But current protests aren't revolts nor violence anyway. There is side/peripheral violence but that is not the point of the protests
the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever
When people are so pissed off that millions of people take to the streets governments fall.
Physical assault isn’t the only way to qualify as a “bad person”.
https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rig...
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-e...
I give it better than even odds that the Kirk shooter, if they have any coherent political views at all, is right of centre. That's where all the violent radicalization is happening right now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Matthew_Crooks#Politica...
The moderate right who was open to engaging in dialogue with you was killed today.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#LGBTQ_issues
Anyway, pointing out that the right is engages in political violence at astronomically higher rates than the left is hardly "deflection." I'm addressing and refuting your point directly.
Charlie was the moderate right, and how you speak about him after his death makes it clear what you think about me and my family.
You people have taken the moderate option off the table. The time for dialog is over.
…do you think stoning gay people is "God's perfect law"?
Obviously it's a tragedy that he was murdered, but he was a reprehensible person. I won't whitewash him.
A road to Weimar America has been paved by his death, the left's cynical and relentless vilification of the right, and its unwillingness to confront its own demons.
They'd vote for someone who would, though. I'm not being flippant; this is why contemporary American politics is so shockingly polarized.
Republican lawmakers will institute extreme and overtly cruel policies (such as the ongoing crackdown on immigrants, tourists, and permanent residents), and people who are upset by this blame Republican voters regardless of how kind or personable those voters are in person. On the flip side, conspiracism has become so mainstream in the Republican party that many Republicans genuinely believe the Democratic party is responsible for a QAnon-style conspiracy, and they blame Democratic voters for complicity in this.
We certainly don't need another Hitler, but we didn't need the first one either. He rose to power because he won an election: More Germans voted for the Nazis than for any other party. Most of those voters were generally decent people who would never lynch anyone, and yet they elected Hitler anyway. Decent people do terrible things. There's no easy way out of this.
In fact, the Nazi party electoral results were down from the previous election. Both the socialist and communist party were up however, and so the men in power chose Hitler to change that. All of those were killed or politically neutered within 6 months, and honestly, they made their bed.
Of course, then the Reichstag caught fire, and that was about it for Weimar democracy. But up until that point, his political success came off the back of genuine popularity at the ballot box. He only managed to became Chancellor because enough people voted for him.
It was a choice: Socialists, Nazis or communist, and as always "Plutot Hitler que le Front Populaire", the extreme center choose fascism. The more thing changes, the more they stay the same.
That's why both of them managed to get their message out to so many people. That might then convert to votes, but are the voters that believed the propaganda at fault as much as the people who paid for it, those who created it, and those that spread it?
Nevertheless, it's propaganda that many Americans have swallowed, and those people then go on to put Republicans in power year after year. I can't fault Democrats for their bitterness towards Republican voters.
If you’re aware of any more accurate modelling, I’d be super interested though!
1984 was supposed to be fiction, not a blueprint.
Well, they didn't say citizens.
> for participating in pro-Palestine protests
And you missed their main point.
Your reply doesn't really seem to be in good faith.
If you're intentionally responding to just any post to vent your anger at people who you disagree with (i.e. it wasn't a mistake) then feel free to ignore me.
?
what is that?
It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense, [...] But 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.
Charlie Kirk's assassin is still at-large and fired from a standoff distance, with a conventional long-barrel firearm.
Make of that what you will.
You said it yourself that the shooter is still at large... despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Is there something I'm missing here?
> despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Many such cases. We're still looking for D. B. Cooper, aren't we? Did the FBI ever dig up Hoffa's body? The feds are hardly a panacea with these things.
And you need more context and the training required to take such a shot and then evade the local cops and FBI, with a solid escape plan from a fuckton of witnesses and so forth. And I did not mention that most people would probably panic and mess up, let alone take the shot and escape. It is much more complex than that. When you look at the pattern fit, it no longer looks like a spur-of-the-moment act by a "typical gun owner".
They gave us some 22 years old kid as the person who pulled this whole operation, allegedly, and acted alone. Even if someone had been shooting since childhood, the rooftop selection, escape route, and casing inscriptions suggest deliberate operational planning and situational awareness, not just trigger skill. Shooting skill alone doesn't cover the logistics and environmental awareness. Plus a 22-year-old who "trained since childhood" might have technical skill, but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes, especially under the psychological pressure of killing a person in a public setting.
