Seemingly obligatory disclaimer: Of course I don’t approve of murdering Charlie Kirk.
But we can be against assassinating a hateful bigot without whitewashing him.
All of the things said by suit guy in this cartoon, are things Kirk actually said in life, paraphrased to fit in the four-panel format. But in the weeks since Kirk’s death, too many centrist liberals – including Ezra Klein, who infamously praised Kirk in The New York Times for “practicing politics in exactly the right way” – have ignored his actual messages. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, it’s telling that Klein didn’t quote Kirk’s own words anywhere in the op-ed.
Klein wrote that “Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics.” But Nicholas Grossman pointed out that this really wasn’t the case.
Were they? Charlie Kirk repeatedly lied about the 2020 election, bussed people to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, and defended Trump pardoning convicted seditionists by lying that normal court proceedings were somehow denial of due process. Kirk recently celebrated Trump’s illegal military deployments against U.S. cities as “shock and awe” that is “taking our country back from these cockroaches.” Those stances oppose the continued possibility of American politics, at least as a rule of law democracy.
In the middle of drawing this cartoon, I did something to my shoulder – I have no idea what – and my shoulder quite unreasonably responded by refusing to move much for a few days. It basically went on strike but refused to tell me what its demands are. It’s still hurting today, actually, but the pain is now very minor, and I was finally able to finish up drawing this strip.
I tried to write this strip so it would make sense even for people who have no idea who either Charlie Kirk or Ezra Klein are – after all, centrist liberals emphasizing civility over substance is a decades old problem, not a passing news story.
Having decided it didn’t matter that the characters were Ezra Klein and Charlie Kirk made drawing caricatures of them a lot more fun for me, because I could just draw them without worrying about if I was achieving good likenesses. (I have prosopagnosia – popularly known as “face blindness” – and I wonder if that accounts for my difficulty being sure if I’ve drawn a decent likeness of someone or not).
I think of Klein as a clean-shaven guy, but in recent photos he’s got a thick beard, and including the beard was both interesting for me to draw and helped differentiate the two characters visually.
RECIEPTS
Since I know from experience that I will probably be accused of lying about what Kirk said, here are some receipts.
Panel one: Kirk used anti-trans slurs on his podcast. And he called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
Panel two: Kirk said “Mexico could close their border in an afternoon, but we’re allowing Mexico and the cartels to overrun the country because, of course, the American Democrat party wants that to happen. The American Democrat Party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.”
Panel three: This panel combines two Kirk statements. First, “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more. ” And second, “…The Haitians that are in Huntsville that are raping your women and hunting you down at night — it’s only gonna get worse if — unless Donald Trump wins.”
Panel four: Kirk called for deporting Mehdi Hasan. “Who is that neurotic lunatic? Who is that guy? Send him back to the country he came from. Holy cow. Get him off TV. Revoke his visa. ”
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels, all featuring the same three characters. Charlie, a white man in a suit and tie. Ezra, a white man in more casual clothing. And Reader, a Latina wearing shorts and a black tank.
PANEL 1
Charlie and Ezra are walking together. Nearby, Reader sits at the base of a tree, reading a book, and overhears.
CHARLIE: We need Nuremberg-style trials for tranny-affirming clinic doctors.
EZRA: As a liberal centrist, I can’t agree with that. But what matters is that we’re talking.
PANEL 2
The woman looks annoyed.
CHARLIE: Democrats want Mexicans to overrun us because they hate America and wanna see it become less white and collapse!
EZRA: That’s not true. But again, we’re talking! Thank you for practicing politics the right way!
PANEL 3
The woman stands up, yelling angrily at the two men.
CHARLIE: You know what happens in the cities? Blacks prowl around attacking white people for fun! Haitians rape your women and hunt you!
EZRA: Again, I can’t agree. But I–
READER: Fuck that racist bullcrap!
PANEL 4
Ezra and Charlie walk on, not speaking to the woman, who watches them leave with an annoyed expression.
EZRA: Tsk! So uncivil! That’s the kind of intolerance that’s ruining America.
CHARLIE: They should deport her!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is forgotten cartoonist lingo for unimportant but hopefully amusing stuff in the art.
PANEL 1: A notice taped to the tree says “DON’T don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t forget about me baby,” a reference to a song by Simple Minds made famous in The Breakfast Club.
PANEL 4: A heart carved into the tree trunk says “N.L. + S.T.” Another heart says “J.T. + J.B.,” but has been crossed out. A third heart says “A.H. + J.B.” All of these hearts refer to one of my favorite musicals, Sweeney Todd.
Beaker from The Muppets is sticking his head out a hole in the ground.
A rat is walking on the street next to the sidewalk, looking distressed as it reads something on its phone. It’s wearing a shirt with a hearts pattern.
A piece of litter on the ground says “REPENT. Panel 4 is upon us!”
I thought the baby thing was a reference to The Play About the Baby until I read the description.
Uhmmm… ya missed a word on the song… “don’t YOU forget about me”
RandomTroll
Whoops! :#O
I (perhaps unsurprisingly) disagree.
I’m not going to defend everything Kirk said, he was one of those people who would display human decency to people in front of him, but was a bit of an asshole on podcasts and during interviews. While I don’t think we should be judged by the six worst things we’ve ever said, he did say versions of those things, and it’s fair to object to them.
What I’m objecting to is the idea that he wasn’t doing politics correctly, which I inferred from this:
Kirk did practice politics in exactly the right way; He identified people who he might reach out to, he spoke to them, and was intelligent and articulate enough to convince them using his words. He seemed to believe what he was saying. He built an organization that has changed the landscape and the conversation among young people. He did that with a chair and a microphone. That is exactly how politics should be.
