lacks a government trusted to determine questions of citizenship. Besides which, one individual's use of a term does not necessarily carry every other user's intent.
In brief, Kirk never argued that someone should be extradited, or lose citizenship, on the basis of race. Nor does that argument follow from anything he said.
And note that you have not at all addressed the point about "words that support killing people".
> In general, I haven't seen people making the hard assertion online that his words justified his death
I have been shown many people outright celebrating. This is not something that can be feasibly done by someone who has normal psychological aversion to death and doesn't consider the death justified.
> But I have seen plenty of "I don't think Charlie Kirk should have died, but the philosophy Charlie Kirk espoused shouldn't care if Charlie Kirk died"
I've seen plenty of messages that included the second part without the first part. But regardless, this reflects a plain misunderstanding of that philosophy.
Again, no pro-killing ideology here, outside of e.g. support for potentially-lethal police force to apprehend criminals in the act.
Murder and political assassination are deeply wrong, but are you sure you really want to go down the rabbit hole of GRT apologism to make your point about that?
Feel free to show me the part where Kirk macro-expanded the thought and asserted anything about whiteness having anything to do with a legitimate claim to residency.
I don't think he has said anything like that.
Part of the reason I don't think he has is that I was literally just watching an extended clip in which he directly addressed a legal Mexican immigrant and asserted unequivocally that the distinction he intended to draw was not based on race or nationality, but on following the immigration rules.
> are you sure you really want to go down the rabbit hole of GRT apologism
The large majority of people I have seen labelled as subscribing to this theory had, upon examination, views like Kirk's, and not ones consistent with racial supremacy. If you're going to say that the theory requires such an attitude, then you are not working with the same definitions as the person ascribing the theory to Kirk, assuming intellectual honesty. I responded to a person using a definition compatible with Kirk's ideology, using arguments compatible with what the evidence says about Kirk's ideology. To conflate this is to commit the "worst argument in the world" i.e. the noncentral fallacy (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...).
Edit: I find it rather amazing that someone managed to downvote me in less time than it would have taken to read and properly understand the comment. My understanding is that downvotes are not available downthread when you're having a back-and-forth, so this must have come from a third party that somehow happened to come across this immediately, 8 comments deep.
Most people around the world who are criticizing Charlie’s philosophy and beliefs have never watched a long form interview with him. Probably picked up a few sound bites or clips from here and there. Also there are many who are blinded by hatred towards him, to the point that they are drawing comparisons between him and Hitler. So it is hard to get through to such people. As someone with Jewish ancestry it is difficult and saddening to see this dilution.
Nevertheless once again I appreciate your responses in this thread!
We don't yet know the motives of his killer, but it may be worth observing that it is an unfortunate consequence of Kirk's philosophy of liberty that, since nobody controls who the citizens define as part of the "tyranny," a so-armed individual can, of their own free will, conclude that the man who (by his own claims) was instrumental in electing a tyrant, supports that tyrant, is clearly in the inner circle of that tyrant (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33r4kjez6no)... Is someone who needs to die.
Personally, I think that's repugnant and I hope the person who took the law into their own hands is constrained from further harming this society indefinitely. But I don't agree with Kirk's philosophy on the purpose, origins, or nature of the Second Amendment.
(emphasis mine)
Well, yes. Those are not "words that support killing people". You might as well say that countries that own nuclear weapons thereby demonstrate intent to eradicate life on Earth. The intended deterrence game theory is much the same.
> nobody controls who the citizens define as part of the "tyranny,"
This line of argumentation proves far too much. All definitions are subjective in this manner.
> But I don't agree with Kirk's philosophy on the purpose, origins, or nature of the Second Amendment.
To my understanding (I quickly searched up https://govfacts.org/history/the-history-behind-the-second-a... and by a quick read it seems to align with what I understood of the history) this is not simply "Kirk's philosophy", but something the Founders (and other political thinkers of the time) were explicit about.
At least on X/Twitter.
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.
"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.
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.
We all have to fight to undo the Obama Smith-Mundt Modernization Act that allowed the executive branch to create domestic propaganda.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
Groypers.
Israel is about the only thing Charlie and Nick disagree on now.
As far as their disagreements over doctrine of-late, I’m not sure. Their messages do/did differ in where they drew the line, though.
