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Unless I'm missing something, at least. I could be.
The reason I post this is because of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. It's also a classic speech for political philosophy and worth visiting on its own right, but that event is why I thought of this.
If people aren't familiar with Malcolm X then the question I'm posing is with respect to political violence and its justifications.
The bread-and-butter interpretation I'd give is: if the ballot works then sure.
But if it doesn't, then there's only one unfortunate answer.
There is, in addition, a certain irony that Charlie Kirk advocated for the 2nd amendment on the basis that random murder is the price to pay for freedom.
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 00:33#10122630 likes
So you are arguing or asking if the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified?
Youre a mod?
Thats pretty fucked up.
Charlie Kirk didn't deserve what happened to him in the sense that all he did made him worthy of punishment: But we're in a time when speakers of movements are legitimate targets for the propaganda by the deed.
And -- c'mon, he really was in favor of the 2nd amendment even if it results in gun violence.
I don't celebrate political violence, and I don't condemn it -- it's like condemning physics -- this is how we still do things.
Neither, in my opinion. People should just try to avoid having their sentiments outraged when others have thoughts and words that differ from their own.
Reply to NOS4A2 Suppose you encounter a government official who as ejected you from some grounds on the basis that the municipality claims those grounds and your people don't meet code.
Is that the same? Would you avoid having your sentiments outraged? Let them speak their words, even though those words result in your collective being ousted?
Reply to NOS4A2 I remember you talking about the group of anarchists you housed with.
I figured you'd prefer if they could stay rather than be pushed out.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 01:15#10122830 likes
I mean, do we even know this is politically motivated yet? Could be a jealous ex-lover or maybe he owed money to someone or crossed or pissed off "the wrong people", etc. It could be a multitude of things, really. Even if the shooter was found to be a registered Democrat that doesn't necessarily mean jack. Hundreds of people are shot daily in the U.S. Because this guy happens to be a little famous (I never heard of him until this thread, frankly) it has to be some major turning point we have to look inward and question our deepest ideals? Come on. That's a bit melodramatic, wouldn't you say. All things considered.
Reply to Moliere
There are widespread fears that we're heading into dictatorship, so it's normal to think about violent conflict. I think if Malcolm X's threat had become reality it would have been devastating.
I think all we can do is give a thought to the grief that guy's family must be going through and carry on.
Also, the motivation doesn't matter to the question: I am inspired by the current event, but am broaching a larger question about political philosophy.
Here the bullet was used, whatever the motivation.
Oddly the ballot could not be used against a speaker that seems to have influence -- was there a politician who said, "Defund Charlie Kirk"?
Probably somewhere if we dig deep enough but you know that voting for that politician wouldn't do anything to his private career that happened to be political.
Is it bad that I don't feel sympathy that a 2nd amendment nut who said the following has been shot dead?
"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth 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."
I think all we can do is give a thought to the grief that guy's family must be going through and carry on.
Perhaps we should honour him by treating his murder in his own terms. Any empathy expressed for his family is a made up New Age notion that does a lot of damage. Gun violence is a natural consequence of the freedom to own guns, and should be treated as much the same as the inevitable deaths resulting from cars.
We might best honour him with a gun ownership rally on the site of his death.
31
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.
[hide][/hide]Reply to Moliere Charlie Kirk is a complete unknown to me. Every day anonymous strangers are killed whom I cannot mourn.
As for The Malcolm X issue of ballots vs. bullets, I am strongly in favor of 'the people' organizing themselves to engage in effective politics for the best interests of the country. "Best interests" will be contested, of course. What's in the best interests for small farmers might not be what is in the interests of urban dwellers. It seems quite clear that the legal framework in which gun manufacturers operate (very weak product liability, for example) is not in the best interest of anyone except gun manufacturers. (Gun manufacturers contribute much less to GDP than pet food manufacturers. The economy can flourish without gun makers!)
The 2nd Amendment / gun fetishists have grossly distorted what the constitution claims, and have in the process created a major menace. Sure, someone's decision to shoot up a school or kill some notable person may be highly irrational, but the more significant fact is that an irrational person someone contemplating mayhem will have no difficulty finding a well-stocked gun shop.
So, no sympathy from me for 2nd amendment victims of gun violence.
Perhaps we will reach a sufficient level of national disunity that we will be faced with a civil war. When and if that day arrives, we can get a gun, join a local militia, and blast away at the designated enemy. But we are not at that day now, and we do not seem to be on the verge of that day.
Vigorous, focused, competent political activism is still a better bet for a civil society, good government, honest business, and a free citizenry.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 01:44#10123020 likes
This thread reminds me just how little I know the lot of you. Which is fine.
Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possible here? There are so many cheap and easy ways to kill a person. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer, a screwdriver, messing with the gas tank, following him home and running him off the road, tampering with food, running him over on a morning jog, the list goes on.
We should honor the OP by sticking to the topic and not letting this turn into some weird, morbid anti-obituary.
Pretend he was killed by a banana by a deranged, politically motivated assassin and let's get back on track please. Sheesh. No shame.
This thread reminds me just how little I know the lot of you.
Of course! The lot of us actually disclose very little pertinent information about our drab wretched lives. Some people here seem to feel they might be giving away private information if they acknowledge which continent they live on.
Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possibly here?
I have no desire to turn this discussion towards the 2nd amendment and all that -- I've stated my case that I'm in favor of the Australian buy-back program, in some capacity.
I'm asking about what a group ought do when they realize voting not only didn't work this one time, but won't work because it's set up that way.
Consider the Electoral College that still exists in thinking about this.
"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth 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."
Not reasonable statement? Replace “guns” with “cars”. Still unreasonable?
The irony isnt lost on me, but I think Kirk would 100% include his own death as part of that acceptable trade off. Say what you want about Kirk, he did not lack conviction. To the point above, we certainly accept that trade off with driving vehicles dont we? Vehicle accidents kill more than guns, why dont we ban cars? Or make everyone drive 5mph? And thats just for our convenience, there are many who think right to bear arms is much more important.
Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possible here? There are so many cheap and easy ways to kill a person. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer, a screwdriver, messing with the gas tank, following him home and running him off the road, tampering with food, running him over on a morning jog, the list goes on.
Firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people quickly. And from far away. It would be rather difficult for the Las Vegas mass shooter, for example, to do the damage he did with a screwdriver. Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane.
Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane.
OK -- in that way I'm interested in a 2nd amendment discussion, but I want it to be a sub-plot: first political violence in the world and then 2nd amendment.
Vice-versa I feel like, tho this is germane, it'd turn into a debate we've had many times before, whereas I'm trying to use a case which might spark some thoughts that aren't the talking points.
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 02:07#10123130 likes
Can we not appreciate the irony AND be disgusted by the reaction to a political assassination? One shot from a sniper position. Primary suspicion of motive has to be political. Liberals may not know him but he was big with the right, an important political figure.
But lets talk about how justified it was?
"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth 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."
— RogueAI
Not reasonable statement? Replace “guns” with “cars”. Still unreasonable?
I need my car to go to work and the store and other things. I don't need my gun for anything, except to assuage my irrational fear that someone will break in and I'll be unarmed.
The irony isnt lost on me, but I think Kirk would 100% include his own death as part of that acceptable trade off.
Really? You think so? You think if an angel came down and said, "Charlie, I can make this assassin miss you be a hair, or you can be gunned down and leave your wife and kids behind and you can become a martyr for the 2nd amendment. What shall it be?" Charlie would have picked martyr?
Say what you want about Kirk, he did not lack conviction. To the point above, we certainly accept that trade off with driving vehicles dont we? Vehicle accidents kill more than guns, why dont we ban cars? Or make everyone drive 5mph? And thats just for our convenience, there are many who think right to bear arms is much more important.
Again, cars have important uses outside of killing things.
Can we not appreciate the irony AND be disgusted by the reaction to a political assassination?
Sure.
I'm still disgusted with the means of politics. I've often found that raising this disgust about other such scenarios results in excuses so I'm a bit skeptical.
I want to point to the genocide in Gaza at the moment more than this sensationalist plot in asking the question, though. I am looking for a wider perspective than this one event.
Really? You think so? You think if an angel came down and said, "Charlie, I can make this assassin miss you be a hair, or you can be gunned down and leave your wife and kids behind and you can become a martyr for the 2nd amendment. What shall it be?" Charlie would have picked martyr?
No idea how Kirk would react to an angel. That is not the trade off I stated I was referencing your direct quote not your non-sequitur hypothetical scenario. Accepting that you yourself would be included in a statistic is obviously not the same as choosing to die a martyr.
Again, cars have important uses outside of killing things.
Sure, I agree a car is a more useful tool. More necessary to my day to day life certainly. I donÂ’t think the right to have a gun is about variety of use or day to day need though.
My point with that analogy was specifically about accepting some deaths as a trade off for freedom to have a gun. We do the exact same thing with cars, we accept that some people (many more than gun deaths actually) are going to die as a trade off for our speed limits and traffic volume (or as a trade off for the freedom to drive and if you prefer).
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 02:40#10123230 likes
Nope, it may well turn out to be them or any number of other motivesÂ…but I doubt youÂ’d wanna bet much money on it :wink:
If it turns out to be a jilted lover or something, Ill stand corrected.
My point with that analogy was specifically about accepting some deaths as a trade off for freedom to have a gun. We do the exact same thing with cars, we accept that some people (many more than gun deaths actually) are going to die as a trade off for our speed limits and traffic volume (or as a trade off for the freedom to drive and if you prefer).
Again, because cars are essential for many people in this society. Driving is inherently dangerous and we accept the risks because cars are so necessary for so many. That's not analogous to guns.
The reason the 2nd amendment is germane but off topic is that it's not how you'd pursue the bullet -- you don't revolt by appealing to the supreme court that your revolution is justified because of the 2nd Amendment.
Reply to RogueAI Yeah, they are, but I want to sideline that notion for this topic.
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 02:46#10123280 likes
I'm still disgusted with the means of politics. I've often found that raising this disgust about other such scenarios results in excuses so I'm a bit skeptical.
I want to point to the genocide in Gaza at the moment more than this sensationalist plot in asking the question, though. I am looking for a wider perspective than this one event.
Oh, suppose I say, "There is a genocide in Gaza", then the response -- not from you but due to media -- would be "Israel has a right to defend itself"
But that's not what they're doing. They're committing a genocide.
Yet if they succeed, as the United States did, they'll win. If they eliminate everyone then they'll get to keep the land. We passed on the genocide stick to them.
I remember you talking about the group of anarchists you housed with.
I figured you'd prefer if they could stay rather than be pushed out.
I never lived there. I only surfed with them. I would prefer that that they werenÂ’t burnt out of their homes.
IÂ’m not sure what any of this has to do with ballots or bullets though. My comment was regarding people who would resort to murder in order to make a political statement or affect politics.
Yet the question is -- the ballot or the bullet? How do we justify each position, philosophically?
You have to listen to your gut, I guess. Is a slave justified in killing the entire master's family if it means he'll be able to get a decent chance to escape? Probably. Would the Jews in Nazi Germany have been justified in gunning down every government official they came across? Certainly. If this country bans abortion entirely and a government official tries to step between a woman and the sympathetic doctor about to perform the abortion and she has a gun? I would support her using deadly force.
Reply to NOS4A2 It relates because thems could have taken the means into their own hands and forced the gov to not take their land other than "move on" to be vagabonds elsewhere.
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 02:59#10123340 likes
Again, because cars are essential for many people in this society. Driving is inherently dangerous and we accept the risks because cars are so necessary for so many. That's not analogous to guns.
4m
Cars are not analogous to guns when it comes to necessity, I agree. Thankfully for my point I am not making an analogy about necessity. Im making an analogy about the trade-off for lives, in that sense cars and guns are analogous.
Im making an analogy about the trade-off for lives, in that sense cars and guns are analogous.
In the case of cars, we're willing to accept a certain amount of deaths to drive at speeds that make cars economically viable. Nobody would drive a car at 5mph on the freeway. We sacrifice safety for efficiency.
How is that the same with guns?
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 03:05#10123360 likes
Oh, suppose I say, "There is a genocide in Gaza", then the response -- not from you but due to media -- would be "Israel has a right to defend itself"
But that's not what they're doing. They're committing a genocide.
Yet if they succeed, as the United States did, they'll win. If they eliminate everyone then they'll get to keep the land. We passed on the genocide stick to them.
How do you vote to influence that?
I see. Honestly Im not really buying your broader premise here. Im not even a fan of Kirks but Im not going to pretend him and gaza have anything pertinent in common for the sake of justifying violence and assassination.
It's the responses to it -- like Donald Trumps -- that made me think this way. "Well... c'mon Trump how many kids have you authorized to be killed today?"
I said that about Obama before if that's a worry. And Biden. etc.
But now we live in a time when we're actively supplying weapons to Israel who is committing a genocide.
Yet the media harps on about the shame of what was a talking head and memorializing it.
I don't claim this event in any political movement way -- I'm using it as a means to broach the question about the lameness of voting in the United States.
Malcolm was right.
Once you realize it's not just a "this time" but an "every time I'm going to lose" -- what else is there?
Being funneled into NGO's that blow smoke up your ass, or....?
Which is what brought me to the question: If you can't outvote Trump, et al., what's the other option?
What do you do if Trump&co declare martial law and suspend elections? And then try to collect all the guns from registered Democrats and suspected LGBTQ people?
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 03:16#10123430 likes
I'm asking about what a group ought do when they realize voting not only didn't work this one time, but won't work because it's set up that way.
Right. Let's stick to that, then, please. As the OP, it would be more effective if you correct those who deviate from your purported line of discussion.
Voting isn't there to "work", it's there to aggregate and determine the will of the people into a social "law" or reality that becomes a binding law in accordance to a a particular Constitution.
Now, many people believe, the average person is fairly stupid. I am one of them. So, naturally it will lead to stupid things which lead to suffering and existential anger. That much is not very difficult to ascertain.
This is why we have "influencers" who try to become barons and counts in their own social circles, eventually hoping to become bishops and lords, and perhaps one day, even greater.
But in the end, per your OP, it comes down to more people disagree with what you believe than those who agree. Therefore, your belief is essentially ignored in favor of that of the majority. It doesn't matter who's wrong or who's right, what matters is that there's more of them than you. Again, humanity is generally it's own worst enemy. People are not very smart. Especially in the modern age where things that used to take a lifetime of practice can be done in the push of a button. The mind looks for the path of least resistance, in just about every measurable way and aspect.
So, if your idea is powerful enough to convince others to abandon their ingrained beliefs in favor for your own, you could try that route and "educate" people. Hence the old saying, that I may have just made up, all war ultimately starts and ends in the mind. Otherwise, you either accept the fact your idea or worldview is less popular than others, and live out your life out in quiet dignity around those who share it. Or you move somewhere with people who do share your worldview.
Killing doesn't change anything. Not really. Not after a time. Humanity always melds and forms into its default state given enough "freedom" and lack of direction. It's like a pendulum. It goes back. And forth. Back. And forth. Once you understand this, you too can be content in this world of malaise, wretchedness, and general stupidity.
The United States is not a democracy because of so many reasons. The easiest way to see this is to look at the polls of what people want and see what politicians vote for.
The hard way to see this is to look at what Citizen's United exacerbated.
I like the idea of "I trust you enough that if I don't win it'll carry on"
But these are fascists that want to eliminate gays and make sure we're a Christian nation and continue to make war.
Killing doesn't change anything. Not really. Not after a time.
I think this is wrong. Killing thousands of British soldiers year after year certainly changed things in the 1770's. Same with Vietnamese killing Americans, Afghanistans killing Russians, etc.
DingoJonesSeptember 11, 2025 at 03:21#10123480 likes
In the case of cars, we're willing to accept a certain amount of deaths to drive at speeds that make cars economically viable. Nobody would drive a car at 5mph on the freeway. We sacrifice safety for efficiency.
How is that the same with guns?
It is the same in the “sacrifice” regard. The trade off of lives is analogous, not the reasons why or even what those lives are traded for. We are willing to trade lives, if it is a problem to trade lives (for anything… I think) then cars are a much better place to start than guns numbers wise.
Anyway, obviously I didnt state the analogy clearly enough and I hope that even if you disagree its at least more clear what I meant.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 03:39#10123490 likes
I think this is wrong. Killing thousands of British soldiers year after year certainly changed things in the 1770's. Same with Vietnamese killing Americans, Afghanistans killing Russians, etc.
No, that's not entirely inaccurate. It certainly changes things in the short term. But in reality, why did any group oppose any other group? It's the same thing as two kids in school who become rivals over what the other has or does not have.
I'm reminded of the old Adage: "You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him for very long."
Which means, human nature will always be what it is: a catalyst for forces both known and unknown, both sought and reviled, both useful and useless. Don't you get it? We are pitiful creatures who seek a plateau over those around us, one that ultimately contains nothing but our worst desires, fears, and impulses. Everything we sought to avoid... now confined to us in short, small space for all time we can never hope to escape from. What madness is this we call humanity? Will it ever end? Could it perhaps be salvaged? Saved from itself, somehow? No matter the cost if all peoples and nations are reduced to a few dozen living in huts and caves far away from one another. Perhaps, as others suggest, history does indeed repeat itself. Perhaps this is the destiny of man. Only time will tell. Only time will tell.
I'll go on record with what ought be an obvious sentiment, which is that the capital murderer who assassinated a young father of two from a rooftop with likely a hunting rifle was not an anti-hero who meted out any sort of just dessert, but a useless coward who is in desperate need of .justice from those hunting him down as he hides among innocent students.
His was an act of pure evil, worthy of nothing but unequivocal condemnation, unnuanced, with no hidden irony, intelligence or purpose that could possibly give us reason to think it had an ounce of good within it.
As noted, the problems of the world are complex and varied, but the most glaring problem is that every post in this thread doesn't read like mine.
I'll go on record with what ought be an obvious sentiment, which is that the capital murderer who assassinated a young father of two from a rooftop with likely a hunting rifle was not an anti-hero who meted out any sort of just dessert, but a useless coward who is in desperate need of .justice from those hunting him down as he hides among innocent students.
What he was I don't know -- I don't want to cast him as an anti-hero at all, at least, and I want to assure you that this makes sense to me.
His was an act of pure evil, worthy of nothing but unequivocal condemnation, unnuanced, with no hidden irony, intelligence or purpose that could possibly give us reason to think it had an ounce of good within it.
I can't go that far -- else I would not have posed the question. But the sentiment is appreciated because that's sort of the quandary, on the ethical side.
I don't care to go into his particulars in the sense of just desserts because that sounds like a good way to have a bad time while not addressing the question.
One thing about political violence, in the United States, is that we're a country founded on revolution. And not all those acts were exactly good -- these acts are part and parcel of how we do business, even civilly.
In such a world I don't want to set up heroes and anti-heroes. That'd lead to even more death -- as much of a cynic as I am I do think all life is important, even Mr Kirk's.
I think it's worth it. I think it's worth 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."
You didn't say that, of course; Kirk did. And it's specious. Having a gun never protected "God-given rights", other than the holy sanctity of private property--and then only maybe. What best protects civil rights is a conscientious cooperative civil society.
But I wonder whether Kirk had any limits to this sort of justification. In 2023 44,000 people died of gunshots. That's quite a few. Year after year, 40,000 here, 38,000 there, it begins to add up to to a sizable city.
We get used to the statistics of excess deaths -- those above and beyond what are the result of natural causes, like heart attacks, cancer, and strokes.
Americans feel they are entitled to do what they want to do, carry a loaded gun into church, drive the way they want to drive, take whatever drugs are on offer, and so on. 39,000 people died in auto accidents last year--quite a bit less than used to be slaughtered on th highways. In 2023, 80,391 people died of drug overdoses -- down from 110,000 in 2023. Are these acceptable numbers to justify "freedom of the gun", "freedom of the road", "freedom of the drug"? Taken together, guns, cars, and drugs killed roughly 160,000 people last year. I consider that a monstrous cost for a policy of non-interference in lethal activities.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 04:40#10123600 likes
His was an act of pure evil, worthy of nothing but unequivocal condemnation, unnuanced, with no hidden irony, intelligence or purpose that could possibly give us reason to think it had an ounce of good within it.
I mean, and you know I hate having to correct you, but you literally know nothing about the shooter. In all my years of judging you by your posts, yes I do that, I've never taken you to be the sort who grandstands. He could have been mentally ill and apparently some political parties are insensitive to the needs of those who don't happen to concern them. Kind of a "oh well, not my business" sentiment many people have in this harsh dog eat dog world, specifically to the mentally unwell or otherwise less efficient than you or I. You know that. Unless you have some information that has not been released to the public, I don't see how you could disagree to the possibility of my alternate suggestion.
unenlightenedSeptember 11, 2025 at 07:29#10123780 likes
[quote=Matthew 26:52]Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.[/quote]
Typical Jesus hyperbole. But when it is exemplified for once it seems an appropriate lament.
But I prefer this sentiment, from the American Jesus, addressed to the Masters of the 2nd amendment:
[quote=Bob Dylan, Masters of War]And I hope that you die
And your deathÂ’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And IÂ’ll watch while youÂ’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And IÂ’ll stand oÂ’er your grave
Â’Til IÂ’m sure that youÂ’re dead
[/quote]
But the last word must surely go to the great admiral, Nelson.
It's.. just a song, man. Just because I paint a picture of a war or scene with people deceased doesn't mean I want to go out and kill somebody. Jeez. I always painted you as wiser than that.
unenlightenedSeptember 11, 2025 at 07:40#10123800 likes
It's.. just a song, man. Just because I paint a picture of a war or scene with people deceased doesn't mean I want to go out and kill somebody.
I don't think you did, Bob. And nor would I.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 07:46#10123810 likes
Well, anyway. I was watching this event unfold on a less than reputable site that showed the full gory video so, I feel I may as well post what I was intending to post in the heat of the moment. While the body was still warm.
What best protects civil rights is a conscientious cooperative civil society.
Yeah, and can you force people to behave? Without violent indoctrination? Without capital punishment and constant fear of death? No, you cannot. So yes, as sad as it is, some people choose (or do they?) to be like animals. Animals are not welcome in society. At least not in the capacity as functional, moral human beings. So when an animal, who again, chooses to be such, acts like such, they are treated as such. I don't know about you, but I happen to feel my life may be just a tad more valuable than that of a rabid dog. So if a dog, or a so-called "human being" chooses to act like such, it's not even worth the possibility of risk of injury to me. Not even a little sprain. Not even a moment of inconvenience, to be quite frank. If you act like a rabid animal (threaten the life of a law-abiding citizen) that law-abiding citizen has a right to treat you like one. There are no excuses. Education is free. In fact, it's basically the law. No, it is the law. There's nothing to hide behind anymore.
TzeentchSeptember 11, 2025 at 08:19#10123830 likes
Some of you might want to strap on your masks a little tighter.
It is the same in the “sacrifice” regard. The trade off of lives is analogous, not the reasons why or even what those lives are traded for. We are willing to trade lives, if it is a problem to trade lives (for anything… I think) then cars are a much better place to start than guns numbers wise.
Anyway, obviously I didnt state the analogy clearly enough and I hope that even if you disagree its at least more clear what I meant.
Could the analogy be to a prohibition era bootlegger who goes around touting the benefits of alcohol, says a certain number of alcohol-related deaths are "worth it" so we can freely drink, and then gets nailed by a drunk driver?
ChristofferSeptember 11, 2025 at 09:41#10123880 likes
I think that it's pretty obvious why this happened. Kirk was part of the rightwing fascists who argues in defense of the second amendment for the purpose of legitimizing hate speech, to move the goal posts of values in society towards hate of certain people in society. He was arguing for violence, literally, through his point of gun deaths necessary to defend the second amendment, but his and others rhetoric was never about defending everyone's speech, it was about defending THEIR speech.
Kirk and people ideologically similar to him are the very same responsible for banning books and silencing people who speak of things like trans rights. It was never about defending the second amendment, it was about transforming society into silencing certain groups of people in favor of the Maga based right.
If you argue for violence, for hate and for polarization, you will eventually get violence, hate and polarization. This isn't about the identity of the killer, it doesn't really matter who that is, because the killer is the symptom of the world that people like Kirk slowly push into reality. This is not literally that "he asked for it", but in some form he did.
I'm always amazed that society has such a bad ability to understand long term consequences. How the dominos fall. How is it so hard for society to grasp that the hateful rhetoric of the far right, spearheaded by Trump, Maga, Farage, Bannon etc. eventually leads to a world that honors that rhetoric?
If anything is to blame for the deaths of Kirk, as well as the deaths of all the unnamed people caused by radicalized right wingers, it's the general hateful rhetoric that dehumanizes and polarize society.
What we're seeing is just the consequence of all of this boiling over. The delusion that this rhetoric is just an expression of freedom of speech, when it's in fact the very definition of hate speech that cause actual consequences for people.
It's easy for the general public, far away form such violence, to just talk about the rhetoric being freedom of speech, but Kirk might be the most noticeable consequence of this dehumanizing, polarizing rhetoric that's been going on for years now.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of looking at this assassination as some isolated event. This is a symptom of our polarized times.
Fighting polarization is the way to mitigate the risks of political violence, and fighting polarization requires us to stop being so naive to the effects of hate speech; of its capacity to move the goal posts of the general public into slowly hating others more and more.
Stop the hateful rhetoric, stop the dehumanization of groups of people in society, stop the dehumanization of political sides. People need to stop being so fucking naive and stupid about these things that erodes society.
I'm not surprised whatsoever that someone like Kirk got killed. If anyone was surprised by it, they don't have a clear understanding of how our modern world behaves.
I don't see how you could disagree to the possibility of my alternate suggestion.
Sure, we'll have to wait and see if a schizophrenic climbed a roof to take down someone who just happened to be politically divisive and who now hides himself away, or we'll have to see if maybe the shooter was just mistaken, thinking he was engaging in some sort of innocuous behavior that turned to look suspiciously like 1st degree murder, or whatever else we might concoct.
Your approach is to ignore the OP"s concerns (might the shooting be the "by and means necessary" of Malcolm X), but just to say "guys, let's not rush to judgment:." But I'll go out on a limb here and judge the video I saw of a guy shot in the neck while sitting in chair talking on a college campus answering questions and doing whatever social media people do.
But if you're right, and alien abduction or whatnot brought us here, I'll eat crow.
Reply to Hanover It's not unheard of. Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. We still don't have a clear motive on why the Trump shooter did what he did. Charles Whitman had a brain tumor.
I can see how these themes are disparate. I went ahead and lounged the thread for that reason.
I still want to think through this, though.
The absurdity that I see is in the various shows of horror at political violence. Malcolm X is a person whose opinions on political violence I respect with a coherent cause that makes sense of political violence: the continued oppression against the black community by the powers that be. It makes sense for a person to question the ballot when they cannot vote.
In some sense this is a similar condition to our own revolution: that there was a court and King with say over us as a colony is the justification for founding a state.
Kirk's assassination is the sort of thing that's so small, though, in comparison to what our government is doing -- which, in turn, if we are Americans, that is what we are at least responsible for.
Further, no matter who we vote for our government will continue down this path.
So while I don't know this assassin's motivation I can't help but wonder at the absurdity of condemning it with so much blood on our hands.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of looking at this assassination as some isolated event. This is a symptom of our polarized times.
Fighting polarization is the way to mitigate the risks of political violence, and fighting polarization requires us to stop being so naive to the effects of hate speech; of its capacity to move the goal posts of the general public into slowly hating others more and more.
Stop the hateful rhetoric, stop the dehumanization of groups of people in society, stop the dehumanization of political sides. People need to stop being so fucking naive and stupid about these things that erodes society.
I don't see it as an isolated event. That's why I'm bringing Malcolm X and the genocide in Gaza as points of reflection, though I see that also caused confusion: I still don't have this thought, well, fully thought out. That's why I posted on it.
In general the question is the justification of political violence: whether we choose the ballot or the bullet as a political and ethical question, and the various justifications about that.
Would that I could wave a magic wand and restore such trust -- but there's more to it than rhetoric, I think. There are material reasons for the rhetoric.
Typical Jesus hyperbole. But when it is exemplified for once it seems an appropriate lament.
But I prefer this sentiment, from the American Jesus, addressed to the Masters of the 2nd amendment:
And I hope that you die
And your deathÂ’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And IÂ’ll watch while youÂ’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And IÂ’ll stand oÂ’er your grave
Â’Til IÂ’m sure that youÂ’re dead
— Bob Dylan, Masters of War
Makes sense to me.
****
One of the things I'm noticing is that we are a country constantly at war.
And it's not like soldiers disappear after the war.
In a way what we're seeing is bringing the ethics of the front to the political sphere: the rhetoric for violence doesn't even register as violent. And the actual daily violence isn't spoken about -- people are actually persecuted for being too outspoken about -- until it's a talking head.
In a way this is me expressing my fear at my own numbness at murder. It shouldn't be this way, but here we are.
Because this guy happens to be a little famous (I never heard of him until this thread, frankly) it has to be some major turning point we have to look inward and question our deepest ideals? Come on. That's a bit melodramatic, wouldn't you say. All things considered.
Yes. When any event is ubiquitous, and everyone is supposed to have an opinion or reaction about it (see the cringey editorials and twitter posts), I ask myself a few questions: 1), why this story and not some other, 2) who decides, and 3) should I really waste much time with it?
Plenty of more important stories happened yesterday. But nonetheless I offer my reaction too, because it’s everywhere. Still, it really does all ring false to me. Kids are getting shot every day— nothing but crickets. No ridiculous and hysterical calls for “war” or races to out-humane everyone.
As for the OP question: sometimes violence is necessary, yeah. When all else fails. Should have been more violence against the Nazis as they were coming to power.
As for the OP question: sometimes violence is necessary, yeah. When all else fails. Should have been more violence against the Nazis as they were coming to power.
But when and why?
If we can only say it in retrospect -- i.e. the Nazis -- then that's not exactly a guide to when and why.
Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.
“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse?”
Right. Let's stick to that, then, please. As the OP, it would be more effective if you correct those who deviate from your purported line of discussion.
Admittedly it's not an easy thing to broach -- hence the discussion.
I'm still wrapping my mind around this absurd world we live in.
ChristofferSeptember 11, 2025 at 14:14#10124170 likes
In general the question is the justification of political violence: whether we choose the ballot or the bullet as a political and ethical question, and the various justifications about that.
When rule of law doesn't function and democracy is being manipulated... what purpose does the ballot have?
The fact is that almost everyone speaks out in horror against this assassination, but I would argue that there are far more people than people think who behind those words have no problem with it happening.
This is how polarized things have become. In which people play some charade of thoughts and prayers, but view each other as mortal enemies.
So when does this "cold war" become an actual war? When does it become something in which people openly accept themselves to be on a side that shoots the other, rather than playing the charade?
Is the current situation in the US, and even globally, between the far right and most people left of that far right... enough of a divide to spark warranted violence to balance things back from that extreme?
If the political extreme is whatever sparks consequences of death for people in a society, be that direct or indirect (suicides or being left to die), is it warranted to violently fight back at the extreme that caused it? If society can't use rule of law and democratic methods to fight that extreme and that extreme worms its way into actual government... does that warrant revolutionary violence against this status quo?
In hindsight we look back at regimes and wonder why no one fought back before it became this regime. But I would argue that the time before those regimes look almost exactly as how it is now. We can't know if the US marches towards an authoritarian regime before it actually happens.
So is this a time that we in the future will look back on and wonder... why didn't anyone do anything before it was too late?
Will the assassin who tried to kill Trump be viewed as a hero who failed if we end up in a dictatorship under Trump? Like operation Valkyrie?
To define what warrants political violence as being good demands perfect knowledge of the future. Maybe many previous successful assassinations actually prevented something we didn't know would happen, no one knows.
It's why I think The Dead Zone is a really good philosophical experiment for this topic.
If we can only say it in retrospect -- i.e. the Nazis -- then that's not exactly a guide to when and why.
Why? If weÂ’re assess that a person, a movement, a cult, a government, etc., will cause great destruction / murder / suffering in the future. No one has a crystal ball, but there is good evidence.
As to when— once certain lines are crossed. I think the Trump administration has pretty much crossed those lines, but I look for the ignoring of court holdings — provided the Supreme Court’s Trump-appointed members don’t continually rubber stamp his blatantly illegal moves. Once that happens, the military will have to make a choice whether to uphold Trump or the constitution. If they choose Trump, then the only recourse is states leaving the union and people fighting back if the army tries to stop it.
The absurd situation is when the screamingly obvious doesn't even register -- what had been bad or good or indifferent isn't even named or thought about.
For myself, at least, when I reflect from a position that wants pacifism I end up here: So the world hates this idea because it's(EDIT: "violence is") justified sometimes.
Once that happens, the military will have to make a choice whether to uphold Trump or the constitution. If they choose Trump, then the only recourse is states leaving the union and people fighting back if the army tries to stop it.
The military is very Republican, and basically is into war. So that doesn't give me high hopes, but is realistic.
My coworkers wanted to vote on what food to order, and I was like, I'm not a slave, damn you! They totally got my point.
You need anotherÂ’s vote to decide what food to order? No wonder.
ItÂ’s a stupid analogy because in that case youÂ’re not operating under the illusion that youÂ’re participating in government, that a government job-holder can represent you and your interests while deciding the conditions of your life, and that you have some sort of say in power. The whole process is at best performative piffle for thralls, at worst, the signing over of yourself as property.
The fact is that almost everyone speaks out in horror against this assassination, but I would argue that there are far more people than people think who behind those words have no problem with it happening.
Oh, I'm unfortunately aware of such sentiments.
It's not just one person, let's say.
This is how polarized things have become. In which people play some charade of thoughts and prayers, but view each other as mortal enemies.
So when does this "cold war" become an actual war? When does it become something in which people openly accept themselves to be on a side that shoots the other, rather than playing the charade?
Is the current situation in the US, and even globally, between the far right and most people left of that far right... enough of a divide to spark warranted violence to balance things back from that extreme?
Good question.
I want to focus on this notion of "balance", in particular, because that seems to be a concept in play in these discussions -- if we could trust one another well enough that what the other does, even if I wouldn't do it, then "balance" is at least adjacent to a good goal.
But we don't live in a time where "balance" is possible.
I don't know if the violence is warranted. That's the question, in the face of the absurd world we live in.
If the political extreme is whatever sparks consequences of death for people in a society, be that direct or indirect (suicides or being left to die), is it warranted to violently fight back at the extreme that caused it? If society can't use rule of law and democratic methods to fight that extreme and that extreme worms its way into actual government... does that warrant revolutionary violence against this status quo?
In hindsight we look back at regimes and wonder why no one fought back before it became this regime. But I would argue that the time before those regimes look almost exactly as how it is now. We can't know if the US marches towards an authoritarian regime before it actually happens.
So is this a time that we in the future will look back on and wonder... why didn't anyone do anything before it was too late?
Will the assassin who tried to kill Trump be viewed as a hero who failed if we end up in a dictatorship under Trump? Like operation Valkyrie?
That's similar to the reflection I'm having.
To define what warrants political violence as being good demands perfect knowledge of the future. Maybe many previous successful assassinations actually prevented something we didn't know would happen, no one knows.