I think he was effective because the left doesn’t really attempt discourse the same way he did. Where are the lefty-operated tents? Who on the left sets up a change-my-mind table? In my opinion, what Kirk tried to convince with conversations, lefties try to coerce with shame. And I think that’s what Klein has identified… I’ve seen lefties mock people who base their policies on who was mean to them. And yeah… You can choose to do that, it’s not entirely unreasonable… But you’re never going to convince them that way either. We aren’t individually responsible for the political conversion of the masses… But if you were even just a little bit interested, I can tell you what’s going to be more effective. Spoiler: It isn’t screaming at them.
And really…. He wasn’t extreme. His positions were pretty basic-righty, held by millions of Americans, with a little bit of faith rhetoric injected into it. You might not like his politics, you might loathe his rhetoric, but the world would be a much better place if there were more Charlies and fewer Tylers.
” was intelligent and articulate enough to convince them using his words”
Whose mind did Charlie Kirk change, exactly?
Charlie Kirk was, essentially, a groomer. He targeted young men and indoctrinated them into his hateful ideology.
Kirk’s events and exchanges were less about good faith or honest debate than about right-wing performance art. He was not doing these “prove me wrong ” or “come at me bro” sessions to convince the other side or reach across the aisle, but so he could amass footage for condensed edited online clips with clickbait taglines boasting about owning the libs.
After a Kirk debate, clips would spin out onto social media, inviting millions into the fray. In celebration of perceived wins, Turning Point USA titled its YouTube videos things like: “Charlie Kirk ANNIHILATES Smart-Aleck Student Accusing Him of Propaganda”, “Charlie Kirk wrecks DEI talking points” and “Liberal Student Can’t Answer Charlie Kirk’s Simple Question”.
When an exchange did not go so well for Kirk, he would not publicize it. Same thing for Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and the other right-wing “debate” bros. Now, Kirk had every right to promote himself and whatever footage however he wanted, but not quite consistent with good faith persuasion and open honest discussion. The last words he uttered in his final moments were evasion and prevarication about mass shootings.
A cursory search of YouTube would show you that there are left-leaning speakers and influencers who do invite questions and discussions with conservatives and MAGA supporters. Though, if a lefty operated a live tent or change-my-mind table and then afterwards published hundreds of clips about how he “ANNIHILATES” or “OWNS” the MAGA bros, would you consider that person to be an honest genuine interlocutor reaching out to the other side with good faith?
That dichotomy doesn’t hold up either. Kirk and his ilk would happily use shame and mockery wherever they could, whenever they thought they could edit a clip to ridicule somebody opposing them.
Telling women that education is mostly a waste of time and that their true purpose is to submit to husbands and breed is extreme.
Saying that trans people are “a throbbing middle finger to God” and an “abomination to God” is extreme (but there’s his touch of “faith rhetoric”).
I have seen this exact statement a lot with the substitution of a college professor (or a college) for “Charlie Kirk”.
In the context of a leftist talking to a conservative on interview on MSNBC or CNN I have certainly often seen claims of [leftist] OWNS/DESTROYS/etc. [conservative]. This is nothing new. Or particularly useful, from either side.
I didn’t know much at all about Charlie Kirk until after he died. I didn’t listen to his podcasts or watch the videos of his campus appearances. I knew he was the founder of Turning Point. That mostly came to my attention when I saw videos of people lining up in groups and screaming at people running a Turning Point table on a campus or someone walking up, yelling at the people running the table and then trashing the table and materials.
After he was assassinated I saw a lot of posts about how he said that gays should be stoned to death, he was racist, etc., supported by 5 second clips. So far, when I have checked out videos showing a minute or two of the context those clips were taken from I have found that the people posting those short clips grossly misrepresented what he was talking about.
It seems to me that stating that a primary purpose of women is to have children is common sense, what with biology and all. Nobody else can do it, and the urge to do so within both sexes is pretty much hard-wired in.
Here’s the video of Charlie Kirk referencing Leviticus to describe gay men being “stoned to death” as part of “God’s perfect law.”
(Pedantic aside: Kirk says he’s quoting Leviticus 18, but I’m pretty sure he meant Leviticus 20:13. Leviticus 18:22 forbids gay male sex, but the death penalty isn’t mentioned there.)
Citing the passage is one thing. Citing it and immediately describing it as “God’s perfect law” is quite another. Kirk was being snarky, not proposing legislation, but his snark was intentionally cruel and demeaning to gay people.
My comic strip refers to several things Kirk said, and you’ll find links to sources in the post. Which of them would you say “grossly misrepresented” what Kirk was talking about?
“I didn’t know much at all about Charlie Kirk until after he died.”
Good to know that your lack of information doesn’t prevent you from jumping into the debate and telling everyone else they’re wrong!
So you agree that Kirk was a groomer? Cool. Unexpected, but still cool.
Well, since that is what Kirk routinely posted and boasted, his output was nothing new or particularly useful either. For the record, some leftists do have their own call-in shows or YouTube channels where they host questions from conservatives, so it’s not just confined to MSNBC.
Kirk did not state it was “a” primary purpose among others for women to choose, negotiate, and prioritize as they see fit. He argued that marriage and breeding were “the” primary purpose for women and girls which trumped all others, that college was a scam and that education for women was only useful or beneficial inasmuch as it facilitated conservative heterosexual pairing. He told a teenage girl who wanted to become a journalist that girls should focus on getting an “MRS degree” instead. He claimed that women who choose other pursuits besides marriage and breeding were doomed to misery and supporting liberal politics.
Not to mention his gross fervent hopes for Taylor Swift to “submit” to a husband.
Here’s the video of Kirk saying that trans people are “a throbbing middle finger to God” and calling Lia Thomas an “abomination to God.”
Context does not make it better.
Oh, and for anybody who thinks Charlie Kirk totally abhorred political violence in a principled unbiased way and that he would never make light about harm and mayhem inflicted upon others, let’s all remember his kind, dignified reaction to the attack on Paul Pelosi.
This is the Teleological Fallacy. “Purpose” presupposes a mind. Women’s biology (and men’s) is the product of evolution – a mindless process. It doesn’t have any purpose beyond the purposes she has for it in her own mind.
