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Charlie Kirk shot at (shot?) in Utah

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Back to the gallow humor... the real reason the far right is upset is that they always presumed liberals would be bad shots and easy targets.
You've got to admit, whatever Luigi and this kid were, bad shots ain't it. The news cycle had everyone convinced that the both of them were professional assassins, before more details emerged. There's something to be said for a college education, teaches you diligence in studying.
 
I hear you, but do you agree it was wrong that MLK and others were struck down violently?
It’s a matter of scale IMHO.
Melissa and Mark didn’t get this kind of attention. No half mast flags, no wall to wall tv coverage, no presidential feigned sadness. Melissa was an ELECTED FUCKING OFFICIAL who was stalked and murdered in her home, along with her innocent husband. Does anyone know who Yvette Hoffman is?
The asymmetry is vast. Open season on elected Dems, but don’t go picking off any loudmouthed unelected trumpsuckers or there will be hell (for all of us) to pay.

I get what you’re saying about asymmetry, and maybe that’s a fair conversation. But before we go there, do you agree or disagree that it was wrong for Kirk to be killed over his opinions, just like it was wrong for Melissa, MLK, or anyone else?
That's a fair question. However, more is needed.

1. Legally speaking, it was indisputably wrong. From A crime to Z crime that took place until arrest, he was wrong.

2. Morally, it's not as clear cut because taking another life is not always wrong. The great majority of the time it is wrong. There are almost always better ways to act. But silencing a bad-faith voice whose known and clearly stated goal is to take more of our rights away, establish an American theocracy, and advocate apathy and even encourage murder for the sake of his disgusting principles; I don't know. My reason is not sympathy, but because we don't know if in the end it will have made any difference. It's the classic if you could kill Hitler question.

3. Practicality: much as what I wrote immediately above, we don't know the impact, if any this will have. Like everything else now, it will likely fade pretty quickly from the news cycle. It does give American fascism a martyr, but they already have as many martyrs as they wish to manufacture anyway.

3A: If this was a rational act by a rational person, is it the first shot in a burgeoning movement that's realizing that peaceful protests accomplish nothing and believe that concrete action is needed to save our democracy, or is it a radicalized leftist who lost rational thought and misguidedly lashed out over paranoia? Etc. I think that its practical effect will be minimal.

I could go on and on, but the way I see it, it amounts to a small sliver of of satisfaction in a sea of despair; a moment where the fascists saw measurable backlash against the policies they promote. I know what the response to that sentence will be, so I'll wait for it.

Overall the question(s) of right and wrong are a matter of degree and on-the-ground results. We'll just have to wait and see.

I see your point about morality, but that’s exactly the problem: morality depends on who’s defining it. The people behind MLK’s assassination no doubt thought they had their own ‘moral’ reasons, just as anyone who resorts to violence does. If morality is the standard, then what makes one person’s justification more valid than another’s? That’s why it’s better to have a universal fact we can all agree on: political violence in a democratic society is unacceptable, no matter who the target is. Once that line blurs, every assassin claims the mantle of moral righteousness, and democracy itself becomes hostage to whoever has the gun.
 
Looks lile we need to take a look at the people who have no political affiliation. They're clearly all violent criminals.
If you're paying enough attention to politics to get mad enough to assassinate someone at the cost of your own life, you already know too much to feel any love for either political party.
 
Apparently the bullet casings were inscribed with a bunch of gamer culture crap. No surprise there.
Can you elaborate for the online gaming ignorant? Is this potentially non-partisan?
I wouldn't assume that these shell casings were even a custom job, as was initially assumed by the police. They may well be getting mass produced by someone on Etsy, and contain no special message for us per se. But if they are specially chosen for the killing, they still don't really give much insight into a motive for the killing, aside from two of the casings mentioning antifa.


"Hey fascists! Catch!"

"Notices, bulges, OwO what's this?"

"Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao"

"If you read this, you are gay LMAO"

Another casing just had a series of arrows, the arrow sequence that calls down a nuke in the game Helldiver.

They're all internet memes from the last twenty years or so. The kind of pop culture things the shooter would have grown up around. Bella Ciao is a rallying song for the "OG Antifa" as Derec would put it. The bulges thing is a furry meme. "If you read this..." is a middle schooler joke, you put a tiny sticker on the ceiling of a locker room or the back of someone's chair or whatever and laugh when someone stoops over to read it.
 
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Looks lile we need to take a look at the people who have no political affiliation. They're clearly all violent criminals.
If you're paying enough attention to politics to get mad enough to assassinate someone at the cost of your own life, you already know too much to feel any love for either political party.
It was more sarcasm because right wingers will always make such generalizations about leftists but never those with no party affiliation.
 
the average person watching these discussions could easily feel discouraged from exercising free speech if it seems society isn’t firmly against political violence in every case.
I think that is not some random side-effect, but rather the object of the alt-right game. It is not a “both sides” phenomenon.

If all we ever talk about is the imbalance in coverage, no one would know whether anyone is explicitly against the assassinations themselves.
Yes, I concur that opposition to political violence in all forms should be the paramount concern for all of us. This particular killing should serve notice to all of us, including violence-prone white supremacist “republican” Trumpsuckers, that nobody wins from assassination.
But this will be used by the fascists to justify exacting retribution from anyone and everyone who pisses them off, or whoever they are directed to be pissed of at by their mango-in-chief. And to me, if not as important, that is a more urgent concern.
 
Betcha "Hey fascists catch" is the one that's going to catch on in the radical left social media sphere over the next few weeks. Because the first thing they shoot is always their own foot.
 
Apparently the bullet casings were inscribed with a bunch of gamer culture crap. No surprise there.
Can you elaborate for the online gaming ignorant? Is this potentially non-partisan?
I wouldn't assume that these shell casings were even a custom job, as was initially assumed by the police. They may well be getting mass produced by someone on Etsy, and contain no special message for us per se. But if they are specially chosen for the killing, they still don't really give much insight into a motive for the killing, aside from two of the casings mentioning antifa.


"Hey fascists! Catch!"

"Notices, bulges, OwO what's this?"

"Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao"

"If you read this, you are gay LMAO"

Another casing just had a series of arrows, the arrow sequence that calls down a nuke in the game Helldiver.

They're all internet memes from the last twenty years or so. The kind of pop culture things the shooter would have grown up around. Bella Ciao is a rallying song for the "OG Antifa" as Derec would put it. The bulges thing is a furry meme. "If you read this..." is a middle schooler joke, you put a tiny sticker on the ceiling of a locker room or the back of someone's chair or whatever and laugh when someone stoops over to read it.
Thanks. So maybe a little hope the shooter was an idiot and this had nothing to do with politics.
 
the way I see it, it amounts to a small sliver of of satisfaction in a sea of despair; a moment where the fascists saw measurable backlash against the policies they promote.
Beyond any doubt, even we who decry the act, the actor and the motive, recognize the involuntary feeling of schadenfreude. We should caution ourselves against savoring it, for it will definitely come back to us in all the forms we detest.
It’s a fucking disaster, but no more or less so than the thousands of other victims of the right’s push toward fascism.
 


Read the whole thing. Wut an asshole.

You know, I was hoping that maybe he was going to talk about the proliferation of the video of Kirk's killing... (kind of like how the family of the girl murdered in North Carolina wanted people to stop sharing her brutal death on social media) but no... he wants to quash free speech.
 
Apparently the bullet casings were inscribed with a bunch of gamer culture crap. No surprise there.
Can you elaborate for the online gaming ignorant? Is this potentially non-partisan?
I wouldn't assume that these shell casings were even a custom job, as was initially assumed by the police. They may well be getting mass produced by someone on Etsy, and contain no special message for us per se. But if they are specially chosen for the killing, they still don't really give much insight into a motive for the killing, aside from two of the casings mentioning antifa.


