5 ms·

Kirk, among many other right wing figures, have absolutely made light of past violence against Democrats. The discourse around Paul Pelosi was utterly vile and

by tootie 1y ago

Kirk, among many other right wing figures, have absolutely made light of past violence against Democrats. The discourse around Paul Pelosi was utterly vile and despicable. Nobody ever threatened his first amendment right to say horrendous things.

nailer 1y ago
FWIW I agree Kirk shouldn't have made fun of Paul Pelosi. I think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there He had years to apologise. It could have meaningfully altered the temperature of our discourse, particularly among young men. He never did. Kirk gets no credit for amends he never made.
  - tastyface 1y ago
    This is how Charlie Kirk got on my radar: "Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump's deployment of federal troops to DC. 'Shock and awe. Force,' he wrote. 'We're taking our country back from these cockroaches.'" Cockroaches! Literally language of the Rwandan genocide. And it's a Christian saying this about other human beings? The man never changed. (Obviously, he should not have been shot. But his sanctification is repulsive.)
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      In case the reference doesn't click[1]: > Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners. > The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.” > In urban centers, government soldiers and well-armed members of the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the ruling party set up roadblocks filtering out Tutsis and killing them by the roadside. It was an easy task to pick them out. Ever since independence from Belgium in 1962, national identification cards specified ethnicity. > Within 100 days, an estimated 1 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Tutsis, lay dead. The worst kind of hatred had been unleashed. What began with dehumanizing words ended in bloodshed. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-shows-how-hateful-speech-leads-violence/587041/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-sho...
    - nailer 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - estearum 1y ago
        Yes it is very bad to call your countrymen "cockroaches" even if they're criminals and you really don't like them. It's especially bad to do so atop a gargantuan media organization that looks to you for moral and political guidance.
        nailer 1y ago
        [flagged]
        estearum 1y ago
        We use names for things to categorize them. We categorize things to inform how to treat them. I think we should treat criminals differently from how we treat cockroaches, so we should use different names for them. There's only one functional reason to refer to humans as cockroaches which is to dehumanize them. Dehumanizing humans is bad.
        nailer 1y ago
        It’s a moral imperative to call out evil. It’s a gross inversion to pretend otherwise.
        estearum 1y ago
        Are cockroaches (the insect) evil?
        nailer 1y ago
        [flagged]
        1y ago
- zzzeek 1y ago
  NARRATOR: he was, in fact, proud of his behavior there, plainly visible by comparing such behavior to hundreds of other publicly recorded instances of such behavior for which he was also quite proud
  - nailer 1y ago
    But that’s not true - it was uncharacteristic. There are many instances where he was kind to someone being openly aggressive towards him and one where he made fun of Paul Pelosi.
    - zzzeek 1y ago
      kind to people....who he was speaking to directly in person? or making social media references while they were not present (or adding them to dox lists so they could be harassed for years with death threats [1]) ? This is the key difference of course. It's also a really basic technique of horrible people to come off as very empathetic and friendly in person under specific circumstances so people are fooled in exactly this way, giving them full leeway to do horrible things elsewhere (such as maintaining dox lists to terrorize people into submission, or referring to women of color as having lesser "brain processing power" - e.g. unfiltered racism [2]....oh or insisting that children should be forced to watch executions [3]). [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-watchlist-free-speech-college-campus-rcna231448 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-... [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/ [3] https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-sponsored-televised-executions-of-trumps-political-opponents https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-spo...
      - nailer 1y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45554559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45554559
WickyNilliams 1y ago
Not an American so I don't have a horse in the race. Didnt Kirk also describe Biden as a "tyrant" and that he should be given the death penalty [0]. Calling for the (then sitting) president to be put to death seems pretty extreme to me. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-biden-death-penalty/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-biden-death-p...
- ithkuil 1y ago
  Those who think that criticizing Kirk is always calling for this death, would this comment above also be considered violent? Or is this comment also unacceptable? Where is the demarcation?
  - tavavex 1y ago
    The demarcation is that my side celebrating someone's death is reasonable, level-headed criticism that reflects the will of the people and how dire the situation is - you've just gotta consider what we're saying and think that both sides have valid points. On the other hand, your side not showing Kim Jong Il funeral levels of grieving towards my figurehead is extremist violent rhetoric that has no place anywhere in our society, it has to be punished; the deranged, crazed, murder-hungry perpetrators must be suppressed and removed before they kill someone. The demarcation is that I'm stronger than you. Rules and logical consistency don't matter when you have power. I only tried to be mildly cynical here, because I actually can't come up with any other justifications here. I don't think there's anything non-inflammatory that can justify this outside of ideological reasons. If anything can think of any, let me know.

