So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.
Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn.
Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing).
Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.
There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did.
>Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging
Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it.
A decade of refinement later, and look where we are.
I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy)
Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable
However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control.
I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to.
He was simply saying that the term empathy is overused vs sympathy
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually," he continued. "I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time."
You can peruse the "political views" section on his Wikipedia page if you want something comprehensive, but here's an example for you to chew on:
In one podcast interview, Kirk cited Leviticus 20:18 (he paraphrases as "if thou liest with another man, thou shalt be stoned") and called it "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." That's a pretty explicit endorsement of the death penalty for sodomy. If that isn't hate speech, what is?
> They [...] don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it).
I think you're the one misunderstanding it. The first amendment protects people from government censorship, not infamy and disgrace.
Citing the Old Testament is hate speech? You're a snowflake. And not that I agree with him on this, but it's clearly protected speech. You couldn't define hate speech if you tried.
>The first amendment protects people from government censorship, not infamy and disgrace.
Sure and he was politely debating on a college campus in a public space. Is that not where you can debate ideas? He was killed for that and now people are trying to justify it and throw it back in his face because he was a 2nd amendment defender. Don't you realize how gross that is?
The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population.
The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs".
So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society.
So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes.
Because that is working so good for Europe? At some point you need to understand that replacing a population is not the solution for low fertility population.
The great replacement theory is the theory that there is an intentional effort to dilute or replace the capital-W White, meaning the historical English/Scottish/Scotch Irish, population of the US, with immigrants and former slaves, and it usually involves a part that says that it is being done to weaken the country against its international competitors. A third part that is usually involved is that the process is being facilitated by and for the benefit of people like "international bankers", "cosmopolitans", "elites", etc., terms which have an antisemitic history.
To steelman it, you would have to steelman at least the intentional dilution part. Not just to say that it is hard to meet our demand for labor without immigration but that someone is coordinating it. Further, I don't think it has any meaning without the part that says it is being done to weaken the country, which you would have to show that not only would it weaken the country, but that is the intention of these coordinators.
Without that, you just have a demographic argument. If "Whites" do not have many children, and the population would otherwise shrink as a whole, while immigration is needed to satisfy demand for labor, then their proportion will shrink, but it is not "great replacement" without it being intentional/directed.
Not of the conspiracy itself (I'm not interested in that, since the literal version isn't even well agreed upon by most of its believers) but of the observable pressures that make the conspiracy attractive.
I think I could convince an average believer in the great replacement theory (who would be a casual believer that doesn't know many of the specific details you've listed at length of the "official" version) that my restatement of the issue is what they're actually concerned about. In fact, I have had productive conversations with right wingers who express such a casual belief in this theory by telling them what I've written here in the comment you're replying to.
On top of that I don't even think most boomers need to be inconvininced. Increase capital taxes, remove the ceiling for SS taxes, give wokers a 4 day workweek, raise minimum wage, invest in 3rd places. A few steps give people the time and energy to meet and make families.
But it seems like we really will just go to civil war before we make sure rich people contribute to the nation.
If you want more children you have to reward mothers directly and significantly in line with their potential earnings. Not a paltry few thousand dollars, but more than enough to offset the price of daycare in hcol cities. I want to mimic social security but for families, and that means concentrated benefits (that directly incentivize voting turnout and interest group formation).
At the same time I want our country to continue to be competitive globally when it comes to business, and not turn into whatever Europe has become. We can't just add this as a line item to our budget. We are not that rich and we have financial problems that are looming.
The hate mongering is from those who bow down to the zeitgeist of the age.
My hope is that Charlie Kirk bravely speaking the truth in the face of so much hate, even though it cost him his life, inspires many more to not fear for their lives to speak the truth, and raise their kids to be the same, until society turns and rejects what is false.
> I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
What you are doing here is quite literally the opposite of steelmanning.
It’s more of a “the only winning move is not to play” situation. You win by refusing to take the bait, and shutting down the attempt to coerce you into playing along with the bad faith argument game.