If so then we never have warrant for political violence, since no one has perfect knowledge of the future.
Could the analogy be to a prohibition era bootlegger who goes around touting the benefits of alcohol, says a certain number of alcohol-related deaths are "worth it" so we can freely drink, and then gets nailed by a drunk driver?
That would be an analogy of the irony of a gun guy getting shot, sure.
LeontiskosSeptember 11, 2025 at 18:28#10124460 likes
Charlie Kirk didn't deserve what happened to him in the sense that all he did made him worthy of punishment: But...
That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.
"Fucked up" is the correct description here.
Count Timothy von IcarusSeptember 11, 2025 at 18:29#10124470 likes
I would say the irony is more that the right to bear arms only secures liberty if those bearing arms are (at least somewhat) virtuous and capable of self-governance (collectively and individually). Even if one grants it great importance, it still seems that it will be, at best, a right oriented towards a secondary good.
With "the ballot" the same issue occurs as with "the bullet." Simply having elections does not produce good governance nor "progress," nor justice, nor liberty. There are plenty of examples of extremely dysfunctional nations that nonetheless host relatively free and fair elections. There are important prerequisites for self-determination; many I'd argue are more important than democracy (and indeed, they can be eroded by democracy or liberalism/consumerism in some cases). Republican government might crown the achievement of self-governance, and it might even be a means towards it (although by no means a foolproof one), since it creates a system where poor leadership is punished (of course, in dysfunctional democracies, good leadership is often punished and demagoguery rewarded). But people who cannot govern themselves as individuals can hardly be expected to collectively each other. It's the same way worker's collectives could create great workplaces, but often didn't.
Too often I think we tend to think of democracy as a good in itself. Perhaps it is, or at least can be. It can lead to people taking a strong ownership over the common good. It hardly seems to today though. Likewise with the right to bear arms. But it seems obvious that places like the Republic of Korea and Singapore have provided for not only a better life, but even a better commonwealth and form of citizenship without full democracy than places like Afghanistan and Iraq had despite having free and fair elections. So too, there are plenty of places that are awash with weapons with little by way of liberty or a common wealth; the Central African Republic is a fine example.
That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.
"Fucked up" is the correct description here.
I hope you've seen I've said as much.
You're right that ": But" is the whole schtick -- that's the question I'm posing.
When is the schtick justified, if ever?
That we live in a fucked up world is part of my lament here.
Yeah, and can you force people to behave? Without violent indoctrination? Without capital punishment and constant fear of death? No, you cannot.
A depressing--and not at all realistic--response.
A "conscientious cooperative civil society" isn't forced -- it is reared from childhood. You have to teach children -- who become adults -- how to behave.
Does this result in perfect compliance with the law under any and all circumstances? Does this absolutely prevent violence under any and all circumstances? No. What it does is result in a LOW level of unlawful and violent behavior.
Do such societies exist? Certainly they do. Most of us live within such societies.
Many of us also live within societies which are fraying, owing to excesses of free enterprise in such businesses as gun manufacture, gambling, illicit drug use, and the like.
With "the ballot" the same issue occurs as with "the bullet." Simply having elections does not produce good governance nor "progress," nor justice, nor liberty. There are plenty of examples of extremely dysfunctional nations that nonetheless host relatively free and fair elections. There are important prerequisites for self-determination; many I'd argue are more important than democracy (and indeed, they can be eroded by democracy or liberalism/consumerism in some cases). Republican government might crown the achievement of self-governance, and it might even be a means towards it (although by no means a foolproof one), since it creates a system where poor leadership is punished (of course, in dysfunctional democracies, good leadership is often punished and demagoguery rewarded). But people who cannot govern themselves as individuals can hardly be expected to collectively each other. It's the same way worker's collectives could create great workplaces, but often didn't.
If "the ballot" and "the bullet" are the same then it shouldn't matter which anyone chooses -- it's the results that matter.
I don't think you believe this at all I'm more asking you to clarify that assertion.
Too often I think we tend to think of democracy as a good in itself. Perhaps it is, or at least can be. It can lead to people taking a strong ownership over the common good. It hardly seems to today though. Likewise with the right to bear arms. But it seems obvious that places like the Republic of Korea and Singapore have provided for not only a better life, but even a better commonwealth and form of citizenship without full democracy than places like Afghanistan and Iraq had despite having free and fair elections. So too, there are plenty of places that are awash with weapons with little by way of liberty or a common wealth; the Central African Republic is a fine example.
I am a skeptic of liberal democracy in the sense usually meant: A representative government with a division of powers and rules which define when and who gets to be the decider, and various rights to property.
Not that I wanted to be, but *gestures at the world*
But I don't think we're democratic exactly -- so while we're responsible for our government's actions we're also not in charge of what they do, no matter how hard you try.
I suppose I'd believe democracy doesn't work once I see it in action. At least a little bit more than a first-past-the-post representative government with an electoral college wherein money is what heavily determines who gets to be the decider, wherein the parties draw their own districts, and wherein the intelligence agencies of the government infiltrate social movements in order to disrupt them so that we remain the same.
In such a world I don't want to set up heroes and anti-heroes. That'd lead to even more death -- as much of a cynic as I am I do think all life is important, even Mr Kirk's.
Conflict here being: I admire John Brown, Eugene Debs, and various others who are heroes to my mind: I thought of these two because one did it with the bullet and the other did it with the ballot.
For myself, at least, when I reflect from a position that wants pacifism I end up here: So the world hates this idea because it's (EDIT: "violence is") justified sometimes.
The OP would not be at all provocative if it were presented this abstractly, simply asking the question of when violence is permitted and when it is not. The OP, however, presented the question of whether the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified under the logic employed during the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting that the plight of todayÂ’s left is much like the plight of African Americans in the 1960s, and so now is the time to take up arms.
One must wonder if anyone so repulsed by Charlie Kirk actually watched his videos. He was a Christian conservative to be sure, but not a firebrand. His shtick was to debate college students who would approach the mic.
One must also wonder if anyone who finds consistency between KirkÂ’s assassin and Malcolm X has actually read Malcolm X.
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.
If you actually think itÂ’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. It is a conversation with someone who doesnÂ’t know basic right from wrong.
The OP would not be at all provocative if it were presented this abstractly, simply asking the question of when violence is permitted and when it is not. The OP, however, presented the question of whether the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified under the logic employed during the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting that the plight of todayÂ’s left is much like the plight of African Americans in the 1960s, and so now is the time to take up arms.
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.
If you actually think itÂ’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. It is a conversation with someone who doesnÂ’t know basic right from wrong.
I said it's murder.
I'm suggesting that this isn't the only murder we're responsible for -- so pacifism becomes an absurd dream.
Yes, I don't know basic right from wrong -- how could we in this world? Who does?
The question between pacifism and violence is easy to answer at its ideals: Pacifists don't do that on principle.
They, more often than not, suffer for these beliefs and move on with their lives when they can -- but also get eaten up by the harsher people amongst us, and forgotten.
Mr Kirk held views -- he held views that are against the gays, for instance, and expressing them kind of views has effects.
He's not a peaceful individual sitting at a college campus just having a conversation -- he's a professional propagandist spreading hate for the FREAKS.
Insofar that anyone is against THE FREAKS then it's really just an existential question for me: Do I want to live or not?
In spite of everything I do.
Mourning the haters of FREAKS wanting a Christian nation is hard to do. I'm willing to go so far as saying killing is evil.
But that's kind of the thing: We are killers, like it or not. We have more kills on our hands than the 1 guy shot yesterday.
So do we apply that same ire and disappointment to ourselves?
Unfortunately, this isn't even registered -- it's not good, bad, indifferent -- it's something so far beyond the subject that it's meaningless fluff.
If you actually think itÂ’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally.
Though the way you put it here -- sure.
I'm hoping that I've made my point clear enough that I'm not advocating for "any public speaker with such and such a view is good to be shot by any random citizen because of their views"
I'd much rather not live in a world like that.
I have a hard time caring, however, in the face of our genocide.
Whether it's the left or not for people dealing with the war against Gaza it seems to me that the bullet is justified. No politician wants to step up to stop supplying arms, and many people against what's happening in Gaza are "right wing", but not fascist.
But the story of the day is this -- so... if you care about Gaza, the ballot or the bullet?
I, myself, would like our states to represent us, but they don't.
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.
I agree it's not a close call. It's the first person I thought of in the moment that has a coherent philosophy of political violence.
Do you wonder if I've read him, for reals?
I have, but I'm not going to claim expertise. I have admiration for his moral convictions that he followed through on, and even revised.
Reply to Moliere
The Malcolm X speech reminds me of the Introduction to John Keegan's A History of Warfare where Keegan criticizes the Clausewitz idea that war is politics by other means. Keegan strives to understand war-making as a culture of different people and not as a natural extension of pursuing political goals. War often interrupts politics.
A ready example of this is when John Brown tried to start a war at Harper's Ferry. It was not as simple a beginning that he had hoped for, but it was a start he hoped to bring about.
The case of Booth shooting Lincoln was in hopes of keeping a war alive. The original plot was to kill all of the leaders of Lincoln's administration.
The civil rights era had intimations of war but also an appeal to avoid it. Otherwise, it would have all been straight up Lenin and vanguard of the proletariat.
The Hatch decision titrated the Second Amendment into an individual right. That is different from the original idea of avoiding standing armies. Or even armies that rake.
All the political shootings of late, whoever they target from the menu of partisan targets, are more like personal messages than a call to arms. The Kirk killing is yet another school shooting. Is that a "cultural war?" Is it not a "cultural war?" Keegan readers would like to know.
OutlanderSeptember 11, 2025 at 22:10#10124720 likes
I'm sure you're most likely right, Hanover. This is an odd event for me to process is all, when upset or bewildered, I enjoy engaging in debate with people I respect. As an "amateur" web programmer, my mind is basically solidified at this point to automatically seeing the "unlikely" options, as far as it relates to possibility (and therefore, relevant issues as they relate to security within a given system or framework). Old habits die hard, I guess.
Hopefully I did not upset you with any perceived vapidness of insinuation. I appreciate the reply.
That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.
"Fucked up" is the correct description here.
You ever see the second Die Hard movie? Bruce Willis has to wear a sandwich board saying "I hate n******" in a predominately black neighborhood or a bomb goes off. So let's say some racist jerk decides to do that and walk around a predominately black neighborhood and someone shoots him dead. Are you really going to object if someone says, "Yeah, it's fucked up that he got shot...BUT". Isn't someone who does that and gets killed get put in the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"? Or "fuck around and find out"?
Charlie Kirk, to me, was the equivalent of the guy walking around with the "I hate *******" sandwich board. Yeah, it's sad he got killed, but...karma's a bitch. The universe has a sense of irony.
OutlanderSeptember 12, 2025 at 01:45#10124960 likes
Charlie Kirk, to me, was the equivalent of the guy walking around with the "I hate *******" sandwich board.
What did he say about black people or "predominately black neighborhoods?" Again, I never heard of the guy until just yesterday, so. Just curious as to what information or knowledge you have that makes that analogy valid in your mind.
I mean, there are no trans animals in nature. People are awful, I agree. They bully people who are smaller than them to believe anything they want. That's a tragedy, sure. But aside from the 0.00001 people who are born biologically of the same sex (both organs or both chromosomes), I don't get it. It's just larger or ruder people bullying and mentally damaging people into thinking they're "beneath" them or "freaks". The people who do that, who harm their fellow man to such a degree of permanence, should not be alive, yes, I agree with that. But you don't let them get away with their crimes by accepting fallen or warped mental states as "valid". That's what they want. That's how they win. You're being their slave right now. Stop or be stopped.
Also, that has nothing to do with black people. Like I specifically requested information on.
Reply to Outlander I don't know if he was racist, but his transphobia, imo, was just as bad.
WayfarerSeptember 12, 2025 at 05:12#10125320 likes
It is obviously an atrocity of the first order. Ezra Klein, a liberal columnist at the NY Times, pointed out that Kirk, with whom he would disagree about almost everything, was practicing real political debate: going out into college campuses all over the US and taking on all comers. His was a model of civil discourse.
Except for one thing.
I can't reconcile how this purportedly fine upstanding citizen could go into bat for the candidate that denied, and tried to subvert, the 2020 election, including whipping up a mob who ransacked the US Capitol Building, and was caught on tape discussing how to fake an election win with fake electors. I don't understand the depth of delusion that allows these apparently earnest and educated activists to pretend that the current President is anything other than an authoritarian egotist who poses a mortal threat to the American body politic. Of course, this kind of political violence, and gun violence generally, is a mortal threat to public order. But then, so is the current President, who appealed for an end to this 'divisive hate speech which is tearing us apart' and then added, 'which is only ever practiced by radical left lunatics.'
//end rant//
Oh, except for to say, I dearly hope if they do catch the perpertrator, that he is captured alive. There are many questions that will need answering.
OutlanderSeptember 12, 2025 at 05:18#10125340 likes
I don't know if he was racist, but his transphobia, imo, was just as bad.
So you just say things for no reason then. Why bring up the plight of people mistreated and killed for a physical quality they were born with no control over, then?
You can't compare the plight of people treated differently by the color of their skin in which they had no choice or control over to those who (were forced to) decide(d) they are different by the choices and mechanisms of their own mind brought about by others and factors that were only determined after their birth and developmental process. That's literally the definition of genocide. You are complicit to genocide. Unknowingly perhaps. But complicit all the same. The fact they-- I'll pause it here I have to respond to the above post. Come back to me with later.
I can't reconcile how this purportedly fine upstanding citizen could go into bat for the candidate that denied, and tried to subvert, the 2020 election, including whipping up a mob who ransacked the US Capitol Building, and being caught on tape discussing how to fake an election win with fake electors. I don't understand the depth of delusion that allows these apparently earnest and educated activists to pretend that the current President is anything other than an authoritarian egotist who poses a mortal threat to the American body politic.
You can't reconcile how people can be people? The very worst of what life is when given the chance? Surely you're not that naive. I've said this many a time to many a people, mostly those in power, but now to you: "The only different between the lowliest kindest person and the most cruel dictator are two simple things we all possess or otherwise have access to: Opprotnity. And time." Deep down, you know, not me, forget me, I'm not part of this equation, but Truth and Reality remain Truth and Reality.
OutlanderSeptember 12, 2025 at 05:22#10125350 likes
Oh, except for to say, I dearly hope if they do catch the perpertrator, that he is captured alive. There are many questions that will need answering.
No there's not. The average man cannot comprehend all that surrounds him. He gets frustrated at traffic even though it's sign of his own, not only economic wellness, but progress as a species. People in general are not very smart. They do terrible things without realizing they are terrible. Until you realize this, you will live a life unpleasant, and so, naturally only contribute to said unpleasantness.
We should all have moved on by now. Kids are shot every day — kids who didn’t contribute to ensuring this happens for decades to come with their spewing of gun manufacturer propaganda, like this guy did.
More media hysteria.
ChristofferSeptember 12, 2025 at 10:22#10125480 likes
It is obviously an atrocity of the first order. Ezra Klein, a liberal columnist at the NY Times, pointed out that Kirk, with whom he would disagree about almost everything, was practicing real political debate: going out into college campuses all over the US and taking on all comers. His was a model of civil discourse.
Except for one thing.
I can't reconcile how this purportedly fine upstanding citizen could go into bat for the candidate that denied, and tried to subvert, the 2020 election, including whipping up a mob who ransacked the US Capitol Building, and was caught on tape discussing how to fake an election win with fake electors. I don't understand the depth of delusion that allows these apparently earnest and educated activists to pretend that the current President is anything other than an authoritarian egotist who poses a mortal threat to the American body politic. Of course, this kind of political violence, and gun violence generally, is a mortal threat to public order. But then, so is the current President, who appealed for an end to this 'divisive hate speech which is tearing us apart' and then added, 'which is only ever practiced by radical left lunatics.'
The problem with the reactions right now is that people whitewash Kirk's behavior and what he has actually said over the years. Even his most vocal critics plays a part in creating this martyr of him.
It's the usual way of people totally unable to keep two truths in their heads at the same time. That an assassination is awful, but so was Kirk.
He spread some rather extreme views, called out for deaths of people, wanted to pardon Pelosi's attacker. There's no denying that someone spreading such hate opened up to the risk of being hated back, to the point of violence.
You need animals to dress up to show it? This is unfortunately part of the public lack of knowledge in the area of transexuality. As Sapolsky says in this video, we viewed homosexuality as a psychopathology and then discovered, no, it's not. And here we go again in history, viewing transexuals in the same way society viewed homosexuals before society matured into actual knowledge (well, the intelligent ones in society anyway)
So, what Kirk and people like him spewed out is pure transphobia. It's exactly the same as when society had widespread, "state-supported" homophobia and it leading to suicides, stigma and extreme suffering for homosexuals just wanting to live in peace and be respected as any other person.
And as I'm usually arguing, society never cares for the indirect suffering caused by a shifting attitude in society because of a high tolerance for hate speech and phobic bullshit spreading around.
We're living through the same maturing society towards transexuals as society went through in the 80-90s for homosexuals. In the end, we will have lots of people who once spewed transphobic hate in public, to be viewed by history as awful.
Who wants to be considered equal to the homophobic haters in the 80s who were part of the crowd who made life a living hell for homosexuals back then? Anyone?
The reason for homophobia and transphobia is because people are drawn to it to feel safe. They feel safe having a group in society they can blame for anything. Who becomes an enemy that are responsible for any troubles they have. It's the behavior of the actual weak and pathetic, who make zero contribution to society which improves the life and safety for all.
Society doesn't get more tolerable and good by allowing such hate to be spread. The free speech argument by the right wing magas who usually spews out this transphobia is not in favor of free speech itself, it's a blanket defense for them to be able to spread this hatred.
I want to focus on this notion of "balance", in particular, because that seems to be a concept in play in these discussions -- if we could trust one another well enough that what the other does, even if I wouldn't do it, then "balance" is at least adjacent to a good goal.
But we don't live in a time where "balance" is possible.
I don't know if the violence is warranted. That's the question, in the face of the absurd world we live in.
I think balance is impossible as long as people view freedom of speech as some abstract axiom without any defining societal parameters.
As it is now, it is used by the hateful to legitimize hate speech. And as Popper's tolerance paradox describes, this practice slowly erodes society into becoming intolerant. This is exactly what we're seeing in the US. Freedom of speech used as blanket defense to spread intolerance.
And since this is what's going on, there's no way to balance because there are no tools to balance with. So we end up with measures that tries to balance things through violence instead; an escalation of the divide through a desperation to balance the scales.
If you spread intolerance hard and long enough, and if no one actually oppose and stops you, then you will eventually get a violent push back.
Think of it as a rubber band being stretched. If nothing stops you, no one blocks you from stretching it further, eventually it will snap back at you and hurt you.
I think Kirk is an example of how far society can push its intolerance before things start to snap. The people, especially those negatively affected by the hate of the intolerant, want actual pushback on the hate, but if the state and society at large instead stupport that hate, then you push these people into desperate measures.
Think of it this way, if you are a person who are in the crosshair of society's accepted hate. Spread by people like Kirk. And you plead for society to stop being like this and you just get more hate. Going on until there's a point where the state itself starts to implement policies that would classify you as sub-human, who want to deport you, even though you're not from anywhere else, who starts to limit your freedoms, who wants to put you in segregated areas away from other people, who want to chemically assault your existence with either taking away needed medicine or try to medicate your "problem" away... and this just keeps going and going and no one does a fucking thing to balance it back... when do you become the rubber band snapping back?
If we are to balance things in society, we need to first acknowledge hate speech for what it is; that it is a call for intolerance, a call for dividing society into accepted and not accepted people. If we accept it for what it is, then we understand that freedom of speech is not a valid defense for it because it's rather a call for destroying part of society, not improving it.
Freedom of speech could be considered true only for that which attempts to improve society. If banning trans, or other people in society is part of an argument for improving society, it needs to be backed up with actual evidence as it is an extreme claim. If such evidence does not support such claims, it can't be defended by freedom of speech and instead falls under hate speech, thereby becomes an attempt to destroy society and is thereby illegal.
If we actually apply the already existing laws on hate speech to actually function properly, Kirk would never have been able to continue saying what he was arguing for. He would have needed to change his debate tactics and rhetoric to be actually factual rather than performative propaganda. And he wouldn't have been the kind of target he became.
People like Kirk push the limits more and more because there's no one on the other side pushing back. There's no laws, or laws used, that prevent him from eroding tolerance in society.
And if you rally for intolerance, then you will rally those who are intolerant of yourself. Further, if people get hurt by your intolerance, then they will hurt you back.
So, a first step to balance things out is to actually apply hate speech laws as they're supposed to.
After that, block politicians who try to go into elections with hate speech as part of their strategy. If you want to protect democracy, don't let anti-democratic politicians into positions of power that lets them change laws. That should be fucking obvious really.
If so then we never have warrant for political violence, since no one has perfect knowledge of the future.
What we do know is what leads society into anti-democratic, intolerant behaviors. And so if we are naive and stupid as a society to let the intolerant, racist, homophobic, transphobic, psychopathic, narcissistic, imperialistic authoritarian lunatics into a position to change laws... then we know where that leads. History have already showed us this and if we think that's not a problem for society and our democracy... then we are absolutely, fundamentally stupid. Because then the only way forward is violence, and we invited that in by being actively stupid or passively naive.
WayfarerSeptember 12, 2025 at 11:35#10125570 likes
unenlightenedSeptember 12, 2025 at 11:42#10125580 likes
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest at about the same time: 3 kids wounded including the shooter who died, in just another High School shooting. Nothing to talk about here, not newsworthy at all - none of them had 1m followers or a history of ranting, so none of us cares a damn.
"Pardon" was the wrong word, rather wanted a patriot to bail him out. Then rejecting that the right wing rhetoric had anything to do with pushing acts like this.
But now we live in a time when we're actively supplying weapons to Israel who is committing a genocide.
Yet the media harps on about the shame of what was a talking head and memorializing it.
Yes. I don't know much about Kirk, but many unambiguously good people get killed around the world daily, particularly children, sometimes with the complicity of our government's, and the media often expects us not only to not feel bad about that but to support it. One can be against political assassinations while still bemoaning the fact that our media environment is composed merely of propaganda, any relationship of which to morality is purely incidental.
Also, I've looked through the thread I haven't found much in the way of ethical arguments one way or the other. The fact that it was a murder is irrelevant in the wider scope of things. E.g. for a Jewish person (or anyone) to have murdered Nazis in 1930s Germany would have been perfectly justified given the context. As I said before, I don't know Charlie Kirk enough to have any strong opinion of him, but I think part of @Moliere's point is to problematize the context and that's not in itself illegitimate, particularly given so much unjustifiable killing is legalized (e.g. the Gaza sniper example Moliere gave earlier).
EDIT: I am not saying America is Nazi Germany etc etc, only that it being a murder is not the end of the argument but the beginning.
(Last point: I'm not trying to provoke anyone here or disrespect Charlie Kirk's family etc. Charlie Kirk is more or less just a name to me. I'm trying to find a route to something rather coldly philosophical.)
Are you asking when it's appropriate to add violence to your political activism?
Was operation Valkyrie political activism?
This is the question, when is it justified? What is justified? Is it ever justified? As a philosophical question, it is valid one as there's been many times in history it was very valid.
I think the more interesting discussion in terms of this specific assassination is why we have a rise of political violence. What is causing it? Of course we all know why; the rising polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization.
So the follow-up question becomes, how do we stop this polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization?
The solutions require an examination of what we allow in society, while still remaining free. This is the global problem for free societies to tackle in the coming years, because if they don't, they will become so polarized that political violence becomes a common practice. A form of room temperature war rather than a cold or hot one.
The assassination of political figures becomes retroactively justified and therefore simply justified depending on how history works out. The assassination of a Nazi functionary in 1934 by a Jewish sniper would likely have almost universally been condemned at the time. Now, I, and I suspect most of us, would consider the assassin a hero. This is just to say that what is obvious without problematizing a context or considering a possible future trajectory is not so obvious when you do so. I take @Moliere to be coming from that angle. The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now. But I don't think @Moliere's thought process is completely wrong.
Another context we ought to problematize is context itself. Folks are very often going to react immediately based on political corner, no? When I first heard about Charlie Kirk, my immediate reaction was cold indifference, partly based of my limited knowledge that he was on the far right. But put me in a different context, e.g. in front of his family and, not being made of stone, I would have a very different attitude. Then, on here, I can take a purely intellectual stance. Same with Gaza, many on the right especially, dismiss, by default, the suffering there, but transport them next to a pile of rubble with Palestinian children suffocating beneath it, and it would most likely be a very different story. Contexts drive us and mislead us about the issues and about ourselves (to an extent deciding for us what is "obvious").
ChristofferSeptember 12, 2025 at 13:34#10125810 likes
The assassination of a Nazi functionary in 1934 by a Jewish sniper would likely have almost universally been condemned at the time. Now, I, and I suspect most of us, would consider the assassin a hero.
And this is a problem with any discussion about politics and war. It demands a great deal of understanding of society to be able to say that a current event is justified or not. It requires both an understanding of history and psychology as well as philosophy.
To be able to understand current events without being wrapped up in biases and fallacies produced by the herd of people pushing and pulling on culture, or lesser intelligent people influencing media and social media into extreme bubbles, is extremely hard.
The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now.
I disagree to some degree. I think it's important to discuss it because a person like Kirk, so involved in spreading the kind of hate he did, will easily become a martyr for that hate, whitewashed through the shallow charade of people ignoring what he stood for in order to score political points. I also think that this forum is exactly the place to discuss something like this, because here we discuss the philosophical ramifications of what is going on in the world... rather than what the rest of the internet is doing at the moment surrounding this event. And because of this, I think that a truly civil discussion like this is extremely important to have surrounding something like an assassination of a public figure of this importance to the current political climate.
I also think that this forum is exactly the place to discuss something like this, because here we discuss the philosophical ramifications of what is going on in the world... rather than what the rest of the internet is doing at the moment surrounding this event. And because of this, I think that a truly civil discussion like this is extremely important to have surrounding something like an assassination of a public figure of this importance to the current political climate.
Fair point. And I did get involved, so, performatively, I agree.
The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now.
Maybe so-- but then there are many people celebrating in bad taste in addition to condemning in bad taste.
There's a sense in which I want to say it's screamingly obvious that killing is wrong. And so we can condemn political assassination and genocide equally. But there's also a sense in which this viewpoint is incredibly naive -- not that the person who espouses such and such is so (a person can be a principled pacifist, for instance), but that it quite literally ignores a huge part of how decisions are made in our political world.
So the question is -- if killing is screamingly obvious, how do we get to a justification of the ": But..." one utilizes in justifying killing.
Malcolm X is a good example of a person who used political violence and its threat as a tool for liberation. A Jewish sniper killing a Nazi is similar. But, as you noted, these are in retrospect -- they only become heroes in the stories we tell of them after.
The reality in the moment is that we live with killing without thinking about killing because "that's just the way things are": Why argue that the moon shouldn't spin around the Earth?
Why argue that we must support Israel for our national interests in the Middle East? These are just the way of things.
But, surely, insofar that we can answer the question philosophically at all, we'd have to have some consistent basis for when that isn't just "Because I gave myself permission this one time" -- which is what the appeal to law looks like to me, except with a few extra steps "Because we talked about it and said this was when it's OK"
****
I suppose I see these questions are a bit more activated by current events, but yes I'm hoping to touch a philosophical ground somewhere. In a lot of ways this mirrors my argument for moral anti-realism: In the world we happen to inhabit even murder is justifiable, under the right conditions. Were the world to have morality as a part of it it seems to me that we'd live in a world where we have finally found ways to negotiate our differences without the tools of murder.
But we don't live in that world, and so such ideals seem to float above in some transcendental world away from us.
So how do we deal with the world we find ourselves in, imperfect and callous as it is?
ChristofferSeptember 12, 2025 at 13:42#10125870 likes
But put me in a different context, e.g. in front of his family and, not being made of stone, I would have a very different attitude. Then, on here, I can take a purely intellectual stance. Same with Gaza, many on the right especially dismiss, by default, the suffering there, but transport them next to a pile of rubble with Palestinian children suffocating beneath it, and it would most likely be a very different story. Contexts drive us and mislead us about the issues and about ourselves.
Of course... but we also need to remember that when a person becomes an influential figure in politics, especially with extreme views that indirectly hurt people in society. What is the morality around that context surrounding an event like this? Does the suffering of the family take away from the suffering caused by his influence? Context change depending on perspective, but I think it's also important to remember that when it comes to political violence, it's no longer just about the act itself, but where it came from, what it leads to, and what it means to the political situation of the world.
Those topics are really what we're talking about, not really him as a human being, not really dismissing the suffering of the family and relatives. The killing of a human being is a tragedy... but the killing of him as a representation of his political views and hateful viewpoints, is another form of act and another form of context that has philosophical and historical proportions worth discussing.
The killing of a human being is a tragedy... but the killing of him as a representation of his political views and hateful viewpoints, is another form of act and another form of context that has philosophical and historical proportions worth discussing.
That's more or less my point. Where do we get consistency?
The assassination of political figures becomes retroactively justified and therefore simply justified depending on how history works out.
My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse.
Sometime before we descend into bloody apehood, we have a chance to see if there is some better way to do things, or if we're going to need violence, can we at least coordinate it so that it's not doing more harm than good?
But thank you for not calling me a f***wit for expressing that. We had a mod who would have made any sane discussion of the topic impossible.
I guess you're a deontologist on this, which is fair enough. And I don't even know if I can agree with myself on the topic, so I'm not in the strongest position to argue.
Anyway, having researched Charlie Kirk, it appears many of his views (anti-semitic statements, racism, homophobia etc) are not all that far off from the bigotry level of early era Nazi party rabble rousers. Regardless, I don't condone the assassination.
ChristofferSeptember 12, 2025 at 15:55#10126210 likes
My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse.
Sometime before we descend into bloody apehood, we have a chance to see if there is some better way to do things, or if we're going to need violence, can we at least coordinate it so that it's not doing more harm than good?
Seems like you are arguing through a Kantian perspective, which is the opposite of a nihilist.
I would say that history shows lots of examples of situations which would have justified political violence. Events that would have saved a lot of good people. It's the prime example of how naive the Kantian perspective can sometimes be.
No one would deny that killing most of the upper elite of the Nazi party would have saved a lot of people, even if it happened before wartimes.
I think the more interesting question isn't if an obvious bad person who will obviously kill or cause deaths directly in the future deserves to be put out to save them, but rather what happens when someone is indirectly responsible for deaths and suffering.
I think there's very little talk about how hateful rhetoric slowly shifts society into a place where that hate becomes action onto those this hate was aimed at. Nazi Germany is always talked about in the context of what eventually happened, but society eroded its views on jews long before that and shifted society into a place where the suffering for jews became more commonplace.
No one really address the fact that when an influential elite spread hate speech that shift society, it actually hurts people down the line.
And if we are morally arguing that political violence to prevent innocent people from getting hurt, killed or suffer, is justified, then why do we not accept that for when hate speech rhetoric leads to such suffering and death? Is it because people are unable to logically connect hateful speech to people becoming radicalized under such speech, to those radicalized people actually carrying out that hate in action against the people that hate was aimed at?
Case point... Hitler never killed any jews himself, he never killed. Why do we consider him responsible? Because he orchestrated the thing, he pushed for it, he argued for it, he spread the hate, he influenced the nation.
So if the hate speech influence that leads to violence in society becomes the foundation for viewing an assassination of that influential person as morally good in order to stop that societal violence and decline into violence against a certain group of people; what does that mean? What context does such political violence against an influential person become valid?
LeontiskosSeptember 12, 2025 at 15:58#10126220 likes
What did he say about black people or "predominately black neighborhoods?" Again, I never heard of the guy until just yesterday, so. Just curious as to what information or knowledge you have that makes that analogy valid in your mind.
His Wiki page contains some of the racist, anti-semitic, and Islamaphobic statements he's made. Of course, he was (apparently) a more vocal, rather than a more extreme, version of a significant minority of Americans and his killing will likely radicalise these people further.
Not necessarily at odds with deontology -- meta-ethical nihilist, deontological normativist is fairly close to how I think about morality in the ideal.
With the caveat being that if everyone actually does follow such and such a principle then it seems hard to deny that the moral commitments have a certain kind of truth to them -- but the world we live in doesn't really look like that.
You could still deny deontology, of course -- but then I'd want to know how :
My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse.
Parses political violence. "In self defense only"? In which case the American Revolution is immoral rather than amoral because it wasn't for survival but to claim a nation?
We're a violent species. Political violence is one of the many forms of jungle ape we manifest. Thus, there is no philosophy of political violence. Unless you know of one you'd like to flesh out?
I suppose what we could say is that there are situations in which ethical commitments apply, and situations in which they do not apply. When is what will be up for debate but given the prevalence of one of the basic precepts that is shared across many cultures -- like the prohibition against killing (sometimes) -- opens what we may term an amoral dialogue that is still normative.
It'd be insane to just say something like "Because he gave himself permission" (or, from early reports, is bullet casings had a video game meme -- so it looks like an inter-fascist dispute on its face, with a cynicism so deep that the killing was dressed up as a joke. Killing 31 year olds for fun, more or less)
But to take a stab at some rough amoral criteria that seems better than "just because it sounded like a good time": it seems there needs to be some kind of interest that is deemed important enough to utilize the harshest tool, and that all other options have been previously attempted to no amend.
There also seems to me to be a sense in which how much power one holds is relevant -- the case of the school shooter @unenlightened is obviously evil because there was even less of a reason: Truly senseless.
Reply to frank I suppose that is what I'm getting after, yes. We swim in violence on a daily basis. I want to make sense of what seems entirely senseless to me. Now, I see the world as absurd so it really could just terminate there -- in a kind of aporia. We should also be skeptical of any philosophy of violence that's more than a philosophy, i.e. it should not -- from a meta-philosophical perspective -- be a treatise advocating for violence but instead is seeking how it is we come to make these decisions.
For me to understand violence is a means of understanding how to negotiate towards non-violence.
Also I sometimes wonder if I'm just entirely barmy and it's really just OK that we kill and I should just accept that I'm the mad one. Which is when I start to feel rather numb.
unenlightenedSeptember 12, 2025 at 18:23#10126480 likes
For me to understand violence is a means of understanding how to negotiate towards non-violence.
That stops working when you are dealing with people who are violently opposed to violence.
You and I, you have to understand, are the violent extremist left wing conspiracy that is directly promoting and funding this wave of violence sweeping the country; there is no talking to us, we have to be stopped by any means necessary. When you talk about non-violence you sound exactly like Putin.
To put it another way, there is a loss of faith, and we can only negotiate in good faith. We cannot negotiate as or with the faithless; there is no basis for communication, let alone negotiation. One does not try and negotiate with a dog, one is satisfied with obedience.
I suppose the question then is, given this realization, how do we make the dog obey? Is a fascist the equivalent of a feral dog which has no other solution but to put it out of its misery? And if so, does it matter if the person who accomplishes the task is motivated wrongly if the dog is taken care of?
There's also something scary about this analogy: for them we are cockroaches, and to us they are dogs. In some ways perhaps just to retain a shred of humanity in a bad situation (since you don't just default to eliminating dogs, but do so with cockroaches).
