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Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’

by tmsh 1y ago

Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’s assassination attempts and targeted violence seem to follow a similar pattern during periods of significant social and political shifts. As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then. Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.

pm90 1y ago
This is dangerous false equivalency. Charlie Kirk was not advocating for the rights of the downtrodden. He was a right wing provocateur, and he’s on the record saying that “some gun deaths are ok” in service of the 2nd amendment, and in making light of the nearly deadly political attack on the Pelosi family. Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.
- PlanksVariable 1y ago
  [dead]
- Cornbilly 1y ago
  He also spread the rumors that Pelosi’s attacker was just an upset gay lover.
  - thephyber 1y ago
    I don’t get why people are downvoting this. It is factually true, even if it’s uncomfortable to point out on the day of his murder. Kirk was not a benevolent truth seeker. He was a political provocateur and propagandist dressed as a debater. And Paul Pelosi was one of the victims of his smears.
- strken 1y ago
  "Some gun deaths are okay" is saying the quiet part out loud, but it's not wrong. When you let a large group of people have access to something dangerous then some number of them will die and kill using the dangerous thing, whether the thing is cars or paracetamol or wingsuits or guns. I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.
  - darkerside 1y ago
    Was this one of the OK ones?
    - strken 1y ago
      I'm not an American, I'm an Australian. Our gun deaths sit at 0.9 per 100000 people instead of 14 per 100000 and I approve of our gun laws. In that sense, I guess I'd say that roughly 6% of this gun death was okay. In a broader sense, it is of course not okay to shoot someone, but that's taking the quote out of the context of gun control measures.
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - dazilcher 1y ago
      Is anyone on the right asking for stricter gun control laws as result? That should answer your gotcha question.
      - throwaway-11-1 1y ago
        yes, the DOJ https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms-justice-department-second-amendment https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
    - nailer 1y ago
      He means lets not disarm ourselves for evil. Not that evil is OK, but that some evil may occur due to not disarming. I disagree with him on guns, but that is the point.
- tmsh 1y ago
  Right it’s more that it’s odd that there’s all these assassinations of conservatives (UnitedHealthCare etc). And previously there were many assassinations of progressives. I think it’s just the leaders in a dominant part of a force in society become casualties. Loss of life is always tragic even if we disagree with everything they stand for. But anyway the historical part (if that is what is happening - hard to tease out if there’s just more gun violence in general) helps me make sense of it. The dominant wave has breaks or we see them more somehow.
  - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - NickC25 1y ago
      > Gabby Giffords assailant was pretty insane but reports from people that knew him claimed he was liberal Unmasking myself a bit here but one of my college roommates at University of Arizona also attended classes with Jared at Pima Community College. Jared liked to burn flags, collect guns, and think the world was conspiring against him. The dude was insane (see his mughsot), not liberal.
  - solid_fuel 1y ago
    It's not like the assassinations of progressives ever stopped - the Hoffmans were killed literally a few months ago. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_legislators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
    - tomjakubowski 1y ago
      It's the Hortmans who were killed, the Hoffmans survived their attack. It's easy to confuse them because the assassin was working his way through an alphabetized list of democratic politicians.
- ironman1478 1y ago
  Even if we ignore the gun topic, he was extremely anti abortion, including in rape situations. He argued for heinous perspectives and oppression. He didn't deserve to die, but he wasn't advocating for a world of opportunity and hope. Just oppression and hate. Let's not act like he was some saint helping people.
  - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
    But the problem is what you're saying doesn't follow. Charlie Kirk believed that abortion involves murdering a human being, violently, which it does. He believe in the rare circumstance of a pregnancy occurring from rape that the child is still innocent and should not be killed. That is explicitly advocating for life and non-violence, whether you agree with the premise or not. I think the left really has to reckon with something extremely important. As much as the left is pompous and pretends to be so much more "educated" that conservatives, they have a hard time following through positions logically, which is seems quite odd for supposed intellectual superiors.
    - ironman1478 1y ago
