• surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I’m getting pretty fucking sick of seeing this ‘no one should be killed for their political beliefs’ take going around.

    He wasn’t killed for his beliefs. He was killed because he dedicated his life to terrorizing everyone who isn’t a conservative white man, and was materially supporting state violence in the pursuit of white supremacy.

    That is 100% something we have firmly established that people should be shot for, in multiple wars throughout the last few centuries.

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        9 days ago

        The Republicans’ rubber stamp, and lack of a competent opposition, is proving to be an absolute nightmare for the party. They’re getting away with everything they ever wanted, and people are seeing the immediate consequences play out. When your policies start killing people, people literally fight back. You’ve given people nothing to lose, and this population is armed to the teeth. What did they think was going to happen?

        You can’t declare war on a population, and then expect to walk freely in the open air among that population.

        The Republicans getting everything they ever wanted will be what caused the party’s destruction. The Democrats helping them do it will destroy them, too.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          True, but let’s not pretend this is some natural result of fucking around like with climate change. This is a result that will have to be affected through actions of individuals. There will be people doing “bad” things for good reasons. Things that need to be done to create that downfall.

          It will not be pretty and the perpetraitors will not be treated well by the media. It will have the potential to spark a proper civil war, (as if one’s not already here) and it will be ugly. We must be prepared for bad news and prepare our relatives to not fall for the blatant lies that will be reported as fact (as if that hasn’t been happening since time immemorial).

    • deaf_fish@midwest.social
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      9 days ago

      There was a way around this that would have resulted in no deaths. Trump should been prosecuted for the January 6th insurrection. Then we should have put a bunch of fascists in jail for a long time. Then we should have de-platformed grifters.

      But none of that happens so. We get what we get.

      • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        We’re never better off with the Dem fascists in charge either. They’re two sides of the same coin.

        If we want the law to mean anything, and we want it used to hold people accountable, over 90% of sitting congresspeople and senators can now be prosecuted for aiding genocide, which they did in violation of domestic & international laws. That would certainly set a tone and precedent for the future.

        • deaf_fish@midwest.social
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          8 days ago

          Slight nitpick. Though I agree with the whole “we’re never better off with the Dem fascists in charge either.” In the long term. In the short term there are a lot of innocent people in US concentration camps and whom have been deported. Who would strongly disagree with you.

          • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Biden deported 250% more people than Trump’s first term, and Stephen Miller was reportedly screaming at a meeting with ICE leadership because he was pissed they were barely keeping pace with Biden’s deportation numbers.

            The Democrat fascists have troves of victims, too, but the media only gives them a microphone when they’re victims of Republicans.

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              8 days ago

              Biden deported them without going to the legal process? Like I’m pro-immigration so I get it. But there’s a big difference from deporting people via the legal process. Versus picking up some guy who’s a US citizen who has a tattoo of his mom on his shoulder. Calling him a gang member and then sending him to some other country to a slave prison without due process.

              Neither Biden or Trump are good, but it’s really hard to argue that things would be just as bad today under Biden or Harris then they are under Trump. And Trump’s not even done with the first year of his second term.

        • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          We were better off with the Dems in charge. The difference is it’s like having your feet on fire vs full emolation. But the point is it’s easier to extinguish feet than it is the whole body, and causes less damage too.

          And by this I mean peace was still a possible, if unlikely, resolution.

          • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            I bet the people being actively killed and oppressed by the Dems would disagree. It sounds more like you personally felt less threatened under Dems, and you want to return to that place of privilege.

            When the ICE raids began, Democrats published a public thank you letter to the agents. If you think this will get better with Dems in charge, you aren’t paying attention.

            • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              I meant past tense.

              Future tense it’s too late. I meant as in under Kamala instead of Trump.

              Things would still be terrible, but they’d undeniably be less terrible. There still being suffering doesn’t change that there would be less of it.

              Not to mention it would slow down climate change a bit more compared to the current regime, which instead going full throttle on the gas pedal. And that’s something that affects all humans.

              PS: by “we” I meant the world. I’ve lived in Finland for many years now.

              • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                “Undeniably.” Not at all. I deny it. The Dem administrations played a pivotal role in building ICE to this level, and Kamala absolutely devastated the immigrant community as Biden’s border czar.

                You should diversify the kind of news sources you’re looking at.

                • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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                  8 days ago

                  Kamala and get administration wouldn’t have put an antivaxxer in charge of the FDC or climate deniers in charge of the EPA etc.

                  Nor would they have had straight up thugs running around like the current ICE.