That might be a better way to approach the question: Rather than looking at it like a justificatory process whereby we rationally decide when something which is absurd is permissible or not we can first accept that the act is evil.
But given the circumstances, at least from my perspective, violence becomes a necessary evil: that which must be done even if we know in the ideal it's not what we should want to do. In the case of fascists they only feign irony long enough to speak a message of hate. The hate and disgust of another group is the point. They advocate for murder with their mouths to incite the passions of people to commit murder for its own sake. Here I'm referring to 4Chan and related sights which actively post fascist memes that call for the death of people, spouts white-supremacist talking points, and so on.
So the question becomes: How do I retain my humanity in the face of necessary evil forced upon me? Is it even possible?
Here I want to clarify that I'm not contemplating being a random assassin as much as looking at the genocide in Gaza as a set of senseless murders that I'm already guilty for. Malcolm X was an example meant to demonstrate a sort of principled stance on political violence.
But these aren't his circumstances so the need to make sense of my situation remains.
Though perhaps it's best to see it as not exactly a rational process whereby I deduce the correct actions in accord with maxims. It's a situation which falls outside of deontological methods which tend to be absolute, and even if relativized they are absolutely relativized (except condition 1 being fulfilled, thou shalt..."
And perhaps I just need to lament the state of the world sometimes and certain events trigger that need in me, and there is nothing more here than that lament: a useless reflection we can forget when we get back to work.
unenlightenedSeptember 12, 2025 at 20:47#10126710 likes
I suppose the question then is, given this realization, how do we make the dog obey? Is a fascist the equivalent of a feral dog which has no other solution but to put it out of its misery?
They are not the dogs, we are, in their eyes. It is a symmetrical understanding of each that the other is the dog.
The reason for this is economic. During the 20th Century, wealth was produced by mass production and sustained by mass consumption. This required a mass of 'wage slaves' that also functioned as consumers. But the advent of robots and 3d printing eliminates the need for mass production and consumption as everything can be made 'bespoke'. The masses are surplus to requirements, and are therefore being turned against each other. It becomes a dog eat dog world.
Neither ballot nor bullet will save us because we are the dogs of war fighting amongst ourselves. "Oh ye of little faith!"
The population will crash to the point where everyone becomes glad to see another human, of any kind, that is not a corpse. Love triumphs in the long run.
They are not the dogs, we are, in their eyes. It is a symmetrical understanding of each that the other is the dog.
I sort of wonder on that one, honestly. Even if I lick the boot I sort of feel like they'll laugh and dispose of me.
If only I could be a dog -- that'd be a worker-boss relationship.
Here we're talking about who they see as degenerates that need to be eliminated: people that associate with labor, have non-heterosexual desire, are of a different race, speak out of line or have spoken out of line, or is simply annoying.
I'm not the first in line but I am wondering if I'm even a dog to a fascist.
The reason for this is economic. During the 20th Century, wealth was produced by mass production and sustained by mass consumption. This required a mass of 'wage slaves' that also functioned as consumers. But the advent of robots and 3d printing eliminates the need for mass production and consumption as everything can be made 'bespoke'. The masses are surplus to requirements, and are therefore being turned against each other. It becomes a dog eat dog world.
This makes sense for a run-of-the-mill capitalist -- it's why the proliferation of bullshit jobs which have no future is larger than stable employment. There is still a need for manufacturing and automation but it's guided by the capitalist hand which pits us one against one another -- a violence.
Neither ballot nor bullet will save us because we are the dogs of war fighting amongst ourselves. "Oh ye of little faith!"
Often times I believe that. Especially for anyone I associate with now -- having been out of the game for some time I pretty much only have "regular" associates which makes for a much more peaceful work environment.
But then this sidesteps the question -- we can insist on pacifism, but it doesn't help me deal with the violence thrust upon me. In a way I want to understand this violence better in order to deal with it as a person who wants life to be seen as sacred, in the end.
The population will crash to the point where everyone becomes glad to see another human, of any kind, that is not a corpse. Love triumphs in the long run.
But will they just start up the same old story again?
I suppose I like to long for something a bit better than that.
A Slate columnist wrote a sensible take on X regarding the assassination:
I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.
Anyway, having researched Charlie Kirk, it appears many of his views (anti-semitic statements, racism, homophobia etc) are not all that far off from the bigotry level of early era Nazi party rabble rousers.
Yes.
He's close enough to count, to my mind, as a fascist. He may not have been knowledgeable about what he was saying -- i.e. doing it because he found a career for himself.
": But...." -- I found myself not mourning when I felt I ought to.
WayfarerSeptember 12, 2025 at 21:55#10126860 likes
And a champion of free speech:
[quote=The Guardian] Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend anchor serving as Donald TrumpÂ’s defense secretary, has ordered Pentagon officials to scour social media for comments by service members that make light of Charlie KirkÂ’s death and punish anyone expressing dissident views, NBC News reports.
Several service members have been relieved of their jobs already, Pentagon officials told the broadcaster.
The purge comes after Hegseth, his spokesman and the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force all warned service members to express only the correct political opinions about Kirk and his killing.
The officials warned service members, and civilian employees of the Pentagon that “inappropriate comments,” including “posts displaying contempt toward” Kirk, or comments that “celebrate or mock the assassination,” would be “dealt with swiftly and decisively.”
The effort to root out dissidents in the ranks comes as online activists promised to get KirkÂ’s critics fired in a range of fields, including the military and academia.[/quote]
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 12, 2025 at 22:17#10126920 likes
The Guardian:Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend anchor serving as Donald TrumpÂ’s defense secretary, has ordered Pentagon officials to scour social media for comments by service members that make light of Charlie KirkÂ’s death and punish anyone expressing dissident views, NBC News reports.
Good. As a former service member, any member of the armed forces expressing glee or sympathy over Charlie's death is simply lacking in values. I wouldn't trust someone possessing those values to protect the United States. Nor is the military academia where, theoretically, a wide range of views should be encouraged.
Get in line or get out - and expressing glee over the political assassination of a conservative influencer is so far out of line.
Reply to Moliere
This is something I was hoping to express in my comment upthread. The thoughts brewing in the young killer in the school shooting scene are not political in the way people organize to bring about a change in their circumstances. It is a different culture.
Reply to BitconnectCarlos Do you think Hegseth would be doing that if it David Hogg had been assassinated?
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 00:29#10127300 likes
Reply to Moliere Firings and sackings over this issue are being used as a pretext to purge organisations of ‘elements incompatible with the President’s Agenda’ (MAGA code word for the Trump’s Will.) See https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/us/politics/charlie-kirk-shooting-firings-celebration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lk8.bTUi.JHA8UCQh4sv1&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I have a strong feeling if it had been David Hogg, whom I hold little respect for, this would not be so loud as to reach our ears, people on an online forum who don't have to follow the UCMJ
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 00:53#10127370 likes
Reply to Moliere I don't know who David Hogg is. I do know that if a figure on the liberal side of politics had been shot giving a talk at a University, MAGA would downplay it or deprecate it or find some way to blame it on 'radical left lunatics'. Trump/MAGA is doing everything it can to deepen the division; Trump is 'the great divider'. It is the way that demagogues have to work - anything like a liberal consensus is kryptonite to them.
So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder.
Trump/MAGA is doing everything it can to deepen the division; Trump is 'the great divider'. It is the way that demagogues have to work - anything like a liberal consensus is kryptonite to them.
So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder.
Makes sense to me, and scares me.
Not that I'm placing bets yet -- but I also didn't place bets on Trump blooming into full fascism by being re-elected. I don't know the future at all.
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 01:02#10127400 likes
Reply to Moliere Me neither, but I still believe that Trump will ultimately fail because heÂ’s a completely mediocre individual and not even competent. Amazingly it hasnÂ’t stopped him yet, but I still hold out hope.
This is something I was hoping to express in my comment upthread. The thoughts brewing in the young killer in the school shooting scene are not political in the way people organize to bring about a change in their circumstances. It is a different culture.
Yeah, it is.
Obviously I've stated that I think these are fascists.
Which makes sense of the "not organizing to bring about change"
-- a big part of why I see the 4chan/etc. channels as fascist propaganda is that it spews not even ironic hate speech as a "joke", similar to what our present assassin did. He did it for the memes because there was nothing for him, because he was more connected to this idea, and -- really the same for any political movement -- somehow the words stirred up and utilized the piss and vinegar a young man feels, a desire to change the world, and an apathy towards what *must* make it happen.
"I'll even tell a little joke on my bullets like that one Luigi guy did, to match the theatre I want to be a part of because -- fuck it. No future anyways. LOL"
Me neither, but I still believe that Trump will ultimately fail because heÂ’s a completely mediocre individual and not even competent. Amazingly it hasnÂ’t stopped him yet, but I still hold out hope.
In this circumstance I do too.
No point in being a cynic in a terrible world where everyone sees the same.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 01:06#10127440 likes
So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder.
Their fear is legitimate. Charlie Kirk shared similar ideological views with Trump/the Trump administration. If one wants Charlie dead, then one likely wants Trump dead. Many of these people have access to sensitive information, so their clearances should be revoked at the very least.
Any military where a sizable portion of its soldiers want their President dead is in serious jeopardy.
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 01:07#10127450 likes
He fits the profile of white Utah boy who thought it'd be funny if he shot a guy he probably had some itch against.
Basically a school shooter. (EDIT: Else, how to make sense of the fact that his own father turned him in?)
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 01:21#10127520 likes
Reply to BitconnectCarlos Trump fans the flames of fear of ‘the other’ to his own political advantage. This is an undeniable factor in his rise to power.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 02:44#10127600 likes
There are plenty of times in history where 'fear of the other' is the proper, rational response.
Is this one of those times? Trump stokes fears of immigrants. I live in California. I interact with immigrants all the time. Many of my students' parents are immigrants. Is the rational response to be afraid of these people?
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 03:30#10127660 likes
Just imagine the situation if the youth were being radicalized to the right and assassinating left-wing influencers. Would you still be chiding the fear stokers?
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 03:33#10127670 likes
Reply to BitconnectCarlos The point was made that Trump was stoking fear. You responded that sometimes fear of the other is "proper and rational". Trump stokes fears of immigrants, correct? Should I be afraid immigrants? Am I being irrational because I'm not afraid of them?
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 03:58#10127710 likes
I am opposed to any blanket fear-stoking of immigrants. If that appears in Trump's rhetoric, I oppose it. I do support the deportation of illegal aliens, and I understand that dangerous gangs have entered the country facilitated by lax border policies.
?BitconnectCarlos
Do you think, had it been a liberal influencer, it would have been so far out of line?
I too noticed the unnecessary mention of his political aversion.
--
Also, we're sure it's a political assassination now? When did that happen? I wanted to think it was my imagination but for some reason it just seems like more and more modern day conservatives take joy in crudeness and "crossing lines" for little reason other than to do so and illicit a negative emotional response in others I.E. to spread misery. Major turn off for me, despite being in favor of many stereotypical "conservative" things. Point being, you don't have to give a hoot about politics to not like a guy or what he has to say to the point of drastic action. People assault and murder people they don't like every single day. This guy just happened to be a bit of a minor celebrity who yes is known for engaging in political activity.
Charlie Kirk wasn't exactly sympathetic [sup](tg) (bf) (hp)[/sup], but that doesn't justify murder. There are reasons for laws. Hopefully, the perpetrator(s) will be sentenced appropriately.
The Babbitts were gifted just under $5 million by taxpayers, and Ashli Babbitt got a funeral service with all-out military honors. She was one of the Jan 6 (2021) attackers.
The responses don't quite match House Trump's response to Kirk's murder, though. Is that because, unlike the Hortmans, Kirk was "one of us"? He wasn't elected by taxpayers for office as far as I know. Do they want to semi-martyr him before the US audience?
I thought freedom was important to House Trump, the clown certainly doesn't hold back, but it seems like that no longer applies to everyone. [sup](nbc) (nbc)[/sup]
EDIT: I am not saying America is Nazi Germany etc etc, only that it being a murder is not the end of the argument but the beginning.
This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. Kirk talked on campuses and held views inconsistent with yours.
The question of self defense, with its well developed jurisprudence related to reasonable force, protection from imminent harm, etc offers an easy enough way to distinguish taking a sniper shot at Kirk versus Hitler, ,assuming you were otherwise blind to the other glaring differences.
As an aside, since it matters so little to me exactly where he fell on the political spectrum in terms of his simple expression of his views as not grounds to murder him, I do not agree with the casual villification of Kirk. I saw him as a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith, with views obviously inconsistent with my own on a variety of topics, but not the evil incarnate he's being painted as.
I respect the unhappiness it brings to have questioned the ethical propriety of one's sexual or gender preference, which is hardly distinct from those telling me Jews like me are destined to hell for my beliefs, but that doesn't justify my declaration of victimhood and my right to lash out. The world is full of disagreement and the anti-social way a murderer handles that isn't cause to reassess whether the anti-social psychopaths might have it right.
What this strikes me then is not a legitimate philosophical question as to whether Kirk's murder constituted self-defense, but instead in his opponents searching for some possible mitigation in the evil iof his murder. As in, a hateful bastard who is killed for his hate can't be just like this murder of Mother Thersa. Well it is. The rule is not to do unto others as you think they would have done unto you.
a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith
Are you at all familiar with his, uh, less than kind hearted beliefs? I could compile a list.
WayfarerSeptember 13, 2025 at 09:44#10127960 likes
From The Daily Beast via Apple News:
Kirk was no hero. The record is clear. If Kirk was a victim of a pernicious culture of violence in America, it must also be acknowledged that he was an author of that culture.
His primary accomplishment in life was to foment hatred and division across the United States. He blamed all of AmericaÂ’s ills on the left, and cheered violent attacks on Democrats. He fought against equal rights for many Americans; some of his last words were condemning womenÂ’s reproductive freedoms. He promoted AmericaÂ’s gun pathology, and asserted the death of innocents was an acceptable cost for that culture.
However, what is happening is far worse than simply devoting our national resources or devaluing our national reputation by elevating an unworthy individual.
In tributes from across the political spectrum, Kirk is being praised as a champion of “free speech.” He was not. He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity. Kirk perverted the idea of our First Amendment rights to suggest they required universities to embrace lies, as though there were some obligation to present unfounded idiocy and malice simply because some special interest or political group supported them.
Much of his political identity was tied up in the dangerous promotion of white Christian nativism and its alliance with the most corrupt president in American history—a felon, a sex offender, a man who incited an insurrection against the United States government.
This president has already explicitly said he will use the attack on Kirk to justify going after his opponents, condemning the “left” in America as terrorists and lunatics and asserting—without presenting evidence—that they were responsible for Kirk’s murder. The State Department announced consular officials were being directed to revoke visas or deny them to people who might have commented on Kirk or his death in ways they did not approve of.
What a fitting tribute to a fake First Amendment warrior.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 12:20#10128170 likes
Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege.
This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race.
And they did so with the blessing of the law.
The American Revolution broke the law with respect to murder, too.
The law isn't a basis for making this decision -- that's just the way we do things at the moment. Part of the weather. It's not a moral or political code as much as a "If you do such and such and get caught and tried and persecuted then this punishment will follow"
Further, pointing to Hitler after the fact is to sidestep the question: If all we do is look to the past to decide when someone is a hero rather than a criminal then we'll always condemn heroes in the moment and then change our mind later. That's a policy of convenience, but it doesn't tell us about when one is justified in using political violence.
If it's just that there's a law for it it seems to much the same to me as the person who follows their own moral code -- since they wrote it down ahead of time and are consistent they are thereby justified.
But I know you'd see this as patently absurd -- I don't see how appeal to law gets around that absurdity though.
****
The pop question is "If you could go back in time to shoot Hitler, would you do it?" -- generically people unthinkingly say "Yes" -- but here the question isn't about one-off assassins as much as "How do you* live with the violence you are responsible for, and how do you* consistently condemn the violence of others with the blood on your hands?"
When I hear "The law", that sounds to me like the one-off manifesto -- because we gave ourselves permission this time.
EDIT: *You because I'm asking, not because I'm not guilty.
ChristofferSeptember 13, 2025 at 14:29#10128340 likes
This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race.
Isn't this hindsight bias? You are comparing the end result of a shift in society with a society in shift. Nazi Germany started with "talk", with a rhetoric that slowly shifted how the public viewed jews. It wasn't "flipping a switch" and then they shipped them to extinction. A key question in this thread has been the problem of projecting where a society is heading, but there's no denying that the rhetoric of the extreme right erodes a large portion of the population's ability to show empathy and more and more opposing basic human rights. The indirect violence that this rhetoric causes, especially through much of it being supported by the very top of the government, means society could very well shift far into the extreme right, with more violence, more suicides, more suffering for certain groups in society. To compare the end result of the Nazi's transition into extreme right, to a time when we're balancing on such an extreme edge is a hindsight bias.
I saw him as a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith, with views obviously inconsistent with my own on a variety of topics, but not the evil incarnate he's being painted as.
So his ridicule of victims of other violent crimes, his homophobic, transphobic, and racist ideologies which he spread through his large reach into young people's hearts... were just him being a kind hearted Christian? Are you seriously arguing that?
There was no kind hearted attitude from him at all. Even the worst people in the world treated their own family and loyalists with kindness. But calling someone with his track record a "kind hearted Christian" is wild. His behavior wasn't even consistent with Christian values [insert Jesus face-palming here]
I respect the unhappiness it brings to have questioned the ethical propriety of one's sexual or gender preference, which is hardly distinct from those telling me Jews like me are destined to hell for my beliefs, but that doesn't justify my declaration of victimhood and my right to lash out. The world is full of disagreement and the anti-social way a murderer handles that isn't cause to reassess whether the anti-social psychopaths might have it right.
I don't think anyone defends the assassin. What we're doing are assessing why this happened. Based on the info at hand it's clear that Kirk wasn't a random target. It wasn't a case of a lunatic who just kills the first well known person to step in front of them (as have been the case with some political violence).
So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? The problem at the core is the fact that the world has become extremely polarized. But rather than polarized as a specific political stance, which can be debated in a normal fashion, it has become the very behavior of polarization that has taken root.
Any topic that enters the online sphere becomes a polarized topic, it doesn't matter at all what it's about. And since the algorithms of social media and channels like Twitch and YouTube push content that has a lot of activity, and activity being more common when it's a conflict going on, driving interactions; the behavior of people becomes extreme, without many of them really understanding why.
It becomes a wrestling match, it becomes a simulacra of a real debate; pushing the extreme as much as allowed to drive attention. In this form of attention economy, people like Kirk and even Trump becomes really popular.
The problem with this is that it radicalizes everyone. The polarization itself radicalizes and we get people on the right who are radicalized into violence against trans people, homosexuals, different ethnicities, while on the left people are radicalized more and more into fighting fascism.
It doesn't really matter if the world ends up in the same form of fascism we've seen before, the thing we're seeing now, with all the political violence going on... is the result of radicalization by the very behavior of people like Kirk.
He's not a debater, he uses the defense by the second amendment to make it valid to spread hateful ideas. It's a strategy that the extreme right is always using, it's the reason Popper developed the Tolerance paradox as a concept. A free and tolerant society eventually leads to intolerance because the freedom of speech legitimizes spreading intolerance if there are no guardrails defending against it. And its naive to think that this intolerance being promoted won't radicalize people and cause radicalization in its opposition.
So the problem at its core is not really the extreme right or left, it's that society is too naive in regards to how we stop intolerance to spread in a free society with free speech. As long as we handle free speech this sloppy, we eventually invite radicalized extreme people into power and lose that freedom. Because Kirk and the extreme right aren't interested in upholding freedom of speech for all people, they want freedom of speech for THEIR speech.
What this strikes me then is not a legitimate philosophical question as to whether Kirk's murder constituted self-defense, but instead in his opponents searching for some possible mitigation in the evil iof his murder. As in, a hateful bastard who is killed for his hate can't be just like this murder of Mother Thersa. Well it is. The rule is not to do unto others as you think they would have done unto you.
By that logic, Kirk's logic of the aftermath of violent acts against the left would legitimize that he falls victim of violence against the right?
I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality.
Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege.
This strikes me as backwards.
One can only give aid to the suffering, but if you dare try to resist the movement of weapons to actually prevent the genocide we will take away your privilege of being here.
What about the students who are citizens that put up a similar resistance? Ought we to deport them too?
If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds.
The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.
Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia.
ChristofferSeptember 13, 2025 at 14:51#10128410 likes
It is rather remarkable that people think that the words spread by anyone isn't enough to cause shifting values and morals in society. The harmful, destructive rhetoric keeps being spread in society, radicalizing people into violence. But when people demonstrate, speak out and become vocal about the opposite, with words in favor of human rights, of compassion and empathy, they're being actively criticized for it.
This assassination seems to whitewash what Kirk spread around, and it was not to spread love. He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them. This side has no political color. It just happens to be more common on the extreme right in this time in history.
The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.
Arguing for the good side is arguing for the side that, with evidence in living standards and quality of life in the world, produces the best living conditions in a society.
Right now we're seeing a rise in the spread of hateful, polarizing rhetoric. Something that divides and makes enemies of neighbors. This rhetoric is eroding society and causing a lot of suffering and even deaths.
When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.
I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.
Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.
I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.
When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.
There's a sense in which I think of Kirk as an early fascist agitator. To use the time travelling assassin scenario one would not go back in time to kill some random propagandist who is close enough to count. That seems cruel, and probably ineffective.
I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.
Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.
I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.
I like this as an ideal.
Partially what the debate is about are "these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad" -- hence @Hanover's point that I don't know good from evil and my admission that this is exactly what I'm saying: I don't know good from evil.
That one person gives themself permission to kill for some political reason vs that a state writes it down a head of time and goes on doing the same seems like a distinction that makes no difference with respect to the sanctity of life, AND with respect to the practical realities of life. The first is easily seen as absurd, and the latter isn't answered.
The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.
Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia.
I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works?
Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return.
Also, Israel won't be there for long. In 2100, the only livable areas will be right on the coast. Soon after that, the final diaspora will take place silently. Only historians will know about Israel.
Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return.
The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.
Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.
So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas"
Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same.
I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works?
There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such.
I figure if we really care about life we'd not give excuses to the killers on the basis of the forgotten tortured -- if anything that there are forgotten tortured should connect you to the now suffering.
Honor the dead in peace, but there are bodies piling.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 15:45#10128510 likes
One can only give aid to the suffering, but if you dare try to resist the movement of weapons to actually prevent the genocide we will take away your privilege of being here.
What about the students who are citizens that put up a similar resistance? Ought we to deport them too?
We're not going to agree on this.
When I think "genocide," I think October 7th, when thousands of Palestinians went house to house murdering, raping, and torturing Israeli civilians living in border regions with the Palestinians as their neighbors. Had the Israeli military not stopped them with force, there is no doubt this group would have continued with their murder, rape, and torture spree until they had swept through the land and conquered everything, and millions had died. The land would be Jew-free with Muslim supremacy established once again. If you listen to the Palestinian terrorist phone calls, they call their parents bragging about how many Jews they killed that day with deep pride. But no matter what they do, they're oppressed, so we must back them.
I get it. 100k Palestinians dead. But that's yesterday's figure. Today the figure is 700k dead and 400k Palestinian babies killed. Check Nerdeen Kiswani's twitter. As long as a study shows it, the figure must be believed. You have no grounds to doubt; you've never been there.
The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.
Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.
So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas"
It sounds like your concern is primarily political.
Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same.
There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such.
You like that word "valence" don't you? :grin: There's a big valence band around the whole nucleus of the situation.
It sounds like your concern is primarily political.
Yes.
Hence Malcolm X.
Tho the event isn't the best one I'll admit now -- it was just the one that made me feel so frustrated at the absurdity of the world that I couldn't help but start the thought.
When I think "genocide," I think October 7th, when thousands of Palestinians went house to house murdering, raping, and torturing Israeli civilians living in border regions with the Palestinians as their neighbors.
The part that makes me hesitate here is that there were also immediate reports about finding hundreds of beheaded babies.
And then learning that Israeli attack helicopters shot on Israelis.
Sometimes states just say shit to demonize someone they want to kill.
It sounds like your concern is primarily political.
— frank
Yes.
We have different priorities. Politics doesn't mean much to me. People's lives do, whether it's one person or 9 million. I realize you care about people too, it's just it's the politics that motivates you to speak.
And Malcolm X was full of shit. He wouldn't have accomplished anything but to get a bunch of black people killed.
Also, we're sure it's a political assassination now? When did that happen? I wanted to think it was my imagination but for some reason it just seems like more and more modern day conservatives take joy in crudeness and "crossing lines" for little reason other than to do so and illicit a negative emotional response in others I.E. to spread misery. Major turn off for me, despite being in favor of many stereotypical "conservative" things. Point being, you don't have to give a hoot about politics to not like a guy or what he has to say to the point of drastic action. People assault and murder people they don't like every single day. This guy just happened to be a bit of a minor celebrity who yes is known for engaging in political activity.
I'm not certain. I could see it being as dumb as you say here: a banality of evil whereby a young frustrated man decided to do something dumb that was way larger than he understood.
That'd be the sympathetic reading, I think.
I've guessed inter-fascist, but that he was turned in by his own father is what persuaded me he could fit the school-shooter archetype (what a dark world where that's an archetype...)
And it could be a mix of these things. I'm far away from the situation. It hit me hard enough to want to say something that I didn't know how to say.
From my perspective he already accomplished many things, and died in that pursuit.
He wouldn't have accomplished anything by instigating violence, other than to have numerous lynched black men in his wake, lynching involves torture, with a preoccupation with genitalia, burning, shooting, and hanging, all to the same bloody pulp of a human. That's what Malcolm X would have accomplished by making white people more afraid than they already were.
Reply to frank Now if that's what Malcolm X wanted or would accomplish or did accomplish then certainly that's bad.
I have a different feeling on what he did -- I have respect for him and the other civil rights warriors.
What you portray is bad, so I can see why you'd say MX is bad. I don't think that's what his politics would result in, though.
They're far from perfect, but that's part of dealing with this world we're in. Whatever counter-factual we can come up with I want to use his reality as a point of reflection because that's not what happened, and he had justifications for how he acted, and was basically a martyr to his cause like MLK.
If all it led to was something like what you say that'd be evil.
But that's not what happened.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 16:13#10128620 likes
The part that makes me hesitate here is that there were also immediate reports about finding hundreds of beheaded babies.
And then learning that Israeli attack helicopters shot on Israelis.
Sometimes states just say shit to demonize someone they want to kill.
I fear that's part of what's going on.
Are you doubting that ~1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, the majority of whom were innocent civilians? They went from house to house indiscriminately murdering. It's proudly recorded on video.
I remember the second intifada in the early 2000s, where Palestinian terrorists would go into bars, restaurants, and buses full of civilians and blow themselves up. I recall they'd attach unclean material to their explosive devices, so for anyone who got hit with shrapnel, the wound would get infected. It never made sense to me. If you hate a government, why attack random civilians living there? Unless that hatred is much deeper.
Are you doubting that ~1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, the majority of whom were innocent civilians? They went from house to house indiscriminately murdering. It's proudly recorded on video.
No, I'm not doubting that event. I'm doubting some of the reports, as one ought to, but I'm not saying "That never happened"
The report I've come to doubt is with respect to the dancing festival -- I read a news article which noted how it was an Israeli helicopter which fired upon that festival.
Could be for the same banal reasons of fear and retwisted in various ways, of course -- it just made me realize that the story isn't so clean as "OCT 7 justifies Amulek!"
I remember the second intifada in the early 2000s, where Palestinian terrorists would go into bars, restaurants, and buses full of civilians and blow themselves up. I recall they'd attach unclean material to their explosive devices, so for anyone who got hit with shrapnel, the wound would get infected. It never made sense to me. If you hate a government, why attack random people living there? Unless that hatred is much deeper.
Because that government has been attacking you in the exact same way, and old cynical men know the piss and vinegar of young men and convince them to in order to get a bargaining chip.
If all it led to was something like what you say that'd be evil.
But that's not what happened.
There was no massive retaliation from whites because there was no violence from blacks. You see, this is what's missed when you advocate violence: that it never ends with one event. It just goes on and on.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 16:27#10128650 likes
Because that government has been attacking you in the exact same way, and old cynical men know the piss and vinegar of young men and convince them to in order to get a bargaining chip.
Understandable, but a sign of a degenerate society. Even during WWII Jews didn't go around murdering or mass murdering German civilians.
Reply to frank What I've noticed, though, is that in all my time of saying we should seek non-violent solutions it doesn't matter what you say: The violence goes on and on and on, whether we trade eyes and make us both blind or don't and get to be blinded.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 16:55#10128710 likes
There were armed Jewish resistance groups. They could have murdered, raped, and tortured many civilians because of their nationality, but they didn't. Such behavior is abhorrent.
I take it that the demand is being pushed to the point that the families cannot even prove they owned such and such -- hopefully because the documents have been destroyed or the oral stories have been stamped out.
For my part I don't want to give Israel weapons to do the evil things they're doing now. Excuses either which way.
But even voicing the thought is met with cries of "anti-semitism" -- and many of the zionists follow along the same fascist scripts, in the darkest of ironies.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 17:05#10128740 likes
That's asking for the destruction of Israel. It would be adding roughly 6 million Arab Muslims to the population of Israel, and it would throw the demographic balance off. Ethnic warfare would result. There would be fighting in the streets as the fundamental character of the state is brought into question. No one can demand that a state destroy itself and call it immoral for not doing so.
Also, why such selective enforcement? Where is the Jewish right of return to Iraq? Or Yemen? The Middle East has been cleansed of Jews besides Israel, but there is no demand for "right of return" there.
Yes, that's what happens when people suddenly lose control of their political sovereignty/self-determination. Flood a nation of 5 million Muslims living under Sharia with 5 million Hindus and see what happens.
It would be like asking the US to absorb 200 million Muslims.
Yes, that's what happens when people suddenly lose control of their political sovereignty/self-determination. Flood a nation of 5 million Muslims living under Sharia with 5 million Hindus and see what happens.
It would be like asking the US to absorb 200 million Muslims.
"Would" -- it's already there. And what you describe is ironic given that this is what happened to the Palestinians -- imagine a group of people show up and then....
This assassination seems to whitewash what Kirk spread around, and it was not to spread love. He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them. This side has no political color. It just happens to be more common on the extreme right in this time in history.
The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.
Arguing for the good side is arguing for the side that, with evidence in living standards and quality of life in the world, produces the best living conditions in a society.
Right now we're seeing a rise in the spread of hateful, polarizing rhetoric. Something that divides and makes enemies of neighbors. This rhetoric is eroding society and causing a lot of suffering and even deaths.
When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.
I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.
And there we have it.
Note here the charge of “spreading hate”, and the making of a threadbare connection between the act of holding and espousing one’s belief and being evil, as if Kirk’s brain state and the combination of sounds that came from his mouth is all it takes to make such an accusation. On the one hand Kirk committed the sin of dividing people into Us vs Them, but on the other Kirk resided on the wrong side of the Good and the Evil, those who speak like us and those who speak like them.
The problem is there is not even a string of chewing gum between the premise and the conclusion, between one duplicitous phrase and the next. It is no strange wonder that the assassin himself accused Charlie of such evil, for “spreading hate”, days before killing him.
This sort of piffle can be read all over social media and presents a window into the empty logic of the censors among us.
I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality.
Note here the charge of “spreading hate”, and the making of a threadbare connection between the act of holding and espousing one’s belief and being evil,
I can't note that anywhere other than your interpretation.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 17:51#10128840 likes
"Would" -- it's already there. And what you describe is ironic given that this is what happened to the Palestinians -- imagine a group of people show up and then....
What do you think would happen? Would Jews and Palestinian Muslims hold hands and sing Kumbaya under RoR? Hamas is a democratically elected Islamic fundamentalist sect — the Palestinian vision. I can't avoid the fact that the Palestinians voted them into power.
What happened to the Palestinians is that the Arab world declared war on Israel in '47. Instead of wiping out the new Jewish state, the Palestinians lost and were put to flight as Israeli forces overran their annihilation attempt.
What do you think would happen? Would Jews and Palestinian Muslims hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
What happened to the Palestinians is that the Arab world declared war on Israel in '47. Instead of wiping out the new Jewish state, the Palestinians lost and were put to flight as Israeli forces overran their annihilation attempt.
What I think is that this is a right I agree with -- but what I think is happening is far worse than what you're imagining, given that we're witnessing a genocide.
I agree with the right -- if someone took my home I'd want it back no matter how long it took.
But things have progressed so far from there now. It's a worthy goal to remember, and since you asked that's where I stand.
But let's step back a bit now.
You mentioned Hamas.
I tend to think Hamas is a direct result of the failures of the PLO and representation. In a way it's "the bullet" in the question.
Oct 7th is horrifying.
And so is this world we see of Israeli fascists posting videos of themselves enjoying killing.
And so is the past prior to that one event -- sometimes an occupied territory decides to revolt.
Note here the charge of “spreading hate”, and the making of a threadbare connection between the act of holding and espousing one’s belief and being evil, as if Kirk’s brain state and the combination of sounds that came from his mouth is all it takes to make such an accusation. On the one hand Kirk committed the sin of dividing people into Us vs Them, but on the other Kirk resided on the wrong side of the Good and the Evil, those who speak like us and those who speak like them.
The problem is there is not even a string of chewing gum between the premise and the conclusion, between one duplicitous phrase and the next. It is no strange wonder that the assassin himself accused Charlie of such evil, for “spreading hate”, days before killing him.
This sort of piffle can be read all over social media and presents a window into the empty logic of the censors among us.
Chris did not make a connection between the act of holding and espousing one's belief and being evil -- I'm the one using "evil" in this conversation, but I also didn't connect that to "Kirk's brain state..."
On one hand he divided, and on the other he was on the wrong side of the divide -- that's closer to my perspective than @Christoffer
I find it a strange wonder that the assassin accused Charlie Kirk so far -- and I'm confused about "not even a string of chewing gum between the premise and the conclusion"; which premise? Who said it? Which conclusion?
That's basically an accusation of a non sequiter inference, but what is the set of premises that you're talking about?
IÂ’m not sure what your conversation was about, because I didnÂ’t read it. It doesnÂ’t even appear that youÂ’re involved at all.
Do you want me to quote exactly which sentences IÂ’m referring to? Because it is all there above, unless there is some formatting issue that I am unaware of.
For instance, I read the accusation “He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them.”
In the paragraph after I read this.
The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.
Do you want me to quote exactly which sentences IÂ’m referring to? Because it is all there above, unless there is some formatting issue that I am unaware of.
For instance, I read the accusation “He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them.”
In the paragraph after I read this.
I think it's a "reader comprehension" issue on my part. I'm wondering what you mean because I felt what you said applied more to myself than Chris.
Not that he can't defend himself, of course -- I guess I just felt defensive because I thought you ought to be attacking me from what I read from you lol -- but I obviously could be wrong.
I've liked @Christoffer's contributions to this thread as a more hopeful perspective than I have.
The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.
I feel like that's an optimistic way of putting what we should go towards.
Do you disagree?