FWIW, some cases remain unsolved for decades because of scarce evidence, degraded scenes, or lack of witnesses, which does not come into play here at all. Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
...thus I remain skeptical.
> but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes
This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
I spent a lot of time at the range when I was a kid - hitting a 200yd shot from an elevated platform is not difficult with a M1903. A modern 63mm loading can easily push 3,000fps in a long-barrel rifle and if you reloaded the cartridge for a single-use assassination, I see no reason you couldn't push 5,000fps if the barrel doesn't explode from overpressure. With those kinds of ballistics its not a very tough shot unless you're shooting into a hurricane. All you need then is a hunting scope, and that can be bought for $170 in cash at Cabelas.
> Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
This I absolutely agree with. It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
Bit of a harrowing precedent for online privacy, but I presume that will fall on deaf ears.
> This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
Sure, it is, and I cannot back it up. He was operating alone, which is much different from doing it as a team, I believe.
> It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
I thought it was his dad that turned him in, but regardless, the Discord messages are suspicious, because he went to great lengths as to successfully complete the mission, but he would talk about it on an online platform? Something makes me skeptical about it, but who knows. It is just pure speculation from me at this point, but it does not align well with the rest of his behavior, IMO.
I get that criminals make mistakes, and perhaps it was just that. We will never truly know.
If you disagree, there are plenty of other countries you can immigrate to that don't practice democracy. But this is how America works, and I'll defend it to the last even if I disagree with the extremists.
There's not much else to add that isn't buffeted in the essay itself. Representative democracy sucks dick, and the fact that Americans engage in politics vicariously ensures that our Volksgeist is reduced to petty arguments about Michelle Obama's penis. Appeals to transgression are a threat to all political systems, not just democracy. See my other comment about the Red Guard.
No, they aren't.
It could be liberals, conservatives, moderates, expats from Europe, etc.
I cannot believe that people think that violence is a good answer to anything.
I don’t upvote these recent killing of political figures or C-levels at companies that destroy people’s lives.
I sympathize with those that fight injustice and want the world changed for the better. But, there are often non-violent ways to do this.
There is quite a bit of philosophical arguments and discussions backing violence as _a_ solution, albeit not the only solution and usually one reserved for when other measures fail.
Look to this treatise as a start[1]
If you think it’s never a solution then all you have done is unilaterally disarmed, and ceded decision making power to those who still keep violence in their toolbox
This is what amazes me about U.S. politics - there's power-seeking individuals that are clearly trying to hurt other people and are objectively not good people (e.g. convicted rapist, multiple felonies and a long history of not paying bills if they can possibly get away with it).
I mean, it's worrying when public figures can decry "empathy" as being a major problem with society (e.g. "I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage"). To my mind, persuading others to not be empathic is a clear sign of being evil.
Empathy means fully simulating the other person state of mind and world. Empathy is cognitive spend.
Love thy enemy is a short cut because human brains seem to be unable to think properly in anger. You need to simulate your enemy to understand their positions and seek deals.
If you think that encouraging empathy is a bad thing and discouraging empathy is good, then there's little hope for you. The lack of empathy can easily be shown to lead to the evils of Nazism and the desire to be cruel to people who are not "in our group" (e.g. their skin colour is different or were born elsewhere)
How do you feel about wealth seizures? Retrospective changes to tax deals and pensions? Laws retrospectively changing?
These are quite bad, even seditious. At some point when actors appear to working on behalf of enemies what are you supposed to feel?
On the other hand, there are people confounding powers with rights. Changing rules and laws going forward might be against ones wishes, but supposing you have freedom you can choose to opt out.
There is something terrible going on in the meta where words are being confused to the point where conversations can not even happen because of confusion and mental models that lead to interactive errors that turn simple statements into threats of violence where there was none.
It really feels like denialism and lack of caring about language is at the heart of it.
If some people can't think conditionally, do not know the difference between blame and causation, don't understand what trust means in terms of contributions and tracking things ... Where to start?
It’s awful that anyone dies.
Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.