Megalodon said:
To which Ron replied:
But those are two completely different things? The problem Megalodon pointed out, and which is one reason the claims of Kirk practicing good face debate ring hollow, is not that he claimed to have “won” the debate. It’s that he controlled all the access to footage of his debates, decided to edit it in a way that made him look like the “winner” and his opponent as a “looser” (extra points for making them look as irrational as possible) and did not release footage of the complete debate that would have allowed others to draw their own conclusions about who was more persuasive.
The example given by Ron refers to leftist commenters looking at a mainstream interview and judging who the think “won”. But while those commenters may very well include (misleading) edits to make their point, the whole interview is available for people to watch and come to their own conclusions.
The problem isn’t the use of the word “owned”, it’s that Kirk didn’t allow access to information/ documantation that would allow others to come to different conclusions.
Plus, there is the fact that Kirk himself declared himself to have “owned” his debate- opponent. Where as in Ron’s example, the person being interviewed / doing the interviewing did not themselves make such a claim, never mind self-promote with that claim.
But are those the six worst things he’s ever said or six representative comments? My impression is very much the latter.
(Thanks for saying it’s fair).
Judged in what way, though? Certainly if it’s God writing things in the Book of Judgement, I assume a lot of things would be considered. Maybe Kirk disguised himself every night and gave money to the poor. If God exists (doubtful), I’d expect God to take that – as well as the enormous harms Kirk did – into account when judging Kirk’s soul.
But I’m not a deity and I’m not judging either Kirk’s soul or his totality as a person. I don’t know what he was like in the privacy of his home, or playing board games with his buds.
The only Kirk I’ve been exposed to is Charlie Kirk the pubic figure, and it’s fair for anyone to judge what sort of public figure he was.
It’s amusing this whole “you can’t judge someone until you know him as a total person” thing only ever gets brought up when you judge someone negatively.
Nobody ever objects when you’re talking about how awesome someone is based on their public persona.
Like, if those of us who believe Kirk was a bad actor have to take into the account the possibility that he was secretly some kind of guardian angel/saint, then those who believe that he was a fearless advancer of civil liberties also have to take into account the possibility that he was secretly a serial killer.
We’re human. We judge everything on incomplete information. I judge each and every comment I read. I judge people I meet for the briefest amounts of time. I judge people I’ve been friends with for decades. I judge myself.
Once we stop judging, we stop being human.
conservatives are happy to judge women, queer people, immigrants and the poor based on nothing but conspiracy theories and internet shlock.
But they don’t want to be judged for their judgements. The queer immigrant or the working class single mum, they can be reduced to a hateful stereotype and judged en masse by ranting conservatives. But the ranting conservative must be considered as a complete person, a husband, a worker, a sportsperson, a chef, a music fan, etc etc, before we are allowed to make any judgement of him.
He can judge others just for who they are, but we can’t judge him for judging others.
And on that note, whenever somebody dies, Christian conservatives often have no problem rating a person’s existence based solely on whether or not the deceased subscribed to a certain deity. They will dismiss a person’s entire public and private life and say none of it matters if they didn’t accept Jesus (and presumably went to hell).
@Megalodon: Yes, but god forbid that we judge Charlie Kirk on his extremely lengthy record of public speech on practically every issue under the sun, because maybe he was secretly Batman crossed with Buddha.
Squid:
I mean…. If that’s the definition you want to use, sure. I’ll never take another objection from you over LGBT teachers being called groomers seriously ever again, but sure. I’d make differentiations on things like… age. Or content. I wouldn’t call Kirk a groomer, myself. But you do you.
Megalodon:
I mean, the algorithm can feed people different things, but I don’t get those results. I’d love for someone to actually say a name. The closest I can find would be Dean Withers’ attempt, which was the UnFuck America tour, but that broke down real fast over in-tribe disagreements.
Lauren (and others, making variations of the point):
That’s just not true…. His performances were all uploaded in full on his YouTube channel, those performances were then chopped up into shorter videos and shorts, which were more widely disseminated. If you thought there were moments that made him look bad, you could in fact chop those out and share them… And there were people that did that.
Amp:
A way that dehumanizes people to the point where suggesting they deserve to die isn’t unreasonable. I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing here, but your comic doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the current discourse exists.
There’s people here like Watcher, who said “conservatives are happy to judge women, queer people, immigrants and the poor based on nothing but conspiracy theories and internet shlock. But they don’t want to be judged for their judgements.”
Or Megalodon, who said “whenever somebody dies, Christian conservatives often have no problem rating a person’s existence based solely on whether or not the deceased subscribed to a certain deity. They will dismiss a person’s entire public and private life and say none of it matters if they didn’t accept Jesus”
And what isn’t a gross generalization misses the point: I’d expect you to judge me, I’d prefer people not make things up or lie, but ultimately I’m not too concerned about what you all think of me. That’s fine. That’s life. It’s also the easily defensible motte against the indefensible bailey of reality – If all that we were really talking about was judgement, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We aren’t talking about this because people were verbally mean to Charlie Kirk as retaliation for him being verbally mean to others. We’re talking about this because the man was shot in the neck and killed because someone thought that his speech was intolerable. We’re talking about this because there were (and are) people who were celebrating his death, who thought he deserved it. And we’re talking about this on the heels of the fawning treatment of Luigi Mangione after he murdered the health insurance CEO, two separate close call attempts on Trump’s life, The arson of Josh Shapiro’s home, and the murder of two state lawmakers.
I get being annoyed when one of your political opponents gets murdered and his side tries to put them up on a pedestal. I think it’s fair, if perhaps tacky and ill timed, to point out that they had questionable views and were flawed before they’re even in the ground… It’s a whole other thing to pretend that these views, even if you disagree with them, made him a legitimate target for murder.
Because while I don’t share Kirk’s views, I’m aware that the difference between him and millions and millions of Americans wasn’t the views, it was the mic. And if Kirk’s views were so abhorrent that his murder can be justified and/or celebrated…. What does that mean for all those other people?