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 18:43#10128970 likes
And so is the past prior to that one event -- sometimes an occupied territory decides to revolt.
Perhaps it could not have been occupied.
I like to read about the history of this region. 2000 years ago it was Jews living there occupied by Rome. Jewish kings would directly report to Roman authorities. The Romans had ultimate control. That is occupation. A clear chain of command; subordination. Yet neither the PLO or Hamas report to Israel. It's absurd to think entertain that they would. Perhaps we could say Israel occupies Gazan airspace, but in really it's just war given Hamas is a sworn enemy.
Anyway, I'm not still not sure what exactly is occupied in your view. Is it Gaza? Is west Jerusalem or Tel Aviv "occupied" by Israel? It's this lack of clarity that bothers me and it'll differ depending on who you ask. Complaining about "occupation" is can be cover for simply complaining about Israel's existence.
Anyway, I'm not still not sure what exactly is occupied in your view. Is it Gaza? Is west Jerusalem or Tel Aviv "occupied" by Israel? It's this lack of clarity that bothers me and it'll differ depending on who you ask. Complaining about "occupation" is can be cover for simply complaining about Israel's existence.
There's a sense in which complaining about its existence is like complaining about the United States' existence -- both are colony's that took other people's land. The US just has more years and more kills than Israel.
In this sense I complain about the United States' existence. It is a colonialist state with moral debts.
But that's where I live.
The part that I know is that I'm in the United States and we give weapons to Israel -- where the line gets drawn eventually or if it's a one-state solution all that, right now, is so far out of scope due to how long the genocide has been going on.
If you're asking if I'm for the genocide of Israelis on behalf of Arabs then no I am not -- but I think this is a line of propaganda more than a reality.
My apologies for the confusion. I only read a couple posts on the last page. I wasnÂ’t aware there was a longer conversation there.
I do disagree because I do not believe the good and the bad can be found in thoughts, only actions. For instance, the assassin may have had the most beautiful thoughts ever conceived. Perhaps they were so good that he opposed fascism and the spreading of hate. Kirk, on the other hand, wanted to bring back the death penalty, and probably believes you or I will go to heaven and hell. Those are bad thoughts, in my view. But from the stories of Kirk IÂ’ve been reading the last couple days, he was very kind. As far as I know he never hurt anyone, and gave a platform to opposing views. The shooter, who apparently opposed fascism, murdered someone in cold blood. So who is good or bad?
In my view there is an increasing conflation between words and deeds in Western moral literature and it leads directly to these sorts of acts.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 19:20#10129020 likes
The part that I know is that I'm in the United States and we give weapons to Israel -- where the line gets drawn eventually or if it's a one-state solution all that, right now, is so far out of scope due to how long the genocide has been going on.
I simply don't see it as a genocide. Historically, genocidal groups don't hold back. The population of Gaza has stayed the same or grown since the start of the war. Israel has shown restraint. Genocidal states don't send in massive amounts of aid to the victim population or provide them with considerable amounts of medical care.
Obviously, if we move the goalposts and redefine the term, then anything can be genocide. Or we could hold that Israel really "intends" it as if states have minds where they secretly hold intentions. Really, the reason we know about the Nazi genocide was because we have the documents that clearly lay out the plan. Even in the beginning of the war, when thousands of Jews had been summarily executed, the fact hadn't been established.
the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
Now if you're killing combatants that's one thing -- but Palestine isn't even a state. It's an occupied territory where we have stories of people shooting Palestinians where they excuse their shot by "I just didn't understand why he cared about that body" -- drawing a literal line in the sand for when to kill.
Differentiate away. How is this not that?
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 13, 2025 at 21:00#10129130 likes
I wouldn't say that Israel is "holding back", but that's a vague criteria.
Israel has complete air superiority over Gaza and is capable of inflicting much more damage. Israel possesses WMDs. Gaza has virtually no air defenses. Israel could do much more.
Now if you're killing combatants that's one thing -- but Palestine isn't even a state. It's an occupied territory where we have stories of people shooting Palestinians where they excuse their shot by "I just didn't understand why he cared about that body" -- drawing a literal line in the sand for when to kill.
Gaza is a region. "Palestine" you will find nowhere on a map. When you say "Palestine is an occupied territory," I'm not sure which geographic boundaries you have in mind. What is "Palestine" to you?
All war crimes should be prosecuted. They occur in virtually every war on all sides. Propaganda, distortions, and lies are also a part of war.
Reply to Moliere
I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone.
I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone.
The attitude from liberals I know is amusement over the irony of Kirk being one of the shooting deaths that are "worth it" to keep the 2nd amendment alive.
Reply to frank Part of the absurdity I feel is the celebration I see. Not really people directly around me, but just generally on the internet and through the media and all that.
When the Healthcare CEO was gunned down I didn't feel so absurd -- he was directly responsible for many deaths. Anyone whose had someone live with chronic pain or die or any such travesty due to the cruelty of healthcare insurance company policies would naturally feel better in the sense of a kind of revenge-by-proxy.
Here the man spread hate, by all means. But it never feels right to me to outright jump for joy for the death of one random person that won't make a difference in how we live.
But then I could tell I didn't feel much care for him given what he said. And I said before when I saw him being lionized and the shooter shamed I couldn't help but think about how much death we already have on our hands -- on what basis do we condemn the shooter?
There's a sense in which all of this isn't even of concern -- there are sides and when your side "wins" one of these terrible games you celebrate, and vice versa. Which strikes me as a good way to lose our humanity in the process of feeling like we're winners.
Between these two extremes is where I felt, and further couldn't help but wish the kind of media given to his death was also given to the deaths we are still causing: it results in a numbly uncertain feeling about the world that I couldn't express easily.
Gaza is a region. "Palestine" you will find nowhere on a map. When you say "Palestine is an occupied territory," I'm not sure which geographic boundaries you have in mind. What is "Palestine" to you?
The wiki on Palestine defines this well enough for me. "Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the occupied Palestinian territories. "
The reason it wasn't on a map is because it was still controlled by a colonial government, not because the people didn't live there.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 14, 2025 at 03:13#10129560 likes
Personally, despite having studied the history of the region, I've always wondered when the "Palestinians" arrived in Palestine. When does their history start? Or where can their coins be found? Or their artifacts? Hebrew/Jewish ones are abundant. Or are the modern "Palestinians" just the people (i.e., non-Jews) who have lived there since time immemorial, since it's in the name — and whoever claims the name "Palestinian" earns this eternal presence.
Anyway.
It's nice that you were able to describe Palestine, but Hamas has made it pretty clear that it considers all of Israel to be occupied, so the first step in the peace process — if there is to be one — would be removing Hamas.
OutlanderSeptember 14, 2025 at 05:03#10129670 likes
so the first step in the peace process — if there is to be one — would be removing Hamas.
But what would that do? I thought you said Hamas was democratically elected. Why wouldn't the same type of person or people with the same type of ideology not get elected again? Are you hoping the people are so psychologically battered to the point they will agree with anything they're told? Is that really a view you'd be proud parading around and being on your tombstone that those after you will read and remember you as?
Are you trying to remove their right to the democratic process? Or place arbitrary guidelines and "controlled opposition" candidates thus subverting the democratic process?
Why do they even call themselves "Hamas", where did that come from? What was wrong with "the democratically elected government?" Just seems necessary.
Frankly, I think it doesn't take much to imagine what happens in war that could explain why the people there today do not physically (or by DNA) resemble the people their before. Not very hard to put two and two together. Which is a very difficult humanitarian situation. What do you with people who genuinely believe they were the original "rightful" folks, yet the DNA says otherwise, and in a twist of irony, their presence is literally excelling the genocide that whatever past invading army who engaged in forced "relations" with the true rightful people tried to perform (and perhaps succeeded)?
The point is, we need more Internationally-recognized national parks, preserves, and protected areas, basically everywhere. Places any person can always visit but are not permitted to build a home or reside on permanently. If not as a buffer between two peoples who cannot or will not live in peace. Once someone plops out a kid (or worse, was forced to plop out a kid), they think that land is their home. As if engaging in the cheapest most automatic and low-level primal act any living being can perform (fornication) somehow elevates you socially and legally above someone who does not have children. All that does is lead to overpopulation, which leads to war, starvation, suffering, and just an all-around lowered quality of life for everyone alive. That's just not smart. That's just not how it is. But it's what they think. Ergo, we have a problem.
Reply to Moliere I'm not happy he's dead, but I'm not upset about it either. There's some reporting the shooter had a transgender partner. Trans people have been banned from the military and the DOJ is talking about restricting them from owning guns. How much abuse can a community take before someone snaps and takes out a particularly vile trans bully? Conservatives have this quaint idea that queers and liberals and liberal queers don't have guns and don't know how to use them.
OutlanderSeptember 14, 2025 at 05:17#10129690 likes
How much abuse can a community take before someone snaps and takes out a particularly vile trans bully? Conservatives have this quaint idea that queers and liberals and liberal queers don't have guns and don't know how to use them.
You're falling into a false argument. Why do people cut off their genitals? Because they feel socially-ostracized. Have you ever been a child once in a modern day school with low-income people? Even having any sense of morality gets you called a "snitch" or a "girl", and basically physically harmed IF you're smaller than the person. It's a cycle of useless people fornicating because they have no self control, often the largest "Strongest" what they call alpha, despite having the brains of rocks and no real purpose since 800 B.C. when the lever and pulley was invented. They can't cope with society. They were made to be slaves. To work, to use their size to lift heavy rocks under the command of a king. They have no purpose in modern society. They don't know how to raise kids. They get pleasure from seeing people, anyone, random strangers, suffer. It gives them "purpose," The things that bring an intellect joy and a sense of harmony, give them anger. The things that give us a sense of disgust and horror, bring a smile to their face. They are incompatible with modern society.
Sorry, my point being, no person who was not bullied or exposed to the idea that "oh you might be a girl, since you act like one" has ever once considered the idea that they were not born into the right body. Not a single one. It's a psychological war humanity wages with itself. The strong taking (dignity and purpose) from the weak. What the very first law ever written, Hammurabi's Code was created to prevent. And it's time to end it before something ends us.
Just look around. Why are all the "transgenders" skinny, awkward people who just didn't fit in. It's not a coincidence. It's psychological bullying and deformation of the human mind by physical and emotional trauma. How can you not see that? How can anyone not see that?
180 ProofSeptember 14, 2025 at 06:57#10129760 likes
Wikipedia is biased and should not be used as a neutral source. I have a bone to pick.
The term "West Bank" encompasses the historic territories of Judea and Samaria — territories with thousands of years of Jewish/Hebrew history.
To just blatantly claim that the "West Bank" (a term only in use for a few decades) is "occupied Palestine" is nonsense, historically. There has never been a Palestinian state or a Palestinian nation. The term "Palestine" historically refers to the geographical or topographical characteristics of the region.
And that's OK for the purposes of this discussion. Since I get my information from people from Gaza it's very likely that my information is "very biased" in my favor. Almost like that's why I believe what I do.
I don't want to judicate the boundaries because I don't have a personal stake in terms of which where etc., and I'm not even close to being worthy of negotiating that.
These events are important to me for the reasons outlined -- I'm not going to pretend to be the guy who can speak on every legal thing, but I will honestly answer your questions with respect to why I'm saying what I'm saying (and noting when I'm out of my depth)
The ongoing genocide in relation to the sensationalist murder is what causes the feeling of the absurd in me.
Where the lines get drawn after the genocide stops is less my interest, and stopping the weapons from continuing that is more my interest -- but these are moments in a reflection on political violence.
When and where?
Suppose 100,000 of your people were indiscriminately killed and you still lived.
You're falling into a false argument. Why do people cut off their genitals? Because they feel socially-ostracized. Have you ever been a child once in a modern day school with low-income people? Even having any sense of morality gets you called a "snitch" or a "girl", and basically physically harmed IF you're smaller than the person. It's a cycle of useless people fornicating because they have no self control, often the largest "Strongest" what they call alpha, despite having the brains of rocks and no real purpose since 800 B.C. when the lever and pulley was invented. They can't cope with society. They were made to be slaves. To work, to use their size to lift heavy rocks under the command of a king. They have no purpose in modern society. They don't know how to raise kids. They get pleasure from seeing people, anyone, random strangers, suffer. It gives them "purpose," The things that bring an intellect joy and a sense of harmony, give them anger. The things that give us a sense of disgust and horror, bring a smile to their face. They are incompatible with modern society.
I think this is a bit much.
You may not recognize it as transphobia, but you're talking the points up front while ending with classist points.
Sorry, my point being, no person who was not bullied or exposed to the idea that "oh you might be a girl, since you act like one" has ever once considered the idea that they were not born into the right body. Not a single one.
And yet this is false.
Unless you can read minds?
Still -- this isn't the question at all.
I noticed there was an uptick in propaganda trying to tie Utah boy to "Trans influence" -- but I'd interpret that as yet another attempt to demonize a minority group and not take responsibility. Or divert it somehow to something to be angry about rather than think it through.
Just look around. Why are all the "transgenders" skinny, awkward people who just didn't fit in. It's not a coincidence. It's psychological bullying and deformation of the human mind by physical and emotional trauma. How can you not see that? How can anyone not see that?
No more "transgenders" talk from here out, please.
It's a propaganda point in the sensationalist murder. Trans people are afraid because they're getting demonized again -- but they ought not be grouped with a person who shot someone for funzies.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 14, 2025 at 16:19#10130160 likes
If you check with the pro-Palestinian movement leaders like @NerdeenKiswani on X, the new death count is 700k with 400k babies dead. According to AI, there are not even 400k Palestinian babies in Gaza, but don't let that get in your way as a Palestinian activist. Push the numbers, yell the slogans, move on.
Last time I checked, it was 60k; now, apparently, it's 100k. Whatever the count is, it includes Hamas terrorists in a large count, given that it is what Israel is targeting. Gaza's figures do not differentiate between combatant and civilian because such a distinction is meaningless to them. Such distortions are run of the mill for the movement.
Can you imagine if we had this reporting in previous wars? I suppose it would be akin to "50k Germans indiscriminately killed" during Battle of the Bulge. Civilian, combatant, whatever, throw it all in one figure.
When a Hamas terrorist dies, the world is improved.
Reply to BitconnectCarlos Yeah -- I've seen other reports too I've been sticking to the "conservative" ones because the topic is controversial, and really even the small counts were enough to my mind to justify my sorrow.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 14, 2025 at 16:26#10130180 likes
My apologies for the confusion. I only read a couple posts on the last page. I wasnÂ’t aware there was a longer conversation there.
S'all good.
I do disagree because I do not believe the good and the bad can be found in thoughts, only actions. For instance, the assassin may have had the most beautiful thoughts ever conceived. Perhaps they were so good that he opposed fascism and the spreading of hate. Kirk, on the other hand, wanted to bring back the death penalty, and probably believes you or I will go to heaven and hell. Those are bad thoughts, in my view. But from the stories of Kirk IÂ’ve been reading the last couple days, he was very kind. As far as I know he never hurt anyone, and gave a platform to opposing views. The shooter, who apparently opposed fascism, murdered someone in cold blood. So who is good or bad?
Yearp. That's the question -- less with respect to these individuals that sparked my feelings, but more with respect to ourselves: Who is good or bad? How do I agree or disagree with either response? Celebration because he spread hate, or condemnation because we're guilty of way more violence, in the big picture?
In some sense, to take the gun-control side, we could argue that we're all guilty for not regulating weapons well enough that a young boy hopped up on propaganda would not be able to shoot a celebrity for funzies.
But that's the sub-plot I'm asking for -- the main plot I'm asking is "Where and when?", but more with a reflection towards an uncomfortable aporia
In my view there is an increasing conflation between words and deeds in Western moral literature and it leads directly to these sorts of acts.
I don't think the thoughts are what does it as much as the material conditions.
Words/Deeds have been a question since at least 1900 in "Western moral literature".
The increase in random gun violence predates those questions -- whereas the proliferation of firearms coupled with a society that is actively engaging with violence (and thereby must find justifications for violence) leads to an every once-and-again one-off murder, especially when bifurcation alienates people through class divisions, and the internet spreads not news but propaganda to incite feelings that young men often aren't good at handling.
Reply to BitconnectCarlos There's one thing here that I think is important to distinguish: this is not a war.
A war is between two countries that recognize one another.
Israel uses the UN definition to declare war on Hamas, but when they controlled the occupied territories they applied two levels of citizenship and deeply controlled who got in or out of the West Bank or Gaza.
It's not like Hamas just decided to be evil. There are reasons for why they were voted for that lead up to Oct 7th.
So as long as they "obey" the restrictions that continued to expand settlements they would not be bombed, but they weren't citizens of Israel as much as an apartheid.
That'd count as an example of "genocide": MW: "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group"
Then that is not a good definition of genocide. Sometimes political groups need to be systematically destroyed. If the destruction of Nazi Germany is genocide then nothing is genocide.
If the destruction of Nazi Germany is genocide then nothing is genocide.
That's not what happened. There was a war between different powers and people were tried after a government surrendered. The destruction of "Nazi Germany" is not the same as the systematic hunting down of anyone associated with "Hamas" to the point that it's OK to kill unarmed civilians and topple down Hospitals or civilian living quarters or stop aid from coming in to starve out anyone that might be associated in order to take over the land.
Hamas isn't the fascist in this scenario -- they're not really a "liberal democracy", but they're not "Nazi Germany" -- not even close.
The destruction of "Nazi Germany" is not the same as the systematic hunting down of anyone associated with "Hamas" to the point that it's OK to kill unarmed civilians and topple down Hospitals or civilian living quarters or stop aid from coming in to starve out anyone that might be associated in order to take over the land.
That is different than hunting down and killing Hamas. I have no problem eliminating Hamas if it can be done without collateral damage or without the goal of stealing land. I see your point that Israel's goal is not just the elimination of Hamas at this point, and they are unable to do it without killing huge numbers of innocents, and what they are doing my fall under the definition of genocide.
Playing DevilÂ’s advocate, LikudÂ’s actions make internal logical sense. Ideally, the Palestinians would just go away, to Egypt or anywhere else, theyÂ’d take over Gaza and West Bank, thereÂ’d be a buffer zone between neighboring countries, and that would be the end of it.
This is the OBVIOUS goal. Eliminating Hamas never was. October 7th was a pretext to just take it all once and for all. Fortunately, the world really isn’t buying it— yet they’ll push on through until every Palestinian is dead or displaced. They’re making Gaza an unlivable hellhole.
At this point, if I were Palestinian IÂ’d just move out of there. TheyÂ’ve lost. The problem is, thereÂ’s nowhere to go.
So this genocide (oh, sorry, I mean ethnic cleansing) has nearly succeeded. A few thousand more dead babies (oops, I mean Hamas combatants) and destroyed buildings should do the trick over the next few years. All with the weapons and support of the US.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 14, 2025 at 21:50#10130610 likes
It's not like Hamas just decided to be evil. There are reasons for why they were voted for that lead up to Oct 7th.
Hamas is a hardline Islamist group that follows hardline Islamist ideology. At its most basic level it is simply seeking to expand the territory of Islam under hardline rule — nothing new in the history of Islam. Hamas isn't shy about this.
Nor is Hamas all that different (although a little more extreme) than "secular" organizations like the PLO, which also sponsors terror attacks.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 14, 2025 at 22:13#10130660 likes
Hamas isn't the fascist in this scenario -- they're not really a "liberal democracy", but they're not "Nazi Germany" -- not even close.
No, but they're people. And you know what that means. I said it before, I'll say it again. "In this world, The only difference between the benevolent king and the evil king are two things: Opportunity. And Time."
Meaning, both people would gladly perform the same acts upon one another, given the opportunity. It simply happens to be one who is able to instead of the other right now. And they both acknowledge and admit that. Therefore, that happenstance transient fact is neither something to praise nor condemn. It's just "what is."
The problem is false religion. And yes, I say that as a practicing theist. They need to consider their religion as a "lifestyle choice" akin to a hobby. The problem is they think it grants them real authority over others in the real world. Maybe it did once upon a time. To not be an "infidel" because you obey what an alleged god king or "prophet" said, supposedly. Most religion is war propaganda to make you comfortable with death, whether delivered to you, or delivered by you.
Basically, allegedly, as far as my understanding goes, Israel is a "democracy" and Hamas has ambitions of a religious caliphate. No elections. Hereditary rule. The problem is, they are not kings. They do not come from royal lineage. Or at least, if they were, they are now crestfallen. Like most empires, the lower class/laborers/non-royalty ended up revolting against and deposing the True divinely appointed-leaders, thus damning their entire people, at least removing their blessing and protection turning their future society into little more than a seedy band of thieves and murderers in the eyes of the divine. Any God-established people or empire that does that loses their status of Nationhood to the only Authority that counts (albeit sometimes temporarily). Sure, they can prop it up for a while (with the blood of the Saints I.E. the Innocent). But it never lasts. Second problem is, if they were ever to become this "empire" they likely genuinely believe a Higher Power wants them to and will ensure they become, they won't stop growing from there, thus threatening the future stability of not just the region but the entire world. In the age of nuclear weaponry, that is no exaggeration. You have to kill the dragon while it's young. Any knight will attest to this fact.
Seriously, while it may seem the opposite, it's literally the difference between democracy in the region and fascism where unworthy men born from false kings control the lives of all, especially women and "gay people" (*cough* intellects who aren't brain-dead slaves who actually appreciate art and poetry over primal acts of pleasure). If they weren't from a false lineage and were real kings, that would be fine. There would be no problem. But they're not. So democracy will inevitably replace whatever system they have or intend to have. The only question is, how many have to die before then, something only they can answer and have full control over. Only question is how many more of their own will they choose to sacrifice for an ill-formed and false cause. So don't get it twisted.
Dude. In reality. All they have to do is become a true democracy and let McDonald's set up shop. They do that, all this killing and war goes away overnight. But they won't. Because they believe, (I would hope truly) that they are doing the right thing and fighting against the powers of an evil world thus ultimately pleasing some Higher Power. Not unlike myself. Shoot. Maybe they are. But guess what? Maybe they're not. That's all someone who believes in much of what they purport to believe can really say looking from the outside in.
Reply to Moliere
I often wonder how the normalization of violence figures into this sort of messaging. There is a blatant political device in particular instances such as pardoning all of the participants in 1/6. But that does not add up to a possible future. The whole theater is oddly barren.
I see that situation as much closer to the situation in Israel -- Israel offers different rights to Jews than to non-News. Palestinians are segregated into different locations within the state of Israel. This is largely due to a desire for an ethno-state -- i.e. Arabs over there and Jews over here.
Suppose that South Africa, in response to a political act of terrorism on white people, set up artillery and began to systematically eliminate the Black neighborhoods in retaliation. Further suppose that they continued to bombard the schools, hospitals, journalists, civilian living quarters, universities, places of worship, etc. in the name of defeating the political group responsible -- how many non-combatants and places unrelated to combat can be purposefully annihilated before this stops being a "war" and starts being a "genocide"?
Part of me is also hesitant to describe this as a war on the sheer basis of firepower. If you hold a firing line to keep people within a place where you're going to bombard them regardless of their political orientation are we really engaging in war? Or is this Dresden extended over a longer period of time? Gaza is under siege while being bombarded. Part of the tools being used here are starvation to inflict mass punishment.
There are other means of genocide in play here too: if one targets people who have knowledge, such as doctors, journalists, teachers, scholars, holy persons, and legal authorities then it will be harder for the genocidaires to be persecuted -- if you destroy the evidence and the knowledge of a people then you can tell the story as you want. Consider "Go West Young Man" as a result of the United States' genocide.
So my theory of war needs refinement, but I don't see an apt comparison to either the United States' civil war or its revolutionary war.
Meaning, both people would gladly perform the same acts upon one another, given the opportunity. It simply happens to be one who is able to instead of the other right now.
While a penchant for violence is a part of human nature I do not think that people are sitting around waiting for their turn at the genocide stick. That's an entirely cynical view whereby we can dismiss any genocide on the basis that "Well, if the people who are being killed now had the opportunity, they'd be the genocidaires. So what's the difference? Let the genocide go on"
I often wonder how the normalization of violence figures into this sort of messaging. There is a blatant political device in particular instances such as pardoning all of the participants in 1/6. But that does not add up to a possible future. The whole theater is oddly barren.
I get the sense that the 4chaners et. al. just want to agitate people to kill others in order to cause a sense of terrorism. I don't think they care which side does it; what they care about is the terror, and the lack of culpability for themselves. They want to inspire others to carry out random acts of violence.
This is functionally speaking -- the ideology is hard to decipher, but that's on purpose. This is part of why I think of it as a fascist underground: fascists purposefully use duplicitous messaging with the intent of destroying social bonds with the state such that they can take over the state without a real political program other than hatred for the other, a desire for punishment, and the willingness to utilize the powers of state to carry out that mission.
Fascism is a cult that worships death for its own sake as a means to purify the population.
At least, that's my perception. It's terribly hard to track details on the actual people -- this is just what the part of the internet looks like that looks similar to what thus far this assassin at hand.
That is different than hunting down and killing Hamas. I have no problem eliminating Hamas if it can be done without collateral damage or without the goal of stealing land.
Ehhh... given what we see right now, it really isn't possible to do that. This is what the Israeli government is pursuing in the name of routing out Hamas.
So this genocide (oh, sorry, I mean ethnic cleansing) has nearly succeeded. A few thousand more dead babies (oops, I mean Hamas combatants) and destroyed buildings should do the trick over the next few years. All with the weapons and support of the US.
Oh, I disagree there. It can still be stopped. There is still resistance.
OutlanderSeptember 15, 2025 at 13:59#10131550 likes
While a penchant for violence is a part of human nature I do not think that people are sitting around waiting for their turn at the genocide stick.
Of course not. To see reality for what it is requires living an examined life. Basically, it requires not being a mental invalid. Unfortunately, most people are exactly that. The average person is little more than a (barely) functional "r-word". And boy do I mean barely. There are just more of them right now so they effectively control the world. That's why it's in chaos. The intelligent are afraid to speak out because they know their life is infinitely and exponentially more valuable than even 10,000 of the commoner and so must do so to remain alive, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. Since the depraved are violent by nature. If intellectual people, like those who post here, were the majority, and saw how the current majority behaves. They'd be locked in a cell for their own safety.
They don't "want genocide" they want "stuff" and the "feeling" (glory?) that genocide happens to provide. And also happens to be the only way to achieve these things. It's very simple.
Basically, we're watching two little children, one much larger, fight one another. It's time for the adults "the world" to step in and break it up.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 15, 2025 at 15:25#10131730 likes
I see that situation as much closer to the situation in Israel -- Israel offers different rights to Jews than to non-News.
Tell that to the Israeli Arab muslims who serve in Parliament and as judges and professors with full rights.
Palestinians are segregated into different locations within the state of Israel. This is largely due to a desire for an ethno-state -- i.e. Arabs over there and Jews over here.
I can't tell whether you're talking about Israeli arabs or Palestinians.
Suppose that South Africa, in response to a political act of terrorism on white people, set up artillery and began to systematically eliminate the Black neighborhoods in retaliation.
I'm not entertaining this because Israel is not South Africa, nor has Israel begun bombing its own neighborhoods. Gaza is not an Israeli neighborhood or region. It is a territory possessed by an enemy political group that openly seeks the complete destruction of its neighbor and to establish hardline Islamic rule.
Did apartheid SA have blacks in Parliament? In high positions in society?
So my theory of war needs refinement, but I don't see an apt comparison to either the United States' civil war or its revolutionary war.
:up: Keep in mind that over 10,000 rockets have been fired indiscriminately into Israel from Gaza since 10/7 and that 10-20% of these misfire and end up landing in Gaza itself. In any case, whether we call it a war or a protracted conflict doesn't matter much to me... although near 1,000 Israeli soldiers have been killed since 10/7 but ultimately 'war' or 'protracted conflict' both fit.
How can the Civil War be a war to you? The North didn't recognize the South as an independent country.
Does it matter? If you won't accept South Africa as an analogue, then ought I to accept the civil war?
I told you the differences I saw. I used South Africa because it's another colonial project.
With the States you have two colonial governments fighting. If I were to analogize something in the United States I'd say it's how we treated the Native Americans and Blacks rather than the Civil War. They were less than second class citizens, for the most part.
They were forced from their land and required to apply for citizenship with Israel and if they couldn't -- which most didn't -- they lost their property.
Technically speaking they're not citizens so it's not a "second class citizen" de jure -- but it is de facto.
I'm not entertaining this because Israel is not South Africa, nor has Israel begun bombing its own neighborhoods. Gaza is not an Israeli neighborhood or region. It is a territory possessed by an enemy political group.
Here's the part where Israel gets duplicitous. Prior to Oct 7th they wouldn't recognize their statehood. After Oct 7th they still won't recognize statehood, but they'll declare war on them as if they are a state. In times of peace they are controlled by the Israeli government, in times of war they're a fully independent nation.
Under apartheid they slowly drive out Palestinians with expansions of colonies. Under war they kill indiscriminately while holding a siege to keep people in an area where they can be slowly eliminated. This is all part of a history of slowly expanding and taking over Palestinian lands by any means necessary.
Drop the analogy if you wish. It was thinly veiled. The part that sticks, from my perspective, is that Israel effectively treats the Palestinian territories as an open air prison in "peace times", and a kill zone in "war times".
Keep in mind that over 10,000 rockets have been fired indiscriminately into Israel from Gaza since 10/7 and that 10-20% of these misfire and end up landing in Gaza itself.
... you realize that this comparison isn't in Israel's favor, yes?
In any case, whether we call it a war or a protracted conflict doesn't matter much to me... although near 1,000 Israeli soldiers have been killed since 10/7 but ultimately 'war' or 'protracted conflict' both fit.
My thought is that this is not a war, but a systematic erasure of another people for the purpose of obtaining land and punishing them en masse for voting for Hamas. I.e. a genocide.
Even if the Nazis were evil they kept Germany after the fact. Heidegger even got to stay a part of the party until it was legally dissolved.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 15, 2025 at 17:09#10131960 likes
This will likely be my last post on the issue since it's clear we disagree, and I don't feel like arguing forever.
They were forced from their land and required to apply for citizenship with Israel and if they couldn't -- which most didn't -- they lost their property.
Technically speaking they're not citizens so it's not a "second class citizen" de jure -- but it is de facto.
If you do a bit of research, you'll see that the vast majority of Palestinians don't want Israeli citizenship. To accept citizenship would be to effectively validate the notion of a Jewish, non-Muslim state, which they have opposed since the very beginning. It is a humiliation to many of them.
And that's a central issue imho—the persistent refusal of the Palestinians to accept an independent Jewish state in what ought to be Muslim land. Jews lived alongside Hindus in peace for many centuries since neither group felt the need to convert or conquer the other. When one side refuses to accept the presence of the other, wars are launched, which lead to greater loss of land, more humiliation, and more victimization. It's a vicious cycle of victimhood.
After 10/7, Hamas lost its seat at the table. They shattered any prospective hope for peace. They acted like Nazis - summarily executing Israelis/Jews civilians and keeping Israelis/Jews in concentration camp-like conditions in captivity - and they deserve annihilation just like the Third Reich. Like the deaths of German civilians are ultimately the responsibility of the Third Reich, the deaths of Gazan civilians are on Hamas, as Israel takes considerable precautions to avoid disproportionate civilian deaths.
Losing wars sucks, but you cannot pass down hate and resentment about it from generation to generation.
When one side refuses to accept the presence of the other, wars are launched, which lead to greater loss of land, more humiliation, and more victimization. It's a vicious cycle of victimhood.
After 10/7, Hamas lost its seat at the table. They shattered any prospective hope for peace. They acted like Nazis - summarily executing Israelis/Jews civilians and keeping Israelis/Jews in concentration camp-like conditions in captivity - and they deserve annihilation just like the Third Reich. Like the deaths of German civilians are ultimately the responsibility of the Third Reich, the deaths of Gazan civilians are on Hamas, as Israel takes considerable precautions to avoid disproportionate civilian deaths.
At least you aren't denying that it's a genocide -- you're just going about it saying that no matter what Israel does the presence of Hamas justifies everything that come.
I'm afraid that responsibility for death doesn't work that way, though. I'd welcome international trials once we disarm Israel -- but I'd put Israel on trial as the one responsible for the deaths of the people their army is killing, and not the dirty other that they must cleanse from the land.
As far as I'm concerned, it's Israel that has lost face in this exchange with their actions. It is they who have lost a seat at the table for free military aid: Look at what they do with it. They cry for people to remember Amulek, sow disinformation, speak duplicitously, and kill systematically such that they will destroy a people for voting for Hamas -- collective punishment -- and hopefully eliminate them from the land so they can take it for themselves.
But the United States isn't terribly concerned about the moral implications of all this -- they just want an airfield. So insofar that the elimination is contained to the Palestinians we'll continue sending military aid because almost no one in office opposes Israel, and people are punished for speaking up in favor of the Palestinian cause.
Which brings me back to my reflection on ballots and bullets: in the United States there is little the ballot will do regarding these matters. It is ineffective. What I see as peaceful means of opposition lies with BDS and the international community, though -- to use the bullet in the United States on this issue wouldn't be effective in spite of the lack of a ballot.
But for Hamas? Well, supposing you eliminate Hamas, given what's happened, were I to survive. . .
you cannot pass down hate and resentment about it from generation to generation.
This wouldn't be something you could shame me from. I'd be tempted to start Hamas 2.0 after seeing so many people slaughtered once you remove Hamas 1.0.
Which is why BDS strikes me as a moral giant. I don't think I'd have that restraint given what's happening. Hate and resentment will spread further and longer the further and longer the genocide continues. And just because Hamas was voted in that does not mean everyone within a territory gets to be killed because "they lost their seat at the table" for daring to fight back against apartheid.
OutlanderSeptember 15, 2025 at 20:28#10132430 likes
If you do a bit of research, you'll see that the vast majority of Palestinians don't want Israeli citizenship. To accept citizenship would be to effectively validate the notion of a Jewish, non-Muslim state, which they have opposed since the very beginning. It is a humiliation to many of them.
This is a non-secular, ignorant (don't take offense at definitions) view of the real situation. They don't view other people as having rights to declare "citizenship" or "borders". No mainstream religion propagated itself without allowing the believer to be "above" another human being for no actual reason other than use of the word "God" and defeating the "idea of Death."
It's like if you're a father with children and you opened the door into your kid's room one day and your kid randomly said "oh I'm a nation all of a sudden and you can be my citizen". You'd smack that little s**t into next week.
Unfortunately, everyone believes they're the "top guy". Because they have no value other than that which they can rob of others. It's the plague of false/corrupted religion. I mean shoot, I'm a Christian. I can acknowledge many churches are either fake or otherwise besieged by "worldly forces", mostly pedophiles. That doesn't matter. They're all going to the same place. And soon. But again, that's... kind of a non-starter for non-theists and those who are (un?)fortunate enough not to have witnessed indescribable miracles of God. Things that indisputably defy all worldly logic, science, and explanation.
By the same logic, everything Likud has done over the years justifies the actions of Hamas. As an evil organization, theyÂ’ve given up all rights to peace. Eventually, after decades of keeping people in open air prisons and murdering innocent people again and again, thereÂ’s bound to be reactions.