Or, if you like - when faced with “heads I win, tails you lose,” the strategy is not to figure out a way to get the coin to land on its edge, or to end up suspended in midair, or to propose some sort of infinite ‘best two out of three’ regress - the strategy is to recognize the rigged game and walk away.
There's no reason to steelman "black people shouldn't exist in the US", as the most extreme example. I can steelman it, but what am I getting out of this? What am I professing to an audience to steelman this? Steelmans are used to build empathy and sh synthesize solutions taking multiple viewpoints into account. This is the opposite.
I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy.
What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives?
What is this supposed to achieve?
Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"?
That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth.
If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong.
E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!"
And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better"
Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.
tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins"
When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back.
That goes for both sides of our political system, and beyond to the rural urban divide, the gender divide, the racial divide, the class divide, etc.
I think I found out about by reading rationalist stuff. E.g. Less wrong and slatestarcodex.
Really checking all the boxes of bad-faith argumentation here, friend.
First off, he chooses his opponents. He's going up against college students, often unprepared ones. He never goes up against people with experience.
Secondly, he's the absolute KING of gish galloping [0]. If someone ever actually starts getting an upper-hand, he just resorts to spewing a non-stop tirade of bullshit. He'll ask 10 questions and then interrupt them after they've only answered one, just to go off on more bullshit. The problem is, people who don't know shit about debate thinks that's winning.
So yes, his style hurts the national dialogue.
I admit I found him unwatchable, and did not watch any of his content.
But I also don't know why most people consume the content they do. For whatever reason, his format got traction with certain people, and it wouldn't have if they got nothing out of it.
Quite comical it is to act as a judge of what helps or hinders the "national conversation", whatever that is. I assume it's something one shakes one's jowels during.
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/...
https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-tra...
He kind of reap what he sown.
Debates take all forms, and Charlie's form was just as valid as yours or anyone else's. Gatekeeping is falling out of fashion, just sayin...
And these tent events with him rapid fire arguing many interlocutors were silly. Nobody learned anything, he only gained lots of 10 second short form video clips of him “owning” some feminist or leftist or whatever. Lots of slop for the YouTube / TikTok algo to pull lots of young people down the political outrage rabbit hole.
His recent debate at Oxford Union with Tilly Middlehuest was pretty eye opening when she was interviewed after. She had analyzed his speaking style and he was insanely predictable. A Robot Rubio, if you will. The interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A
Nonetheless I think his killing will have more of a chilling effect on debate of any sort, though I'd like to proven wrong and see a more trend of more sober, thoughtful debate take hold.
As for the value of debate, even bad debate is better than nothing. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing being gained from it, but if you question people who have engaged in a lot of debates, you find that they're much more informed after the debates — even very acrimonious debates, where both sides are just trying to defeat the other side — than they were before it. A society needs people to communicate, for it to progress in its ability to effectively coordinate on complex social issues, and that process of communication is not going to be without warts, given how complex these social issues are, and how high the stakes are for a great number of people.
Societies which embrace civil discourse and protect free speech are far better off for it. This killing strikes at the heart of a civil society.
And no, bad debate isn’t necessarily valuable and that dichotomy doesn’t get us anywhere. Kirk was not the only person doing valuable debates. He was a propagandist with a façade of debater.
Medhi Hasan is an eminently more honest and more skilled debater. Destiny is decent (although he does streaming debates for a living, so he gets a little too “debate bro” for my taste). Matt Dillahunty and some of his crowd are more informed and charitable than Kirk was.
We should be encouraging young minds to seek out honest interlocutors, not ones that sate their “dunking” appetites.
I’m not arguing for killing and your framing is not valuable. I’m arguing that Kirk was not a good role model for the kind of debate where people might actually learn facts.
Alas, we can agree to disagree.
Generally I’m a fan of Oxford style debates, such as Intelligence Squared.