“It’s a whole other thing to pretend that these views, even if you disagree with them, made him a legitimate target for murder.”
Just for the record, I do not think Kirk deserved to be murdered, and I am not celebrating his murder.
Perhaps you didn’t intend to imply that I thought so, or celebrated so, but your quoting of me in this post at least implies it. I expect you will probably say you meant no such thing.
Is anybody here celebrating his murder, or saying he deserved it? If so, who? If not, aren’t you arguing with a strawman?
I’m sure some people are celebrating his murder because there are plenty of arseholes in the world. But they’re not here. You’re replying to a group of people criticising Kirk’s views and actions by saying “don’t celebrate his murder”. This is a very bad faith argument, even by your standards.
Ps – corso, rather than laying out a bunch of questions that you think we need to answer, why don’t you answer the question I asked you a month ago and that you appear to be ignoring?
I don’t think anyone here has said so, no. But again, this discourse doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This comic was either the mother of all coincidences, or related to Kirk’s murder, and seeing as Amp’s very first line was him expressing disapproval of the murder, I think it’s safe to say it was at least front of mind. I think it’s also obvious, although I’m not a mind reader, and he can correct me, that the disclaimer was there in part because so many people were actively having a mask-off moment celebrating the murder of Kirk.
And at that point… I think it’s fair to ask what the point is. Is it really so important that people know The Truth™ about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his murder and an outpouring of support? Because, I’m just going to put this out there: The only thing differentiating this comic and the general message in it from the people celebrating his death is a fifth panel with the people wearing party hats NS someone saying “and that’s why it’s good he’s dead.” I understand that this tends to be a left of center space… But somehow that 5th panel, which exists all over the internet right now, seems like it should be more important. I don’t think it’s rational, or in good taste, to have the sterilized conversation about whether Kirk’s positions were questionable against a backdrop of political violence on a scale I haven’t seen before in my lifetime.
I… Don’t think that word means what you think it does. Bath faith argumentation is when you don’t believe what you’re saying, or when you purposefully ignore inconvenient pieces of context to make your argument. I don’t think there’s an angle I’m ignoring here… Mind articulating it?
I assume you mean “Whose mind did Charlie Kirk change, exactly?” Sorry, I thought that was a particularly stupid rhetorical question. Did you expect me to do more than gesture vaguely at the crowds he drew? At how his tours sold out? At the fact that Gen Z, particularly gen Z men, between 18 and 24 are the most conservative generation at that life stage since polling started? I don’t think he often convinced the people he directly spoke to, although there are clips of people admitting they were wrong, or said they had something to think about after their interactions, but the audience… The audience is who the show was for.
I have not seen a single person actually celebrating Kirk’s murder. I’ve seen some quoting Kirk himself saying that murders were the price of freedom, but that’s not celebrating his murder. It’s pointing out that he would have celebrated ours.
I guess the algorithm prevented you from seeing any of Mehdi Hasan’s exchange with twenty MAGA and far-right individuals. Sam Seder did the same thing and he takes conservative callers on his show.
There’s Parkergetajob who takes MAGA callers.
There’s Pushing The Limits hosted by Brian Shapiro who is participating in the UnFuck America Tour which is still happening.
His “performances” posted on his channel are not the full raw unedited footage of his appearances from start to finish. They are all segments and shorter videos, most under 10 minutes, culled from his tour encounters. The videos usually start off with him hawking a product. They have all definitely been modified and edited in some fashion. I’m sure some of them may generally represent the encounter as Kirk describes them, but some of them do not. And that’s not counting the footage Kirk chose to omit.
Yeah, and the videos recorded by outside parties are the ones that portray him in the less impressive light, like the Cambridge debate. People who were present at the same shows as him pointed out ways in which Kirk edited the footage to his favor. Kirk aggressively marketed the edited and truncated clips of his Gish gallops with clickbait taglines about how he “owned the libs” while he omitted or obscured the mediocre or unfavorable footage. Kirk had every right to promote himself however he wanted, but that’s not in line with pretense of candor or good faith dialogue. When Kirk tried to laugh off the South Park parody of him, he was sure to omit the line that hit too close to home.
Then you complain about my statement:
Uh, what exactly is your complaint here? That it is somehow “dehumanizing” or unfair to point out that Christian conservatives and fundamentalists rate and judge somebody’s entire life based on acceptance or rejection of a single dogma? That is what Charlie Kirk fan Ray Comfort did upon Tina Turner’s death. Others thought to dismiss Gandhi’s life with the assurance “He’s in hell.” We’re being told that it is somehow unfair and indecent to posthumously judge Kirk’s actions and beliefs on numerous subjects which he volubly broadcasted. We’re pointing out how that demand is hypocrisy and special pleading, when many of Kirk’s ilk are only too eager to judge a deceased person who happened to not share conservative Christian religion.
Are you anticipating some kind of imminent purge or something?
It means what it’s always meant. Some people keep their distance and don’t want to associate with those whose views they find abhorrent and hateful. Some people become estranged. Some people even get divorced. For everyone else, civility and tolerance aren’t always based on liking or respecting other people’s views. It’s more about keeping distances so that the other person’s views aren’t a personal issue because they’re not close enough to you to matter.
You have this notion that if enough people hold certain beliefs, then those beliefs are somehow entitled to credibility and deference from everyone else. And that’s just wrong. Beliefs can be embraced by millions and still be despicable and contemptible. About a quarter of Republicans and one fifth of Americans believe in QAnon. While that’s not a majority, it certainly numbers in the millions. Does that mean we need to tone down our criticisms of QAnon and pretend like believing in its lunacy is fine and dandy?
Funny, some liberals suggested something similar when some Republican politicians (including Trump) remarked about “Second Amendment solutions” against Democrats, but those worried critics were told to shut up and stop being “snowflakes” trying to curtail free speech. There were similar concerns when Josh Shapiro’s house was firebombed and Melissa Hortman was murdered. But again, that was just “snowflake” paranoia.