By their own logic, we shouldnÂ’t condemn Hamas. They certainly donÂ’t condemn Likud. They find a way to justify their atrocities. Well, so can Hamas. In fact, they have a better argument.
It's the sort of logic that can lock one into a fight -- a tit-for-tat that lands on whichever side you want to favor. And usually adopted by the bully to try and confuse people as to who is really at fault.
In such a case we might look for an arbiter of some kind -- but I don't trust the United States in this matter.
I'd prefer the United Nation's ICC.
Fire OlogistSeptember 15, 2025 at 22:20#10132710 likes
What amazes me is how precise and rigorous many of us are when it comes to using terms like “knowledge” or “certainty” or “being” or “becoming” or “essence” or “modal collapse” or “concept” versus “idea”…. And the result of this precision is often how impossible it is to say anything solid about any of them. Page after page, deconstructing the grounds and effects of saying anything. Uncovering all of metaphysical, epistemological and ontological questions and assumptions…
But then, many of these same people are so quickly willing to say we know what Charlie Kirk meant, and understand his use of some of those same words clearly enough to convict him as a deplorable, hateful, harm causing son of bitch.
As far as I can tell, Charlie Kirk talked. He said things. (Like we do here.) Someone else shot him. Kirk is dead now. The other guy is arrested.
Who cares about what Kirk said? Unless he expressly said “please shoot me”, it’s all irrelevant to a more important question.
What do you think about setting up a tent, inviting a bunch of people, grabbing a microphone to speak to them, offering a microphone to others so they can speak, and getting shot dead?
How does that sound?
The rest of the facts and opinions and debatable content and observations and analysis donÂ’t matter. At least they shouldnÂ’t matter at all first.
Aside from the personal crap for his poor wife and kids, and aside from the fact that none of us should judge anyone else so harshly, who cares if Kirk was a good guy or not?
We can banish him to hell or congratulate ourselves on having a better world without Kirk in it later - what about assassination of anyone, ever, in a tent, giving out hats and tee shirts? What about political debate fora? What about our own tent TPF?
ShouldnÂ’t all of us bigmouths care about someone being killed for having a big mouth?
We can’t start this discussion without agreement about killing anyone in tent like that. If instead we start off with “killing people in tents like that is bad, but…” we skipped what is important about the topic.
ArenÂ’t KirkÂ’s views on the 2nd amendment secondary to his embodiment (not his views) of the first amendment?
Is it bad that some guy is dead like that or not? He wasnÂ’t even an elected official. He, literally, was all talk. And someone shot him.
The killing of Malcom X was equally as heinous an affront to humanity. No matter what Malcom thought about bullets, or what Charlie thought about guns. Who really gives a shit what either man thought or said at a moment like this - what the fuck kind of people entertain in any level assassination of private citizens because of things they say in a political debate forum?
How hard is that not to make bedrock among us - on a debate forum?!!!
The part that makes me wonder is how much violence we're already responsible for.
And that is pretty fucked up.
Yeah, but “how much violence we are already responsible for” is also a diversion. More fog. This is an easy one if you have any principles at all.
Unless you really mean to ask: when should we be allowed to kill our political debate opponents?
IsnÂ’t that the same as asking, when can we throw out the rules of any game weÂ’ve all agreed to play for sake of some other new game? As if in such circumstances there is such a thing as a judge or ground to answer such question anymore.
We donÂ’t get to bring a gun to a debate and have a debate. No one should celebrate what happened on any level. Charlie was as precious and loved as Malcom, and so many others.
We should be convicting ourselves - instead we build grounds for the next bullet.
———
What logical fallacy is involved here:
- p1: supporting private gun ownership
- p2: saying and recognizing that this will create a platform where private people can wrongfully kill each other
-p3: getting shot dead
Therefore: he asked for it and got what he wanted, or canÂ’t complain.
Count pointed out how this is a stupid argument.
ItÂ’s like a trans man supporting DEI even if hiring that Asian woman means that Trans man wonÂ’t be hired - we donÂ’t have to conclude the trans man asked not to be hired.
Yet I think our resident rigorously genius Banno basically made this argument.
You guys are willing to post page after page showing how we canÂ’t know anything for certain, but ahhh, fuck Charlie, he was a dick about trans people, he said Jesus way too much, and wouldnÂ’t shut up. So heÂ’s dead, letÂ’s move on and talk about Israel, and Trump clearly inciting an insurrectionÂ…
Charlie Kirk didn't deserve what happened to him in the sense that all he did made him worthy of punishment: But we're in a time when speakers of movements are legitimate targets for the propaganda by the deed.
Now, granted, if all we're talking about is Charlie Kirk's assassination then it's a diversion.
I had a particular feeling in relation to his death, what he said, and our continued support for Israel.
And, ultimately, still feel fear at my own numbness.
Unless you really mean to ask: when should we be allowed to kill our political debate opponents?
No, not at all. I tend to see one-off assassinations as ineffective to what I want to achieve.
I'm asking after the justifications for political violence in a world where we condemn this sniper while living as we do. I genuinely don't get how Trump, for instance, can support Israel and condemn the sniper**.
**EDIT: I get it politically, but I mean the whole reaction that Trump joined in with: we condemn this random assassination as if we aren't supporting death on a mass scale elsewhere. In an ethical sense it shouldn't matter the laws, so much, as the deaths and how much they can be prevented. Sending weapons en masse without sanction isn't exactly on par with the reaction against this sniper.
We donÂ’t get to bring a gun to a debate and have a debate. No one should celebrate what happened on any level. Charlie was as precious and loved as Malcom, and so many others.
That's the true Christian*** spirit I'm aware of.
I agree that no one should celebrate death -- that's the path to more death. It's part of why I'm disturbed at my own indifference, even though I can tell you why.
I've felt an absurd feeling I don't know how to describe succinctly since seeing that assassination and trying to contextualize it within what first came to mind. The thing that comes to mind for me is not only should we not celebrate, but we should pay attention to the death we're more directly involved in rather than continue the sensation. At least in light of the deaths we can prevent if we choose to act.
***EDIT: Given the circumstances I ought say the true Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist spirit, and really all life and freedom loving people, but I succumbed to rhetorical devices.
Reply to Moliere
We do not know what the killer had in mind. The label "fascist" has been pinned to too many donkeys to form a shared idea. We have had experience of the MAGA version of our circumstances. Maybe they have been hoisted by their own petard. Maybe we will find out about that. Maybe not.
What puzzles me about the MAGA message is to be told there is a war going on but also not a war. The absorption of 1/6 as a valid form of political expression versus preventing a hostile takeover by a particular cartel.
By contrast, I submit that John and Malcolm had a clear idea about the difference between war and peace.
Yes, and never will really -- I'm trying to make sense of things so posit various "motivations" that aren't really from evidence but an attempt to make sense of things.
The label "fascist" has been pinned to too many donkeys to form a shared idea.
I disagree in that I think it's a social phenomena worth identifying.
We have had experience of the MAGA version of our circumstances. Maybe they have been hoisted by their own petard. Maybe we will find out about that. Maybe not.
What puzzles me about the MAGA message is to be told there is a war going on but also not a war. The absorption of 1/6 as a valid form of political expression versus preventing a hostile takeover by a particular cartel.
I am, for several reasons. If Israel were committing genocide against the "Palestinians" why wouldn't it root out and presumably execute its own Israeli Arabs? Israeli Arabs and "Palestinians" are really the same people, and only differ due to location and citizenship. If anything, I'd expect Israel to start with its own Arabs. It would have been like Germany leaving its own Jews unharassed.
It's like if you're a father with children and you opened the door into your kid's room one day and your kid randomly said "oh I'm a nation all of a sudden and you can be my citizen". You'd smack that little s**t into next week.
To make this example better, we need to imagine that that the kid is older than the adult because Judaism is older than Islam and has had a presence in Israel for longer. We also need to imagine that the "kid" had several houses (i.e. kingdoms) built in that location before the father was alive. Third, that the ancient child's religious/cultural identity was formed in those ancient kingdoms (houses), making him indigenous.
Analogies to family dynamics aren't good ways of understanding geo-politics if that's where we end. If that's what we have to work with then OK that's what we work with.
But political conflict is not a family dynamic. There are no "older siblings" or "Daddys". There is no such thing as an "immature" country from the political perspective such that another country can "guide" it. When a more developed country "guides" another there is always a realpolitik motive. The family analogies aren't helpful in understanding these sorts of relationships.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 16, 2025 at 23:01#10134580 likes
Reply to Moliere
That report points to the problem of expecting a manifesto to explain actions. It also highlights how unconcerned the suspect was about killing someone as a matter of principle. That is something we do not know.
The effort to put this in a box is all that can be known for sure so far.
Reply to Moliere
Now we have Vance taking over as the host of the Kirk podcast while ABC is pulling the Kimmel show for saying the killer has MAGA roots. I don't think these attempts to control the message will succeed but it is about to get ugly.
Reply to Moliere
Voting is good. Supporting institutions as well as we can in relation to our capacities and opportunities is good.
One way I look at it is that MAGA has to reproduce to become a force in the next generation. If they completely "own the libs" the environment of the first generations will lose their meaning. Becoming a victim of one's own success does happen to people.
Reply to Moliere, well, the better cooperation, the better the chances. Argue the case for all to see, gather the voters, point out inconsistencies and faults, keep it concise or otherwise accurate, broadcast, ... (As an aside, I have a feeling that Rubio has rehearsed "I did so because of so-and-so".)
Anybody else notice that Charlie Kirk's face was too small for his head?
This is a genocidal statement that would result in systemic discrimination, incarceration, enslavement, and eventual killing off of all those with relatively small face-to-head ratios. You are the next Hitler and must be stopped. Nothing short of your immediate arrest will suffice. I would relocate somewhere else if I were you.
Also, what are you trying to do? Get us all cancelled and have Jamal named #1 international fugitive by INTERPOL? Have some tact, mate.
Voting is good. Supporting institutions as well as we can in relation to our capacities and opportunities is good.
I have to admit I was mocking voting in this retort. Mostly at the individual level -- i.e. if you're organized then voting can make a difference in some circumstances, but we don't live in a country where voting has much influence if you're just an individual voting in practical terms. That it exists influences conversations, but it's also well managed so that it doesn't influence policy.
One way I look at it is that MAGA has to reproduce to become a force in the next generation. If they completely "own the libs" the environment of the first generations will lose their meaning. Becoming a victim of one's own success does happen to people.
I'd say that's already there. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Rittenhouse -- the fascists have a multi-generational movement willing to utilize violence to purge the state of those unclean. That connections from the young to the old is part of why I say Trump has bloomed into full on fascism rather than the proto-fascism of yesteryears. They have enough people thinking like them that purifying the state with state powers are seen as legitimate uses of state power.
The illegals, the drug addicts, the unemployed, the disabled, the "antifa", the progressives, the atheists, the Muslims, the Jews, the anti-anythingTrumpsays-ers -- time to finally get rid of these dirty individuals so we can make ourselves great again.
This is a genocidal statement that would result in systemic discrimination, incarceration, enslavement, and eventual killing off of all those with relative small face-to-head ratios. You are the next Hitler and must be stopped. Nothing short of your immediate arrest will suffice. I would relocate somewhere else if I were you.
None of that is true.
OutlanderSeptember 18, 2025 at 22:13#10138000 likes
Says the boy who tosses a snowball off a winter-kissed hill overlooking a remote village that is warned: "You shouldn't do that. It could cause an avalanche."
Also, to be technical. The last sentence is completely true. I would in fact relocate if I were him. Just to see what else is around, if nothing else. You're smart, but not very thorough.
Says the boy who tosses a snowball off a winter-kissed hill overlooking a remote village that is warned: "You shouldn't do that. It could cause an avalanche."
But how would I know which way it'd go unless I toss? This is a relatively safe environment for exploring thoughts.
Also, to be technical. The last sentence is completely true. I would in fact relocate if I were him. Just to see what else is around, if nothing else. You're smart, but not very thorough.
What I thought is untrue is that @frank didn't make "a genocidal statement" -- whatever the motive or result that's not what the statement does or is intended for.
It's important to me that "genocide" is understood in a fairly technical manner -- as well as "fascist"
Else it runs the risk of trivializing horrors I want to talk about and understand.
Glad to at least be "smart" ;)
I agree that I'm not thorough -- that's where things get hard. I like to pursue it but that's the hard part. And ultimately it's why I post threads like this: I don't know where I'll land at the end and that's why I wanted to talk about it.
This recent assassination compared to the ongoing genocide is what inspired the thought. There's certainly a contrast there in terms of exposure (the assassination) and impact (the genocide).
I don't think @frank was making a comment towards genocide or even something that'd result in genocide, but attempting to make light of a heavy situation.
Reply to Moliere
You are reading off the ledger of the true believers. I don't think they have the last word. The system may be rigged in most ways, but voting is still important. Otherwise, the choice is as Malcom X put it.
The electorate who brought in Trump were seduced. Now that they have tied the knot and headed down Highway 61 with the guy, they are learning stuff. The agricultural support for him is getting hit hard by ICE and starting trade wars with everybody. People are learning the hard way what destruction of government services and regulation involves.
If all that has no effect, I will consider restoring the crossbow.
My view is that the way to deal with people like Kirk is to engage them reasonably. Try to figure out what they are actually angry about etc. I had a Russian student once who hated gays virulently. Puzzled by this, I asked him what he would do if his own son turned out to be gay. His first answer was "kill him". He later rowed back on that a bit, but to call him anti-gay was, let's say, an understatement. Still, he was generally speaking a nice guy and because I knew him and liked him before he revealed himself to be a homophobe, I didn't stop liking him and trying to convince him he was misguided. I met him two years after that incident when I no longer taught him and he had dropped the homophobia. Don't know why. But whatever happened, it was better than someone shooting him in the head.
At the same time, let's not downplay the fact that homophobic, racist etc propaganda, by people who are actually listened to (unlike my student) has real world consequences for those who are the victims of it. Anti-gay rhetoric in Uganda led eventually to a law that punishes homosexuality by life imprisonment and, in some cases, death. So, this is not a hypothetical. We don't have to condone essentially self-defeating acts of violence to realize that hateful rhetoric is dangerous and, over time, can instigate political changes that threaten lives.
My view is that the way to deal with people like Kirk is to engage them reasonably.
But of course, and while I appreciate you have other things you'd like to do, you might want to listen to Kirk a bit (if you haven't) to really see where he stood. He was not a firebrand and he really didn't spew hatred in the sense that I think some on the left think he did. He represented, to be sure, a distateful element for the left, but he was pretty much a rank and file devout Christian who spoke the tenants of his faith. He did not suggest anyone should kill or hate. That was not his message. And this isn't me defending his Christian views because I don't hold them.
The secular "religious" view holds the protection of homosexual and transsexual rights in very high regard and it also places a very high priority on things like climate change. I can respect these views, as I can of any other highly prioritized view among a group, but those holding these secular views have to reflect upon the fact that a war for their cause is no different than any other holy war one might want to declare. What also has to be remembered is that the views I've itemized are not the views of your grandparents and maybe not your parents, meaning they are extremely new in terms of what we typically accept as societal norms. Villifying someone who hasn't adopted the morality du jour, even if it should one day prove itself worthy of eternal acceptance, is not a realistic response to someone not being as receptive to change as you might be.
My point here is just that I see nothing but unmitigated tragedy in Kirk's death, unreduced an iota that he might have held views conflicting with my own. The world is a worse place for his death. Period. This view is a largely held one, and it's why those who hold otherwise are being cast aside daily as unfit for civil discourse. Whether that is the proper response or not might be a question, but condemning them is not.
..In October 2023, Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show that "Jewish donors have been the Number 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border, neoliberal, quasi?Marxist policies ... This is a beast created by secular Jews, and now it's coming for Jews", and also suggested that these Jews control "not just the colleges; it's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it". Soon after, he said that "Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."[211] Kirk called on American Jews to stop "subsidizing your own demise by supporting institutions that breed Anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers".[144]
In November 2023, Kirk said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."[212] He went on to claim "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors", but said he was glad that some donors were reconsidering.[213] Some Jewish public figures have defended Kirk against accusations of antisemitism, citing his pro-Israel stance. Kirk was funded by some Jewish donors, including Bernard Marcus.[214]
In July 2025, Kirk warned his followers against hatred of Jews, calling it "evil" and "demonic".[215] He was quoted as saying that "no non-Jewish person my age has a longer or clearer record of support for Israel, sympathy with the Jewish people, or opposition to antisemitism than I do".[144] However, Kirk was also accused of antisemitism by multiple people and organizations;[144][212][216] the Anti-Defamation League accused Kirk of creating a "vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists".[144]
Reply to frank I don't live under any illusions. Anti-semitism, racism, bigotry, various brands of phobias exist all too frequently, and we remain suspicious of those unlike us. This isn't to offer an excuse, but it's just the reality that one has to accept to get along in the world. Everyone is Archie Bunker. Lovable and not so lovable given the right day.
But Jews are a diverse group. There are a thousand miles of difference between Hannah Einbinder (look her up), Netanhyahu, and Menachem Schneerson (look him up) and many others. There were in fact many openly communist Jews and many are very liberal, but many like Hanover (look him up), not so much.
If your objective it to make me remove Kirk from the Saint list, I never put him there, but if it's to have some understanding for those who felt a fleeting sense of joy at his having been shot in the neck, you'll be wasting your time. Sympathy for the devil is one of the highest sins.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 19, 2025 at 21:23#10140120 likes
There do seem to be some influential Jews who hate Israel and the West more generally. Soros would be among them. As mentioned, there are wonderful and not-so-wonderful Jews. I think it's clear at this point that influential NGOs, some funded by Jews like Soros, have been financing the pro-Palestine movement and facilitating the flow of mass migration to the West. There seems to be a long history of contributions to left-wing causes.
If your objective it to make me remove Kirk from the Saint list, I never put him there, but if it's to have some understanding for those who felt a fleeting sense of joy at his having been shot in the neck, you'll be wasting your time.
You said he represented views that might be distasteful to the left. I think it was a little worse than that. He openly disagreed with the principle of separation of church and state, he advocated Christian nationalism, and he embraced the replacement conspiracy theory.
I agree his assassination was a terrible thing, for a variety of reasons. And I'm sure there are evil Jews in the world, but when a person is found to have rambled on about that from a stage in front of crowds of people, a little blip ought to appear on your Neo-Nazi radar. I'm just saying, stop saying he was just a regular devout Christian. That's not true.
BitconnectCarlosSeptember 19, 2025 at 23:05#10140370 likes
Comments (312)
Unless I'm missing something, at least. I could be.
The reason I post this is because of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. It's also a classic speech for political philosophy and worth visiting on its own right, but that event is why I thought of this.
The bread-and-butter interpretation I'd give is: if the ballot works then sure.
But if it doesn't, then there's only one unfortunate answer.
There is, in addition, a certain irony that Charlie Kirk advocated for the 2nd amendment on the basis that random murder is the price to pay for freedom.
Youre a mod?
Thats pretty fucked up.
And that is pretty fucked up.
And -- c'mon, he really was in favor of the 2nd amendment even if it results in gun violence.
I don't celebrate political violence, and I don't condemn it -- it's like condemning physics -- this is how we still do things.
How do we, in a philosophical sense, tackle this question?
:up:
Is that the same? Would you avoid having your sentiments outraged? Let them speak their words, even though those words result in your collective being ousted?
My collective? IÂ’m just one guy. But yes, I would would leave rather than resort to violence.
I figured you'd prefer if they could stay rather than be pushed out.
There are widespread fears that we're heading into dictatorship, so it's normal to think about violent conflict. I think if Malcolm X's threat had become reality it would have been devastating.
I think all we can do is give a thought to the grief that guy's family must be going through and carry on.
Also, the motivation doesn't matter to the question: I am inspired by the current event, but am broaching a larger question about political philosophy.
Here the bullet was used, whatever the motivation.
Oddly the ballot could not be used against a speaker that seems to have influence -- was there a politician who said, "Defund Charlie Kirk"?
Probably somewhere if we dig deep enough but you know that voting for that politician wouldn't do anything to his private career that happened to be political.
I'm using Malcolm X as a philosopher. He has a point -- I guess the question is, philosophically, "How do we carry on?"
"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth 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."
It just seems so...karmic.
Perhaps we should honour him by treating his murder in his own terms. Any empathy expressed for his family is a made up New Age notion that does a lot of damage. Gun violence is a natural consequence of the freedom to own guns, and should be treated as much the same as the inevitable deaths resulting from cars.
We might best honour him with a gun ownership rally on the site of his death.
:roll:
Not your finest moment there, dude.
Even so I think this way, or try to:
As for The Malcolm X issue of ballots vs. bullets, I am strongly in favor of 'the people' organizing themselves to engage in effective politics for the best interests of the country. "Best interests" will be contested, of course. What's in the best interests for small farmers might not be what is in the interests of urban dwellers. It seems quite clear that the legal framework in which gun manufacturers operate (very weak product liability, for example) is not in the best interest of anyone except gun manufacturers. (Gun manufacturers contribute much less to GDP than pet food manufacturers. The economy can flourish without gun makers!)
The 2nd Amendment / gun fetishists have grossly distorted what the constitution claims, and have in the process created a major menace. Sure, someone's decision to shoot up a school or kill some notable person may be highly irrational, but the more significant fact is that an irrational person someone contemplating mayhem will have no difficulty finding a well-stocked gun shop.
So, no sympathy from me for 2nd amendment victims of gun violence.
Perhaps we will reach a sufficient level of national disunity that we will be faced with a civil war. When and if that day arrives, we can get a gun, join a local militia, and blast away at the designated enemy. But we are not at that day now, and we do not seem to be on the verge of that day.
Vigorous, focused, competent political activism is still a better bet for a civil society, good government, honest business, and a free citizenry.
Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possible here? There are so many cheap and easy ways to kill a person. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer, a screwdriver, messing with the gas tank, following him home and running him off the road, tampering with food, running him over on a morning jog, the list goes on.
We should honor the OP by sticking to the topic and not letting this turn into some weird, morbid anti-obituary.
Pretend he was killed by a banana by a deranged, politically motivated assassin and let's get back on track please. Sheesh. No shame.
Of course! The lot of us actually disclose very little pertinent information about our drab wretched lives. Some people here seem to feel they might be giving away private information if they acknowledge which continent they live on.
I have no desire to turn this discussion towards the 2nd amendment and all that -- I've stated my case that I'm in favor of the Australian buy-back program, in some capacity.
I'm asking about what a group ought do when they realize voting not only didn't work this one time, but won't work because it's set up that way.
Consider the Electoral College that still exists in thinking about this.
I envy your position lol.
I think organizing is the only way out, which I take to be the same as what you say here, with anarchist modifications:
Quoting BC
Not reasonable statement? Replace “guns” with “cars”. Still unreasonable?
Quoting RogueAI
The irony isnt lost on me, but I think Kirk would 100% include his own death as part of that acceptable trade off. Say what you want about Kirk, he did not lack conviction. To the point above, we certainly accept that trade off with driving vehicles dont we? Vehicle accidents kill more than guns, why dont we ban cars? Or make everyone drive 5mph? And thats just for our convenience, there are many who think right to bear arms is much more important.
Firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people quickly. And from far away. It would be rather difficult for the Las Vegas mass shooter, for example, to do the damage he did with a screwdriver. Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane.
OK -- in that way I'm interested in a 2nd amendment discussion, but I want it to be a sub-plot: first political violence in the world and then 2nd amendment.
Vice-versa I feel like, tho this is germane, it'd turn into a debate we've had many times before, whereas I'm trying to use a case which might spark some thoughts that aren't the talking points.
But lets talk about how justified it was?
I need my car to go to work and the store and other things. I don't need my gun for anything, except to assuage my irrational fear that someone will break in and I'll be unarmed.
Quoting DingoJones
Really? You think so? You think if an angel came down and said, "Charlie, I can make this assassin miss you be a hair, or you can be gunned down and leave your wife and kids behind and you can become a martyr for the 2nd amendment. What shall it be?" Charlie would have picked martyr?
Again, cars have important uses outside of killing things.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nick-fuentes-slams-charlie-kirk-over-support-for-israel/id390071758?i=1000723989144
Are you sure it wasn't one of them?
Sure.
I'm still disgusted with the means of politics. I've often found that raising this disgust about other such scenarios results in excuses so I'm a bit skeptical.
I want to point to the genocide in Gaza at the moment more than this sensationalist plot in asking the question, though. I am looking for a wider perspective than this one event.
And, yeah, it's a disturbing thought.
No idea how Kirk would react to an angel. That is not the trade off I stated I was referencing your direct quote not your non-sequitur hypothetical scenario. Accepting that you yourself would be included in a statistic is obviously not the same as choosing to die a martyr.
Quoting RogueAI
Sure, I agree a car is a more useful tool. More necessary to my day to day life certainly. I donÂ’t think the right to have a gun is about variety of use or day to day need though.
My point with that analogy was specifically about accepting some deaths as a trade off for freedom to have a gun. We do the exact same thing with cars, we accept that some people (many more than gun deaths actually) are going to die as a trade off for our speed limits and traffic volume (or as a trade off for the freedom to drive and if you prefer).
Nope, it may well turn out to be them or any number of other motivesÂ…but I doubt youÂ’d wanna bet much money on it :wink:
If it turns out to be a jilted lover or something, Ill stand corrected.
Yet the question is -- the ballot or the bullet? How do we justify each position, philosophically?
Again, because cars are essential for many people in this society. Driving is inherently dangerous and we accept the risks because cars are so necessary for so many. That's not analogous to guns.
Yeah, they are, but I want to sideline that notion for this topic.
Im honestly not sure what you mean here.
Oh, suppose I say, "There is a genocide in Gaza", then the response -- not from you but due to media -- would be "Israel has a right to defend itself"
But that's not what they're doing. They're committing a genocide.
Yet if they succeed, as the United States did, they'll win. If they eliminate everyone then they'll get to keep the land. We passed on the genocide stick to them.
How do you vote to influence that?
I never lived there. I only surfed with them. I would prefer that that they werenÂ’t burnt out of their homes.
IÂ’m not sure what any of this has to do with ballots or bullets though. My comment was regarding people who would resort to murder in order to make a political statement or affect politics.
You have to listen to your gut, I guess. Is a slave justified in killing the entire master's family if it means he'll be able to get a decent chance to escape? Probably. Would the Jews in Nazi Germany have been justified in gunning down every government official they came across? Certainly. If this country bans abortion entirely and a government official tries to step between a woman and the sympathetic doctor about to perform the abortion and she has a gun? I would support her using deadly force.
Cars are not analogous to guns when it comes to necessity, I agree. Thankfully for my point I am not making an analogy about necessity. Im making an analogy about the trade-off for lives, in that sense cars and guns are analogous.
I think my points stand.
In the case of cars, we're willing to accept a certain amount of deaths to drive at speeds that make cars economically viable. Nobody would drive a car at 5mph on the freeway. We sacrifice safety for efficiency.
How is that the same with guns?
I see. Honestly Im not really buying your broader premise here. Im not even a fan of Kirks but Im not going to pretend him and gaza have anything pertinent in common for the sake of justifying violence and assassination.
Or, if if it doesn't, as you bemoaned this is not a thread on regulating weapons.
This is a thread that could apply to people in Britain, Spain, Germany, etc. etc. can participate in.
It doesn't matter.
It's the responses to it -- like Donald Trumps -- that made me think this way. "Well... c'mon Trump how many kids have you authorized to be killed today?"
I said that about Obama before if that's a worry. And Biden. etc.
But now we live in a time when we're actively supplying weapons to Israel who is committing a genocide.
Yet the media harps on about the shame of what was a talking head and memorializing it.
Malcolm was right.
Once you realize it's not just a "this time" but an "every time I'm going to lose" -- what else is there?
Being funneled into NGO's that blow smoke up your ass, or....?
What do you do if Trump&co declare martial law and suspend elections? And then try to collect all the guns from registered Democrats and suspected LGBTQ people?
Right. Let's stick to that, then, please. As the OP, it would be more effective if you correct those who deviate from your purported line of discussion.
Voting isn't there to "work", it's there to aggregate and determine the will of the people into a social "law" or reality that becomes a binding law in accordance to a a particular Constitution.
Now, many people believe, the average person is fairly stupid. I am one of them. So, naturally it will lead to stupid things which lead to suffering and existential anger. That much is not very difficult to ascertain.
This is why we have "influencers" who try to become barons and counts in their own social circles, eventually hoping to become bishops and lords, and perhaps one day, even greater.
But in the end, per your OP, it comes down to more people disagree with what you believe than those who agree. Therefore, your belief is essentially ignored in favor of that of the majority. It doesn't matter who's wrong or who's right, what matters is that there's more of them than you. Again, humanity is generally it's own worst enemy. People are not very smart. Especially in the modern age where things that used to take a lifetime of practice can be done in the push of a button. The mind looks for the path of least resistance, in just about every measurable way and aspect.
So, if your idea is powerful enough to convince others to abandon their ingrained beliefs in favor for your own, you could try that route and "educate" people. Hence the old saying, that I may have just made up, all war ultimately starts and ends in the mind. Otherwise, you either accept the fact your idea or worldview is less popular than others, and live out your life out in quiet dignity around those who share it. Or you move somewhere with people who do share your worldview.
Killing doesn't change anything. Not really. Not after a time. Humanity always melds and forms into its default state given enough "freedom" and lack of direction. It's like a pendulum. It goes back. And forth. Back. And forth. Once you understand this, you too can be content in this world of malaise, wretchedness, and general stupidity.
And, yeah, not give them up. We don't live in a time when "giving them up" is something we can do.
The United States is not a democracy because of so many reasons. The easiest way to see this is to look at the polls of what people want and see what politicians vote for.
The hard way to see this is to look at what Citizen's United exacerbated.
I like the idea of "I trust you enough that if I don't win it'll carry on"
But these are fascists that want to eliminate gays and make sure we're a Christian nation and continue to make war.
I think this is wrong. Killing thousands of British soldiers year after year certainly changed things in the 1770's. Same with Vietnamese killing Americans, Afghanistans killing Russians, etc.
It is the same in the “sacrifice” regard. The trade off of lives is analogous, not the reasons why or even what those lives are traded for. We are willing to trade lives, if it is a problem to trade lives (for anything… I think) then cars are a much better place to start than guns numbers wise.
Anyway, obviously I didnt state the analogy clearly enough and I hope that even if you disagree its at least more clear what I meant.
No, that's not entirely inaccurate. It certainly changes things in the short term. But in reality, why did any group oppose any other group? It's the same thing as two kids in school who become rivals over what the other has or does not have.
I'm reminded of the old Adage: "You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him for very long."
Which means, human nature will always be what it is: a catalyst for forces both known and unknown, both sought and reviled, both useful and useless. Don't you get it? We are pitiful creatures who seek a plateau over those around us, one that ultimately contains nothing but our worst desires, fears, and impulses. Everything we sought to avoid... now confined to us in short, small space for all time we can never hope to escape from. What madness is this we call humanity? Will it ever end? Could it perhaps be salvaged? Saved from itself, somehow? No matter the cost if all peoples and nations are reduced to a few dozen living in huts and caves far away from one another. Perhaps, as others suggest, history does indeed repeat itself. Perhaps this is the destiny of man. Only time will tell. Only time will tell.
His was an act of pure evil, worthy of nothing but unequivocal condemnation, unnuanced, with no hidden irony, intelligence or purpose that could possibly give us reason to think it had an ounce of good within it.
As noted, the problems of the world are complex and varied, but the most glaring problem is that every post in this thread doesn't read like mine.
The only oppressed victim in this case was Charlie Kirk. Do you believe his family deserves revenge? Perhaps.
IÂ’m with you on voting, though. If one votes he acquiesces to the system, and his own serfdom.
What he was I don't know -- I don't want to cast him as an anti-hero at all, at least, and I want to assure you that this makes sense to me.
Quoting Hanover
I can't go that far -- else I would not have posed the question. But the sentiment is appreciated because that's sort of the quandary, on the ethical side.
I don't care to go into his particulars in the sense of just desserts because that sounds like a good way to have a bad time while not addressing the question.
One thing about political violence, in the United States, is that we're a country founded on revolution. And not all those acts were exactly good -- these acts are part and parcel of how we do business, even civilly.
In such a world I don't want to set up heroes and anti-heroes. That'd lead to even more death -- as much of a cynic as I am I do think all life is important, even Mr Kirk's.
You didn't say that, of course; Kirk did. And it's specious. Having a gun never protected "God-given rights", other than the holy sanctity of private property--and then only maybe. What best protects civil rights is a conscientious cooperative civil society.
But I wonder whether Kirk had any limits to this sort of justification. In 2023 44,000 people died of gunshots. That's quite a few. Year after year, 40,000 here, 38,000 there, it begins to add up to to a sizable city.
We get used to the statistics of excess deaths -- those above and beyond what are the result of natural causes, like heart attacks, cancer, and strokes.
Americans feel they are entitled to do what they want to do, carry a loaded gun into church, drive the way they want to drive, take whatever drugs are on offer, and so on. 39,000 people died in auto accidents last year--quite a bit less than used to be slaughtered on th highways. In 2023, 80,391 people died of drug overdoses -- down from 110,000 in 2023. Are these acceptable numbers to justify "freedom of the gun", "freedom of the road", "freedom of the drug"? Taken together, guns, cars, and drugs killed roughly 160,000 people last year. I consider that a monstrous cost for a policy of non-interference in lethal activities.
I mean, and you know I hate having to correct you, but you literally know nothing about the shooter. In all my years of judging you by your posts, yes I do that, I've never taken you to be the sort who grandstands. He could have been mentally ill and apparently some political parties are insensitive to the needs of those who don't happen to concern them. Kind of a "oh well, not my business" sentiment many people have in this harsh dog eat dog world, specifically to the mentally unwell or otherwise less efficient than you or I. You know that. Unless you have some information that has not been released to the public, I don't see how you could disagree to the possibility of my alternate suggestion.
Typical Jesus hyperbole. But when it is exemplified for once it seems an appropriate lament.
But I prefer this sentiment, from the American Jesus, addressed to the Masters of the 2nd amendment:
[quote=Bob Dylan, Masters of War]And I hope that you die
And your deathÂ’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And IÂ’ll watch while youÂ’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And IÂ’ll stand oÂ’er your grave
Â’Til IÂ’m sure that youÂ’re dead
[/quote]
But the last word must surely go to the great admiral, Nelson.
It's.. just a song, man. Just because I paint a picture of a war or scene with people deceased doesn't mean I want to go out and kill somebody. Jeez. I always painted you as wiser than that.
I don't think you did, Bob. And nor would I.
Quoting BC
Yeah, and can you force people to behave? Without violent indoctrination? Without capital punishment and constant fear of death? No, you cannot. So yes, as sad as it is, some people choose (or do they?) to be like animals. Animals are not welcome in society. At least not in the capacity as functional, moral human beings. So when an animal, who again, chooses to be such, acts like such, they are treated as such. I don't know about you, but I happen to feel my life may be just a tad more valuable than that of a rabid dog. So if a dog, or a so-called "human being" chooses to act like such, it's not even worth the possibility of risk of injury to me. Not even a little sprain. Not even a moment of inconvenience, to be quite frank. If you act like a rabid animal (threaten the life of a law-abiding citizen) that law-abiding citizen has a right to treat you like one. There are no excuses. Education is free. In fact, it's basically the law. No, it is the law. There's nothing to hide behind anymore.
Could the analogy be to a prohibition era bootlegger who goes around touting the benefits of alcohol, says a certain number of alcohol-related deaths are "worth it" so we can freely drink, and then gets nailed by a drunk driver?
I think that it's pretty obvious why this happened. Kirk was part of the rightwing fascists who argues in defense of the second amendment for the purpose of legitimizing hate speech, to move the goal posts of values in society towards hate of certain people in society. He was arguing for violence, literally, through his point of gun deaths necessary to defend the second amendment, but his and others rhetoric was never about defending everyone's speech, it was about defending THEIR speech.
Kirk and people ideologically similar to him are the very same responsible for banning books and silencing people who speak of things like trans rights. It was never about defending the second amendment, it was about transforming society into silencing certain groups of people in favor of the Maga based right.
If you argue for violence, for hate and for polarization, you will eventually get violence, hate and polarization. This isn't about the identity of the killer, it doesn't really matter who that is, because the killer is the symptom of the world that people like Kirk slowly push into reality. This is not literally that "he asked for it", but in some form he did.
I'm always amazed that society has such a bad ability to understand long term consequences. How the dominos fall. How is it so hard for society to grasp that the hateful rhetoric of the far right, spearheaded by Trump, Maga, Farage, Bannon etc. eventually leads to a world that honors that rhetoric?
If anything is to blame for the deaths of Kirk, as well as the deaths of all the unnamed people caused by radicalized right wingers, it's the general hateful rhetoric that dehumanizes and polarize society.
What we're seeing is just the consequence of all of this boiling over. The delusion that this rhetoric is just an expression of freedom of speech, when it's in fact the very definition of hate speech that cause actual consequences for people.
It's easy for the general public, far away form such violence, to just talk about the rhetoric being freedom of speech, but Kirk might be the most noticeable consequence of this dehumanizing, polarizing rhetoric that's been going on for years now.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of looking at this assassination as some isolated event. This is a symptom of our polarized times.
Fighting polarization is the way to mitigate the risks of political violence, and fighting polarization requires us to stop being so naive to the effects of hate speech; of its capacity to move the goal posts of the general public into slowly hating others more and more.
Stop the hateful rhetoric, stop the dehumanization of groups of people in society, stop the dehumanization of political sides. People need to stop being so fucking naive and stupid about these things that erodes society.
I'm not surprised whatsoever that someone like Kirk got killed. If anyone was surprised by it, they don't have a clear understanding of how our modern world behaves.
Sure, we'll have to wait and see if a schizophrenic climbed a roof to take down someone who just happened to be politically divisive and who now hides himself away, or we'll have to see if maybe the shooter was just mistaken, thinking he was engaging in some sort of innocuous behavior that turned to look suspiciously like 1st degree murder, or whatever else we might concoct.
Your approach is to ignore the OP"s concerns (might the shooting be the "by and means necessary" of Malcolm X), but just to say "guys, let's not rush to judgment:." But I'll go out on a limb here and judge the video I saw of a guy shot in the neck while sitting in chair talking on a college campus answering questions and doing whatever social media people do.
But if you're right, and alien abduction or whatnot brought us here, I'll eat crow.
I take great comfort in knowing the naval gazing opinions on our odd board carry no sway
My coworkers wanted to vote on what food to order, and I was like, I'm not a slave, damn you! They totally got my point.
I still want to think through this, though.
The absurdity that I see is in the various shows of horror at political violence. Malcolm X is a person whose opinions on political violence I respect with a coherent cause that makes sense of political violence: the continued oppression against the black community by the powers that be. It makes sense for a person to question the ballot when they cannot vote.
In some sense this is a similar condition to our own revolution: that there was a court and King with say over us as a colony is the justification for founding a state.
Kirk's assassination is the sort of thing that's so small, though, in comparison to what our government is doing -- which, in turn, if we are Americans, that is what we are at least responsible for.
Further, no matter who we vote for our government will continue down this path.
So while I don't know this assassin's motivation I can't help but wonder at the absurdity of condemning it with so much blood on our hands.
I don't see it as an isolated event. That's why I'm bringing Malcolm X and the genocide in Gaza as points of reflection, though I see that also caused confusion: I still don't have this thought, well, fully thought out. That's why I posted on it.
In general the question is the justification of political violence: whether we choose the ballot or the bullet as a political and ethical question, and the various justifications about that.
Would that I could wave a magic wand and restore such trust -- but there's more to it than rhetoric, I think. There are material reasons for the rhetoric.
It's not a lecture. All I've said is screamingly obvious.
Makes sense to me.
****
One of the things I'm noticing is that we are a country constantly at war.
And it's not like soldiers disappear after the war.
In a way what we're seeing is bringing the ethics of the front to the political sphere: the rhetoric for violence doesn't even register as violent. And the actual daily violence isn't spoken about -- people are actually persecuted for being too outspoken about -- until it's a talking head.
In a way this is me expressing my fear at my own numbness at murder. It shouldn't be this way, but here we are.
Yes. When any event is ubiquitous, and everyone is supposed to have an opinion or reaction about it (see the cringey editorials and twitter posts), I ask myself a few questions: 1), why this story and not some other, 2) who decides, and 3) should I really waste much time with it?
Plenty of more important stories happened yesterday. But nonetheless I offer my reaction too, because it’s everywhere. Still, it really does all ring false to me. Kids are getting shot every day— nothing but crickets. No ridiculous and hysterical calls for “war” or races to out-humane everyone.
As for the OP question: sometimes violence is necessary, yeah. When all else fails. Should have been more violence against the Nazis as they were coming to power.
You have to have a license to drive a car.
No license to carry a machine literally designed to kill many people.
Your NRA-like analogy is stupid.
But when and why?
If we can only say it in retrospect -- i.e. the Nazis -- then that's not exactly a guide to when and why.
The quote that pops to mind:
Admittedly it's not an easy thing to broach -- hence the discussion.
I'm still wrapping my mind around this absurd world we live in.
When rule of law doesn't function and democracy is being manipulated... what purpose does the ballot have?
The fact is that almost everyone speaks out in horror against this assassination, but I would argue that there are far more people than people think who behind those words have no problem with it happening.
This is how polarized things have become. In which people play some charade of thoughts and prayers, but view each other as mortal enemies.
So when does this "cold war" become an actual war? When does it become something in which people openly accept themselves to be on a side that shoots the other, rather than playing the charade?
Is the current situation in the US, and even globally, between the far right and most people left of that far right... enough of a divide to spark warranted violence to balance things back from that extreme?
If the political extreme is whatever sparks consequences of death for people in a society, be that direct or indirect (suicides or being left to die), is it warranted to violently fight back at the extreme that caused it? If society can't use rule of law and democratic methods to fight that extreme and that extreme worms its way into actual government... does that warrant revolutionary violence against this status quo?
In hindsight we look back at regimes and wonder why no one fought back before it became this regime. But I would argue that the time before those regimes look almost exactly as how it is now. We can't know if the US marches towards an authoritarian regime before it actually happens.
So is this a time that we in the future will look back on and wonder... why didn't anyone do anything before it was too late?
Will the assassin who tried to kill Trump be viewed as a hero who failed if we end up in a dictatorship under Trump? Like operation Valkyrie?
To define what warrants political violence as being good demands perfect knowledge of the future. Maybe many previous successful assassinations actually prevented something we didn't know would happen, no one knows.
It's why I think The Dead Zone is a really good philosophical experiment for this topic.
Why? If weÂ’re assess that a person, a movement, a cult, a government, etc., will cause great destruction / murder / suffering in the future. No one has a crystal ball, but there is good evidence.
As to when— once certain lines are crossed. I think the Trump administration has pretty much crossed those lines, but I look for the ignoring of court holdings — provided the Supreme Court’s Trump-appointed members don’t continually rubber stamp his blatantly illegal moves. Once that happens, the military will have to make a choice whether to uphold Trump or the constitution. If they choose Trump, then the only recourse is states leaving the union and people fighting back if the army tries to stop it.
But thatÂ’s me.
The absurd situation is when the screamingly obvious doesn't even register -- what had been bad or good or indifferent isn't even named or thought about.
For myself, at least, when I reflect from a position that wants pacifism I end up here: So the world hates this idea because it's(EDIT: "violence is") justified sometimes.
How and when? It feels so absurd.
Quoting Christoffer
Not the one I'd like.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree that hits the topic.
I'm still thinking through and so didn't address your thoughts in between, but wanted to say something.
Quoting Mikie
The military is very Republican, and basically is into war. So that doesn't give me high hopes, but is realistic.
You need anotherÂ’s vote to decide what food to order? No wonder.
ItÂ’s a stupid analogy because in that case youÂ’re not operating under the illusion that youÂ’re participating in government, that a government job-holder can represent you and your interests while deciding the conditions of your life, and that you have some sort of say in power. The whole process is at best performative piffle for thralls, at worst, the signing over of yourself as property.
Oh, I'm unfortunately aware of such sentiments.
It's not just one person, let's say.
Good question.
I want to focus on this notion of "balance", in particular, because that seems to be a concept in play in these discussions -- if we could trust one another well enough that what the other does, even if I wouldn't do it, then "balance" is at least adjacent to a good goal.
But we don't live in a time where "balance" is possible.
I don't know if the violence is warranted. That's the question, in the face of the absurd world we live in.
That's similar to the reflection I'm having.
If so then we never have warrant for political violence, since no one has perfect knowledge of the future.
The wilderness awaits you, Buck. Flee.
That would be an analogy of the irony of a gun guy getting shot, sure.
It is, yep.
Quoting Moliere
That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.
"Fucked up" is the correct description here.
I would say the irony is more that the right to bear arms only secures liberty if those bearing arms are (at least somewhat) virtuous and capable of self-governance (collectively and individually). Even if one grants it great importance, it still seems that it will be, at best, a right oriented towards a secondary good.
With "the ballot" the same issue occurs as with "the bullet." Simply having elections does not produce good governance nor "progress," nor justice, nor liberty. There are plenty of examples of extremely dysfunctional nations that nonetheless host relatively free and fair elections. There are important prerequisites for self-determination; many I'd argue are more important than democracy (and indeed, they can be eroded by democracy or liberalism/consumerism in some cases). Republican government might crown the achievement of self-governance, and it might even be a means towards it (although by no means a foolproof one), since it creates a system where poor leadership is punished (of course, in dysfunctional democracies, good leadership is often punished and demagoguery rewarded). But people who cannot govern themselves as individuals can hardly be expected to collectively each other. It's the same way worker's collectives could create great workplaces, but often didn't.
Too often I think we tend to think of democracy as a good in itself. Perhaps it is, or at least can be. It can lead to people taking a strong ownership over the common good. It hardly seems to today though. Likewise with the right to bear arms. But it seems obvious that places like the Republic of Korea and Singapore have provided for not only a better life, but even a better commonwealth and form of citizenship without full democracy than places like Afghanistan and Iraq had despite having free and fair elections. So too, there are plenty of places that are awash with weapons with little by way of liberty or a common wealth; the Central African Republic is a fine example.
I hope you've seen I've said as much.
You're right that ": But" is the whole schtick -- that's the question I'm posing.
When is the schtick justified, if ever?
That we live in a fucked up world is part of my lament here.
A depressing--and not at all realistic--response.
A "conscientious cooperative civil society" isn't forced -- it is reared from childhood. You have to teach children -- who become adults -- how to behave.
Does this result in perfect compliance with the law under any and all circumstances? Does this absolutely prevent violence under any and all circumstances? No. What it does is result in a LOW level of unlawful and violent behavior.
Do such societies exist? Certainly they do. Most of us live within such societies.
Many of us also live within societies which are fraying, owing to excesses of free enterprise in such businesses as gun manufacture, gambling, illicit drug use, and the like.
If "the ballot" and "the bullet" are the same then it shouldn't matter which anyone chooses -- it's the results that matter.
I don't think you believe this at all I'm more asking you to clarify that assertion.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I am a skeptic of liberal democracy in the sense usually meant: A representative government with a division of powers and rules which define when and who gets to be the decider, and various rights to property.
Not that I wanted to be, but *gestures at the world*
But I don't think we're democratic exactly -- so while we're responsible for our government's actions we're also not in charge of what they do, no matter how hard you try.
I suppose I'd believe democracy doesn't work once I see it in action. At least a little bit more than a first-past-the-post representative government with an electoral college wherein money is what heavily determines who gets to be the decider, wherein the parties draw their own districts, and wherein the intelligence agencies of the government infiltrate social movements in order to disrupt them so that we remain the same.
Conflict here being: I admire John Brown, Eugene Debs, and various others who are heroes to my mind: I thought of these two because one did it with the bullet and the other did it with the ballot.
The OP would not be at all provocative if it were presented this abstractly, simply asking the question of when violence is permitted and when it is not. The OP, however, presented the question of whether the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified under the logic employed during the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting that the plight of todayÂ’s left is much like the plight of African Americans in the 1960s, and so now is the time to take up arms.
One must wonder if anyone so repulsed by Charlie Kirk actually watched his videos. He was a Christian conservative to be sure, but not a firebrand. His shtick was to debate college students who would approach the mic.
One must also wonder if anyone who finds consistency between KirkÂ’s assassin and Malcolm X has actually read Malcolm X.
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.
If you actually think itÂ’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. It is a conversation with someone who doesnÂ’t know basic right from wrong.
Yes.
What else is there?
Quoting Hanover
I said it's murder.
I'm suggesting that this isn't the only murder we're responsible for -- so pacifism becomes an absurd dream.
Yes, I don't know basic right from wrong -- how could we in this world? Who does?
They, more often than not, suffer for these beliefs and move on with their lives when they can -- but also get eaten up by the harsher people amongst us, and forgotten.
Mr Kirk held views -- he held views that are against the gays, for instance, and expressing them kind of views has effects.
He's not a peaceful individual sitting at a college campus just having a conversation -- he's a professional propagandist spreading hate for the FREAKS.
Insofar that anyone is against THE FREAKS then it's really just an existential question for me: Do I want to live or not?
In spite of everything I do.
Mourning the haters of FREAKS wanting a Christian nation is hard to do. I'm willing to go so far as saying killing is evil.
But that's kind of the thing: We are killers, like it or not. We have more kills on our hands than the 1 guy shot yesterday.
So do we apply that same ire and disappointment to ourselves?
Unfortunately, this isn't even registered -- it's not good, bad, indifferent -- it's something so far beyond the subject that it's meaningless fluff.
Though the way you put it here -- sure.
I'm hoping that I've made my point clear enough that I'm not advocating for "any public speaker with such and such a view is good to be shot by any random citizen because of their views"
I'd much rather not live in a world like that.
I have a hard time caring, however, in the face of our genocide.
Whether it's the left or not for people dealing with the war against Gaza it seems to me that the bullet is justified. No politician wants to step up to stop supplying arms, and many people against what's happening in Gaza are "right wing", but not fascist.
But the story of the day is this -- so... if you care about Gaza, the ballot or the bullet?
I, myself, would like our states to represent us, but they don't.
No taxation without....
I agree it's not a close call. It's the first person I thought of in the moment that has a coherent philosophy of political violence.
Do you wonder if I've read him, for reals?
I have, but I'm not going to claim expertise. I have admiration for his moral convictions that he followed through on, and even revised.
The Malcolm X speech reminds me of the Introduction to John Keegan's A History of Warfare where Keegan criticizes the Clausewitz idea that war is politics by other means. Keegan strives to understand war-making as a culture of different people and not as a natural extension of pursuing political goals. War often interrupts politics.
A ready example of this is when John Brown tried to start a war at Harper's Ferry. It was not as simple a beginning that he had hoped for, but it was a start he hoped to bring about.
The case of Booth shooting Lincoln was in hopes of keeping a war alive. The original plot was to kill all of the leaders of Lincoln's administration.
The civil rights era had intimations of war but also an appeal to avoid it. Otherwise, it would have all been straight up Lenin and vanguard of the proletariat.
The Hatch decision titrated the Second Amendment into an individual right. That is different from the original idea of avoiding standing armies. Or even armies that rake.
All the political shootings of late, whoever they target from the menu of partisan targets, are more like personal messages than a call to arms. The Kirk killing is yet another school shooting. Is that a "cultural war?" Is it not a "cultural war?" Keegan readers would like to know.
I'm sure you're most likely right, Hanover. This is an odd event for me to process is all, when upset or bewildered, I enjoy engaging in debate with people I respect. As an "amateur" web programmer, my mind is basically solidified at this point to automatically seeing the "unlikely" options, as far as it relates to possibility (and therefore, relevant issues as they relate to security within a given system or framework). Old habits die hard, I guess.
Hopefully I did not upset you with any perceived vapidness of insinuation. I appreciate the reply.
You ever see the second Die Hard movie? Bruce Willis has to wear a sandwich board saying "I hate n******" in a predominately black neighborhood or a bomb goes off. So let's say some racist jerk decides to do that and walk around a predominately black neighborhood and someone shoots him dead. Are you really going to object if someone says, "Yeah, it's fucked up that he got shot...BUT". Isn't someone who does that and gets killed get put in the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"? Or "fuck around and find out"?
Charlie Kirk, to me, was the equivalent of the guy walking around with the "I hate *******" sandwich board. Yeah, it's sad he got killed, but...karma's a bitch. The universe has a sense of irony.
What did he say about black people or "predominately black neighborhoods?" Again, I never heard of the guy until just yesterday, so. Just curious as to what information or knowledge you have that makes that analogy valid in your mind.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/tpusas-charlie-kirk-trans-people
I mean, there are no trans animals in nature. People are awful, I agree. They bully people who are smaller than them to believe anything they want. That's a tragedy, sure. But aside from the 0.00001 people who are born biologically of the same sex (both organs or both chromosomes), I don't get it. It's just larger or ruder people bullying and mentally damaging people into thinking they're "beneath" them or "freaks". The people who do that, who harm their fellow man to such a degree of permanence, should not be alive, yes, I agree with that. But you don't let them get away with their crimes by accepting fallen or warped mental states as "valid". That's what they want. That's how they win. You're being their slave right now. Stop or be stopped.
Also, that has nothing to do with black people. Like I specifically requested information on.
Except for one thing.
I can't reconcile how this purportedly fine upstanding citizen could go into bat for the candidate that denied, and tried to subvert, the 2020 election, including whipping up a mob who ransacked the US Capitol Building, and was caught on tape discussing how to fake an election win with fake electors. I don't understand the depth of delusion that allows these apparently earnest and educated activists to pretend that the current President is anything other than an authoritarian egotist who poses a mortal threat to the American body politic. Of course, this kind of political violence, and gun violence generally, is a mortal threat to public order. But then, so is the current President, who appealed for an end to this 'divisive hate speech which is tearing us apart' and then added, 'which is only ever practiced by radical left lunatics.'
//end rant//
Oh, except for to say, I dearly hope if they do catch the perpertrator, that he is captured alive. There are many questions that will need answering.
So you just say things for no reason then. Why bring up the plight of people mistreated and killed for a physical quality they were born with no control over, then?
You can't compare the plight of people treated differently by the color of their skin in which they had no choice or control over to those who (were forced to) decide(d) they are different by the choices and mechanisms of their own mind brought about by others and factors that were only determined after their birth and developmental process. That's literally the definition of genocide. You are complicit to genocide. Unknowingly perhaps. But complicit all the same. The fact they-- I'll pause it here I have to respond to the above post. Come back to me with later.
Quoting Wayfarer
You can't reconcile how people can be people? The very worst of what life is when given the chance? Surely you're not that naive. I've said this many a time to many a people, mostly those in power, but now to you: "The only different between the lowliest kindest person and the most cruel dictator are two simple things we all possess or otherwise have access to: Opprotnity. And time." Deep down, you know, not me, forget me, I'm not part of this equation, but Truth and Reality remain Truth and Reality.
No there's not. The average man cannot comprehend all that surrounds him. He gets frustrated at traffic even though it's sign of his own, not only economic wellness, but progress as a species. People in general are not very smart. They do terrible things without realizing they are terrible. Until you realize this, you will live a life unpleasant, and so, naturally only contribute to said unpleasantness.
More media hysteria.
The problem with the reactions right now is that people whitewash Kirk's behavior and what he has actually said over the years. Even his most vocal critics plays a part in creating this martyr of him.
It's the usual way of people totally unable to keep two truths in their heads at the same time. That an assassination is awful, but so was Kirk.
He spread some rather extreme views, called out for deaths of people, wanted to pardon Pelosi's attacker. There's no denying that someone spreading such hate opened up to the risk of being hated back, to the point of violence.
Quoting Outlander
You need animals to dress up to show it? This is unfortunately part of the public lack of knowledge in the area of transexuality. As Sapolsky says in this video, we viewed homosexuality as a psychopathology and then discovered, no, it's not. And here we go again in history, viewing transexuals in the same way society viewed homosexuals before society matured into actual knowledge (well, the intelligent ones in society anyway)
So, what Kirk and people like him spewed out is pure transphobia. It's exactly the same as when society had widespread, "state-supported" homophobia and it leading to suicides, stigma and extreme suffering for homosexuals just wanting to live in peace and be respected as any other person.
And as I'm usually arguing, society never cares for the indirect suffering caused by a shifting attitude in society because of a high tolerance for hate speech and phobic bullshit spreading around.
We're living through the same maturing society towards transexuals as society went through in the 80-90s for homosexuals. In the end, we will have lots of people who once spewed transphobic hate in public, to be viewed by history as awful.
Who wants to be considered equal to the homophobic haters in the 80s who were part of the crowd who made life a living hell for homosexuals back then? Anyone?
The reason for homophobia and transphobia is because people are drawn to it to feel safe. They feel safe having a group in society they can blame for anything. Who becomes an enemy that are responsible for any troubles they have. It's the behavior of the actual weak and pathetic, who make zero contribution to society which improves the life and safety for all.
Society doesn't get more tolerable and good by allowing such hate to be spread. The free speech argument by the right wing magas who usually spews out this transphobia is not in favor of free speech itself, it's a blanket defense for them to be able to spread this hatred.
Quoting Moliere
I think balance is impossible as long as people view freedom of speech as some abstract axiom without any defining societal parameters.
As it is now, it is used by the hateful to legitimize hate speech. And as Popper's tolerance paradox describes, this practice slowly erodes society into becoming intolerant. This is exactly what we're seeing in the US. Freedom of speech used as blanket defense to spread intolerance.
And since this is what's going on, there's no way to balance because there are no tools to balance with. So we end up with measures that tries to balance things through violence instead; an escalation of the divide through a desperation to balance the scales.
If you spread intolerance hard and long enough, and if no one actually oppose and stops you, then you will eventually get a violent push back.
Think of it as a rubber band being stretched. If nothing stops you, no one blocks you from stretching it further, eventually it will snap back at you and hurt you.
I think Kirk is an example of how far society can push its intolerance before things start to snap. The people, especially those negatively affected by the hate of the intolerant, want actual pushback on the hate, but if the state and society at large instead stupport that hate, then you push these people into desperate measures.
Think of it this way, if you are a person who are in the crosshair of society's accepted hate. Spread by people like Kirk. And you plead for society to stop being like this and you just get more hate. Going on until there's a point where the state itself starts to implement policies that would classify you as sub-human, who want to deport you, even though you're not from anywhere else, who starts to limit your freedoms, who wants to put you in segregated areas away from other people, who want to chemically assault your existence with either taking away needed medicine or try to medicate your "problem" away... and this just keeps going and going and no one does a fucking thing to balance it back... when do you become the rubber band snapping back?
If we are to balance things in society, we need to first acknowledge hate speech for what it is; that it is a call for intolerance, a call for dividing society into accepted and not accepted people. If we accept it for what it is, then we understand that freedom of speech is not a valid defense for it because it's rather a call for destroying part of society, not improving it.
Freedom of speech could be considered true only for that which attempts to improve society. If banning trans, or other people in society is part of an argument for improving society, it needs to be backed up with actual evidence as it is an extreme claim. If such evidence does not support such claims, it can't be defended by freedom of speech and instead falls under hate speech, thereby becomes an attempt to destroy society and is thereby illegal.
If we actually apply the already existing laws on hate speech to actually function properly, Kirk would never have been able to continue saying what he was arguing for. He would have needed to change his debate tactics and rhetoric to be actually factual rather than performative propaganda. And he wouldn't have been the kind of target he became.
People like Kirk push the limits more and more because there's no one on the other side pushing back. There's no laws, or laws used, that prevent him from eroding tolerance in society.
And if you rally for intolerance, then you will rally those who are intolerant of yourself. Further, if people get hurt by your intolerance, then they will hurt you back.
So, a first step to balance things out is to actually apply hate speech laws as they're supposed to.
After that, block politicians who try to go into elections with hate speech as part of their strategy. If you want to protect democracy, don't let anti-democratic politicians into positions of power that lets them change laws. That should be fucking obvious really.
Quoting Moliere
What we do know is what leads society into anti-democratic, intolerant behaviors. And so if we are naive and stupid as a society to let the intolerant, racist, homophobic, transphobic, psychopathic, narcissistic, imperialistic authoritarian lunatics into a position to change laws... then we know where that leads. History have already showed us this and if we think that's not a problem for society and our democracy... then we are absolutely, fundamentally stupid. Because then the only way forward is violence, and we invited that in by being actively stupid or passively naive.
Is that so? I didnÂ’t know that.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-reported-colorado-high-school-2-kids-transported/story?id=125452526
"Pardon" was the wrong word, rather wanted a patriot to bail him out. Then rejecting that the right wing rhetoric had anything to do with pushing acts like this.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paul-pelosi-charlie-kirk-bail-conspiracies-b2214680.html
On top of that he also called Kyle Rittenhouse “a hero to millions", so...
Yes. I don't know much about Kirk, but many unambiguously good people get killed around the world daily, particularly children, sometimes with the complicity of our government's, and the media often expects us not only to not feel bad about that but to support it. One can be against political assassinations while still bemoaning the fact that our media environment is composed merely of propaganda, any relationship of which to morality is purely incidental.
EDIT: I am not saying America is Nazi Germany etc etc, only that it being a murder is not the end of the argument but the beginning.
Are you asking when it's appropriate to add violence to your political activism?
Was operation Valkyrie political activism?
This is the question, when is it justified? What is justified? Is it ever justified? As a philosophical question, it is valid one as there's been many times in history it was very valid.
I think the more interesting discussion in terms of this specific assassination is why we have a rise of political violence. What is causing it? Of course we all know why; the rising polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization.
So the follow-up question becomes, how do we stop this polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization?
The solutions require an examination of what we allow in society, while still remaining free. This is the global problem for free societies to tackle in the coming years, because if they don't, they will become so polarized that political violence becomes a common practice. A form of room temperature war rather than a cold or hot one.
The assassination of political figures becomes retroactively justified and therefore simply justified depending on how history works out. The assassination of a Nazi functionary in 1934 by a Jewish sniper would likely have almost universally been condemned at the time. Now, I, and I suspect most of us, would consider the assassin a hero. This is just to say that what is obvious without problematizing a context or considering a possible future trajectory is not so obvious when you do so. I take @Moliere to be coming from that angle. The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now. But I don't think @Moliere's thought process is completely wrong.
And this is a problem with any discussion about politics and war. It demands a great deal of understanding of society to be able to say that a current event is justified or not. It requires both an understanding of history and psychology as well as philosophy.
To be able to understand current events without being wrapped up in biases and fallacies produced by the herd of people pushing and pulling on culture, or lesser intelligent people influencing media and social media into extreme bubbles, is extremely hard.
Quoting Baden
I disagree to some degree. I think it's important to discuss it because a person like Kirk, so involved in spreading the kind of hate he did, will easily become a martyr for that hate, whitewashed through the shallow charade of people ignoring what he stood for in order to score political points. I also think that this forum is exactly the place to discuss something like this, because here we discuss the philosophical ramifications of what is going on in the world... rather than what the rest of the internet is doing at the moment surrounding this event. And because of this, I think that a truly civil discussion like this is extremely important to have surrounding something like an assassination of a public figure of this importance to the current political climate.
Fair point. And I did get involved, so, performatively, I agree.
Precisely. Not good, or bad, or indifferent -- it's just the weather report.
And Gaza's weather reports are passed over.
Quoting Baden
Maybe so-- but then there are many people celebrating in bad taste in addition to condemning in bad taste.
There's a sense in which I want to say it's screamingly obvious that killing is wrong. And so we can condemn political assassination and genocide equally. But there's also a sense in which this viewpoint is incredibly naive -- not that the person who espouses such and such is so (a person can be a principled pacifist, for instance), but that it quite literally ignores a huge part of how decisions are made in our political world.
So the question is -- if killing is screamingly obvious, how do we get to a justification of the ": But..." one utilizes in justifying killing.
Malcolm X is a good example of a person who used political violence and its threat as a tool for liberation. A Jewish sniper killing a Nazi is similar. But, as you noted, these are in retrospect -- they only become heroes in the stories we tell of them after.
The reality in the moment is that we live with killing without thinking about killing because "that's just the way things are": Why argue that the moon shouldn't spin around the Earth?
Why argue that we must support Israel for our national interests in the Middle East? These are just the way of things.
But, surely, insofar that we can answer the question philosophically at all, we'd have to have some consistent basis for when that isn't just "Because I gave myself permission this one time" -- which is what the appeal to law looks like to me, except with a few extra steps "Because we talked about it and said this was when it's OK"
****
I suppose I see these questions are a bit more activated by current events, but yes I'm hoping to touch a philosophical ground somewhere. In a lot of ways this mirrors my argument for moral anti-realism: In the world we happen to inhabit even murder is justifiable, under the right conditions. Were the world to have morality as a part of it it seems to me that we'd live in a world where we have finally found ways to negotiate our differences without the tools of murder.
But we don't live in that world, and so such ideals seem to float above in some transcendental world away from us.
So how do we deal with the world we find ourselves in, imperfect and callous as it is?
Of course... but we also need to remember that when a person becomes an influential figure in politics, especially with extreme views that indirectly hurt people in society. What is the morality around that context surrounding an event like this? Does the suffering of the family take away from the suffering caused by his influence? Context change depending on perspective, but I think it's also important to remember that when it comes to political violence, it's no longer just about the act itself, but where it came from, what it leads to, and what it means to the political situation of the world.
Those topics are really what we're talking about, not really him as a human being, not really dismissing the suffering of the family and relatives. The killing of a human being is a tragedy... but the killing of him as a representation of his political views and hateful viewpoints, is another form of act and another form of context that has philosophical and historical proportions worth discussing.
That's more or less my point. Where do we get consistency?
Quoting Moliere
By finding an apparently impossible consistency across contexts.
My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse.
Sometime before we descend into bloody apehood, we have a chance to see if there is some better way to do things, or if we're going to need violence, can we at least coordinate it so that it's not doing more harm than good?
But thank you for not calling me a f***wit for expressing that. We had a mod who would have made any sane discussion of the topic impossible.
I guess you're a deontologist on this, which is fair enough. And I don't even know if I can agree with myself on the topic, so I'm not in the strongest position to argue.
I'm a moral nihilist.
Quoting Baden
:grin:
Wasn't expecting that...
Anyway, having researched Charlie Kirk, it appears many of his views (anti-semitic statements, racism, homophobia etc) are not all that far off from the bigotry level of early era Nazi party rabble rousers. Regardless, I don't condone the assassination.
How does that rhyme with...
Quoting frank
Seems like you are arguing through a Kantian perspective, which is the opposite of a nihilist.
I would say that history shows lots of examples of situations which would have justified political violence. Events that would have saved a lot of good people. It's the prime example of how naive the Kantian perspective can sometimes be.
No one would deny that killing most of the upper elite of the Nazi party would have saved a lot of people, even if it happened before wartimes.
I think the more interesting question isn't if an obvious bad person who will obviously kill or cause deaths directly in the future deserves to be put out to save them, but rather what happens when someone is indirectly responsible for deaths and suffering.
I think there's very little talk about how hateful rhetoric slowly shifts society into a place where that hate becomes action onto those this hate was aimed at. Nazi Germany is always talked about in the context of what eventually happened, but society eroded its views on jews long before that and shifted society into a place where the suffering for jews became more commonplace.
No one really address the fact that when an influential elite spread hate speech that shift society, it actually hurts people down the line.
And if we are morally arguing that political violence to prevent innocent people from getting hurt, killed or suffer, is justified, then why do we not accept that for when hate speech rhetoric leads to such suffering and death? Is it because people are unable to logically connect hateful speech to people becoming radicalized under such speech, to those radicalized people actually carrying out that hate in action against the people that hate was aimed at?
Case point... Hitler never killed any jews himself, he never killed. Why do we consider him responsible? Because he orchestrated the thing, he pushed for it, he argued for it, he spread the hate, he influenced the nation.
So if the hate speech influence that leads to violence in society becomes the foundation for viewing an assassination of that influential person as morally good in order to stop that societal violence and decline into violence against a certain group of people; what does that mean? What context does such political violence against an influential person become valid?
Yeah, 's analogy makes no sense. I guess when you're justifying murder you have to make up analogies that make no sense.
His Wiki page contains some of the racist, anti-semitic, and Islamaphobic statements he's made. Of course, he was (apparently) a more vocal, rather than a more extreme, version of a significant minority of Americans and his killing will likely radicalise these people further.
Not necessarily at odds with deontology -- meta-ethical nihilist, deontological normativist is fairly close to how I think about morality in the ideal.
With the caveat being that if everyone actually does follow such and such a principle then it seems hard to deny that the moral commitments have a certain kind of truth to them -- but the world we live in doesn't really look like that.
You could still deny deontology, of course -- but then I'd want to know how :
Quoting frank
Parses political violence. "In self defense only"? In which case the American Revolution is immoral rather than amoral because it wasn't for survival but to claim a nation?
We're a violent species. Political violence is one of the many forms of jungle ape we manifest. Thus, there is no philosophy of political violence. Unless you know of one you'd like to flesh out?
It'd be insane to just say something like "Because he gave himself permission" (or, from early reports, is bullet casings had a video game meme -- so it looks like an inter-fascist dispute on its face, with a cynicism so deep that the killing was dressed up as a joke. Killing 31 year olds for fun, more or less)
But to take a stab at some rough amoral criteria that seems better than "just because it sounded like a good time": it seems there needs to be some kind of interest that is deemed important enough to utilize the harshest tool, and that all other options have been previously attempted to no amend.
There also seems to me to be a sense in which how much power one holds is relevant -- the case of the school shooter @unenlightened is obviously evil because there was even less of a reason: Truly senseless.
I suppose that is what I'm getting after, yes. We swim in violence on a daily basis. I want to make sense of what seems entirely senseless to me. Now, I see the world as absurd so it really could just terminate there -- in a kind of aporia. We should also be skeptical of any philosophy of violence that's more than a philosophy, i.e. it should not -- from a meta-philosophical perspective -- be a treatise advocating for violence but instead is seeking how it is we come to make these decisions.
For me to understand violence is a means of understanding how to negotiate towards non-violence.
