Analysis: Charlie Kirk’s death shows political violence is now a feature of US life
Charlie Kirk’s death shows political violence is now a feature of US life
When some asshole shoots a black teenager for ringing his doorbell because the shooter has been whipped into a frenzy of racist hate and terror by people like Charlie Kirk, is that not also political violence? Charlie Kirk’s death just shows that political violence targeting republican men is now a feature of US life. It has been a feature of life for democratic politicians for some time. For women and minorities: always.
How very egalitarian of us
Gun violence has gone from a mainstay of working class life to schools, to now including CEOs and politicians. Truly equal
What was that quote? "God made man, Samuel Colt made him equal"?
The political violence is reaching the white men, and now the media's pretending its new.
Thats what we get for allowing the racist fascists to gain control of all facets of government and society. Violence is all they respect
The 2nd Amendment is reserved for when all the other Amendments fail.
Or attacked
Why wouldn't people kill each other based on rhetoric like "Democrats are demonic and they're trying to fuck your children and erase white people" or "there's a huge child raping conspiracy involving tons of powerful people and now that I've said this you need to immediately forget about it you stupid fucking bitch"
Other people can argue about morality but I am obsessed with how things actually function. I'm obsessed with the "exploits" we allow.
ie murder is illegal. Telling others to commit murder is illegal. But it's legal to use words and ideas to rig a Plinko game so that if someone was crazy enough to play, they'd drop their chip exactly where you wanted.
These deaths happened awhile ago, when people started upping the ante. Just takes awhile for the crop to grow.
Always has been. Whenever someone says "this is not who we are" they are willfully lying or have had a very poor history education. We can aspire to be better but for all of American history, political violence has been a feature.
Yeah, the very phrase Make America Great AGAIN is a paradox. When was America ever great? During the Colonial and Antebellum eras, when we built a nation on the backs of slaves? Or during those same eras, when we systematically committed genocide against the Native Americans? Or the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century, when unpunished lynching wasn't just tolerated, it was actually considered an enjoyable community event? Or the post-war era, where women basically found themselves as the new replacement for house slaves, unable to make financial decisions for their own lives? Or the rest of the 20th century when corporations and Sociopathic Oligarchs embarked on a strategy to strip away ALL the wealth from the middle class?
Even as a kid, learning about slavery and Indians, I was wondering why America is considered such a wonderful country.
Is NOW a feature of US life?? Political violence has always been a feature of US life. Their entire country is built on violence and of deep hatred for others, profiting off subjugated populations, and just violence, violence and more violence. “Violence” was the last word out of his mouth, in life.
Democracy was built using violence and decays during easy times
I never paid attention to the guy in life so was surprised that this is becoming a thing, but on reading his wikipedias entry …. I’d say he deserves partial credit for political violence becoming normalized
Ah yes. The death of a tiny-faced, vile, white guy is what shows that. Not the thousands of mass shootings, or the Zionists running riot on college campuses, or ICE thugs (and pretend-ICE thugs) running rampant on the streets...it's the extermination of vermin that did it. Sure.
Mango wants flags flown at half staff for this hateful man, who was not an elected official. No such honor was given to Melissa Hortman, and flags were raised for Asinine's inauguration because they were down for Jimmy Carter.
The whole "it's a new era of political violence" rhetoric only means that Republicans do not expect to get assaulted but it's perfectly okay for that to happen to Democrats.
One white fascist is worth more than the mass shootings of school children and bars nationwide, don't you know? ICE could deport every vaguely brown person and it's not as important as when it happens to the normal and good people.
No, it does not show this yet. Because we don't know why he was shot still.
I mean political violence has always been a feature of American history. We don't need this to show it
I know this might sound like a wild guess but...
I think he was shot because of the shit he said.
Just a guess.
Motive is irrelevant. It is/will be used as a political statement. It absolutely will cause MAGA nuts to kill in retaliation.
Charlie Kirk's death is the wake up moment? Not the Minnesota lawmakers who were murdered just a couple months ago? Not the martial law being declared in US cities?
Or Paul Pelosi
Or all the shootings that are normalized and have people commenting things like "let's not make this political."
How many minorities have been shot for knocking on the wrong door or using a stranger's driveway? By shooters amped up on what these political figures are saying?
Let’s also not forget that J6 was political violence, too.
Even in this thread, you're the only one who remembered the other recent political assassinations.
Chomsky frequently talks about how the media narrative creates "worthy" victims vs. "unworthy" victims.
I think what we have in the cases you mention are examples of the "unworthy" victims.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, for anyone who hasn't read it.
It's almost like white conservative men get to be the worthy victims.
ICE raids, violent border security, deploying the military to cities, the president declaring war on cities...
Political violence was a feature before today.
Missing the big one: The Minnesota politicians that were assassinated 2 months ago (1 assassinated, 1 attempted)
The federal government and right-wing talking heads were silent about that one. Tacit approval
"The big one" was when Trump personally led a deadly violent coup on the nation's capital to try to overturn the results of a fair election. What few consequences actually came of it have all already been undone, and the consequences that should have come were never even really considered.