But when shots are taken at Trump and Charlie Kirk, suddenly we’re told that any unkind critical word about conservative public figures paves the road to assassination. Since any criticism or denunciation of a politician could conceivably inspire somebody to violence, then the only way to not be possibly complicit in such violence is to hold one’s tongue.
Yeah, it is important. Kirk’s death was not treated as a private tragedy. The entire right wing charged to politicize and exploit Kirk’s death to the hilt before Kirk was even in the ground. We were told that the only permissible reaction to Kirk’s death was to embrace Kirk’s beliefs or withhold all criticism of them. Trump and his retinue bellowed how they were going to use this assassination to criminalize the “Left” and exact “revenge” on all those who dared oppose Kirk’s politics. So that make it very important to explain the full picture of Charlie Kirk and explain why a good many people objected to him and his beliefs.
If the deceased is being put on a pedestal and used as a martyr to score political points and vendettas even before they are in the ground, how long should the other side wait before responding and explaining why they found the departed’s views to have been objectionable and deserving of criticism?
As has been pointed out multiple times, nobody here has been celebrating his death. But when Charlie Kirk joked about somebody who broke into Paul Pelosi’s home and tried to kill him, how did you react to that “mask-off” moment? Did it ignite your indignation?
Not quite. It was more because so many people were being accused of having a “mask off moment,” regardless of if they’d actually said they were happy Kirk was murdered, and I didn’t feel like dealing with that.
For instance, the website “charliesmurderers.com” doxed 40+ people, including people like Erin Gudge.
Stuff like that was the context for my disclaimer – if someone falsely accused me of celebrating Kirk’s death, I wanted to have something I could point to saying I was not.
Yeah, it’s like if we took your sentence: “I think it’s also obvious, although I’m not a mind reader, and he can correct me, that the disclaimer was there in part because so many people were actively having a mask-off moment celebrating the murder of Kirk.” And followed it with another sentence: “And those people should be doxed and we should harass their bosses until they’re fired.”
It’s as if adding a new ending to a paragraph, or comic strip, can completely change the meaning of it. But I don’t think that makes you close to having called for people to be fired, and it certainly doesn’t make me close to having done a comic strip celebrating Kirk’s death.
Back to talking about me, me, me: My political cartoon work is, unless Patreon decides to dump me (unlikely), immune to right-wing “cancellations” like what Gudge went through. But a significant portion of my income comes from more commercial work done for clients who I could imagine being pressured to dump me. (If that happens, it would be a significant hit to my income, but I have other income streams and a supportive household, so I’d be okay.)
The people behind Charliesmurderers.com, by the way, raised over $30,000 in donations, for which they…
They posted forty-something names before disappearing, taking the money with them. I hope it’s okay that I find that hilarious. I’m not sure if they always intended it as a scam or just bit off more than they could chew and decided ghosting was the better part of valor.
For the record: Some of them, absolutely.
I’m not as hard on this as I used to be. Some of the shit I’ve seen posted out there, the most egregious of the celebrations… I’m not convinced that people shouldn’t be fired. If you want to argue that there are right wing extremists who should also be fired, starting with of some the people who sent those messages above: Sure.
This isn’t hypothetical anymore, people are literally dying, politicians are being assassinated, the temperature is just too high. And some of the messages I’ve seen from people who thought they were in a space where everyone agreed with them… I don’t want to be near these people. The question was asked earlier if I thought there’d be a purge, and the answer is probably not… But there’s almost certainly going to be something. Why would it all stop now? What’s the count for the last two years? Two attempted presidential assassinations, the murder of two lawmakers, the arson of a governor’s residence, the assassination of a major media figure, the assassination of a healthcare CEO. People forget that the assassin that shot Trump also killed a random man at that rally. Am I safe? Probably. Are you? Probably. But someone else is almost certainly going to be killed, and while there are millions of people like me, I could still win that lottery.
I do think there was a point in time when some of the most milquetoast of comments could get you cancelled, and the cancellations were unidirectional. Both of those things improved, I think, to the point of overcorrection. And I think we’ve collectively jumped the shark if the assumption is that there won’t be personal or professional fallout for saying things that are grossly offensive.
Well, there are two different things. First of all, so some people deserve to lose their jobs or otherwise face consequences for saying terrible things? Sure, I can agree with that.
But I don’t think we should treat “people should be doxed and we should harass their bosses” as a legitimate tactic for national action, ever, except for rare cases that are of genuinely national interest. (Someone working for the White House, for example.)
As I wrote almost a decade ago, “Punishment unrelieved by mercy or responsibility is not justice; therefore, justice will not be achieved by thousands of strangers on the internet.” We should let local communities work that out. I just don’t trust that large-scale “get them fired!” campaigns, such as we saw with conservatives attacking critics of Kirk, are capable of nuance or good judgement, except in the stopped-clock fashion.
“More than 145 people in a wide range of occupations have been fired or disciplined after they made statements about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Not to mention all the people who have been fired, or expelled from college, or even deported for opposing genocide in Gaza. I don’t think it has slowed down at all, although I don’t have any stats. Certainly, I can’t recall any earlier time when anyone as prominent as a sitting Vice President was calling for people to harass employers over stuff like this.
You write:
For 2024 and 2025, the count of political violence deaths is 83 (as of September), and it’s on track to be 105.
In comparison, the numbers for 2022 & 2023 were 164. For 2020 and 2021, 161. (Source). So when was it “hypothetical”?
I think there’s often been more political violence in the US than there is right now. What’s new is that two prominent right-wing celebrities (Trump and Kirk) have been targeted recently, so right-wing media has been talking about it more. There’s also the obvious desire of the administration to use violence as an excuse to crack down on left-wing views, which conservatives are supporting by claiming that we’re now in some sort of epidemic of left-wing political violence. (I’m not saying you’ve made that claim; you haven’t claimed that in this thread, and I assume you haven’t made that claim elsewhere.)
I think I agree with you in principle. I agree that crowds are going to be bad at nuance and mobs tend to be less reasonable than individuals. But where I differ is that I think some of this isn’t just defensible, but necessary, and I don’t know that there are good mechanisms for this to happen naturally.