      What about if a person can't support their child at that time in their life and they don't have a support system to help them? the government doesn't make it easy to give a kid up for adoption and also doesn't make it easy to adopt kids. The kid will likely not have a good life, especially as the government cuts benefits. Is it really worth bringing a child into this world if you're setting them up to fail? Is that really the correct thing to do? Are you really being kind to the child by kicking it in the teeth from birth? What if the birth will kill the mother? Is that not okay either? It's not even political. You just follow the logic and you kind of have to support abortion. There isn't really a logical reason not to. I actually believe the world is really messy and you have to have solutions that deal with the messiness. Being absolutist in any direction will never be right. Taking the extreme opposite position of mandated abortions is equally stupid and quite frankly as childish. It's surprising anybody on this site would defend something so illogical. Also read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-w... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
- b0ringdeveloper 1y ago
  Would you say that some car deaths are OK in service of transportation or that we should lower the speed limit until there are 0 deaths from vehicle accidents? Tradeoffs between rights and safety are always made. I interpret "some gun deaths are ok" as to mean that they are inherently dangerous, and that seeking 0 accidental deaths is too high of a standard for something to be allowed. And we don't hold other parts of daily life to this standard, like vehicles or medicine. If you want to get into degrees, that's fine, but a blanket shutdown on the sentence doesn't do that.
  - pm90 1y ago
    Transportation is required for daily life for almost all Americans. Gun ownership isn’t. If it were upto me, we wouldn’t have such a car dependent culture. It is absolutely possible to invest in public transportation/multimodal transport and reduce this number significantly.
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      They certainly are, police cause gun deaths all the time in service of maintaining law and order. But to middle class snobs who think they're morally above it all, such dirtiness is a reality they can wave away with a dismissive comment of superiority, safe from all that messiness, in their nice suburb homes. So long as they intentionally ignore these lower class facts that some wrongdoers exist who can literally only be stopped by deadly force, they can continue to put their chins up and lament the inferior-to-them simpletons who think guns have to be a thing, in between taking long savouring sniffs of their excrement after every bathroom visit.
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        Speaking as an amoral low-class snob who grew up in Detroit, the prevalence of concealed carry didn't make me feel any safer than I felt in Windsor. Lot more gunfire at night on the stars-and-stripes side of the river too, which always struck me as rude when people are trying to sleep.
      - 1y ago
- typeofhuman 1y ago
  He was advocating for the rights of the living yet unborn. He was advocating for the downtrodden youth who are being unnecessarily overburdened with massive college debt and unable to afford a home. He was advocating for citizens who are being put last by their electorate.
  - thrance 1y ago
    He was helping the "unborn" by advocating for stripping womens of their rights and sending them back to the house. He was helping students by supporting the most anti-intellectual party ever, that cancelled student debt relief and help programs. He was helping the downtrodden by supporting the most billionaire-friendly administration ever, giving tax breaks to the rich and dismantling the last of our social safety nets. Get real. I don't even buy that you believe all that shit.
    - tirant 1y ago
      A small but important correction. The debt was never cancelled, but socialized and payed by all the American citizens. A loan that was taken voluntarily by adults was arbitrarily reassigned and forced upon the rest of the American citizens, including all those who never had accepted to take such debt. Completely violating the principles of personal responsibility. It is very easy to be generous and altruist with someone else's money and then even take the credit for it.
      - thrance 1y ago
        Public higher education yields more skilled workers, who contribute more to society, thereby being a net positive overall. That's how it works in civilized country anyways. Too bad the average American can't think further then "Me no share, fuck you".
        typeofhuman 1y ago
        "Public higher education yields more skilled workers" as compared to what? Laborers or trade-skill workers? I think people overestimate the ROI of a college diploma. Let's just assume you are correct. The solution should be universities lower or eliminate tuition. Not exponentially increase it. Not pay presidents and coaches millions and millions of dollars. And not stick taxpayers with the bill - or devalue our currency with government spending.
mynameyeff 1y ago
Indeed.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by tmsh 1y ago

pm90 1y ago

This is dangerous false equivalency. Charlie Kirk was not advocating for the rights of the downtrodden. He was a right wing provocateur, and he’s on the record saying that “some gun deaths are ok” in service of the 2nd amendment, and in making light of the nearly deadly political attack on the Pelosi family. Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.