by tootie 1y ago

nailer 1y ago

FWIW I agree Kirk shouldn't have made fun of Paul Pelosi. I think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there He had years to apologise. It could have meaningfully altered the temperature of our discourse, particularly among young men. He never did. Kirk gets no credit for amends he never made.
- tastyface 1y ago
  This is how Charlie Kirk got on my radar: "Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump's deployment of federal troops to DC. 'Shock and awe. Force,' he wrote. 'We're taking our country back from these cockroaches.'" Cockroaches! Literally language of the Rwandan genocide. And it's a Christian saying this about other human beings? The man never changed. (Obviously, he should not have been shot. But his sanctification is repulsive.)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    In case the reference doesn't click[1]: > Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners. > The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.” > In urban centers, government soldiers and well-armed members of the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the ruling party set up roadblocks filtering out Tutsis and killing them by the roadside. It was an easy task to pick them out. Ever since independence from Belgium in 1962, national identification cards specified ethnicity. > Within 100 days, an estimated 1 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Tutsis, lay dead. The worst kind of hatred had been unleashed. What began with dehumanizing words ended in bloodshed. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-shows-how-hateful-speech-leads-violence/587041/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-sho...
  - nailer 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - estearum 1y ago
      Yes it is very bad to call your countrymen "cockroaches" even if they're criminals and you really don't like them. It's especially bad to do so atop a gargantuan media organization that looks to you for moral and political guidance.
      - nailer 1y ago
        [flagged]
        estearum 1y ago
        We use names for things to categorize them. We categorize things to inform how to treat them. I think we should treat criminals differently from how we treat cockroaches, so we should use different names for them. There's only one functional reason to refer to humans as cockroaches which is to dehumanize them. Dehumanizing humans is bad.
        nailer 1y ago
        It’s a moral imperative to call out evil. It’s a gross inversion to pretend otherwise.
        estearum 1y ago
        Are cockroaches (the insect) evil?
        nailer 1y ago
        [flagged]
        1y ago
zzzeek 1y ago
NARRATOR: he was, in fact, proud of his behavior there, plainly visible by comparing such behavior to hundreds of other publicly recorded instances of such behavior for which he was also quite proud
- nailer 1y ago
  But that’s not true - it was uncharacteristic. There are many instances where he was kind to someone being openly aggressive towards him and one where he made fun of Paul Pelosi.
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    kind to people....who he was speaking to directly in person? or making social media references while they were not present (or adding them to dox lists so they could be harassed for years with death threats [1]) ? This is the key difference of course. It's also a really basic technique of horrible people to come off as very empathetic and friendly in person under specific circumstances so people are fooled in exactly this way, giving them full leeway to do horrible things elsewhere (such as maintaining dox lists to terrorize people into submission, or referring to women of color as having lesser "brain processing power" - e.g. unfiltered racism [2]....oh or insisting that children should be forced to watch executions [3]). [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-watchlist-free-speech-college-campus-rcna231448 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-... [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/ [3] https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-sponsored-televised-executions-of-trumps-political-opponents https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-spo...
    - nailer 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45554559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45554559

WickyNilliams 1y ago

Not an American so I don't have a horse in the race. Didnt Kirk also describe Biden as a "tyrant" and that he should be given the death penalty [0]. Calling for the (then sitting) president to be put to death seems pretty extreme to me. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-biden-death-penalty/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-biden-death-p...

ithkuil 1y ago
Those who think that criticizing Kirk is always calling for this death, would this comment above also be considered violent? Or is this comment also unacceptable? Where is the demarcation?
- tavavex 1y ago
  The demarcation is that my side celebrating someone's death is reasonable, level-headed criticism that reflects the will of the people and how dire the situation is - you've just gotta consider what we're saying and think that both sides have valid points. On the other hand, your side not showing Kim Jong Il funeral levels of grieving towards my figurehead is extremist violent rhetoric that has no place anywhere in our society, it has to be punished; the deranged, crazed, murder-hungry perpetrators must be suppressed and removed before they kill someone. The demarcation is that I'm stronger than you. Rules and logical consistency don't matter when you have power. I only tried to be mildly cynical here, because I actually can't come up with any other justifications here. I don't think there's anything non-inflammatory that can justify this outside of ideological reasons. If anything can think of any, let me know.