I don’t know that this is evidence that something has gone wrong. What did they do? I’m sure that I’m going to agree with you that some of these are egregious and bad in context, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The example from your link, Tara Marcelle? A nurse, in a hospital, on shift, in uniform, in full view of the public… I have no idea if her version of what she said or the hospital’s was true, but it doesn’t really matter: She can’t work there anymore. Professionals are expected to be professional. There’s an element of Trust involved, and people shouldn’t have to parse whether the people in charge of their care want them dead or not. I can’t even sympathize with being emotional; sometimes people say really stupid things in grief, and I think there needs to be a little room for that. What’s the emotion here? She felt so much joy she couldn’t help herself?
Again… I think we’ve jumped the shark a little on being anti-cancellation. Often, these people didn’t need to be doxxed: People are saying egregious shit, proudly, in real life, or with their real names on their accounts, wearing uniforms. I have no sympathy. They shouldn’t be that comfortable.
I don’t know exactly what their methodology was, but I’ll assume they’re correct. I’d like to know what those numbers were 20 years ago. Maybe this is nostalgia, but it really does seem that political violence has become more frequent and more serious lately. I don’t remember an assassination attempt before Giffords, and I don’t remember a successful assassination before the Minnesota legislators.
At some point in the past? Sure. The civil war. But more in our lifetime? I’m not sure.
Regardless, you’re right… The reason that the Kirk and Trump situations are bigger news is because Trump is the President of the United States and Charlie Kirk ran a massive YouTube channel. Similarly, the reason the Minnesota legislators didn’t attract as much attention, I think, is because they’re Minnesota State legislators. I didn’t know their names before they died. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that though… I don’t think that it’s just pure moral luck that all of this is happening now. Sure, if Obama had been shot while in office, that would have been big news. But he wasn’t.
As to an epidemic: No, but… I think that there’s a general increase in political violence, period. I don’t think enough people are involved to call it epidemic, but I have the impression that if we were to line up the amount of political violence along party lines and zero-sum netted them off, this is more of a problem on the left, and it isn’t close.
“Did you expect me to do more than gesture vaguely at the crowds he drew? At how his tours sold out?”
Is this evidence of him changing anybody’s minds?
” At the fact that Gen Z, particularly gen Z men, between 18 and 24 are the most conservative generation at that life stage since polling started?”
Do you really think this is the personal work of charlie Kirk?
Exactly the opposite of the truth. In the US, right-wingers kill far more people in political violence than left-wingers, and it isn’t close.
There are dozens of sources that have determined this, using different measures. (Including a Department of Justice study that the Trump administration deleted because they didn’t like the results.) But I’ll link to this article from the right-wing website Cato. From 1975 to this year, there have been 391 politically motivated murders from the right, and 65 from the left. (And also 3,120 from Islamic terrorists – a number which includes 9/11).
What about just more recent years? From 2020 to 2025, there have been 44 politically motivated murders from the right, versus 18 from the left (and 15 from Islamic terrorists).
What if we measure by incidents, rather than just looking at fatalities?
That article, by two academics, is interesting – they spend a lot of time discussing the difficulties inherent in measuring these things, and the decisions that have to be made about how to classify different crimes. (They also note, as does the Cato article, that politically motivated violence is a tiny percentage of overall violence.)
That right-wingers commit far more politically motivated violence and homicide in the US is not even a remotely controversial finding among people who study this. It’s basically only MAGA that denies it. Whatever source led you to the “impression” that “this is more of a problem on the left, and it isn’t close” has badly misinformed you, and you should consider relying on it less.
I think Charlie Kirk rode to success on a trend of young people moving to the right. I don’t doubt that there are some individuals who feel Kirk in particular changed their mind, but in general I think it’s the other way around – it’s because the zeitgeist was moving rightward that Kirk was so popular.
Put another way, if Kirk had never been born, I think the shift to the right we’ve seen still would have happened.
Hey, Corso!
You can do me the courtesy of calling me by my nym or as “Jackie” or as “Jackie O” or as “Ms. Squid.” Honestly, copy & paste isn’t difficult if you can’t type my whole nym.
“Sorry, I thought that was a particularly stupid rhetorical question.”
Remember this answer next time you’re doing your thing where you demand everybody else answer one of your questions and speculate that the only reason we’re not is that we are afraid of debate or secretly know we are wrong.
@Corso:
In which case I’m sure that you’ll agree that a professional posting in his official social media account a video of himself wearing an article of clothing suggesting that he is planning treason and dumping sewage on voters (the people he is professionally obliged to serve no less) is acting in an unprofessional manner and should be removed from his job, right?
@Dianne: Look you can’t expect the most powerful person in the world to be held to the same standards as a nurse, OK?
@Watcher: Maybe they don’t consider Trump a professional?
@Corso: Genuine non-rhetorical question: What do you get out of defending the Republicans? The tax breaks are never going to be for you, their foreign policy is clearly to your detriment, and IIRC, you’re one of the targeted groups that they want to send to eliminate from society and by “eliminate” I mean final solution style. So what do you get out of defending them?
I’ve seen these before, and like I said: I think that the people looking at these numbers often fail to count left-wing violence. Take table 3 from your link, it says that between 2020 and 2025, there were 11 murders attributed to the left. I can point to a single phenomenon that adds up to more than that in a single year: In 2021 following George Floyd’s murder there was a slew of unprovoked murders of police officers. There were 25 such killings in 2021, there were 2 in 2020. I’m sorry, the people tallying these up might be confused as to why there was a 1000% increase in cops shot while eating lunch or fueling their cars, but I’m not. I don’t know how to quantify that, which is why I said “my impression”, but I just don’t trust the methodology of these studies enough to take them at face value.