I’ve seen Loomer’s turning on Kirk (over his “turning” on Trump re: the Epstein files) cited as part of this, with Nick’s crowd being on Loomer’s side, but given Nick’s history with Trump that I know of I’d find that surprising, but I’ve not closely followed Fuentes so I’ve got some reading to do there.
How does that square with the issue that he texted his trans significant other to go pick up his rifle which he could not do as feds found the rifle first. [1] The feds are interviewing the trans partner as we speak. To be clear I am not anti-trans, rather just confused how he could also be a Groyper. Maybe this is possible, just a new concept to me.
[1] - https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-t...
From the article you posted:
> According to public records, Lance Twiggs, 22, resided at the same address where Robinson lived. A relative of Twiggs confirmed to The Post Saturday that “yes, they were roommates.”
> The family member, who asked not to be identified, said Twiggs was the “black sheep” of their St. George, Utah, family, but declined to speculate on a romantic relationship between the two men.
> She said she didn’t know her relative’s politics or whether Twiggs was transitioning to become a woman, but added that it wouldn’t surprise her.
So basically the source is "it was revealed to me in a dream". For all we know they were just roommates.
It's possible. I keep hearing terms used interchangably on different YT channels and all of that could be people just projecting their preferred narratives so I guess we will have to wait for the Discord and cell phone text message transcripts assuming those ever drop. They so rarely do. Either way at least we know the roommate was involved to some extent. The Discord transcripts may be the most telling of the relationship.
[1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15096571/Trans-part...
I use the Firefox addon Foxreplace [1] to display that word as such. Others should do the same.
[1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxreplace/
The other day, a Fox News host called for the mass-murder of mentally ill people.
> Brian Kilmeade suggested that mentally ill homeless people who refuse government assistance should be given "involuntary lethal injection" or something similar, adding, "Just kill 'em"
I guess if I call him a Nazi, that just means I just, like, disagree with him?
At what point can we call a spade a spade? What do we call that man?
How is he not getting cancelled? Should someone celebrating something bad happening to a man that's calling for mass-murder get cancelled?
No, only those who refuse government assistance.
Which inherently makes them a threat to others. Keep in mind that this is happening in the context of Iryna Zarutska getting stabbed to death.
I disagree with it, but it's objectively not what you're representing it as.
> I guess if I call him a Nazi, that just means I just, like, disagree with him?
It's not justified by the evidence.
> At what point can we call a spade a spade? What do we call that man?
Something else.
> How is he not getting cancelled?
How isn't he? I've lost count of the times I've had to hear about this in the last few days, which is strange because I don't watch American TV at all and he has nothing to do with Kirk. If you think he should be fired from Fox because of it then you are absolutely welcome to call them and say so. That's freedom of speech, and I agree that you have a much better case than most of the "cancelling" attempts I've seen over the years. Fox execs, however, are under no obligation to agree with you.
> Should someone celebrating something bad happening to a man that's calling for mass-murder get cancelled?
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Kirk and Kilmeade are different people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
(bullet engravings, his partner, his father's testimony)
There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Many sources similarly assert that Robinson's father "recognized" him in photos and "encouraged him to turn himself in" (see e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/tyler-rob...). However, I don't know anything specific about his "testimony".
Could turn out to be true, but considering the hilariously wrong stuff that was being published even by mainstream sources in the 24 hours after (the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance) I’d not yet treat this as meaningful at all. I’ve not seen anything above tabloid-level pushing it yet.
I am unaware of any mistakes of fact as to the actual text of the engravings published by any mainstream source at any point.
"Not getting the reference" is not the same thing as making an "extremely-wrong report".
The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
> The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
I agree. We can take away some things (like “very online” and some suggestions of certain connections to spheres or activities, like the Helldivers 2 reference) but there’s little more than rather mixed suggestions that could go multiple ways, as far as political affiliation and motivation that we can read from them, so far.
Not the FBI, and the story is much more complex than that: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-bullets-...
You can read anything you want into those if you want to. To me they reek weeb culture (as opposed to furry like everyone else jumps to - there are overlaps but they are distinct), 4chan trolling and lemmy more than anything. We can not know the intentions behind those engravings and they say nothing about which, if any, affiliation the shooter had. Could be a Luigi wannabe, could be a false flag to induce civil war.