PlanksVariable 1y ago
[dead]
Cornbilly 1y ago
He also spread the rumors that Pelosi’s attacker was just an upset gay lover.
- thephyber 1y ago
  I don’t get why people are downvoting this. It is factually true, even if it’s uncomfortable to point out on the day of his murder. Kirk was not a benevolent truth seeker. He was a political provocateur and propagandist dressed as a debater. And Paul Pelosi was one of the victims of his smears.
strken 1y ago
"Some gun deaths are okay" is saying the quiet part out loud, but it's not wrong. When you let a large group of people have access to something dangerous then some number of them will die and kill using the dangerous thing, whether the thing is cars or paracetamol or wingsuits or guns. I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.
- darkerside 1y ago
  Was this one of the OK ones?
  - strken 1y ago
    I'm not an American, I'm an Australian. Our gun deaths sit at 0.9 per 100000 people instead of 14 per 100000 and I approve of our gun laws. In that sense, I guess I'd say that roughly 6% of this gun death was okay. In a broader sense, it is of course not okay to shoot someone, but that's taking the quote out of the context of gun control measures.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - dazilcher 1y ago
    Is anyone on the right asking for stricter gun control laws as result? That should answer your gotcha question.
    - throwaway-11-1 1y ago
      yes, the DOJ https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms-justice-department-second-amendment https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
  - nailer 1y ago
    He means lets not disarm ourselves for evil. Not that evil is OK, but that some evil may occur due to not disarming. I disagree with him on guns, but that is the point.
tmsh 1y ago
Right it’s more that it’s odd that there’s all these assassinations of conservatives (UnitedHealthCare etc). And previously there were many assassinations of progressives. I think it’s just the leaders in a dominant part of a force in society become casualties. Loss of life is always tragic even if we disagree with everything they stand for. But anyway the historical part (if that is what is happening - hard to tease out if there’s just more gun violence in general) helps me make sense of it. The dominant wave has breaks or we see them more somehow.
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - NickC25 1y ago
    > Gabby Giffords assailant was pretty insane but reports from people that knew him claimed he was liberal Unmasking myself a bit here but one of my college roommates at University of Arizona also attended classes with Jared at Pima Community College. Jared liked to burn flags, collect guns, and think the world was conspiring against him. The dude was insane (see his mughsot), not liberal.
- solid_fuel 1y ago
  It's not like the assassinations of progressives ever stopped - the Hoffmans were killed literally a few months ago. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_legislators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
  - tomjakubowski 1y ago
    It's the Hortmans who were killed, the Hoffmans survived their attack. It's easy to confuse them because the assassin was working his way through an alphabetized list of democratic politicians.
ironman1478 1y ago
Even if we ignore the gun topic, he was extremely anti abortion, including in rape situations. He argued for heinous perspectives and oppression. He didn't deserve to die, but he wasn't advocating for a world of opportunity and hope. Just oppression and hate. Let's not act like he was some saint helping people.
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
  But the problem is what you're saying doesn't follow. Charlie Kirk believed that abortion involves murdering a human being, violently, which it does. He believe in the rare circumstance of a pregnancy occurring from rape that the child is still innocent and should not be killed. That is explicitly advocating for life and non-violence, whether you agree with the premise or not. I think the left really has to reckon with something extremely important. As much as the left is pompous and pretends to be so much more "educated" that conservatives, they have a hard time following through positions logically, which is seems quite odd for supposed intellectual superiors.
  - ironman1478 1y ago