Yeah, I’m not going to defend that, and I don’t know why you think I would. I’m on record here as thinking that while Trump often has nuggets of good, often true ideas, he’s a master at bad implementation, and shit like this is a great example of him putting a stick in his own spokes. I can’t believe he ran again, I can’t believe that he won again, I wish that almost anyone else had.
I think you gave a great example of why in the question: Because the truth matters. I have a really hard time squaring reality with some of the comments being made here, “final solution” being the newest example. Please. While Trump isn’t good on LGBT issues, he’s probably the most pro-LGBT Republican president in American history, and we’re still here.
I hate making comments that are specifically about me, but I’m more of a contrarian right-of-center centrist than I am a Republican. I’m Canadian, I like my healthcare system. I largely agree with the group here on non-violent crime in the criminal justice system, drugs, sex and sexuality, and guns. I think the reason I end up taking the right-of-center position is because with the exception of Ron (and if I had a nickel for every time I’ve been accused of being him…) the group here is very progressive, and so the likelihood is that the comments I’m going to respond to are from left of center people (or comics).
I think the right, generally, and Trump specifically, have some very obvious flaws, which are fair game… But if your opponents give you ammo, then you shouldn’t need to lie or exaggerate to make them look bad. It’s almost like there’s a competition to say the most unreasonable, worst thing possible about the subjects, and that brushes my fur the wrong way.
@ Corso:
I don’t have time at the moment to address your response in the detail it deserves, but I really have to ask: Were you able to keep a straight face when you typed this? Because from “alternative facts” to today, the right has been lying and perpetuating disinformation for years. How can you possibly believe that they have any connection to reality? (Nor do they want one: reality has a liberal bias after all.)
I’m sorry, I don’t comment much, but… I literally spat out my wine.
It’s possible you’re getting very, very badly munged information from the media sources you frequent.
I can absolutely assure you that you are deeply, deeply wrong on this point though. Whether you know you are and you’re saying it anyway (just a couple of sentences after “truth matters”!), or you don’t know you are but you’re going to double down on it, I couldn’t say, but if you actually believe truth matters, you need to withdraw that statement because it is absolutely, categorically false.
What? You don’t think the most anti-trans President in the history of American Presidents is the most pro-LGBT Republican President in American History? Weird.
@Jacqueline and Eluis: The qualifier “Republican” is an interesting one too: it acknowledges that Republican presidents are generally worse for LGBT than Democratic presidents and gives Trump the easy comparison rather than the more honest one. And he still fails. Sorry, but the person who literally erased trans people from history and supports conversion therapy is clearly not the “best” president for the T part of LGBT, even grading on a Republican-only curve. It could be argued that Reagan was worse for gay men, having allowed the AIDS epidemic to go unchecked and kill millions, but it’s hard to see how he’s better for LGB than either Bush, for example.
@Corso:
Trump is literally opening concentration camps and disappearing people. This is not some sort of radical leftist conspiracy theory: he is bragging about opening concentration camps and kidnapping people off the streets. The camps are definitely killing people, although not yet, as far as I know, on the industrial scale that happened in the Holocaust. But it’s clear where this is going. If your objection is that the extrajudicial kidnappings are not yet specifically targeting white gay men, well, that’s a very narrow definition of what the “reality” you’re having trouble squaring the actual facts with is.
Also, would you really feel safe visiting the US right now? Whites from Europe and Canada have been held by ICE before. As far as I know, all of them were eventually released. So far. And as far as I know. Does this sound like a good risk?
@Dianne: Speaking as a straight white cis male who isn’t American – yes, I would feel safe visiting the USA. People like me and Corso aren’t the ones threatened by Trump.
I’d have felt pretty safe visiting Nazi Germany, too. (Well, before the war begun). Same thing. People like Corso and me aren’t the ones in trouble there, either.
@Watcher: Probably. ICE has detained white, straight, cis, males who aren’t USian on various erm, trumped up charges recently. They have let them go eventually, so far. You’re right that you’re not the primary target, your odds are much better than those of someone who is not all of the above. But there is a non-nil chance that if you visited the US you’d end up getting a free bonus tour of US detention centers and/or concentration camps. Ending up with six feet of free real estate…less likely but not impossible. I’d recommend spending your money elsewhere.
Right, and if there were a bunch of rabid Republicans spouting nonsense in here, I’d respond to them. As it stands, there’s a progressive here who thinks that she can appeal to my homosexuality by saying that Trump wants to genocide me Nazi-style.
Alternately: I think you’re wrong, and it pays to remember that America has actually progressed on gay rights very quickly. Sodomy laws were only effectively repealed in 2003. A generation ago don’t-ask-don’t-tell was the Clinton position. I’m old enough to remember when Trump was running the first time, and Alabama was passing that awful bathroom bill, and Trump invited Caitlyn Jenner to take a piss in the ladies room at Trump Tower. Yeah, he’s not great on trans issues, and there’s all kinds of things he’s doing that I’m sure you don’t like, but that’s not new ground for Republicans, and what I said was that he’s probably the most pro-LGBT Republican President ever. I’ll go further: There’s going to be a very long line of Democrat Presidents who were worse.
Who do you think was better? People mentioned Bush… Bush might have supported civil unions, but he simultaneously asked for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and I’m very sure he wasn’t making room for trans-men or trans-women in that definition. It only gets worse the further back you go. At some point this is going to break down because into a subjective exercise, but at the very least: Trump obviously isn’t actually the worst on the issue in American history, and we’ve managed not to be genocided so far.
I’m in Vegas next month!
@Dianne, source on this? I Googled around a bit, and I found an increase in deaths due to medical neglect this year. This is disgusting, but also disgustingly predictable given the huge ramp up in the number of people being kidnapped any given day; I didn’t see anything about deliberate killings beyond that, at least on a cursory search.
Actually, don’t-ask-don’t-tell only became Clinton’s position after he attempted to remove the ban on LGB (not sure about T) serving in the military and the Republican backlash hit. My first thought on hearing that he was lifting the ban was “cool, another wildly ridiculous biased law still on the books removed”. I was shocked by the backlash. (Yeah, I was a lot younger and less cynical about humanity then.) That aside, the bottom line was that DADT was an (ineffective) attempt to improve the rights of LGB people, not to further limit their rights or erase them from history as Trump has done and is doing. (See the Stonewall monument as an example.)