                  The Dems (or more specifically, the DNC) have definitely enabled on purpose the Republicans. But they at least mostly followed the law and kept order.

                  I understand the frustration of people not understanding that the DNC Democrats are very right wing as well, and even actually collaborate with Republicans / fascists. But they’re more culturally liberal oligarchs than straight up authoritarian fascists. People would still be harmed by their policies, but groups like Transexuals wouldn’t have to fear they’ll get killed by the government.

                  Equating the two completely is bad faith. They’re very close - cut a neoliberal and a fascist bleeds - but they’re not the same. Under Kamala, the might have been a 10% chance at a more peaceful resolution via elections (maybe 25% if Trump died, 50% if he actually went to jail) because leftists like Mamandi could have kept running and winning some power.

                  But under Trump, there’s no more chance of that at all, PLUS it accelerates all the bad thing.

    • bunchberry@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      It comes across to me as they simply lack empathy for other “kinds” of people. If you actually felt the same pain and empathy when watching the video of Kirk get merked, you should feel that a thousand times over when seeing a thousand videos of the IOF massacring children, many sniped in the same way Kirk got merked, and then you should look upon Kirk in disgust for supporting that and dehumanizing the Palestinian people. But the fact is these people don’t. They don’t see other “kinds” of people different from them as in fact “people.” Let’s be real, they don’t feel the same kind of empathy for Palestinian fathers dying as they do a white fascist dying. They constantly mock the deaths of minority groups like trans people. They suddenly have empathy and demand pacifism and valuing the sanctity of all life when a white fascist dies, but are silent in every other case.

    • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      His family shouldn’t expect empathy, and he wouldn’t want his death to distract from full Epstein file disclosure.

    • BanMe@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      If you’re part of a movement that’s taking vaccines away from babies, well, you’re evil and people are going to respond to that.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      materially supporting state violence

      Dingdingdingdingding.

      Here’s the winner, right here. Fascist fucks want to go around pretending that only billy clubs and bullets and bombs count as “violence.” Inflicting mass starvation on people, withholding medical care, stealing workers’ wages they depend upon to survive, and brutalizing minorities and marginalized groups (oftentimes with actual up front physical attacks) is “just doing business.”

      So news flash to the chucklefucks: That’s not how it works. State sponsored violence is still violence, and so it follows the oppressed have a right to defend themselves. It sure sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, don’t it?

      But it turns out there’s an easy way to defend yourself from that sort of thing. All you have to do is not be an evil and hateful fuck whose policies and actions threaten the lives of others and their right to exist.

    • khaleer@sopuli.xyz
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      9 days ago

      It’s bad to kill for political beliefs only if a fascist dies. Otherwise nobody will even know about anything.

    • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      See the issue with this mentality is that THIS is the mentality of authoritarians. You try to find ways to justify the murder of the people you politically disagree with while not applying the same standard to the people you politically agree with.

      What you’re doing is helping set a precedent that political violence is justified if you frame it in a certain way. If that’s the case then other extremist whackos, including conservative ones, are going to start doing the same thing. What’s there from stopping some conservative nutjob from shooting someone like Hasan Piker or AOC or Mamdani or anyone on the left really as a retaliation? After all, if what you’re saying here is now passing as a valid justification, then they’ll just use your very own justification to justify their own actions.

      The things that authoritarians don’t understand is that when principles aren’t applied universally, the standard becomes subjective, and sooner or later, their abuse of power will come back to bite them in the ass by the very standard they helped establish. I am fully aware that Lemmy is usually off the deep end on politics, but this is too unhinged even for this platform.

        • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          It’s not about him, it’s about the implications of embracing actions like this. Vigilantes killing people for political reasons without due process is not justice

      • Geldaran@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I agree with you in principle. It sucks a well-worded dissenting opinion is getting downvoted. I’m not an advocate for political killings. But I want to pose a counter question… When does it become acceptable to cross this line? When can an otherwise reasonable person give up on a broken system, and go from political resistance to violent resistance? Because for a lot of people, their rights, their lives, and their futures are under attack. Both politically AND with the full force of the government.

        • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          I take issue with your question because it conflates two completely separate things as the same. There’s a very difference between a “system” and an “individual”, especially when that person is a private citizen. Ideally, political violence should be a line that’s never crossed, however, we don’t live in an ideal world. If people are tired of the system they live under, and they have no meaningful way of getting change then violence might be inevitable. However, in these cases people go after the system itself. That means the actual institutions that keep the system in place. Want an example? Look at what’s happening right now in Nepal.

          What you don’t do to fight a system is shoot a private citizen over their political views. That’s not meaningful resistance, that’s just violence. It doesn’t do anything or change anything, all it does is help establish a dangerous precedent where violence becomes an acceptable part of political discourse. Don’t like someone’s political views? Shoot them, they probably deserved it anyway… at least that’s what people here are saying to justify it, but what these don’t understand is that it’s a two way street. Just as you cheer and condone political violence, others can as well, including the people you don’t like. You can’t condemn people you don’t like for doing it but then cheer for the same actions when the people you like do it, because you’ll just be a hypocrite and your words will hold no weight. It’s not a defensible position.

          It should be noted that for any principle to mean anything, it is absolutely mandatory for it to be applied fairly and universally. If we want to remain a society that values civil liberties, then those have to extend to everyone, including those who you don’t like don’t or don’t agree with, and this includes people with vile views. When a system becomes a dysfunctional mess, it means that it has deviated significantly from it’s founding principles, and a new system needs to take it’s place to embody them. However, if the people no longer believe in civil liberties for all, then we’re looking at a very grim future because we would have tyranny’s pandora’s box.

          • Geldaran@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            I don’t know your backgrounds or motivations, but that simple a response feels flippant.

            I too believe that you should obviously resist and try to counter someone who wants to stamp down the “other” just because they are the other. But simple talk probably shouldn’t warrant execution, unless you want those same rules to apply against you as well. Fight them with words and actions, yes. Discredit the speaker and their ideas, embarrass them, ostracize them. Drive them and their bass-ackwards views out of polite society. I know this is difficult in the current environment. They appear to have no shame. But I think the bar for for violence has to be higher.

            I wont shed any tears for this guy. I wont use his name. I want him to be forgotten. But I don’t think his killing should be celebrated either.

            • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              i am saying that the time to act is now. unless you want to wait until the genocide starts. it sounded flippant because it was.

      • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Again, he was far beyond “political disagreement.” He was promoting actual, race-targeted violence domestically and internationally. If you’re going to be a Nazi terrorizing your community, you’re going to be a target for retaliation.

  • 58008@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I feel bad that his children had to witness that, and even if they hadn’t been there (which they were) they’d undoubtedly have the video clip shoved in their faces eventually. That’s a hell of a way to lose a parent.

    The fact that he died while in the middle of talking about trans mass shooters being a huge problem certainly makes it feel like cosmic karma at work. I struggle to give a shit about the man himself being shot dead. But I do worry about political violence… it’s a very rare occasion when murdering someone sitting in a chair talking is a good idea. Not a single person in his right-wing sphere of repugnance is going to do any self-reflection and change their ways, they’ll just become even more rabidly anti-everything left of Hitler. Shit like this doesn’t go unanswered too often. Violence is a contagion with no cure except time, and the clock gets set back another decade every time someone retaliates. I’m sure we could chain all of these assassinations together into a causal sequence. But even if they’re all independent events, the narrative-makers will be hard at work making it sound like a grand battle of the ages, so the result is the same either way.

    Source: History, memory…

    P.S. Any bets that the shooter was a MAGA nut? Seems to be the trend 👀

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      I feel bad that his children had to witness that, and even if they hadn’t been there (which they were) they’d undoubtedly have the video clip shoved in their faces eventually. That’s a hell of a way to lose a parent.

      It’s what he wanted. Quick, too.

      It is fucked for those kids though. Not their fault.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Wtf, I knew this guy was a nutter, but never really knew that much about him.

        The USA is so screwed holy balls.

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      9 days ago

      Speaking as someone with a shitty sociopath ‘parent’:

      They’ve seen enough its not too much escalation. And now they never have to deal with his bullshit again. The emotions will be complicated, but they won’t all be bad.

      You’re looking for someone to cry for. Cry for tye victims of this toxic shit. The kids he turned into nazis. The people who died on the street. The querrs who suffered abd possibly died in silence. All because this didnt happen sooner.

      Cry with joy for those that might live now. If you have that much surplus of tears.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I get what you mean, but there’s a chance he was nice to his kids specifically.

        I don’t think it’s likely, but there’s a chance they’ve been fully brainwashed to care. I can’t see someone like Kirk being like that though.

        I guess time will tell.

          • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            No, you misunderstood.

            I’m saying there’s a 98% chance he was terrible to his kids. Just a 2% chance that he wasn’t, and a 50% chance that even if he was, his kids liked him (when you’ve seen a person love someone who beats them up, you’ll realize that’s unfortunately very possible).

            Was he extremely homophobic and/or unusually outspoken against pedos? If he was then yeah, very good chance that he might’ve done things to them. Hard to keep track of all the shit he did

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 days ago

      Yeah I agree that it wouldn’t have been easy on the kids. However, if dont think seeing a parent get shot, would be much different than having them die of cancer or anything else really.

      Certainly, the kids have my sympathy.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Yeah his kids and family didn’t deserve that.

      He may have, but they didn’t. That’s why this kind of thing is usually frowned upon I suppose.

    • Paddzr@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I found out from a clip wife showed me. Got no clue who he was but he was surrounded by MAGA hats.

      Boy that was a lot of blood!

            • bunchberry@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              I have been desensitize to it because my twitter timeline has been flooded with toddlers having their skulls hollowed out by the IDF. A live-streamed holocaust has kind of made violence seem not that abnormal to me, so it comes across as strange when politicians cry about people advocating for violence, when literally most of them support industrial-scale genocide of hundreds of thousands that I see dying on a day-to-day basis. That alone has changed me from a “violence is inherently bad” type mofo to a “I would celebrate if most of these American politicians were [redacted]” type mofo. Why should I care if a person who loves mass murder of children dies? It’s called karma.

          • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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            9 days ago

            Been looking for the link but kind of immediately regretted watching that jesus fuck that’s a lot of blood.

    • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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      Thing is most gun owners who hunt know. I saw a man shot at close range when I was in my early twenties. I wasn’t involved, just passenger in a car nearby when it happened. The next day there was nothing about it in the papers. Nothing at all. This guy gets shot and no one cared.

      I shot pigs for slaughter at close range right between the eyes when I was ten or eleven years old. All us kids took a turn and in some ways it was a good thing. Its good you know where meat comes from. Only a fool would think that shooting a person isn’t going to result in a large amount of blood. That shot was in a region of the body that has closely grouped large arteries and veins. No surprise there was so much blood. Anyone who is surprised should be thankful they have never seen something like that before.

      I saw that video of the man shooting himself in those faces of death videos back in the 90’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Budd_Dwyer I felt bad about it because they said he was a good man. As for Kirk I feel very little. His words have made me care very little for him. Similar to how I felt when that healthcare guy got deleted.

      I realize I may be more desensitized to the things like this than most. At least I hope so.

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        9 days ago

        I have never seen a person get shot in person (I’ve seen those videos too) but I have hunted pigs and kangaroos, bullet wounds really aren’t portrayed well in media.

        What’s funny to me is that American conservatives will argue that you can’t have guns in Australia. You can. We have guns and… no school shootings. No politicians being assassinated.

        Charlie Kirk spouted all kinds of bullshit about my country. I’m very happy he won’t be doing that anymore.

  • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
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    9 days ago

    This is a TRAGEDY! WHY couldn’t they MURDER A BUNCH OF KINDERGARTNERS Instead? This SUCKS! It’s TIME for Trump to send the Military into the Shithole Blue state of Utah!

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Great foreshadowing too.

    Earlier this year, Utah passed House Bill 128 allowing people to conceal carry firearms on university campuses. One of the campuses where conceal carry was now permitted is, of course, Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was visiting today. He was sitting under a tent with the slogan “Prove Me Wrong”.

    Immediately before the shooting, he was taking questions from the audience:

    “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”

    The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

    “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

    Then a single shot rang out.

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/conservative-activist-charlie-kirk-shot-at-utah-valley-university-event-spokesperson-says

    It’s unfortunate that he’s ineligible for the Darwin Award because he leaves behind 2 very young children and a culture warrior wife, because otherwise he’d be a great nominee for the 2025 Darwin Awards. Normally to get a Darwin Award someone has to directly kill themselves. But, I think in this case we could have make an exception for someone who was a cheerleader for gun rights and was sitting directly under a banner saying “Prove Me Wrong” when he was killed with a gun.

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      8 days ago

      This was apparently done by a sniper, so not really a concealed carry thing.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        Surely the sniper was stopped by all the people conceal carrying though? I’m told that lots of guns makes everything ever so much safer.

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          3000 people all shooting their handguns at the sound of the rifle… might work!

        • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 days ago

          Nah, they need students with snipers in good high locations to scout for the bad guys with guns

  • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I don’t really agree with much about anything this guys says but at least he’s willing to commit to what he believes and leads by example.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    9 days ago

    Wasn’t sure where to post this since I’m not aware of a Lemmy equivalent of r/imgoingtohellforthis