"Unafilliated" seems like the most plausible assumption right now. Everyone pushing theories about shooter affiliation right now either has their own political agenda behind it and are doing so incincerly or are useful idiots serving the aforementioned.
However from what did seem credible I think this still looks left-wing motivated
cf. https://mastodon.world/@jeffowski/115199287909601561
You're completely misrepresenting and misquoting the access to weapons comment. A parallel would be "give me liberty or give me death" which is a foundational quote in the invention/founding of the Constitutional Federal Republic system that has been adopted by many western nations.
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
He was not pro-free speech. It is not hard to see what he actually believed. Maybe it is right now with all of the news happening.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
Sure, and all those trolls online are "just asking questions."
Well that clears things up...
"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised."
FIRE, not exactly a liberal organization, called out TPUSA as a primary cause of increasing threats to speakers and professors on campus in recent years.
The same search found me multiple stories about universities denying recognition to TPUSA chapters.
FIRE is quintessentially liberal. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental liberal value there is, and education is where the free exchange of ideas is most values. American left-wingers (as judged by American standards) not liking that doesn't change what liberalism is; it informs what they are. There is absolutely a bias in FIRE coverage towards conservative and Republican organizations and ideas being suppressed. I have every reason to believe that this is because that's actually representative of what happens on American college campuses.
You just discovered why dog whistles exist.
PS: Take a deep breath before you reply. Don't let me ruin your day.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
I respect your lack of desire to engage on the topic and will not ask it of you, but FWIW: if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)... You are not.
He did make that assertion.
> (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)
It does not imply this.
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.
They are the same as the people who die in car crashes every year, or who are poisoned by household cleaners, etc.
Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
I found it for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228530
If you still think this is an argument about people being "expendable", then it appears we simply disagree about what that word means.
"Kirk's moral calculus involves accepting that possibly some more people will die, beyond what would happen otherwise, in order to guarantee what he considers an essential right to everyone."
... And he was the "some more people" this week.
This phrasing is simply incoherent to me. Accepting that "possibly some more people" will die, agnostic to anyone's intent, is clearly not the same as accepting a probability of being personally targeted for murder.
I'm not. Because the violence is often not "random." Kirk was mid making that point when he was killed; he was about to debate gang-on-gang violence.
Most killings in the US are targeted. Killers (even the psychotic ones) generally have a personal motivation, some self-justification to pull the trigger. The guns make it far easier to succeed than it would be otherwise.
I'm giving Kirk the benefit of the doubt here. Because if what he really meant was "someone's life is the price of our freedom... But not me, I'm special, I'm doing everything right..." He wasn't misguided, he was stupid. And I don't think he was stupid. So I'm left with the wry observation that the manner of his own death was consistent with his philosophy on the necessity of gun ownership to protect essential liberties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...
I doubt he would have taken much comfort in knowing his death is a fascinating statistical anomaly.
This is the key part that people are the MOST upset about. From the right's perspective, they are getting called "nazis", "fascists" for things that are self-evident to them. But to the far-left, those beliefs are equivalent to Nazism. I don't think people on the right fully understand and internalize that their opponents believe that they are literal nazis. They think it's just a rhetorical device. So they think that the left is being grossly negligent by bandying these words around.
I think now, though, the right has finally realized that being called a "nazi" isn't cute or a rhetorical device, and the far-left really intends to kill people. Therefore, a little cancel culture is the very least you should expect from them.
He was a victim here. Far-left news outlets like Vanity Fair and The Nation twisted the facts and made-up others. I don't really expect a 77-year-old celebrity to have the media literacy to separate fact from fiction, especially when these outlets have tailored their reporting to appeal to exactly his demographic.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.
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).
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.
"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.
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
The interface makes it feel like you're having a polite conversation among like-minded folk. In reality, you're like one of those folks on a street corner with a megaphone and most of the time the rest of the world isn't listening to you. But they can tune you in anytime they want, and there can be consequences for holding a strong opinion incompatible with the strong opinion of other people you will be wanting to do business with.
... That of course includes this medium. Watch what you say today everyone, your future and current employers are reading Hacker News.
is it limited to people sharing a certain sentiment or common statement?
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