“And some of my best friends are…”
I mean this sincerely: Best of luck to you. It’ll probably be fine. Spend some money while you’re there. Our tourism industry isn’t in the best shape right now, since quite a lot of Canadians’ assessment of the risk doesn’t agree with yours.
@David: That’s exactly what I meant. The deaths at this point appear to be due to neglect and individual acts of abuse (e.g. kneeling on someone’s neck until they suffocate or beating them to death). That is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany: the initial camps were “just” killing people by neglect, overwork, and poor living conditions. The industrial level killings happened fairly late in the war.
My point wasn’t that Trump likes trans people, my point was that he was doing that against the backdrop of Republican led legislation like the Arizona bathroom bill. He’s obviously not the worst actor out there, and it isn’t close.
Pfft…. I’ll be fine. The tourism problem isn’t a risk assessment. The problem is that it’s basically an American pastime to underestimate Canadian patriotism and Trump double-dipped by calling us the 51st state and installing his tariff scheme (which will be one of those things that we never talk about, but probably entirely agree on). And it’s beyond tourism: The provinces pulled American liquor off store shelves, our imports from America are much less than they were last year. Canadians aren’t afraid of America, we’re angry. I probably wouldn’t have gone, except I like my buddy more than I dislike Trump.
@Dianne: Well, there was a non-zero chance of getting immigration drama before Trump was elected. The chance has gone up, but for someone like me, it’s not gone up drastically.
Personally, while I don’t expect nay Europeans or Australians to be happy to get put through the ringer by US immigration, I actually think there is a slightly excessive focus on this in the media. For every Norwegian or Belgian tourist who gets steam-cleaned at the border, there’s literally thousands of undocumented immigrants who have to face much, much worse. In fact sometimes I detect a rather nasty racist undercurrent to these stories – it’s never actually said but some of these nice, photogenic, pearly-white Dutch or Portuguese backpackers seem to be presented as “Oh, I never thought this would happen to ME” (as opposed to those vast, nameless, less-photogenic-and-sympathetic-to-a-white-groups of audience people of colour)”.
But leaving all that aside I might just personally have a relativlely high risk tolerance for authoritarian states, I’ve visited Turkey, china etc, where there was also a non-zero risk of getting monstered at the border as a white cis hetero male, so the USA is just another one for the list.
@Corso:
Did he actually come out against the legislation? I must admit I don’t actually know one way or another and a brief web search didn’t clarify. So he clearly didn’t put his political clout behind defeating the bathroom bill, whatever bathroom Jenner used.
In contrast, here’s a link to executive orders and other policies Trump has enacted that target trans people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_transgender_people_under_the_second_Trump_administration
These policies, of course, don’t only affect trans people. Trump’s policies are also killing cis men with breast cancer”
My link making ability seems to be off today. Link to the propublica article on male breast cancer: https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-male-breast-cancer-coverage-trump-executive-order
@Watcher: Yeah, a white person (really of either gender) entering the US from a European or five eyes country will probably be okay in customs. I mean, yeah, you’re far more likely to die in a mass shooting (almost certainly perpetrated by a fellow white male) or auto accident in the US than to be disappeared by ICE if you’re white. And then there’s the infectious disease problem. That’s probably also a greater risk, especially if you’re not up to date on your vaccines. And good luck dealing with the health care system if you do get sick. So, yeah, all in all, ICE may not be your biggest worry.
@Dianne: I was in the Philippines this year, and Turkey the year before. Both countries do far worse than the USA on every single one of those factors. I survived. I’m confident I will survive the USA too.
Understanding that I’m glomming onto the first person that said the thing that reinforced my priors, I actually think that Tim Carney did a good job articulating this. While Carney is biased, and uses some language that I think is purposefully inflammatory, the sources seem good. I’d like the group here to consider what it might mean if this is correct, and the people who conducted these studies included acts we probably wouldn’t reasonably assume to be right-wing political violence, and didn’t count acts we probably would reasonably assume to be left-wing political violence.
From the Article:
So this sets the stage, basically everyone relies on four sources: The two big ones that were cited in congress were the ADL and CSIS, the other two are The Prosecution Project and Cato, he addressed them all;
On the ADL, there was more, by all means read the article and look at the sources, but the dichotomy here crystalized it for me. Just a warning; he misgenders a trans person here, but I thought the example was important:
Again, sorry for the language there, I think it’s egregious, but it’s a quote, and the actual fact pattern there is so blatant… I said earlier that the numbers from Cato had obviously undercounted because the cops killed by bad actors claiming BLM membership added up to more than what was presented. This is worse. Some of those police killings weren’t solved, and so they really don’t know all the motivations even if reasonable people could infer it. This guy had a six-kill count, and they didn’t add him because…. I actually don’t know how you justify that. Particularly against the backdrop of having included the “sovereign citizen”.
The other thing he mentioned was that the ADL would often count obviously non-political crimes as right-wing extremists if the person committing those crimes could be even tenuously tied to extremism, which I just want to point out, might be what happened to Cobb-Bey. He executed an officer, unprovoked, in a parked police car. I don’t know if that was left-motivated or not, but I don’t think you can tie it to the right.
Regardless: The point was made that the largest population of people likely to offend with extremist ties are ex-cons and that a lot of people join extremist groups as protection inside jail, but even assuming a genuine true believer: If a white supremacist kills his white girlfriend, I don’t know that reasonable people would call that right wing political violence.
On CSIS:
Put aside for a moment the double standard… By what logic except book-cookery could you ever justify taking violence that happened at riots and protests out of a tally of political violence? They also excluded “economic sabotage and terrorism”, so none of the Tesla arsons were counted. Again… This is just so egregious.
And those are the two most commonly cited studies.
On The Prosecution Project:
On Cato: