It was not so long ago, on the venerable pages of 1EyedEeel, that those of us unfortunate enough to have landed on the left of the political spectrum were scolded for apparently celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. No, we said, we are not celebrating that murder. Instead, our point was that the canonization of Kirk was a means to avoid frank discussion of his actual words. We would not participate in canonizing such a divisive figure. No matter said our critics. The issue was stated to be that ‘the left’ were responsible for the Kirk shooting. This ‘fact’ showed ‘the left’ are "loonies", "cancerous", they killed Kirk "because of his beliefs", they are "losing their grip on reality", "showing their true colours" and "cannot accept contrarian views". Yes, receipts available if memory does not serve. Some actually HOPED for "civil war" and that 'lefties' would be "carted off to work camps". Others opined that "far left violence is becoming a trend [and they will] definitely not like what comes next". Well, I guess that last remark was prescient?
Political irony is a gap between ideals and reality. With all this Kirk-inspired defence of free speech, and the deploring of political violence in response to "contrarian beliefs", we on the loony left were asked to ignore two obvious contradictions coming our way. One, our free speech to NOT fall into normative line was self-evidently denied. Apparently, we could not walk and chew gum. In this case, oppose murdering based on disagreement with beliefs but also have our own evaluation that said we oppose canonizing someone we regard as possessing many noxious beliefs. Two, apparently leftists were prone to political violence and deserved violent retribution because political violence was wrong. It is not even possible to parody that one, it is so comically contradictory.
Anyway, now we all watch as US ICE murders a soccer mom in her car and a male nurse trying to assist a woman who was being set upon by ICE agents. Senior US politicians from Trump down on through VP Vance and Congressman like R. Fine, plus Trump’s loyal protection squadron in his administration (Noem, Miller, Hegseth etc), have set about blaming the murder victims for their fate. The soccer mom was called a domestic terrorist trying to use her car as a weapon, when she was shot twice in the body and once in the head. The ICE agent is heard saying “f***en b***h” after murdering her. MAGA is saying the soccer mom deserved it, apparently because women should not be challenging men. The nurse is being accused of sedition and for deserving to be shot, because he was carrying a (licensed) hand-gun on his person (so much for gun rights?) when half a dozen ICE agents piled on top of him on an icy road and shot him multiple times at point-blank range. An ICE agent is on video dancing and clapping moments after the nurse was murdered. The US Republican leadership and their MAGA support base are literally celebrating the murders.
Political irony is a gap between ideals and reality. Is there really any kind of substance to the idea that there is some ideological debate going on here? If everything that was said in those Kirk blogs is true, that free speech extends to free political speech and political action, that political violence in response to political disagreement is wrong, that trends toward violent retribution are abhorrent, where are all the blogs calling for action against the Trump Regime. The Trump Regime that is quite literally terrorizing and violently suppressing its own citizens?
Is there not some common humanity, unfortunately too often hidden behind vicious and pointless trolling of people, usually based on their identity differences, that isn’t screaming out that there is potentially something terrible both germinating and unfolding in the USA at this present time? If political irony is a gap between ideals and reality, when does reality intervene to say stop pretending that free speech and abhorrence of political violence can just be memes launched by the right against the left or the left against the right, and that they actually should mean something, regardless of partisan identification? The US Government is celebrating the murder of its own citizens by its own agents. We are beyond hypotheticals. They’re celebrating murder, FYI.
Replies
US citizens are big on their rights, correct?
From what I have read online, ICE have no jurisdiction over traffic or protests. Their remit on the ICE website is to identify and arrest illegal immigrants.
https://share.google/tMMIpDKuRRedggx6r
So citizens complying with masked gunmen who are inadequately trained in policing the arena where the last two people were killed, via multiple gunshots on both occasions, is going to happen again.
In both events, if this is outside the ICE jurisdiction, why did they use deadly force when they simply could have acted as they are supposedly authorised to do and basically not do anything to the citizens
The US government seems to be championing the killing of it's own citizens who on the face of it were doing very little to hinder ICE arresting illegals.
Worth reiterating here that the analogy with those Kirk blogs is meant to be taken seriously.
In those blogs there was a constant claim that loony lefties needed to grasp the no matter how much they disagreed with Kirk, murder was unwarranted.
But every effort to litigate the two ICE shootings is premised on "no matter how much citizens dissent from ICE, murder is warranted".
This "comply or die" is the exact opposite of the political sentiment marshaled against the so-called loony left in the Kirk blogs.
Returning to Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitatiainism (1951), a central plan in her argument was the danger of permitting a situation where rank contradiction and hypocrisy was permitted.
Those "loony lefties" aren't government representatives. They aren't enforcing the law on behalf of the legitimate government of the USA. These protesters haven't been killed because ICE 'disagreed' with them, they were killed because armed law enforcement officers' lives were threatened while doing their job.
If the protesters are trying to provoke ICE agents into committing murder (a classic tactic of insurgents btw) then the responsibility is on all of them. If ICE agents have committed murder, that's on the individual, not the organisation.
....don't forget terror.
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