Boomers and older Gen-Xers seem to truly have no concept of how many school shootings that Millennials and Zoomers have lived through.
The response to those was the same every time, and the words they used were similar to those Kirk himself used — "a little random violence is the price we pay for the freedom to own guns."
Since Uvalde, I have just been straight with it and just refer to it as the Second Amendment God. The Second Amendment God occasionally gets hungry, and must be fed with blood. That's what we as Americans want. This has happened a thousand times over in 25 years, and each time, we all cast a silent vote that this is what we want.
The Second Amendment God exists because we want Him to exist.
It's only "violence" when liberals do literally anything as a response, even if it is mildly rebuking the Confederates, or telling them NO.
The convicted felon in chief gets his panties all twisted when people - particularly Black people - were protesting. I'm sure he deemed that "violence" even if most of that was spurred on by police and Confederate counter-protesters being the violent ones.
In this case apparently it’s “liberal violence” before there’s any indication of the murder motives or affiliation
Up vote for use of Confederate
Which is why I think we're at the tipping point. I think Dems and leftists have realized we're going to get blamed no matter what, so if we're going to get blamed then at least do something to get blamed for. And start making them afraid
It's only "political violence" when it's right wing figures that get hurt
Having a school shooting every other week shows political violence has been a feature of the US for a while now.
Oh, and I guess political violence was not a feature of US life when the sitting president called for an insurrection and planned a coup in parallel?
Hear fucking hear.
If your political ideology is based around advocating for harm to other groups of people, violence targeted at you shouldn't be surprising. FAFO.
Rules for thee, not for me. Or something.
How do they know it was political? Maybe the shooter hated him for personal reasons.
The chances of this are astronomically high.
He wasn't a kind, generous, or pleasent man.
It’s been a feature for a bit now, only it’s been officially sanctioned by the regime. This is just the people starting to fight back.
"Now"? Someone hasn't been paying attention. Violence has been a part of US politics since, well, US politics.
Violence is a defining feature of US politics.
Roughly 10% of all US presidents have been assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK. That's 4 out of 47. In most other countries it has either happened once or not at all.
All you can really say is that there was a relative lull of political violence between say 2005 and 2015. But, even that period would be seen as massive political violence in most other advanced countries in the world.
I PRAY to GOD this isn't True! I PRAY to God that we go back to ONLY MURDERING CHILDREN IN SCHOOL!
As the news of the gun death of a white supremascist gun-promoting fascist broke, a school shooting happened.
I appreciate your steadfast dedication to the bit. Solid work.
Oh they got some of them today too, don’t you worry.
I also appreciate your work, carry on.
He is responsible for a lot of it with his constant lies and propaganda. No more from him.
Maybe this will encourage the others to stop being Nazis and start to open their eyes to reality.
It might actually. U.S. Nazis tend to be chicken shit.
Maybe this will encourage the others to stop being Nazis and start to open their eyes to reality.
One additional benefit of the suspect still being at large is that the rest of Trump's posse are going to be afraid to show their faces in public for a while.
I assume the national guard will be rolling into Salt Lake City any minute now.
There was some bit from the FBI about how they are going to send immediate help or something, but I assume they meant trying to track down the shooter.
Dumb dumb donnie probably thinks it'd be a real "help" to send in the National Guard to stand around, look bored, assist ICE in kidnapping people that don't pass the paper bag test, and do other useless shit in the pursuit of performative "crime fighting" measures.
Fkn lol!
If this is the only option left...
To the guillotine!
Libs of TikTok, the rightwing X account, put simply: “THIS IS WAR.”
No, children, this isn’t war. You haven’t seen war yet. Keep fucking around, though, and you’ll be shown what war really is.
He wasn't even a politician. Besides for all we know this was just a simple hunting accident
Dick Cheney has entered the chat...
#sad #leopards #look-out-fascists
As opposed to vanilla gun violence, which is good for your health.
Damn, that "now" is doing some heavyyy lifting
The DHS found that right domestic terrorists posed the biggest threat to the United States back way back when W was finishing up his term.
The Reich wing got wind of it, got major butthurt over it, blamed Obama, and Obama and others bent over backwards in covering up the faux pas of violating the REAL political correctness, which is anything that offends the Confederates in this country.
That was over 16 years ago. And even back then, it was a great big fucking DUH after things like the Oklahoma City bombing. That wasn't vegan potluck members, it wasn't ALF or ELF, as scawy as the Reich wing finds those things...
Oh, now it is? I'm sorry, I've been misunderstanding the last 250 years.
We can all blame the government for this. They have been dividing us for years.
Running off on a narrative before any facts are available is pretty on par with media
It’s always been there, used against us. It is high time the traitor filth understand that they have no monopoly on violence.
It always has been! Do people not read history books?
No, taking out fascist Nazis has returned to US like Audie Murphy would have wanted.
Political violence was a feature of US life for some time already. At least since January 6th, 2020.
What is new is the active fighting back against fascism.
Back in the 60s, they were killing everyone on the left - JFK, RFK, Malcom X, MLK, etc.