PREAMBLE: Ladies and Gentleman, Super is happy for this discussion to continue if we can remain civil and disagree respectfully, updated as necessary. If not, comments will be removed and if necessary the blog closed and any future Kirk-related blogs closed for discussion.
Part 1, by Wiz (more right leaning)
Part 2, by Prof Daz (more left leaning)
SYNOPSIS: Charlie Kirk spoke his final words at 12:23 p.m. on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, in front of around three thousand people. Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old alleged shooter of the 31-year-old Republican, remains under investigation. Utah’s governor suggested he may have been radicalized by the Left, though his MAGA-entrenched family and transgender partner complicate the narrative.
The attack shook the United States, exposing deep ideological fractures. Two days later, President Donald Trump concluded that “the radicals on the left are the problem” rather than the radical right who, he said, merely want to “stop crime,” framing the debate in partisan terms during a live Fox News interview. However, voices such as Jack Posobiec and Steve Bannon, speakers at Kirk’s conventions, had long used hard-line rhetoric, calling the Left “demonic” and urging the building of “an army of the awakened.”
History offers a far broader perspective. Abraham Lincoln, Yitzhak Rabin, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated by right-wing extremists. John F. Kennedy and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose death helped ignite World War I, were killed by left-leaning radicals. A two-way street.
Just months earlier, on June 14, Democrats Melissa and Mark Hortman were gunned down in their Brooklyn home by Vance Boelter, a hard-right evangelical, white Christian who disguised himself as a police officer. Married nearly 32 years, the couple left behind two children. The killings, however, received far less attention than Kirk’s death and did not prompt a presidential call to confront the radical right.
“What do they all share in common? Every political assassination is an attack on the collective; on our ability to disagree without destroying,” an academic observer noted. George Bernard Shaw called it the "extreme form of censorship."
Left or Right isn't the problem in my view. The greater danger lies in the radical mind and in how easily society nurtures the “us versus them” divide. As Desmond Tutu warned, “The moment we divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them,’ we begin to lose our humanity.”
Charlie Kirk (above and below) is survived by his wife and two children.
Married nearly 32 years, Melissa and Mark Hortman as well as Gilbert, their Labrador (below) leave behind two children.
Boelter who assasinated the Hartmans allegedly kept a hit list of 70 targets, including Democratic lawmakers and even some anti-abortion clinics. The same early morning at 2am he invaded the Minnesota home (above) of the Hoffmans and their children who survived the shooting following surgery.
Replies
Bob Smith wants engagement, obviously, because he has complained in several posts that all of his posts were deleted. Bob calls these posts, only one of which was deleted (says HOE), his "considered" thoughts.
OK, let's engage with them, seeing as Bob thinks he is being silenced. First, I found all of the posts Bob claims were deleted. This was fairly easy, just skim the pages. What are these "considered" thoughts?
1) When I asked if civil war and concentration camps for leftists is STILL Bob's solution to political violence, Bob replied that I should "stop moralizing" and that I was a "defender of murder". First, how does that answerr the question, especially given Bob claimed he was the only one answering questions? Second, everyone is free to skim the blog and find one single place where I defended murder. Third, Bob regards it as "moralizing" to have suggested it might be wrong to call for civil war and concentration camps. Sure, it IS moralizing, but history shows us that those calling for concentration camps are immoral. Maybe Bob can explain to us how his endorsement of concentration camps amounts to "considered"?
2) Another "considered" thought of Bob Smith's is that "things will continue to escalate in the US until one side has subdued the other.” This appears to mean Bob's solution to political violence is wait for one violent team to subdue the other. One wonders how Bob thinks he himself will avoid the purge, but also, what will his society look like after the purge? And I thought the originating animus of the first Kirk blog was to critique the left for apparently wanting and celebrating political violence against the 'other team'? But here is Bob Smith endorsing political violence as the solution? Is it the final solution, Bob Smith?
3) Bob mentions two causes of current political conflict. One, identity politics. Two, intersectionality. Until Bob says what he means by identity politics, we cannot assess his claim. But Bob defines intersectionality, so we can assess that claim. Bob says intersectionality places everyone into categories and then sorts those categories into good or bad. Bob says that “Kirk's assassin subscribed to such a philosophy, as do most of the intelligentsia, politicians and media". Evidence re: Tyler R, Bob?Bob then links to why this thing he calls intersectionality is one of the causes of modern political violence. As Bob tells the story, both “non-whites males” and “white males who empathise with non white males” are “justified” in “acting violently” (according to intersectionality). Everything Bob said is total nonsense. We know this because of a basic error in how Bob defined intersectionality.
Bob says intersectionality is about creating categories and sorting those categories into good/bad. Yet intersectionality theorists explicitly DENY that identity is about neatly describable categories that can be further sorted into neatly boxed evaluations of good or bad. Identities are inter-locking, non-separate and over-lapping. That is why you have the term 'inter' in there. Instead, the idea is that social categories like race or gender or class form inter-connected systems. Bob seems not to understand what such theorists do with conventional categories. Bob also thinks everything is then sorted by good/bad evaluations. This is a very odd way of responding to intersectionality theorists, who say social relations of privilege and oppression are shaped by the myriad relations between mixed-identities and structural factors in societies. They are basically asking how different parts of people might expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination or marginalization. It is thus absolutely absurd for Bob to conclude intersectionality licenses or justifies some identities acting violently toward others. It remains fundamentally unclear how Bob thinks this completely absurd interpretation of intersectionality is "considered".
But I can offer a theory. Bob has stated he thinks concentration camps are acceptable places to imagine where he wants leftists to be, and that this is a civil war in which we must await one camp subduing the other. So it is possible Bob extends this view - and I must say it is IMO an extremely warped view that valorizes political violence - to all other views in which Bob takes himself to be in conversation. Bob thus seems to 'read' intersectionality as attempting to violently subdue 'others'. But I think Bob is just imagining that because he thinks social conflict is ultimately resolved by one side subduing the other in violent conflict (that includes using concentration camps), OTHER thinkers about social conflict must be thinking the same. No, Bob, it's really just you. I have not read a single other poster across the three Kirk blogs on 1EE arguing that political violence (including concentration camps) to subdue enemies is the only real option. I suggest Bob Smith and his implied final solution is the outlier in this discussion.
But there, Bob, your "considered" views, which were not deleted, have now got the engagement you requested.
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