"Hey fascists! Catch!"

"Notices, bulges, OwO what's this?"

"Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao"

"If you read this, you are gay LMAO"

Another casing just had a series of arrows, the arrow sequence that calls down a nuke in the game Helldiver.

They're all internet memes from the last twenty years or so. The kind of pop culture things the shooter would have grown up around. Bella Ciao is a rallying song for the "OG Antifa" as Derec would put it. The bulges thing is a furry meme. "If you read this..." is a middle schooler joke, you put a tiny sticker on the ceiling of a locker room or the back of someone's chair or whatever and laugh when someone stoops over to read it.
Thanks. So maybe a little hope the shooter was an idiot and this had nothing to do with politics.
I bet the right wing idiots will be calling for the Helldivers games to be banned too.
 
Apparently the bullet casings were inscribed with a bunch of gamer culture crap. No surprise there.
Can you elaborate for the online gaming ignorant? Is this potentially non-partisan?
I wouldn't assume that these shell casings were even a custom job, as was initially assumed by the police. They may well be getting mass produced by someone on Etsy, and contain no special message for us per se. But if they are specially chosen for the killing, they still don't really give much insight into a motive for the killing, aside from two of the casings mentioning antifa.


"Hey fascists! Catch!"

"Notices, bulges, OwO what's this?"

"Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao"

"If you read this, you are gay LMAO"

Another casing just had a series of arrows, the arrow sequence that calls down a nuke in the game Helldiver.

They're all internet memes from the last twenty years or so. The kind of pop culture things the shooter would have grown up around. Bella Ciao is a rallying song for the "OG Antifa" as Derec would put it. The bulges thing is a furry meme. "If you read this..." is a middle schooler joke, you put a tiny sticker on the ceiling of a locker room or the back of someone's chair or whatever and laugh when someone stoops over to read it.
Thanks. So maybe a little hope the shooter was an idiot and this had nothing to do with politics.
My understanding is that the kid confessed pretty directly to being politically motivated.

This article has quite a few details:

I'm becoming a bit more convinced that they have nabbed the right person this time, at least.

"Investigators interviewed a member of the man's family, who said he had become more political in recent years. The person said Robinson recently told them that Kirk was coming to UVU and the pair discussed how they didn't like Kirk and the viewpoints he held.

Officials also interviewed Robinson's roommate, who showed investigators a number of Discord messages from the suspect, including ones that said he needed to get a rifle from a drop point and another about leaving that rifle in a bush, Cox said.

There were also messages that referred to the suspect watching the spot where he had left the rifle after Kirk's shooting and that the rifle was wrapped in a towel, which is how officials found it yesterday."
 
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I bet the right wing idiots will be calling for the Helldivers games to be banned too.
Maybe the morality police fringe. The Party leadership is way too heavily invested in microchips to seriously want any video game to be banned.
Well the fringe can still send death threats to the developers and needlessly traumatize people too.
 
My understanding is that the kid confessed pretty directly to being politically motivated.

This article has quite a few details:

I'm becoming a bit more convinced that they have nabbed the right person this time, at least.

"Investigators interviewed a member of the man's family, who said he had become more political in recent years. The person said Robinson recently told them that Kirk was coming to UVU and the pair discussed how they didn't like Kirk and the viewpoints he held.

Officials also interviewed Robinson's roommate, who showed investigators a number of Discord messages from the suspect, including ones that said he needed to get a rifle from a drop point and another about leaving that rifle in a bush, Cox said.

There were also messages that referred to the suspect watching the spot where he had left the rifle after Kirk's shooting and that the rifle was wrapped in a towel, which is how officials found it yesterday."
The second and third things don't mesh as well with the first thing. It seems like a joke to him in the Discord messages. And of course, it isn't political to not like Kirk's viewpoints, that is just being a decent human being. Drove a long way, it seems, to be there though.
 
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