Also I sometimes wonder if I'm just entirely barmy and it's really just OK that we kill and I should just accept that I'm the mad one. Which is when I start to feel rather numb.
That stops working when you are dealing with people who are violently opposed to violence.
You and I, you have to understand, are the violent extremist left wing conspiracy that is directly promoting and funding this wave of violence sweeping the country; there is no talking to us, we have to be stopped by any means necessary. When you talk about non-violence you sound exactly like Putin.
To put it another way, there is a loss of faith, and we can only negotiate in good faith. We cannot negotiate as or with the faithless; there is no basis for communication, let alone negotiation. One does not try and negotiate with a dog, one is satisfied with obedience.
I suppose the question then is, given this realization, how do we make the dog obey? Is a fascist the equivalent of a feral dog which has no other solution but to put it out of its misery? And if so, does it matter if the person who accomplishes the task is motivated wrongly if the dog is taken care of?
There's also something scary about this analogy: for them we are cockroaches, and to us they are dogs. In some ways perhaps just to retain a shred of humanity in a bad situation (since you don't just default to eliminating dogs, but do so with cockroaches).
That might be a better way to approach the question: Rather than looking at it like a justificatory process whereby we rationally decide when something which is absurd is permissible or not we can first accept that the act is evil.
But given the circumstances, at least from my perspective, violence becomes a necessary evil: that which must be done even if we know in the ideal it's not what we should want to do. In the case of fascists they only feign irony long enough to speak a message of hate. The hate and disgust of another group is the point. They advocate for murder with their mouths to incite the passions of people to commit murder for its own sake. Here I'm referring to 4Chan and related sights which actively post fascist memes that call for the death of people, spouts white-supremacist talking points, and so on.
So the question becomes: How do I retain my humanity in the face of necessary evil forced upon me? Is it even possible?
Here I want to clarify that I'm not contemplating being a random assassin as much as looking at the genocide in Gaza as a set of senseless murders that I'm already guilty for. Malcolm X was an example meant to demonstrate a sort of principled stance on political violence.
But these aren't his circumstances so the need to make sense of my situation remains.
Though perhaps it's best to see it as not exactly a rational process whereby I deduce the correct actions in accord with maxims. It's a situation which falls outside of deontological methods which tend to be absolute, and even if relativized they are absolutely relativized (except condition 1 being fulfilled, thou shalt..."
And perhaps I just need to lament the state of the world sometimes and certain events trigger that need in me, and there is nothing more here than that lament: a useless reflection we can forget when we get back to work.
They are not the dogs, we are, in their eyes. It is a symmetrical understanding of each that the other is the dog.
The reason for this is economic. During the 20th Century, wealth was produced by mass production and sustained by mass consumption. This required a mass of 'wage slaves' that also functioned as consumers. But the advent of robots and 3d printing eliminates the need for mass production and consumption as everything can be made 'bespoke'. The masses are surplus to requirements, and are therefore being turned against each other. It becomes a dog eat dog world.
Neither ballot nor bullet will save us because we are the dogs of war fighting amongst ourselves. "Oh ye of little faith!"
The population will crash to the point where everyone becomes glad to see another human, of any kind, that is not a corpse. Love triumphs in the long run.
I sort of wonder on that one, honestly. Even if I lick the boot I sort of feel like they'll laugh and dispose of me.
If only I could be a dog -- that'd be a worker-boss relationship.
Here we're talking about who they see as degenerates that need to be eliminated: people that associate with labor, have non-heterosexual desire, are of a different race, speak out of line or have spoken out of line, or is simply annoying.
I'm not the first in line but I am wondering if I'm even a dog to a fascist.
This makes sense for a run-of-the-mill capitalist -- it's why the proliferation of bullshit jobs which have no future is larger than stable employment. There is still a need for manufacturing and automation but it's guided by the capitalist hand which pits us one against one another -- a violence.
Often times I believe that. Especially for anyone I associate with now -- having been out of the game for some time I pretty much only have "regular" associates which makes for a much more peaceful work environment.
But then this sidesteps the question -- we can insist on pacifism, but it doesn't help me deal with the violence thrust upon me. In a way I want to understand this violence better in order to deal with it as a person who wants life to be seen as sacred, in the end.
But will they just start up the same old story again?
I suppose I like to long for something a bit better than that.
Yes.
He's close enough to count, to my mind, as a fascist. He may not have been knowledgeable about what he was saying -- i.e. doing it because he found a career for himself.
": But...." -- I found myself not mourning when I felt I ought to.
[quote=The Guardian] Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend anchor serving as Donald TrumpÂ’s defense secretary, has ordered Pentagon officials to scour social media for comments by service members that make light of Charlie KirkÂ’s death and punish anyone expressing dissident views, NBC News reports.
Several service members have been relieved of their jobs already, Pentagon officials told the broadcaster.
The purge comes after Hegseth, his spokesman and the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force all warned service members to express only the correct political opinions about Kirk and his killing.
The officials warned service members, and civilian employees of the Pentagon that “inappropriate comments,” including “posts displaying contempt toward” Kirk, or comments that “celebrate or mock the assassination,” would be “dealt with swiftly and decisively.”
The effort to root out dissidents in the ranks comes as online activists promised to get KirkÂ’s critics fired in a range of fields, including the military and academia.[/quote]
OK I see it's from the live updates.
Good. As a former service member, any member of the armed forces expressing glee or sympathy over Charlie's death is simply lacking in values. I wouldn't trust someone possessing those values to protect the United States. Nor is the military academia where, theoretically, a wide range of views should be encouraged.
Get in line or get out - and expressing glee over the political assassination of a conservative influencer is so far out of line.
This is something I was hoping to express in my comment upthread. The thoughts brewing in the young killer in the school shooting scene are not political in the way people organize to bring about a change in their circumstances. It is a different culture.
There's a part of me that wonders if it had been Hogg then such a strict condemnation would not have been issued.
Technically, yeah, you're not supposed to do such and such as noted.
It is way out of line.
": But "
I have a strong feeling if it had been David Hogg, whom I hold little respect for, this would not be so loud as to reach our ears, people on an online forum who don't have to follow the UCMJ
So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder.
Demographically he's a young white guy that came out for gun control and is basically an influencer, but for the democrats.
Quoting Wayfarer
Makes sense to me, and scares me.
Not that I'm placing bets yet -- but I also didn't place bets on Trump blooming into full fascism by being re-elected. I don't know the future at all.
Yeah, it is.
Obviously I've stated that I think these are fascists.
Which makes sense of the "not organizing to bring about change"
-- a big part of why I see the 4chan/etc. channels as fascist propaganda is that it spews not even ironic hate speech as a "joke", similar to what our present assassin did. He did it for the memes because there was nothing for him, because he was more connected to this idea, and -- really the same for any political movement -- somehow the words stirred up and utilized the piss and vinegar a young man feels, a desire to change the world, and an apathy towards what *must* make it happen.
"I'll even tell a little joke on my bullets like that one Luigi guy did, to match the theatre I want to be a part of because -- fuck it. No future anyways. LOL"
In this circumstance I do too.
No point in being a cynic in a terrible world where everyone sees the same.
Their fear is legitimate. Charlie Kirk shared similar ideological views with Trump/the Trump administration. If one wants Charlie dead, then one likely wants Trump dead. Many of these people have access to sensitive information, so their clearances should be revoked at the very least.
Any military where a sizable portion of its soldiers want their President dead is in serious jeopardy.
Fear is MAGA rocket fuel. How much of Trump’s campaign was based on stoking fear? ‘They’re eating the dogs ! :rage: ‘
Fear can be reasonable or unreasonable.
He fits the profile of white Utah boy who thought it'd be funny if he shot a guy he probably had some itch against.
Basically a school shooter. (EDIT: Else, how to make sense of the fact that his own father turned him in?)
There are plenty of times in history where 'fear of the other' is the proper, rational response.
Is this one of those times? Trump stokes fears of immigrants. I live in California. I interact with immigrants all the time. Many of my students' parents are immigrants. Is the rational response to be afraid of these people?
Just imagine the situation if the youth were being radicalized to the right and assassinating left-wing influencers. Would you still be chiding the fear stokers?
I see Trump going after illegal aliens, but I don't see him going after lawful immigrants.
I am opposed to any blanket fear-stoking of immigrants. If that appears in Trump's rhetoric, I oppose it. I do support the deportation of illegal aliens, and I understand that dangerous gangs have entered the country facilitated by lax border policies.
I too noticed the unnecessary mention of his political aversion.
--
Also, we're sure it's a political assassination now? When did that happen? I wanted to think it was my imagination but for some reason it just seems like more and more modern day conservatives take joy in crudeness and "crossing lines" for little reason other than to do so and illicit a negative emotional response in others I.E. to spread misery. Major turn off for me, despite being in favor of many stereotypical "conservative" things. Point being, you don't have to give a hoot about politics to not like a guy or what he has to say to the point of drastic action. People assault and murder people they don't like every single day. This guy just happened to be a bit of a minor celebrity who yes is known for engaging in political activity.
He's not the only victim.
The Babbitts were gifted just under $5 million by taxpayers, and Ashli Babbitt got a funeral service with all-out military honors. She was one of the Jan 6 (2021) attackers.
A couple of months before Kirk, Melissa and Mark Hortman were murdered.
The responses don't quite match House Trump's response to Kirk's murder, though. Is that because, unlike the Hortmans, Kirk was "one of us"? He wasn't elected by taxpayers for office as far as I know. Do they want to semi-martyr him before the US audience?
I thought freedom was important to House Trump, the clown certainly doesn't hold back, but it seems like that no longer applies to everyone. [sup](nbc) (nbc)[/sup]
I guess we'll see what happens.
This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. Kirk talked on campuses and held views inconsistent with yours.
The question of self defense, with its well developed jurisprudence related to reasonable force, protection from imminent harm, etc offers an easy enough way to distinguish taking a sniper shot at Kirk versus Hitler, ,assuming you were otherwise blind to the other glaring differences.
As an aside, since it matters so little to me exactly where he fell on the political spectrum in terms of his simple expression of his views as not grounds to murder him, I do not agree with the casual villification of Kirk. I saw him as a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith, with views obviously inconsistent with my own on a variety of topics, but not the evil incarnate he's being painted as.
I respect the unhappiness it brings to have questioned the ethical propriety of one's sexual or gender preference, which is hardly distinct from those telling me Jews like me are destined to hell for my beliefs, but that doesn't justify my declaration of victimhood and my right to lash out. The world is full of disagreement and the anti-social way a murderer handles that isn't cause to reassess whether the anti-social psychopaths might have it right.
What this strikes me then is not a legitimate philosophical question as to whether Kirk's murder constituted self-defense, but instead in his opponents searching for some possible mitigation in the evil iof his murder. As in, a hateful bastard who is killed for his hate can't be just like this murder of Mother Thersa. Well it is. The rule is not to do unto others as you think they would have done unto you.
Are you at all familiar with his, uh, less than kind hearted beliefs? I could compile a list.
Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege.
And they did so with the blessing of the law.
The American Revolution broke the law with respect to murder, too.
The law isn't a basis for making this decision -- that's just the way we do things at the moment. Part of the weather. It's not a moral or political code as much as a "If you do such and such and get caught and tried and persecuted then this punishment will follow"
Further, pointing to Hitler after the fact is to sidestep the question: If all we do is look to the past to decide when someone is a hero rather than a criminal then we'll always condemn heroes in the moment and then change our mind later. That's a policy of convenience, but it doesn't tell us about when one is justified in using political violence.
If it's just that there's a law for it it seems to much the same to me as the person who follows their own moral code -- since they wrote it down ahead of time and are consistent they are thereby justified.
But I know you'd see this as patently absurd -- I don't see how appeal to law gets around that absurdity though.
****
The pop question is "If you could go back in time to shoot Hitler, would you do it?" -- generically people unthinkingly say "Yes" -- but here the question isn't about one-off assassins as much as "How do you* live with the violence you are responsible for, and how do you* consistently condemn the violence of others with the blood on your hands?"
When I hear "The law", that sounds to me like the one-off manifesto -- because we gave ourselves permission this time.
EDIT: *You because I'm asking, not because I'm not guilty.
Isn't this hindsight bias? You are comparing the end result of a shift in society with a society in shift. Nazi Germany started with "talk", with a rhetoric that slowly shifted how the public viewed jews. It wasn't "flipping a switch" and then they shipped them to extinction. A key question in this thread has been the problem of projecting where a society is heading, but there's no denying that the rhetoric of the extreme right erodes a large portion of the population's ability to show empathy and more and more opposing basic human rights. The indirect violence that this rhetoric causes, especially through much of it being supported by the very top of the government, means society could very well shift far into the extreme right, with more violence, more suicides, more suffering for certain groups in society. To compare the end result of the Nazi's transition into extreme right, to a time when we're balancing on such an extreme edge is a hindsight bias.
Quoting Hanover
So his ridicule of victims of other violent crimes, his homophobic, transphobic, and racist ideologies which he spread through his large reach into young people's hearts... were just him being a kind hearted Christian? Are you seriously arguing that?
There was no kind hearted attitude from him at all. Even the worst people in the world treated their own family and loyalists with kindness. But calling someone with his track record a "kind hearted Christian" is wild. His behavior wasn't even consistent with Christian values [insert Jesus face-palming here]
Quoting Hanover
I don't think anyone defends the assassin. What we're doing are assessing why this happened. Based on the info at hand it's clear that Kirk wasn't a random target. It wasn't a case of a lunatic who just kills the first well known person to step in front of them (as have been the case with some political violence).
So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? The problem at the core is the fact that the world has become extremely polarized. But rather than polarized as a specific political stance, which can be debated in a normal fashion, it has become the very behavior of polarization that has taken root.
Any topic that enters the online sphere becomes a polarized topic, it doesn't matter at all what it's about. And since the algorithms of social media and channels like Twitch and YouTube push content that has a lot of activity, and activity being more common when it's a conflict going on, driving interactions; the behavior of people becomes extreme, without many of them really understanding why.
It becomes a wrestling match, it becomes a simulacra of a real debate; pushing the extreme as much as allowed to drive attention. In this form of attention economy, people like Kirk and even Trump becomes really popular.
The problem with this is that it radicalizes everyone. The polarization itself radicalizes and we get people on the right who are radicalized into violence against trans people, homosexuals, different ethnicities, while on the left people are radicalized more and more into fighting fascism.
It doesn't really matter if the world ends up in the same form of fascism we've seen before, the thing we're seeing now, with all the political violence going on... is the result of radicalization by the very behavior of people like Kirk.
He's not a debater, he uses the defense by the second amendment to make it valid to spread hateful ideas. It's a strategy that the extreme right is always using, it's the reason Popper developed the Tolerance paradox as a concept. A free and tolerant society eventually leads to intolerance because the freedom of speech legitimizes spreading intolerance if there are no guardrails defending against it. And its naive to think that this intolerance being promoted won't radicalize people and cause radicalization in its opposition.
So the problem at its core is not really the extreme right or left, it's that society is too naive in regards to how we stop intolerance to spread in a free society with free speech. As long as we handle free speech this sloppy, we eventually invite radicalized extreme people into power and lose that freedom. Because Kirk and the extreme right aren't interested in upholding freedom of speech for all people, they want freedom of speech for THEIR speech.
Quoting Hanover
By that logic, Kirk's logic of the aftermath of violent acts against the left would legitimize that he falls victim of violence against the right?
I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality.
This strikes me as backwards.
One can only give aid to the suffering, but if you dare try to resist the movement of weapons to actually prevent the genocide we will take away your privilege of being here.
What about the students who are citizens that put up a similar resistance? Ought we to deport them too?
The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.
Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia.
This assassination seems to whitewash what Kirk spread around, and it was not to spread love. He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them. This side has no political color. It just happens to be more common on the extreme right in this time in history.
The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.
Arguing for the good side is arguing for the side that, with evidence in living standards and quality of life in the world, produces the best living conditions in a society.
Right now we're seeing a rise in the spread of hateful, polarizing rhetoric. Something that divides and makes enemies of neighbors. This rhetoric is eroding society and causing a lot of suffering and even deaths.
When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.
I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.
Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.
I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.
And why does it continue to happen?
And, the bigger political question -- what's with the intuition that killing is wrong and our constant habit of making exceptions for ourselves?
Quoting Christoffer
There's a sense in which I think of Kirk as an early fascist agitator. To use the time travelling assassin scenario one would not go back in time to kill some random propagandist who is close enough to count. That seems cruel, and probably ineffective.
I like this as an ideal.
Partially what the debate is about are "these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad" -- hence @Hanover's point that I don't know good from evil and my admission that this is exactly what I'm saying: I don't know good from evil.
That one person gives themself permission to kill for some political reason vs that a state writes it down a head of time and goes on doing the same seems like a distinction that makes no difference with respect to the sanctity of life, AND with respect to the practical realities of life. The first is easily seen as absurd, and the latter isn't answered.
I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works?
Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return.
Also, Israel won't be there for long. In 2100, the only livable areas will be right on the coast. Soon after that, the final diaspora will take place silently. Only historians will know about Israel.
The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.
Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.
So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas"
Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same.
Quoting frank
There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such.
I figure if we really care about life we'd not give excuses to the killers on the basis of the forgotten tortured -- if anything that there are forgotten tortured should connect you to the now suffering.
Honor the dead in peace, but there are bodies piling.
We're not going to agree on this.
When I think "genocide," I think October 7th, when thousands of Palestinians went house to house murdering, raping, and torturing Israeli civilians living in border regions with the Palestinians as their neighbors. Had the Israeli military not stopped them with force, there is no doubt this group would have continued with their murder, rape, and torture spree until they had swept through the land and conquered everything, and millions had died. The land would be Jew-free with Muslim supremacy established once again. If you listen to the Palestinian terrorist phone calls, they call their parents bragging about how many Jews they killed that day with deep pride. But no matter what they do, they're oppressed, so we must back them.
I get it. 100k Palestinians dead. But that's yesterday's figure. Today the figure is 700k dead and 400k Palestinian babies killed. Check Nerdeen Kiswani's twitter. As long as a study shows it, the figure must be believed. You have no grounds to doubt; you've never been there.
It sounds like your concern is primarily political.
Quoting Moliere
:meh:
Quoting Moliere
You like that word "valence" don't you? :grin: There's a big valence band around the whole nucleus of the situation.
I do. It's something that makes sense to me both in the literary and the chemical sense.
If it's false then I can't clarify by analogy, but if it's true (non-chemically) then perhaps there's some analogy whereby we can "trade electrons"
Quoting frank
Yes.
Hence Malcolm X.
Tho the event isn't the best one I'll admit now -- it was just the one that made me feel so frustrated at the absurdity of the world that I couldn't help but start the thought.
The part that makes me hesitate here is that there were also immediate reports about finding hundreds of beheaded babies.
And then learning that Israeli attack helicopters shot on Israelis.
Sometimes states just say shit to demonize someone they want to kill.
I fear that's part of what's going on.
Also, we don't have to. If I've said too much and that's that then no need to frustrate one another.
We have different priorities. Politics doesn't mean much to me. People's lives do, whether it's one person or 9 million. I realize you care about people too, it's just it's the politics that motivates you to speak.
And Malcolm X was full of shit. He wouldn't have accomplished anything but to get a bunch of black people killed.
I'm not certain. I could see it being as dumb as you say here: a banality of evil whereby a young frustrated man decided to do something dumb that was way larger than he understood.
That'd be the sympathetic reading, I think.
I've guessed inter-fascist, but that he was turned in by his own father is what persuaded me he could fit the school-shooter archetype (what a dark world where that's an archetype...)
And it could be a mix of these things. I'm far away from the situation. It hit me hard enough to want to say something that I didn't know how to say.
From my perspective he already accomplished many things, and died in that pursuit.
Like MLK.
He wouldn't have accomplished anything by instigating violence, other than to have numerous lynched black men in his wake, lynching involves torture, with a preoccupation with genitalia, burning, shooting, and hanging, all to the same bloody pulp of a human. That's what Malcolm X would have accomplished by making white people more afraid than they already were.
I have a different feeling on what he did -- I have respect for him and the other civil rights warriors.
What you portray is bad, so I can see why you'd say MX is bad. I don't think that's what his politics would result in, though.
They're far from perfect, but that's part of dealing with this world we're in. Whatever counter-factual we can come up with I want to use his reality as a point of reflection because that's not what happened, and he had justifications for how he acted, and was basically a martyr to his cause like MLK.
If all it led to was something like what you say that'd be evil.
But that's not what happened.
Are you doubting that ~1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, the majority of whom were innocent civilians? They went from house to house indiscriminately murdering. It's proudly recorded on video.
I remember the second intifada in the early 2000s, where Palestinian terrorists would go into bars, restaurants, and buses full of civilians and blow themselves up. I recall they'd attach unclean material to their explosive devices, so for anyone who got hit with shrapnel, the wound would get infected. It never made sense to me. If you hate a government, why attack random civilians living there? Unless that hatred is much deeper.
No, I'm not doubting that event. I'm doubting some of the reports, as one ought to, but I'm not saying "That never happened"
The report I've come to doubt is with respect to the dancing festival -- I read a news article which noted how it was an Israeli helicopter which fired upon that festival.
Could be for the same banal reasons of fear and retwisted in various ways, of course -- it just made me realize that the story isn't so clean as "OCT 7 justifies Amulek!"
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Because that government has been attacking you in the exact same way, and old cynical men know the piss and vinegar of young men and convince them to in order to get a bargaining chip.
There was no massive retaliation from whites because there was no violence from blacks. You see, this is what's missed when you advocate violence: that it never ends with one event. It just goes on and on.
Understandable, but a sign of a degenerate society. Even during WWII Jews didn't go around murdering or mass murdering German civilians.
Suppose they had the means, though.
And suppose it'd been an 80 year occupation.
But had the jews managed to stop the Nazis from their evil I think that'd been a good thing.
At least the genocide part.
There were armed Jewish resistance groups. They could have murdered, raped, and tortured many civilians because of their nationality, but they didn't. Such behavior is abhorrent.
Quoting Moliere
Occupying what? Gaza? Jerusalem?
https://bdsmovement.net/what-bds
For my part I don't want to give Israel weapons to do the evil things they're doing now. Excuses either which way.
But even voicing the thought is met with cries of "anti-semitism" -- and many of the zionists follow along the same fascist scripts, in the darkest of ironies.
Regarding RoR:
That's asking for the destruction of Israel. It would be adding roughly 6 million Arab Muslims to the population of Israel, and it would throw the demographic balance off. Ethnic warfare would result. There would be fighting in the streets as the fundamental character of the state is brought into question. No one can demand that a state destroy itself and call it immoral for not doing so.
Also, why such selective enforcement? Where is the Jewish right of return to Iraq? Or Yemen? The Middle East has been cleansed of Jews besides Israel, but there is no demand for "right of return" there.
Would?
But we're engaging in talking points now....
Yes, that's what happens when people suddenly lose control of their political sovereignty/self-determination. Flood a nation of 5 million Muslims living under Sharia with 5 million Hindus and see what happens.
It would be like asking the US to absorb 200 million Muslims.
"Would" -- it's already there. And what you describe is ironic given that this is what happened to the Palestinians -- imagine a group of people show up and then....
And there we have it.
Note here the charge of “spreading hate”, and the making of a threadbare connection between the act of holding and espousing one’s belief and being evil, as if Kirk’s brain state and the combination of sounds that came from his mouth is all it takes to make such an accusation. On the one hand Kirk committed the sin of dividing people into Us vs Them, but on the other Kirk resided on the wrong side of the Good and the Evil, those who speak like us and those who speak like them.
The problem is there is not even a string of chewing gum between the premise and the conclusion, between one duplicitous phrase and the next. It is no strange wonder that the assassin himself accused Charlie of such evil, for “spreading hate”, days before killing him.
This sort of piffle can be read all over social media and presents a window into the empty logic of the censors among us.
What do we have?
A charge of "spreading hate" -- but I'm the one who has used "evil", not @Christoffer, except this one time in quotes:
Quoting Christoffer
So:
Quoting NOS4A2
I can't note that anywhere other than your interpretation.
What do you think would happen? Would Jews and Palestinian Muslims hold hands and sing Kumbaya under RoR? Hamas is a democratically elected Islamic fundamentalist sect — the Palestinian vision. I can't avoid the fact that the Palestinians voted them into power.
What happened to the Palestinians is that the Arab world declared war on Israel in '47. Instead of wiping out the new Jewish state, the Palestinians lost and were put to flight as Israeli forces overran their annihilation attempt.
I explain in the following paragraphs.
I cited the words I was responding to in preceding paragraphs.
What I think is that this is a right I agree with -- but what I think is happening is far worse than what you're imagining, given that we're witnessing a genocide.
I agree with the right -- if someone took my home I'd want it back no matter how long it took.
But things have progressed so far from there now. It's a worthy goal to remember, and since you asked that's where I stand.
But let's step back a bit now.
You mentioned Hamas.
I tend to think Hamas is a direct result of the failures of the PLO and representation. In a way it's "the bullet" in the question.
Oct 7th is horrifying.
And so is this world we see of Israeli fascists posting videos of themselves enjoying killing.
And so is the past prior to that one event -- sometimes an occupied territory decides to revolt.
Perhaps it could not have been occupied.
Quoting NOS4A2
Chris did not make a connection between the act of holding and espousing one's belief and being evil -- I'm the one using "evil" in this conversation, but I also didn't connect that to "Kirk's brain state..."
On one hand he divided, and on the other he was on the wrong side of the divide -- that's closer to my perspective than @Christoffer
I find it a strange wonder that the assassin accused Charlie Kirk so far -- and I'm confused about "not even a string of chewing gum between the premise and the conclusion"; which premise? Who said it? Which conclusion?
That's basically an accusation of a non sequiter inference, but what is the set of premises that you're talking about?
IÂ’m not sure what your conversation was about, because I didnÂ’t read it. It doesnÂ’t even appear that youÂ’re involved at all.
Do you want me to quote exactly which sentences IÂ’m referring to? Because it is all there above, unless there is some formatting issue that I am unaware of.
For instance, I read the accusation “He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them.”
In the paragraph after I read this.
Eh, fair. I've been reading along and thinking here.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think it's a "reader comprehension" issue on my part. I'm wondering what you mean because I felt what you said applied more to myself than Chris.
Not that he can't defend himself, of course -- I guess I just felt defensive because I thought you ought to be attacking me from what I read from you lol -- but I obviously could be wrong.
I've liked @Christoffer's contributions to this thread as a more hopeful perspective than I have.
Quoting NOS4A2
I feel like that's an optimistic way of putting what we should go towards.
Do you disagree?
I like to read about the history of this region. 2000 years ago it was Jews living there occupied by Rome. Jewish kings would directly report to Roman authorities. The Romans had ultimate control. That is occupation. A clear chain of command; subordination. Yet neither the PLO or Hamas report to Israel. It's absurd to think entertain that they would. Perhaps we could say Israel occupies Gazan airspace, but in really it's just war given Hamas is a sworn enemy.
Anyway, I'm not still not sure what exactly is occupied in your view. Is it Gaza? Is west Jerusalem or Tel Aviv "occupied" by Israel? It's this lack of clarity that bothers me and it'll differ depending on who you ask. Complaining about "occupation" is can be cover for simply complaining about Israel's existence.
There's a sense in which complaining about its existence is like complaining about the United States' existence -- both are colony's that took other people's land. The US just has more years and more kills than Israel.
In this sense I complain about the United States' existence. It is a colonialist state with moral debts.
But that's where I live.
The part that I know is that I'm in the United States and we give weapons to Israel -- where the line gets drawn eventually or if it's a one-state solution all that, right now, is so far out of scope due to how long the genocide has been going on.
If you're asking if I'm for the genocide of Israelis on behalf of Arabs then no I am not -- but I think this is a line of propaganda more than a reality.
My apologies for the confusion. I only read a couple posts on the last page. I wasnÂ’t aware there was a longer conversation there.
I do disagree because I do not believe the good and the bad can be found in thoughts, only actions. For instance, the assassin may have had the most beautiful thoughts ever conceived. Perhaps they were so good that he opposed fascism and the spreading of hate. Kirk, on the other hand, wanted to bring back the death penalty, and probably believes you or I will go to heaven and hell. Those are bad thoughts, in my view. But from the stories of Kirk IÂ’ve been reading the last couple days, he was very kind. As far as I know he never hurt anyone, and gave a platform to opposing views. The shooter, who apparently opposed fascism, murdered someone in cold blood. So who is good or bad?
In my view there is an increasing conflation between words and deeds in Western moral literature and it leads directly to these sorts of acts.
I simply don't see it as a genocide. Historically, genocidal groups don't hold back. The population of Gaza has stayed the same or grown since the start of the war. Israel has shown restraint. Genocidal states don't send in massive amounts of aid to the victim population or provide them with considerable amounts of medical care.
Obviously, if we move the goalposts and redefine the term, then anything can be genocide. Or we could hold that Israel really "intends" it as if states have minds where they secretly hold intentions. Really, the reason we know about the Nazi genocide was because we have the documents that clearly lay out the plan. Even in the beginning of the war, when thousands of Jews had been summarily executed, the fact hadn't been established.
What is a genocide, in your view?
I wouldn't say that Israel is "holding back", but that's a vague criteria.
I'd go with Merriam-Webster:
Now if you're killing combatants that's one thing -- but Palestine isn't even a state. It's an occupied territory where we have stories of people shooting Palestinians where they excuse their shot by "I just didn't understand why he cared about that body" -- drawing a literal line in the sand for when to kill.
Differentiate away. How is this not that?
Quoting Moliere
We can go by Merriam-Webster.
Quoting Moliere
Israel has complete air superiority over Gaza and is capable of inflicting much more damage. Israel possesses WMDs. Gaza has virtually no air defenses. Israel could do much more.
Quoting Moliere
Gaza is a region. "Palestine" you will find nowhere on a map. When you say "Palestine is an occupied territory," I'm not sure which geographic boundaries you have in mind. What is "Palestine" to you?
All war crimes should be prosecuted. They occur in virtually every war on all sides. Propaganda, distortions, and lies are also a part of war.
I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone.
The attitude from liberals I know is amusement over the irony of Kirk being one of the shooting deaths that are "worth it" to keep the 2nd amendment alive.
Sacrifices have to be made apparently.
When the Healthcare CEO was gunned down I didn't feel so absurd -- he was directly responsible for many deaths. Anyone whose had someone live with chronic pain or die or any such travesty due to the cruelty of healthcare insurance company policies would naturally feel better in the sense of a kind of revenge-by-proxy.
Here the man spread hate, by all means. But it never feels right to me to outright jump for joy for the death of one random person that won't make a difference in how we live.
But then I could tell I didn't feel much care for him given what he said. And I said before when I saw him being lionized and the shooter shamed I couldn't help but think about how much death we already have on our hands -- on what basis do we condemn the shooter?
There's a sense in which all of this isn't even of concern -- there are sides and when your side "wins" one of these terrible games you celebrate, and vice versa. Which strikes me as a good way to lose our humanity in the process of feeling like we're winners.
Between these two extremes is where I felt, and further couldn't help but wish the kind of media given to his death was also given to the deaths we are still causing: it results in a numbly uncertain feeling about the world that I couldn't express easily.
The wiki on Palestine defines this well enough for me. "Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the occupied Palestinian territories. "
The reason it wasn't on a map is because it was still controlled by a colonial government, not because the people didn't live there.
Ok. Thanks for clarifying.
Personally, despite having studied the history of the region, I've always wondered when the "Palestinians" arrived in Palestine. When does their history start? Or where can their coins be found? Or their artifacts? Hebrew/Jewish ones are abundant. Or are the modern "Palestinians" just the people (i.e., non-Jews) who have lived there since time immemorial, since it's in the name — and whoever claims the name "Palestinian" earns this eternal presence.
Anyway.
It's nice that you were able to describe Palestine, but Hamas has made it pretty clear that it considers all of Israel to be occupied, so the first step in the peace process — if there is to be one — would be removing Hamas.
But what would that do? I thought you said Hamas was democratically elected. Why wouldn't the same type of person or people with the same type of ideology not get elected again? Are you hoping the people are so psychologically battered to the point they will agree with anything they're told? Is that really a view you'd be proud parading around and being on your tombstone that those after you will read and remember you as?
Are you trying to remove their right to the democratic process? Or place arbitrary guidelines and "controlled opposition" candidates thus subverting the democratic process?
Why do they even call themselves "Hamas", where did that come from? What was wrong with "the democratically elected government?" Just seems necessary.
Frankly, I think it doesn't take much to imagine what happens in war that could explain why the people there today do not physically (or by DNA) resemble the people their before. Not very hard to put two and two together. Which is a very difficult humanitarian situation. What do you with people who genuinely believe they were the original "rightful" folks, yet the DNA says otherwise, and in a twist of irony, their presence is literally excelling the genocide that whatever past invading army who engaged in forced "relations" with the true rightful people tried to perform (and perhaps succeeded)?
The point is, we need more Internationally-recognized national parks, preserves, and protected areas, basically everywhere. Places any person can always visit but are not permitted to build a home or reside on permanently. If not as a buffer between two peoples who cannot or will not live in peace. Once someone plops out a kid (or worse, was forced to plop out a kid), they think that land is their home. As if engaging in the cheapest most automatic and low-level primal act any living being can perform (fornication) somehow elevates you socially and legally above someone who does not have children. All that does is lead to overpopulation, which leads to war, starvation, suffering, and just an all-around lowered quality of life for everyone alive. That's just not smart. That's just not how it is. But it's what they think. Ergo, we have a problem.
You're falling into a false argument. Why do people cut off their genitals? Because they feel socially-ostracized. Have you ever been a child once in a modern day school with low-income people? Even having any sense of morality gets you called a "snitch" or a "girl", and basically physically harmed IF you're smaller than the person. It's a cycle of useless people fornicating because they have no self control, often the largest "Strongest" what they call alpha, despite having the brains of rocks and no real purpose since 800 B.C. when the lever and pulley was invented. They can't cope with society. They were made to be slaves. To work, to use their size to lift heavy rocks under the command of a king. They have no purpose in modern society. They don't know how to raise kids. They get pleasure from seeing people, anyone, random strangers, suffer. It gives them "purpose," The things that bring an intellect joy and a sense of harmony, give them anger. The things that give us a sense of disgust and horror, bring a smile to their face. They are incompatible with modern society.
Sorry, my point being, no person who was not bullied or exposed to the idea that "oh you might be a girl, since you act like one" has ever once considered the idea that they were not born into the right body. Not a single one. It's a psychological war humanity wages with itself. The strong taking (dignity and purpose) from the weak. What the very first law ever written, Hammurabi's Code was created to prevent. And it's time to end it before something ends us.
Just look around. Why are all the "transgenders" skinny, awkward people who just didn't fit in. It's not a coincidence. It's psychological bullying and deformation of the human mind by physical and emotional trauma. How can you not see that? How can anyone not see that?
We need to clone that guy. He's amazing.
Including you.
There are memes out there in the wild that are.
Wikipedia is biased and should not be used as a neutral source. I have a bone to pick.
The term "West Bank" encompasses the historic territories of Judea and Samaria — territories with thousands of years of Jewish/Hebrew history.