Kirk was a rapid-fire debater who made all of his content to go viral. I don’t see much value in that style, because it steamrolls so much important nuance.
My viewpoints don't align with flat earthers, and also I criticize their unscientific methods.
In that instance, I have to say I saw no indication of bath faith; to the contrary, he seemed to listen very carefully, and would use the most charitable interpretation of what people were saying. I’d heard a lot of negative things about him, so I was actually impressed. I might not have agreed with him, but he was genuine and respectful.
I think his death is truly a tragedy. I worry about how this will further radicalize the right, and the chilling effect it will have on already chilled discourse.
It seemed just try to be a jab against trans identity without even bothering to make an outright argument. You could do the same shtick with "What is a Republican?" or anything else.
I also don’t see how that is a bad faith question.
I think in certain contexts the question “what is a Republican” would be important, for example the right wing has been trying to answer that since Trump ran in 2015.
An informed take from Forest Valkai on Kirk’s “what is a woman?” Debate style:
Kirk was bad faith because he tried to distill a complicated, nuanced argument into TikTok clips.
He ran into plenty of college students who tried the thing you described, but he was equally dismissive of the people who knew more than him on the subject.
Marshall McLuhan would like a word with you
If a progressive were running the debate, they would never ask a question like, "what is a woman." They don't care that Republicans think trans women are men. They'd ask, "why should your conception of womanhood be used to determine who gets put in a women's jail when putting transgender women in male prisons measurably increases prison violence?"
"What is a woman" is a nebulous cultural question with no real importance compared to the actual lives and freedoms of transgender women.
And the Democratic Party still wonders why they lost. I’m saying this as not an American. The question is what’s 2+2 and the answer being it’s a social construct.
Brother, you'll never guess what type of construct numbers are.
If American voters prefer simple, incorrect answers over complex truths, that's a problem with their education system, not with trans rights.
These questions also admit "straightforward" answers ("what's 4?" raises 4 fingers "this many") ("what's a woman?" points to a woman "one of those"), but these don't really answer the deeper question being asked. They gesture at a preexisting category and demand that it be recognized without actually explaining the nature of that category or its boundaries.
Alternatively you could actual engage with the substance of the argument?
It’s clear to me that these people lack real problems and are creating their own.
That's not the same as saying that "everything is defined by society/culture?" That's a strawman - no-one was claiming that.
In some insect, reptile or fish, like the clown fish, sure.
In mammals? It’s not. And to be more specific, in primates, it’s not.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-why-human-s...
> Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University.
You should actually read the opinion of a biologist:
> When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.
> Gender ideology seeks to portray sex as so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people as simply either male or female is grossly outdated and should be abandoned for a revolutionary concept of “gender identity.” This entails that males wouldn’t be barred from female sports, women’s prisons or any other space previously segregated according to our supposedly antiquated notions of “biological sex,” so long as they “identify” as female.
> But “intersex” and “transgender” mean entirely different things. Intersex people have rare developmental conditions that result in apparent sex ambiguity. Most transgender people aren’t sexually ambiguous at all but merely “identify” as something other than their biological sex. Once you’re conscious of this distinction, you will begin to notice gender ideologues attempting to steer discussions away from whether men who identify as women should be allowed to compete in female sports toward prominent intersex athletes like South African runner Caster Semenya. Why? Because so long as they’ve got you on your heels making difficult judgment calls on a slew of complex intersex conditions, they’ve succeeded in drawing your attention away from easy calls on unquestionably male athletes like 2022 NCAA Division I women’s swimming and diving champion Lia Thomas. They shift the focus to intersex to distract from transgender.
Kirk would always use the first dictionary definition of “woman” while academics would incorporate both the first and second definitions. And the cultural effect ballooned when this specific question became a meme and a virtue signal.
Forest Valkai explains this all in a few minutes:
Define “woman?” It’s easy - it’s the traditional gender role for people AFAB. Do you understand how we arrive at that answer though?
This redefinition of "woman" comes from a fundamentally sexist and conservative perspective.
That’s the reason any of this is even an issue, conservatives still think cows are sacred, queers are hungry for steak!
Full, uncut video, or video edited and hosted by Kirk on his youtube channel?
I ask in good faith, I've seen him stumbling about badly in UK debating clubs where debate is an art form and I've seen "debates" on his channels that appear to have numerous edits.
In that production he was pretty engaged and most of the time seemed to be putting out relevant, thought out responses.
That's not to say there weren't any gotcha responses being thrown around but IIRC (it's been a while) it was coming from both sides of the debate. IIRC, there was some one of the debaters was actually more ,than Kirk (provided I'm not mixing up videos, healthy distrust for my memory lol).
I have not seen any videos from his channel, I wasn’t aware he had one though obviously in retrospect it is unsurprising.
I found it: https://youtu.be/WV29R1M25n8?si=N9dU3r4DxJzK1a2i
Perhaps if you watch it you’ll have a different impression than I did.
* this seems highly contrived, and
* "Now Casting 55+ year old Trump supporters for an upcoming SURROUNDED video" (on the home page)
supports that notion.
This isn't the format of Buckley V. Vidal (perhaps the start of the end of intellectual debate in the US) and nor is it a debate in the sense of equal time, three rounds (case, defense, conclusion), etc.
I've moved on to looking at:
The Problem with Jubilee’s Political Debate Videos - https://fhspost.com/10276/forum/the-problem-with-jubilees-po...
The ‘one voice against 20 extremists’ format is designed to monetise hate - https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/the-on...
which at a first rapid skim appear to flesh out many of the initial issues and feelings that I have.
Right now I have hedges to trim and a roof to tin so it'll be many hours before I can watch an hour and half contrived 'battle' and take notes .. but I will give it a shot.
Thanks for the link.
But I do think they are fairly neutral, and they get people who disagree to talk to each other, and I appreciate that.
I watched another video of theirs where it was inverted, with many conservative students debating one liberal pundit, and of course the students did worse- they’re just a bunch of kids. But good to be exposed to another point of view.
Best of luck on your hedges and roof! That sounds far more worthwhile than watching that video.
How many WASP mass shooters would you consider to be an acceptable amount?
How many ginger-haired mass shooters would you consider to be an acceptable amount?
Why is it suddenly a problem now, to the point of restricting the 2nd amendment?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Why don't you answer the question of how many is "many"? Isn't it because the number would absolutely ridiculuous when mass shooting count is in the hundreds without any reaction from you (and Charlie Kirk himself who said it was the price to pay for the 2nd amendment)?
Bad faith is not an argument.
The kind of individual who shoots someone for saying things he doesn't like is a narcissist.
Ideas anger narcissists because if they are counter to what they already believe, they are a personal affront, and if they cannot reason the challenge away because - quite simply, they're wrong and the other person is right - it creates a great anger in them.
And narcissism is prevailing in our culture currently. People far prefer to call the other side bad, stupid, etc, rather than introspect and consider that maybe you're not that smart, and maybe you don't know everything, and maybe what you believe is actually naive and just a manifestation of your sillyness.
The problem of course is that the only way opposing narcissists can overcome each other is by force. So there'll be less argument, and more go-straight-to violence.
A world where pugilism prevails over debate would look markedly different. I doubt Kirk would bother holding events if any of what you said was fundamentally true about politics.
I have coworkers lying low so they don't get deported from the country. And many were born here. I beyond exhausted of this "both sides" narrative as if I need any introspection on the prospect of "maybe we should exile people based on skin color".
If you compare it with the more sober, reflectful sort (eg russell vs copleston on the existence of God [0]) you can see how far we've fallen.
Nevertheless, his killing I think will make us slide even further.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpADrtr85iM&pp=ygUlYmVydHJhb...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAqMIZdX5g ("Charlie Kirk Hands Out L's")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVQ3l5P0A4 ("Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Power vs Justice")
A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".
The whole point is you either answer A) no, and get a reaction from the audience for looking bad cause hitler or B) yes, and now you have conceded.
It amounts to a party trick.
If he fails to corner you, then comes the escape hatch where he brings up God and how God defines morality. Now the debate is over because you either believe in God or you don't.
This is a script that turns the whole thing into a rigged game not a method for arguing.
This part:
> A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".
> B) yes, and now you have conceded.
Yes, it makes the person look silly because the only answer that seems correct is yes, because there is obviously objective evil.
You don’t understand the discussion. Kirk is saying objectively morality exists. We can all agree that murdering a one month old child is objectively immoral. Not that all situations are objectively moral or immoral.
You yourself seem to be the one trying to bend what objective morality means by claiming it only applies sometimes.
If it were so obvious it would not be something worth debating in the first place which has been debated far better by far greater people. This is not a novel topic.
No but having the student admit objective morality exists is debating. You know this. I know you know this. You know the audience reaction is to the person losing the point too. You know you are being deceitful pretending the audience reaction is the debating technique not the actual technique that caused the reaction. I know you are being deceitful too. Stop posting, go outside.
The correct answer there (to someone who, unlike me, does not believe in objective morality) is something like "I oppose everything Hitler did and stood for. Notwithstanding that, your question is incoherent." What unprepared 20 year old comes up with that on the spot? Much less be prepared to back it up, only in sound bites (because that's what works in the format)?
It's not a question of skill or aptitude, but rather that he actively sought performative "owning the libs" arguments than genuine rigorous intellectual debate.
The point of his videos is to teach Young Republicans to identify weaker, more easily targeted members of the liberal tribe, alongside a set of disingenous talking points they could use to harass and ideally embarass those individuals.
I'm not sure books or blogs are a good example of this though. While they may contain lies or disingenuous talking points, they are quite different from the type of "debating" Kirk partook in on college campuses. Specifically, that strategy is characterized by speaking quickly and finding "gotcha" moments that play well on social media and short form video like reels or tiktok.
Written material can still be harmful of course, but I feel that it lacks a certain infectious, viral aspect to it that is so politically divisive these days.
I don't understand. Absolutely wild take.
They are both adults, end of story. If anything, your mind should become less sharp as you age.
You don't suddenly become a wise sage/philosopher/intellectual as you age 30 to 70 or whatever.
There are better and worse debates but I question the validity of an argument about the quality of debates of someone who likely got shot for a political argument.
At least his argument seemed to hit some spot. (I don't know a single one, didn't even know the victim).
Are you even able to meet that level yourself? This is non-sense. Obviously we all would love to reach that level of knowledge, introspection and speaking capability of Chomsky/Foucault, but it is absurd to expect it at all times.
Are you claiming Kirk was just shilling, as was imagined about Ann Coulter[0]? (Very NSFW).
The sad thing is if people debate like it’s a performance when it’s not.
I’m not American, I never heard of this guy before. But I saw the video of the last moments and it’s a telling snippet. He was incredibly dismissive in his answers which were vague and devoid of information, while being clearly rage bait meant to be cheered on by his base.
Why can't we strive for a proper environment and expel those who don't want to foster it? Schools are not entitled to give "equal platform" to unequal ideas.
People are just babies now and can't even handle moderate debate or people challenging their ideas. If you don't just reinforce their world views, it's seen as hate speech. We've become far too coddled and whiny and entitled. You are not entitled to not be offended and life in a bubble. People need to grow up.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
If you don't see anything racist in that article, then congrats you're racist.
>Where does he use a racial slur
You think that's the only way to be racist ?
>or say someone is something negative because of their race?
Are you blind, willfully obtuse or is your reading comprehension just this poor ?
"If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified." This is not racist? Are you fucking stupid ?
“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” - Charlie Kirk
Oh the irony. The more i learn about this piece of shit, the less i care about his death.
Not racist in the slightest. DEI hires are a threat to competency. I want airlines hiring the BEST pilots, not having ethnic quotas. You're a moron to argue that is a racist opinion. He's not saying black people can't be a good pilot, he's saying DEI politics make him question qualifications/priorities of hiring. The left just argues in bad faith.
> The more i learn about this piece of shit, the less i care about his death.
Ironic that the crowd with 'COEXIST' stickers on their Subarus is the fascist cult cheering on a murder. Completely unhinged losers mad because someone had a different opinion. You are just losers with assigned opinions. You don't even think for yourselves.
Oh yeah...all that DEI hiring of pilots...wait what's that ? It doesn't exist and never happened ? If you're out there wondering whether black hires are competent completely unprompted, you're a racist piece of shit sorry.
>Ironic that the crowd with 'COEXIST' stickers on their Subarus is the fascist cult cheering on a murder.
Well it's unsurprising that your reading comprehension is so poor. I clearly said i care less about his death. Nothing there about celebrating it.
You're arguing in bad faith again. I agree with you UNTIL you enact DEI then you have to wonder if they got the job because of qualifications and competency or because of some racial quota...
>I clearly said i care less about his death. Nothing there about celebrating it.
Yes, of course, you didn't come off gloating or gleeful at all... just funny how the party that thinks they have the moral high ground is the first to cheer when someone gets assassinated for political beliefs. If you can't be free to have unpopular opinions or disagree, then you don't live in a free society. I disagree with Rachel Maddow but I don't think she should be assassinated... not sure why it's so hard for the left to make the opposite statement.
I'm not arguing in bad faith. You do not need to worry about anything. Do your job and mind your business. Millions of white people get hired for dubious reasons but I'm sure you don't go around wondering if every white worker you see is competent. That is what is racist. It's especially silly because it does not mean a lack of competence, so you just look like an idiot hiding behind an asinine 'problem'.
With people like you, there's always the undercurrent that a black person must have been hired because of diversity and not a presence of skill. Why else would you be worrying about a random fucking pilot. Do you have any idea what it takes to be one ? He obviously didn't. Did he know the guy ? No. Did he know anything about the airline's work environment ? No. He just said it because 'oh it's a black person'.
>Yes, of course, you didn't come off gloating or gleeful at all.
You think that was me being gleeful ? Lol
>If you can't be free to have unpopular opinions or disagree, then you don't live in a free society.
You can have your opinions and I can call you a piece of shit for it. It's not mutually exclusive. Fuck ignorant 'opinions' that just spew hatred.
Because absolutely no one is hiring white workers solely on the basis of there skin color. There is no DEI category for more white males... They are simply there because they are qualified! You can't say the opposite is true... Go look at Asian discrimination in universities because they perform 'too well'... it's the same thing! It shouldn't based on racial quotas... it should be based on performance....
>You can have your opinions and I can call you a piece of shit for it. It's not mutually exclusive. Fuck ignorant 'opinions' that just spew hatred.
It's funny that you think I'm spewing hatred and don't have an iota of self-awareness. This is the narrow minded tunnel vision of the left--they hold the moral high ground and are simply arguing with subhhuman amoral psychophants... You've frame it all in your mind as good vs evil. Bravo. Continue tilting at windmills and made up boogie men.
What's funny is I'm not even a republican, I've never voted for a republican, and I have been a mostly lifelong democrat until the last election where I didn't bother voting because the left has become so pathetic and filled with people like you who I can't respect and don't want to be a part of in a group. I don't like the right, but I think the left has become even worse and outright lies to live in a fantasy world that is not reality. And I'm not alone--they lost 4 million voters since 2020 and in the same period the GOP gained 4.5 million voters... Take a step back and realize whatever side you're on, you're actively harming it and ensuring that your side will not have any political power for decades to come.
This isn't what respectful discourse looks like and doesn't meet the standard I expect from HN.
> link
There are four quotes given, entirely out of context, "on race". Without looking them up, simply applying basic charity and awareness of basic American right-wing arguments, it's clear that none of them establish what you'd like them to establish.