    What about if a person can't support their child at that time in their life and they don't have a support system to help them? the government doesn't make it easy to give a kid up for adoption and also doesn't make it easy to adopt kids. The kid will likely not have a good life, especially as the government cuts benefits. Is it really worth bringing a child into this world if you're setting them up to fail? Is that really the correct thing to do? Are you really being kind to the child by kicking it in the teeth from birth? What if the birth will kill the mother? Is that not okay either? It's not even political. You just follow the logic and you kind of have to support abortion. There isn't really a logical reason not to. I actually believe the world is really messy and you have to have solutions that deal with the messiness. Being absolutist in any direction will never be right. Taking the extreme opposite position of mandated abortions is equally stupid and quite frankly as childish. It's surprising anybody on this site would defend something so illogical. Also read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-w... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
b0ringdeveloper 1y ago
Would you say that some car deaths are OK in service of transportation or that we should lower the speed limit until there are 0 deaths from vehicle accidents? Tradeoffs between rights and safety are always made. I interpret "some gun deaths are ok" as to mean that they are inherently dangerous, and that seeking 0 accidental deaths is too high of a standard for something to be allowed. And we don't hold other parts of daily life to this standard, like vehicles or medicine. If you want to get into degrees, that's fine, but a blanket shutdown on the sentence doesn't do that.
- pm90 1y ago
  Transportation is required for daily life for almost all Americans. Gun ownership isn’t. If it were upto me, we wouldn’t have such a car dependent culture. It is absolutely possible to invest in public transportation/multimodal transport and reduce this number significantly.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    They certainly are, police cause gun deaths all the time in service of maintaining law and order. But to middle class snobs who think they're morally above it all, such dirtiness is a reality they can wave away with a dismissive comment of superiority, safe from all that messiness, in their nice suburb homes. So long as they intentionally ignore these lower class facts that some wrongdoers exist who can literally only be stopped by deadly force, they can continue to put their chins up and lament the inferior-to-them simpletons who think guns have to be a thing, in between taking long savouring sniffs of their excrement after every bathroom visit.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Speaking as an amoral low-class snob who grew up in Detroit, the prevalence of concealed carry didn't make me feel any safer than I felt in Windsor. Lot more gunfire at night on the stars-and-stripes side of the river too, which always struck me as rude when people are trying to sleep.
    - 1y ago
typeofhuman 1y ago
He was advocating for the rights of the living yet unborn. He was advocating for the downtrodden youth who are being unnecessarily overburdened with massive college debt and unable to afford a home. He was advocating for citizens who are being put last by their electorate.
- thrance 1y ago
  He was helping the "unborn" by advocating for stripping womens of their rights and sending them back to the house. He was helping students by supporting the most anti-intellectual party ever, that cancelled student debt relief and help programs. He was helping the downtrodden by supporting the most billionaire-friendly administration ever, giving tax breaks to the rich and dismantling the last of our social safety nets. Get real. I don't even buy that you believe all that shit.
  - tirant 1y ago
    A small but important correction. The debt was never cancelled, but socialized and payed by all the American citizens. A loan that was taken voluntarily by adults was arbitrarily reassigned and forced upon the rest of the American citizens, including all those who never had accepted to take such debt. Completely violating the principles of personal responsibility. It is very easy to be generous and altruist with someone else's money and then even take the credit for it.
    - thrance 1y ago
      Public higher education yields more skilled workers, who contribute more to society, thereby being a net positive overall. That's how it works in civilized country anyways. Too bad the average American can't think further then "Me no share, fuck you".
      - typeofhuman 1y ago
        "Public higher education yields more skilled workers" as compared to what? Laborers or trade-skill workers? I think people overestimate the ROI of a college diploma. Let's just assume you are correct. The solution should be universities lower or eliminate tuition. Not exponentially increase it. Not pay presidents and coaches millions and millions of dollars. And not stick taxpayers with the bill - or devalue our currency with government spending.

mynameyeff 1y ago

Indeed.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]