To just blatantly claim that the "West Bank" (a term only in use for a few decades) is "occupied Palestine" is nonsense, historically. There has never been a Palestinian state or a Palestinian nation. The term "Palestine" historically refers to the geographical or topographical characteristics of the region.
And that's OK for the purposes of this discussion. Since I get my information from people from Gaza it's very likely that my information is "very biased" in my favor. Almost like that's why I believe what I do.
I don't want to judicate the boundaries because I don't have a personal stake in terms of which where etc., and I'm not even close to being worthy of negotiating that.
These events are important to me for the reasons outlined -- I'm not going to pretend to be the guy who can speak on every legal thing, but I will honestly answer your questions with respect to why I'm saying what I'm saying (and noting when I'm out of my depth)
The ongoing genocide in relation to the sensationalist murder is what causes the feeling of the absurd in me.
Where the lines get drawn after the genocide stops is less my interest, and stopping the weapons from continuing that is more my interest -- but these are moments in a reflection on political violence.
When and where?
Suppose 100,000 of your people were indiscriminately killed and you still lived.
Time to register to vote?
I think this is a bit much.
You may not recognize it as transphobia, but you're talking the points up front while ending with classist points.
Quoting Outlander
And yet this is false.
Unless you can read minds?
Still -- this isn't the question at all.
I noticed there was an uptick in propaganda trying to tie Utah boy to "Trans influence" -- but I'd interpret that as yet another attempt to demonize a minority group and not take responsibility. Or divert it somehow to something to be angry about rather than think it through.
Quoting Outlander
No more "transgenders" talk from here out, please.
It's a propaganda point in the sensationalist murder. Trans people are afraid because they're getting demonized again -- but they ought not be grouped with a person who shot someone for funzies.
If you check with the pro-Palestinian movement leaders like @NerdeenKiswani on X, the new death count is 700k with 400k babies dead. According to AI, there are not even 400k Palestinian babies in Gaza, but don't let that get in your way as a Palestinian activist. Push the numbers, yell the slogans, move on.
Last time I checked, it was 60k; now, apparently, it's 100k. Whatever the count is, it includes Hamas terrorists in a large count, given that it is what Israel is targeting. Gaza's figures do not differentiate between combatant and civilian because such a distinction is meaningless to them. Such distortions are run of the mill for the movement.
Can you imagine if we had this reporting in previous wars? I suppose it would be akin to "50k Germans indiscriminately killed" during Battle of the Bulge. Civilian, combatant, whatever, throw it all in one figure.
When a Hamas terrorist dies, the world is improved.
I am also sad for the innocent Palestinians. I am sad for the innocent in all wars. Such is war.
S'all good.
Yearp. That's the question -- less with respect to these individuals that sparked my feelings, but more with respect to ourselves: Who is good or bad? How do I agree or disagree with either response? Celebration because he spread hate, or condemnation because we're guilty of way more violence, in the big picture?
In some sense, to take the gun-control side, we could argue that we're all guilty for not regulating weapons well enough that a young boy hopped up on propaganda would not be able to shoot a celebrity for funzies.
But that's the sub-plot I'm asking for -- the main plot I'm asking is "Where and when?", but more with a reflection towards an uncomfortable aporia
I don't think the thoughts are what does it as much as the material conditions.
Words/Deeds have been a question since at least 1900 in "Western moral literature".
The increase in random gun violence predates those questions -- whereas the proliferation of firearms coupled with a society that is actively engaging with violence (and thereby must find justifications for violence) leads to an every once-and-again one-off murder, especially when bifurcation alienates people through class divisions, and the internet spreads not news but propaganda to incite feelings that young men often aren't good at handling.
I disagree.
That'd count as an example of "genocide": MW: "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group"
Hamas is a political group.
Something like "When a Republican dies the world is improved" would fit here.
Or even "When a Nazi dies the world is improved"
Only the Nazis did the genocide, so it is false to lament the death of a Nazi.
Whereas here we have the IDF carrying out the deliberate and systematic destruction of Hamas while killing anyone that gets in their way.
They don't use nukes because they want the land, not because they have restraint.
They don't use airpower because the land is close enough that artillery does the job.
It's not restraint -- it's systematic.
A war is between two countries that recognize one another.
Israel uses the UN definition to declare war on Hamas, but when they controlled the occupied territories they applied two levels of citizenship and deeply controlled who got in or out of the West Bank or Gaza.
It's not like Hamas just decided to be evil. There are reasons for why they were voted for that lead up to Oct 7th.
So as long as they "obey" the restrictions that continued to expand settlements they would not be bombed, but they weren't citizens of Israel as much as an apartheid.
Then that is not a good definition of genocide. Sometimes political groups need to be systematically destroyed. If the destruction of Nazi Germany is genocide then nothing is genocide.
That's not what happened. There was a war between different powers and people were tried after a government surrendered. The destruction of "Nazi Germany" is not the same as the systematic hunting down of anyone associated with "Hamas" to the point that it's OK to kill unarmed civilians and topple down Hospitals or civilian living quarters or stop aid from coming in to starve out anyone that might be associated in order to take over the land.
Hamas isn't the fascist in this scenario -- they're not really a "liberal democracy", but they're not "Nazi Germany" -- not even close.
That is different than hunting down and killing Hamas. I have no problem eliminating Hamas if it can be done without collateral damage or without the goal of stealing land. I see your point that Israel's goal is not just the elimination of Hamas at this point, and they are unable to do it without killing huge numbers of innocents, and what they are doing my fall under the definition of genocide.
I don't see how it matters what we call it.
Playing DevilÂ’s advocate, LikudÂ’s actions make internal logical sense. Ideally, the Palestinians would just go away, to Egypt or anywhere else, theyÂ’d take over Gaza and West Bank, thereÂ’d be a buffer zone between neighboring countries, and that would be the end of it.
This is the OBVIOUS goal. Eliminating Hamas never was. October 7th was a pretext to just take it all once and for all. Fortunately, the world really isn’t buying it— yet they’ll push on through until every Palestinian is dead or displaced. They’re making Gaza an unlivable hellhole.
At this point, if I were Palestinian IÂ’d just move out of there. TheyÂ’ve lost. The problem is, thereÂ’s nowhere to go.
So this genocide (oh, sorry, I mean ethnic cleansing) has nearly succeeded. A few thousand more dead babies (oops, I mean Hamas combatants) and destroyed buildings should do the trick over the next few years. All with the weapons and support of the US.
So the Civil War wasn't a war? Or the Revolutionary War, for that matter.
Quoting Moliere
Hamas is a hardline Islamist group that follows hardline Islamist ideology. At its most basic level it is simply seeking to expand the territory of Islam under hardline rule — nothing new in the history of Islam. Hamas isn't shy about this.
Nor is Hamas all that different (although a little more extreme) than "secular" organizations like the PLO, which also sponsors terror attacks.
If a German civilian were to "get in the way" of the Allies killing the Nazis, that civilian becomes a legitimate target. He has chosen a side.
Anyway, yes, Hamas and the Nazis are/were both political groups. Political groups deserving destruction.
No, but they're people. And you know what that means. I said it before, I'll say it again. "In this world, The only difference between the benevolent king and the evil king are two things: Opportunity. And Time."
Meaning, both people would gladly perform the same acts upon one another, given the opportunity. It simply happens to be one who is able to instead of the other right now. And they both acknowledge and admit that. Therefore, that happenstance transient fact is neither something to praise nor condemn. It's just "what is."
The problem is false religion. And yes, I say that as a practicing theist. They need to consider their religion as a "lifestyle choice" akin to a hobby. The problem is they think it grants them real authority over others in the real world. Maybe it did once upon a time. To not be an "infidel" because you obey what an alleged god king or "prophet" said, supposedly. Most religion is war propaganda to make you comfortable with death, whether delivered to you, or delivered by you.
Basically, allegedly, as far as my understanding goes, Israel is a "democracy" and Hamas has ambitions of a religious caliphate. No elections. Hereditary rule. The problem is, they are not kings. They do not come from royal lineage. Or at least, if they were, they are now crestfallen. Like most empires, the lower class/laborers/non-royalty ended up revolting against and deposing the True divinely appointed-leaders, thus damning their entire people, at least removing their blessing and protection turning their future society into little more than a seedy band of thieves and murderers in the eyes of the divine. Any God-established people or empire that does that loses their status of Nationhood to the only Authority that counts (albeit sometimes temporarily). Sure, they can prop it up for a while (with the blood of the Saints I.E. the Innocent). But it never lasts. Second problem is, if they were ever to become this "empire" they likely genuinely believe a Higher Power wants them to and will ensure they become, they won't stop growing from there, thus threatening the future stability of not just the region but the entire world. In the age of nuclear weaponry, that is no exaggeration. You have to kill the dragon while it's young. Any knight will attest to this fact.
Seriously, while it may seem the opposite, it's literally the difference between democracy in the region and fascism where unworthy men born from false kings control the lives of all, especially women and "gay people" (*cough* intellects who aren't brain-dead slaves who actually appreciate art and poetry over primal acts of pleasure). If they weren't from a false lineage and were real kings, that would be fine. There would be no problem. But they're not. So democracy will inevitably replace whatever system they have or intend to have. The only question is, how many have to die before then, something only they can answer and have full control over. Only question is how many more of their own will they choose to sacrifice for an ill-formed and false cause. So don't get it twisted.
Dude. In reality. All they have to do is become a true democracy and let McDonald's set up shop. They do that, all this killing and war goes away overnight. But they won't. Because they believe, (I would hope truly) that they are doing the right thing and fighting against the powers of an evil world thus ultimately pleasing some Higher Power. Not unlike myself. Shoot. Maybe they are. But guess what? Maybe they're not. That's all someone who believes in much of what they purport to believe can really say looking from the outside in.
I often wonder how the normalization of violence figures into this sort of messaging. There is a blatant political device in particular instances such as pardoning all of the participants in 1/6. But that does not add up to a possible future. The whole theater is oddly barren.
Naw, that's dumb.
There are significant differences between those and what's happening here, though, such that the "war" designation isn't exactly apparent to me.
Suppose South African Apartheid.
I see that situation as much closer to the situation in Israel -- Israel offers different rights to Jews than to non-News. Palestinians are segregated into different locations within the state of Israel. This is largely due to a desire for an ethno-state -- i.e. Arabs over there and Jews over here.
Suppose that South Africa, in response to a political act of terrorism on white people, set up artillery and began to systematically eliminate the Black neighborhoods in retaliation. Further suppose that they continued to bombard the schools, hospitals, journalists, civilian living quarters, universities, places of worship, etc. in the name of defeating the political group responsible -- how many non-combatants and places unrelated to combat can be purposefully annihilated before this stops being a "war" and starts being a "genocide"?
Part of me is also hesitant to describe this as a war on the sheer basis of firepower. If you hold a firing line to keep people within a place where you're going to bombard them regardless of their political orientation are we really engaging in war? Or is this Dresden extended over a longer period of time? Gaza is under siege while being bombarded. Part of the tools being used here are starvation to inflict mass punishment.
There are other means of genocide in play here too: if one targets people who have knowledge, such as doctors, journalists, teachers, scholars, holy persons, and legal authorities then it will be harder for the genocidaires to be persecuted -- if you destroy the evidence and the knowledge of a people then you can tell the story as you want. Consider "Go West Young Man" as a result of the United States' genocide.
So my theory of war needs refinement, but I don't see an apt comparison to either the United States' civil war or its revolutionary war.
While a penchant for violence is a part of human nature I do not think that people are sitting around waiting for their turn at the genocide stick. That's an entirely cynical view whereby we can dismiss any genocide on the basis that "Well, if the people who are being killed now had the opportunity, they'd be the genocidaires. So what's the difference? Let the genocide go on"
I get the sense that the 4chaners et. al. just want to agitate people to kill others in order to cause a sense of terrorism. I don't think they care which side does it; what they care about is the terror, and the lack of culpability for themselves. They want to inspire others to carry out random acts of violence.
This is functionally speaking -- the ideology is hard to decipher, but that's on purpose. This is part of why I think of it as a fascist underground: fascists purposefully use duplicitous messaging with the intent of destroying social bonds with the state such that they can take over the state without a real political program other than hatred for the other, a desire for punishment, and the willingness to utilize the powers of state to carry out that mission.
Fascism is a cult that worships death for its own sake as a means to purify the population.
At least, that's my perception. It's terribly hard to track details on the actual people -- this is just what the part of the internet looks like that looks similar to what thus far this assassin at hand.
Ehhh... given what we see right now, it really isn't possible to do that. This is what the Israeli government is pursuing in the name of routing out Hamas.
Oh, I disagree there. It can still be stopped. There is still resistance.
Of course not. To see reality for what it is requires living an examined life. Basically, it requires not being a mental invalid. Unfortunately, most people are exactly that. The average person is little more than a (barely) functional "r-word". And boy do I mean barely. There are just more of them right now so they effectively control the world. That's why it's in chaos. The intelligent are afraid to speak out because they know their life is infinitely and exponentially more valuable than even 10,000 of the commoner and so must do so to remain alive, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. Since the depraved are violent by nature. If intellectual people, like those who post here, were the majority, and saw how the current majority behaves. They'd be locked in a cell for their own safety.
They don't "want genocide" they want "stuff" and the "feeling" (glory?) that genocide happens to provide. And also happens to be the only way to achieve these things. It's very simple.
Basically, we're watching two little children, one much larger, fight one another. It's time for the adults "the world" to step in and break it up.
How can the Civil War be a war to you? The North didn't recognize the South as an independent country.
Quoting Moliere
Tell that to the Israeli Arab muslims who serve in Parliament and as judges and professors with full rights.
I can't tell whether you're talking about Israeli arabs or Palestinians.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not entertaining this because Israel is not South Africa, nor has Israel begun bombing its own neighborhoods. Gaza is not an Israeli neighborhood or region. It is a territory possessed by an enemy political group that openly seeks the complete destruction of its neighbor and to establish hardline Islamic rule.
Did apartheid SA have blacks in Parliament? In high positions in society?
Quoting Moliere
:up: Keep in mind that over 10,000 rockets have been fired indiscriminately into Israel from Gaza since 10/7 and that 10-20% of these misfire and end up landing in Gaza itself. In any case, whether we call it a war or a protracted conflict doesn't matter much to me... although near 1,000 Israeli soldiers have been killed since 10/7 but ultimately 'war' or 'protracted conflict' both fit.
Does it matter? If you won't accept South Africa as an analogue, then ought I to accept the civil war?
I told you the differences I saw. I used South Africa because it's another colonial project.
With the States you have two colonial governments fighting. If I were to analogize something in the United States I'd say it's how we treated the Native Americans and Blacks rather than the Civil War. They were less than second class citizens, for the most part.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
What about the ones that don't have full rights?
Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_citizenship_law#Status_of_Palestinian_Arabs
They were forced from their land and required to apply for citizenship with Israel and if they couldn't -- which most didn't -- they lost their property.
Technically speaking they're not citizens so it's not a "second class citizen" de jure -- but it is de facto.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Here's the part where Israel gets duplicitous. Prior to Oct 7th they wouldn't recognize their statehood. After Oct 7th they still won't recognize statehood, but they'll declare war on them as if they are a state. In times of peace they are controlled by the Israeli government, in times of war they're a fully independent nation.
Under apartheid they slowly drive out Palestinians with expansions of colonies. Under war they kill indiscriminately while holding a siege to keep people in an area where they can be slowly eliminated. This is all part of a history of slowly expanding and taking over Palestinian lands by any means necessary.
Drop the analogy if you wish. It was thinly veiled. The part that sticks, from my perspective, is that Israel effectively treats the Palestinian territories as an open air prison in "peace times", and a kill zone in "war times".
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
... you realize that this comparison isn't in Israel's favor, yes?
My thought is that this is not a war, but a systematic erasure of another people for the purpose of obtaining land and punishing them en masse for voting for Hamas. I.e. a genocide.
Even if the Nazis were evil they kept Germany after the fact. Heidegger even got to stay a part of the party until it was legally dissolved.
Quoting Moliere
If you do a bit of research, you'll see that the vast majority of Palestinians don't want Israeli citizenship. To accept citizenship would be to effectively validate the notion of a Jewish, non-Muslim state, which they have opposed since the very beginning. It is a humiliation to many of them.
And that's a central issue imho—the persistent refusal of the Palestinians to accept an independent Jewish state in what ought to be Muslim land. Jews lived alongside Hindus in peace for many centuries since neither group felt the need to convert or conquer the other. When one side refuses to accept the presence of the other, wars are launched, which lead to greater loss of land, more humiliation, and more victimization. It's a vicious cycle of victimhood.
After 10/7, Hamas lost its seat at the table. They shattered any prospective hope for peace. They acted like Nazis - summarily executing Israelis/Jews civilians and keeping Israelis/Jews in concentration camp-like conditions in captivity - and they deserve annihilation just like the Third Reich. Like the deaths of German civilians are ultimately the responsibility of the Third Reich, the deaths of Gazan civilians are on Hamas, as Israel takes considerable precautions to avoid disproportionate civilian deaths.
Losing wars sucks, but you cannot pass down hate and resentment about it from generation to generation.
It would certainly be nice if those were the people we were talking about.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
At least you aren't denying that it's a genocide -- you're just going about it saying that no matter what Israel does the presence of Hamas justifies everything that come.
I'm afraid that responsibility for death doesn't work that way, though. I'd welcome international trials once we disarm Israel -- but I'd put Israel on trial as the one responsible for the deaths of the people their army is killing, and not the dirty other that they must cleanse from the land.
As far as I'm concerned, it's Israel that has lost face in this exchange with their actions. It is they who have lost a seat at the table for free military aid: Look at what they do with it. They cry for people to remember Amulek, sow disinformation, speak duplicitously, and kill systematically such that they will destroy a people for voting for Hamas -- collective punishment -- and hopefully eliminate them from the land so they can take it for themselves.
But the United States isn't terribly concerned about the moral implications of all this -- they just want an airfield. So insofar that the elimination is contained to the Palestinians we'll continue sending military aid because almost no one in office opposes Israel, and people are punished for speaking up in favor of the Palestinian cause.
Which brings me back to my reflection on ballots and bullets: in the United States there is little the ballot will do regarding these matters. It is ineffective. What I see as peaceful means of opposition lies with BDS and the international community, though -- to use the bullet in the United States on this issue wouldn't be effective in spite of the lack of a ballot.
But for Hamas? Well, supposing you eliminate Hamas, given what's happened, were I to survive. . .
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This wouldn't be something you could shame me from. I'd be tempted to start Hamas 2.0 after seeing so many people slaughtered once you remove Hamas 1.0.
Which is why BDS strikes me as a moral giant. I don't think I'd have that restraint given what's happening. Hate and resentment will spread further and longer the further and longer the genocide continues. And just because Hamas was voted in that does not mean everyone within a territory gets to be killed because "they lost their seat at the table" for daring to fight back against apartheid.
This is a non-secular, ignorant (don't take offense at definitions) view of the real situation. They don't view other people as having rights to declare "citizenship" or "borders". No mainstream religion propagated itself without allowing the believer to be "above" another human being for no actual reason other than use of the word "God" and defeating the "idea of Death."
It's like if you're a father with children and you opened the door into your kid's room one day and your kid randomly said "oh I'm a nation all of a sudden and you can be my citizen". You'd smack that little s**t into next week.
Unfortunately, everyone believes they're the "top guy". Because they have no value other than that which they can rob of others. It's the plague of false/corrupted religion. I mean shoot, I'm a Christian. I can acknowledge many churches are either fake or otherwise besieged by "worldly forces", mostly pedophiles. That doesn't matter. They're all going to the same place. And soon. But again, that's... kind of a non-starter for non-theists and those who are (un?)fortunate enough not to have witnessed indescribable miracles of God. Things that indisputably defy all worldly logic, science, and explanation.
By the same logic, everything Likud has done over the years justifies the actions of Hamas. As an evil organization, theyÂ’ve given up all rights to peace. Eventually, after decades of keeping people in open air prisons and murdering innocent people again and again, thereÂ’s bound to be reactions.
By their own logic, we shouldnÂ’t condemn Hamas. They certainly donÂ’t condemn Likud. They find a way to justify their atrocities. Well, so can Hamas. In fact, they have a better argument.
It's the sort of logic that can lock one into a fight -- a tit-for-tat that lands on whichever side you want to favor. And usually adopted by the bully to try and confuse people as to who is really at fault.
In such a case we might look for an arbiter of some kind -- but I don't trust the United States in this matter.
I'd prefer the United Nation's ICC.
But then, many of these same people are so quickly willing to say we know what Charlie Kirk meant, and understand his use of some of those same words clearly enough to convict him as a deplorable, hateful, harm causing son of bitch.
As far as I can tell, Charlie Kirk talked. He said things. (Like we do here.) Someone else shot him. Kirk is dead now. The other guy is arrested.
Who cares about what Kirk said? Unless he expressly said “please shoot me”, it’s all irrelevant to a more important question.
What do you think about setting up a tent, inviting a bunch of people, grabbing a microphone to speak to them, offering a microphone to others so they can speak, and getting shot dead?
How does that sound?
The rest of the facts and opinions and debatable content and observations and analysis donÂ’t matter. At least they shouldnÂ’t matter at all first.
Aside from the personal crap for his poor wife and kids, and aside from the fact that none of us should judge anyone else so harshly, who cares if Kirk was a good guy or not?
We can banish him to hell or congratulate ourselves on having a better world without Kirk in it later - what about assassination of anyone, ever, in a tent, giving out hats and tee shirts? What about political debate fora? What about our own tent TPF?
ShouldnÂ’t all of us bigmouths care about someone being killed for having a big mouth?
We can’t start this discussion without agreement about killing anyone in tent like that. If instead we start off with “killing people in tents like that is bad, but…” we skipped what is important about the topic.
ArenÂ’t KirkÂ’s views on the 2nd amendment secondary to his embodiment (not his views) of the first amendment?
Is it bad that some guy is dead like that or not? He wasnÂ’t even an elected official. He, literally, was all talk. And someone shot him.
The killing of Malcom X was equally as heinous an affront to humanity. No matter what Malcom thought about bullets, or what Charlie thought about guns. Who really gives a shit what either man thought or said at a moment like this - what the fuck kind of people entertain in any level assassination of private citizens because of things they say in a political debate forum?
How hard is that not to make bedrock among us - on a debate forum?!!!
Quoting Moliere
Yeah, but “how much violence we are already responsible for” is also a diversion. More fog. This is an easy one if you have any principles at all.
Unless you really mean to ask: when should we be allowed to kill our political debate opponents?
IsnÂ’t that the same as asking, when can we throw out the rules of any game weÂ’ve all agreed to play for sake of some other new game? As if in such circumstances there is such a thing as a judge or ground to answer such question anymore.
We donÂ’t get to bring a gun to a debate and have a debate. No one should celebrate what happened on any level. Charlie was as precious and loved as Malcom, and so many others.
We should be convicting ourselves - instead we build grounds for the next bullet.
———
What logical fallacy is involved here:
- p1: supporting private gun ownership
- p2: saying and recognizing that this will create a platform where private people can wrongfully kill each other
-p3: getting shot dead
Therefore: he asked for it and got what he wanted, or canÂ’t complain.
Count pointed out how this is a stupid argument.
ItÂ’s like a trans man supporting DEI even if hiring that Asian woman means that Trans man wonÂ’t be hired - we donÂ’t have to conclude the trans man asked not to be hired.
Yet I think our resident rigorously genius Banno basically made this argument.
You guys are willing to post page after page showing how we canÂ’t know anything for certain, but ahhh, fuck Charlie, he was a dick about trans people, he said Jesus way too much, and wouldnÂ’t shut up. So heÂ’s dead, letÂ’s move on and talk about Israel, and Trump clearly inciting an insurrectionÂ…
Weak. We must do better.
KirkÂ’s murder was bad all around for everyone.
I did say that I don't believe he deserved what happened to him.
Quoting Moliere
Now, granted, if all we're talking about is Charlie Kirk's assassination then it's a diversion.
I had a particular feeling in relation to his death, what he said, and our continued support for Israel.
And, ultimately, still feel fear at my own numbness.
No, not at all. I tend to see one-off assassinations as ineffective to what I want to achieve.
I'm asking after the justifications for political violence in a world where we condemn this sniper while living as we do. I genuinely don't get how Trump, for instance, can support Israel and condemn the sniper**.
**EDIT: I get it politically, but I mean the whole reaction that Trump joined in with: we condemn this random assassination as if we aren't supporting death on a mass scale elsewhere. In an ethical sense it shouldn't matter the laws, so much, as the deaths and how much they can be prevented. Sending weapons en masse without sanction isn't exactly on par with the reaction against this sniper.
That's the true Christian*** spirit I'm aware of.
I agree that no one should celebrate death -- that's the path to more death. It's part of why I'm disturbed at my own indifference, even though I can tell you why.
I've felt an absurd feeling I don't know how to describe succinctly since seeing that assassination and trying to contextualize it within what first came to mind. The thing that comes to mind for me is not only should we not celebrate, but we should pay attention to the death we're more directly involved in rather than continue the sensation. At least in light of the deaths we can prevent if we choose to act.
***EDIT: Given the circumstances I ought say the true Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist spirit, and really all life and freedom loving people, but I succumbed to rhetorical devices.
We do not know what the killer had in mind. The label "fascist" has been pinned to too many donkeys to form a shared idea. We have had experience of the MAGA version of our circumstances. Maybe they have been hoisted by their own petard. Maybe we will find out about that. Maybe not.
What puzzles me about the MAGA message is to be told there is a war going on but also not a war. The absorption of 1/6 as a valid form of political expression versus preventing a hostile takeover by a particular cartel.
By contrast, I submit that John and Malcolm had a clear idea about the difference between war and peace.
Yes, and never will really -- I'm trying to make sense of things so posit various "motivations" that aren't really from evidence but an attempt to make sense of things.
I disagree in that I think it's a social phenomena worth identifying.
Quoting Paine
Yes, true.
Quoting Paine
"Fascism" explains this, I'd say.
Quoting Paine
[s]John the Baptist? 4th book in the Bible?[/s]
The answer.
John Brown. Malcom X.
I got confused, obviously.
That seems part of the reflection, philosophically -- if you don't have a clear notion of both then how could you possibly choose?
I don't have a ready answer for all of this.
But there are some interesting gaps.
I am, for several reasons. If Israel were committing genocide against the "Palestinians" why wouldn't it root out and presumably execute its own Israeli Arabs? Israeli Arabs and "Palestinians" are really the same people, and only differ due to location and citizenship. If anything, I'd expect Israel to start with its own Arabs. It would have been like Germany leaving its own Jews unharassed.
Quoting Outlander
To make this example better, we need to imagine that that the kid is older than the adult because Judaism is older than Islam and has had a presence in Israel for longer. We also need to imagine that the "kid" had several houses (i.e. kingdoms) built in that location before the father was alive. Third, that the ancient child's religious/cultural identity was formed in those ancient kingdoms (houses), making him indigenous.
That's no normal child.
Analogies to family dynamics aren't good ways of understanding geo-politics if that's where we end. If that's what we have to work with then OK that's what we work with.
But political conflict is not a family dynamic. There are no "older siblings" or "Daddys". There is no such thing as an "immature" country from the political perspective such that another country can "guide" it. When a more developed country "guides" another there is always a realpolitik motive. The family analogies aren't helpful in understanding these sorts of relationships.
Quoting Moliere
Agree; I was working within the framework I was given.
That report points to the problem of expecting a manifesto to explain actions. It also highlights how unconcerned the suspect was about killing someone as a matter of principle. That is something we do not know.
The effort to put this in a box is all that can be known for sure so far.
Now we have Vance taking over as the host of the Kirk podcast while ABC is pulling the Kimmel show for saying the killer has MAGA roots. I don't think these attempts to control the message will succeed but it is about to get ugly.
It's been ugly and getting uglier. I've admitted I didn't expect Trump 2.0 to go full fascist.
So what to do?
Voting is good. Supporting institutions as well as we can in relation to our capacities and opportunities is good.
One way I look at it is that MAGA has to reproduce to become a force in the next generation. If they completely "own the libs" the environment of the first generations will lose their meaning. Becoming a victim of one's own success does happen to people.
This is a genocidal statement that would result in systemic discrimination, incarceration, enslavement, and eventual killing off of all those with relatively small face-to-head ratios. You are the next Hitler and must be stopped. Nothing short of your immediate arrest will suffice. I would relocate somewhere else if I were you.
Also, what are you trying to do? Get us all cancelled and have Jamal named #1 international fugitive by INTERPOL? Have some tact, mate.
I have to admit I was mocking voting in this retort. Mostly at the individual level -- i.e. if you're organized then voting can make a difference in some circumstances, but we don't live in a country where voting has much influence if you're just an individual voting in practical terms. That it exists influences conversations, but it's also well managed so that it doesn't influence policy.
I'd say that's already there. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Rittenhouse -- the fascists have a multi-generational movement willing to utilize violence to purge the state of those unclean. That connections from the young to the old is part of why I say Trump has bloomed into full on fascism rather than the proto-fascism of yesteryears. They have enough people thinking like them that purifying the state with state powers are seen as legitimate uses of state power.
The illegals, the drug addicts, the unemployed, the disabled, the "antifa", the progressives, the atheists, the Muslims, the Jews, the anti-anythingTrumpsays-ers -- time to finally get rid of these dirty individuals so we can make ourselves great again.
None of that is true.
Says the boy who tosses a snowball off a winter-kissed hill overlooking a remote village that is warned: "You shouldn't do that. It could cause an avalanche."
Also, to be technical. The last sentence is completely true. I would in fact relocate if I were him. Just to see what else is around, if nothing else. You're smart, but not very thorough.
But how would I know which way it'd go unless I toss? This is a relatively safe environment for exploring thoughts.
Quoting Outlander
What I thought is untrue is that @frank didn't make "a genocidal statement" -- whatever the motive or result that's not what the statement does or is intended for.
It's important to me that "genocide" is understood in a fairly technical manner -- as well as "fascist"
Else it runs the risk of trivializing horrors I want to talk about and understand.
Glad to at least be "smart" ;)
I agree that I'm not thorough -- that's where things get hard. I like to pursue it but that's the hard part. And ultimately it's why I post threads like this: I don't know where I'll land at the end and that's why I wanted to talk about it.
This recent assassination compared to the ongoing genocide is what inspired the thought. There's certainly a contrast there in terms of exposure (the assassination) and impact (the genocide).
I don't think @frank was making a comment towards genocide or even something that'd result in genocide, but attempting to make light of a heavy situation.
You are reading off the ledger of the true believers. I don't think they have the last word. The system may be rigged in most ways, but voting is still important. Otherwise, the choice is as Malcom X put it.
The electorate who brought in Trump were seduced. Now that they have tied the knot and headed down Highway 61 with the guy, they are learning stuff. The agricultural support for him is getting hit hard by ICE and starting trade wars with everybody. People are learning the hard way what destruction of government services and regulation involves.
If all that has no effect, I will consider restoring the crossbow.
My view is that the way to deal with people like Kirk is to engage them reasonably. Try to figure out what they are actually angry about etc. I had a Russian student once who hated gays virulently. Puzzled by this, I asked him what he would do if his own son turned out to be gay. His first answer was "kill him". He later rowed back on that a bit, but to call him anti-gay was, let's say, an understatement. Still, he was generally speaking a nice guy and because I knew him and liked him before he revealed himself to be a homophobe, I didn't stop liking him and trying to convince him he was misguided. I met him two years after that incident when I no longer taught him and he had dropped the homophobia. Don't know why. But whatever happened, it was better than someone shooting him in the head.
At the same time, let's not downplay the fact that homophobic, racist etc propaganda, by people who are actually listened to (unlike my student) has real world consequences for those who are the victims of it. Anti-gay rhetoric in Uganda led eventually to a law that punishes homosexuality by life imprisonment and, in some cases, death. So, this is not a hypothetical. We don't have to condone essentially self-defeating acts of violence to realize that hateful rhetoric is dangerous and, over time, can instigate political changes that threaten lives.
But of course, and while I appreciate you have other things you'd like to do, you might want to listen to Kirk a bit (if you haven't) to really see where he stood. He was not a firebrand and he really didn't spew hatred in the sense that I think some on the left think he did. He represented, to be sure, a distateful element for the left, but he was pretty much a rank and file devout Christian who spoke the tenants of his faith. He did not suggest anyone should kill or hate. That was not his message. And this isn't me defending his Christian views because I don't hold them.
The secular "religious" view holds the protection of homosexual and transsexual rights in very high regard and it also places a very high priority on things like climate change. I can respect these views, as I can of any other highly prioritized view among a group, but those holding these secular views have to reflect upon the fact that a war for their cause is no different than any other holy war one might want to declare. What also has to be remembered is that the views I've itemized are not the views of your grandparents and maybe not your parents, meaning they are extremely new in terms of what we typically accept as societal norms. Villifying someone who hasn't adopted the morality du jour, even if it should one day prove itself worthy of eternal acceptance, is not a realistic response to someone not being as receptive to change as you might be.
My point here is just that I see nothing but unmitigated tragedy in Kirk's death, unreduced an iota that he might have held views conflicting with my own. The world is a worse place for his death. Period. This view is a largely held one, and it's why those who hold otherwise are being cast aside daily as unfit for civil discourse. Whether that is the proper response or not might be a question, but condemning them is not.
He was like: 'I love Jews, but they hate white people, they want to destroy them by importing non-whites.'
I think we probably disagree on which direction his boat was eventually going to tip.
Quoting Wikipedia, NYT
But Jews are a diverse group. There are a thousand miles of difference between Hannah Einbinder (look her up), Netanhyahu, and Menachem Schneerson (look him up) and many others. There were in fact many openly communist Jews and many are very liberal, but many like Hanover (look him up), not so much.
If your objective it to make me remove Kirk from the Saint list, I never put him there, but if it's to have some understanding for those who felt a fleeting sense of joy at his having been shot in the neck, you'll be wasting your time. Sympathy for the devil is one of the highest sins.
There do seem to be some influential Jews who hate Israel and the West more generally. Soros would be among them. As mentioned, there are wonderful and not-so-wonderful Jews. I think it's clear at this point that influential NGOs, some funded by Jews like Soros, have been financing the pro-Palestine movement and facilitating the flow of mass migration to the West. There seems to be a long history of contributions to left-wing causes.
You said he represented views that might be distasteful to the left. I think it was a little worse than that. He openly disagreed with the principle of separation of church and state, he advocated Christian nationalism, and he embraced the replacement conspiracy theory.
I agree his assassination was a terrible thing, for a variety of reasons. And I'm sure there are evil Jews in the world, but when a person is found to have rambled on about that from a stage in front of crowds of people, a little blip ought to appear on your Neo-Nazi radar. I'm just saying, stop saying he was just a regular devout Christian. That's not true.
I mean, he was a devout evangelical Christian, and it's not like he was talking about Soros all the time.
Regular Christians don't think Jews are trying to destroy white people. Kirk did believe that.
It's not "the Jews." It's Soros and maybe a handful of others. He's like Magneto.
That's incorrect. It's "Jews.". But Soros is legendary among day traders. More like Hell Boy.