The first and last do not propose that black people are inherently unqualified for particular jobs or roles. Instead, they propose that employers use discriminatory hiring practices to hire black people preferentially, for the specific purpose of measuring up to some external standard for racial diversity.
It should be clear why many would consider discriminatory hiring practices based on race to be racist, and therefore consider complaints such as this to be in fact anti-racist. There are also any number of factors that could cause a racially unbiased hiring practice to produce racially biased results, including but not limited to: past racism enacted by third parties (perhaps generations ago, resulting in racial correlation with socioeconomic status, which is reinforced by generational wealth); differences in inclination and interest (which may in spring from cultural differences); and workers generally preferring employers of their own race (whether due to actual racism of the workers, low social trust in general, higher ability to make connections in that environment, etc.).
The second conflates several identity markers with a mark of achievement (being in the WNBA) along with what Kirk presumably considered a moral vice (smoking marijuana). But setting up this example doesn't actually associate those identity markers with the moral vice, just as they don't associate them with the achievement (aside from the part where being a lesbian implies being a woman, and being a woman is a prerequisite to play in the WNBA, and if you are about to object with anything whatsoever related to transgender issues then you are missing the point, perhaps deliberately). Possibly Kirk considered being a WNBA athlete a lesser achievement than being a marine, but it doesn't make a big difference to the argument. The point, clearly, is to posit that people belonging to certain identity groups are being held to a lower standard for ideological reasons — which is to say, the same sort of thing going on with the employment examples. In particular, their (supposed) vices are overlooked.
(It's also noteworthy that this source capitalizes "black" while leaving "white" lowercase; this is an example of the exact sort of institutional bias that these arguments critique.)
The third describes a particular pattern of racially motivated criminal behaviour. It seems that Kirk might have considered the killing of Iryna Zarutska to fit this pattern. However, pointing out that these things happen is not attributing that behaviour to an entire race, or stereotyping the race. It cannot be, because it's commonly understood that very few people overall engage in violent crime (society could not have ever existed otherwise). The only "group" that can meaningfully be stereotyped this way is the one labelled "criminals".
Kirk points out race here because, presumably, he is aware of statistics that show racial disparities in who tends to do the attacking, and perhaps in who tends to get attacked. I am deliberately being vague about this because I am not interested in debating the numbers, nor spending time on researching citations, nor in being seen as the sort of person who routinely cites them. But from everything I've seen, it really isn't something that can be disputed in good faith. Again, there are many possible contributing factors to this, and simply observing the statistical fact does not allege any specific explanation.
It didn't.
> The elevation of racist ideology to being just another political opinion deserving of respect
This has not occurred.
This is also irrelevant, because Kirk has not made racist claims.
He's said multiple very obviously racist remarks, on video, with full context.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-charlie-kirk-...
I'm not convinced political debates are good for anything else. Most people believe in things without really thinking about them. Especially politics.
If you stop and actually reason this stuff out, you're going to reach some deeply disturbing conclusions which border on wrongthink. If you try to spread the nuggets of truth you discovered, you just fail miserably at first. People will not be convinced.
They probably won't really refute you either. Maybe it's because you're right, maybe it's because they didn't even think about what you said and just responded emotionally, there's no way to know for sure because trying to test ideas in debates just doesn't work with the vast majority of human beings.
If you insist on this path, people start thinking you're acting superior to them with your unconventional ideas. At some point you start getting flagged and downvoted on sight. Then you start getting personally called out. Labeled as some "extremist". Maybe one day you become such a nuisance authorities actually knock on your door and arrest you. Maybe your ideas offend someone so much they assassinate you.
So I don't blame this guy at all for debating like a politician. If he debated seriously and won, would his opponents revise their entire belief systems and start following his logical footsteps? Of course not.
no he didn't, and this is absolutely self-evident, he trolled and victim-blamed and had no interest in talking to anyone about any kind of idea
I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.
That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?