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
Fake Midget, you used the SIFT strategy and so I extend my respect to you. We can have a conversation because you did just what I said many do NOT do, which is actually provide the context and discuss it. Our conversation becomes, well, a conversation at that point.
We can immediately see that our dispute turns crucially on how we intrerpret 'DEI'. Kirk frames DEI as "ridiculous racial hiring quotas", which makes sense from Kirk's perspectrive IF we join that to other remarks where Kirk denied "systemic racism". Thus Kirk says he thinks that "Of course I believe anybody of any skin color can become a qualified pilot". That quip also denies systemic racism. So Kirk's view is consistent so long as we place his remarks in the context of a denial of systemic racism.
OK, so now we see that because you used the SIFT strategy, our conversation has been moved along in a productive way. We can now ask a very specific question which gets to the heart of the critics' dispute with Kirk. Kirk denies systemic racism and his critics believe systemic racism exists.
Why does THAT matter? Because does it not suggest to us that framing DEI as contra merit is a sideshow? Isn't the debate really about the role of systemic racism?
So, Fake Midget, although you say that an opinion I ventured was "rambling", despite the fact which I wrote in modest language and did my best to provide links to evidence, when you simply actually prvoded context the conversation moves along in a productive way. We still may not agree but we have seen we can get much clearer about where the crux of the dispute may reside?
What is systematic racism. The term is thrown around a lot, but a black man rose to the very top office of president why didn't the system stop him.
Many blacks and other minorities have attained high level of achievement and jobs, but as Kirk and many people argue the majority come from the much hated nuclear family of mum dad and couple kids.
Maybe it isn't racism holding people back but economic opportunities and cultural differences they grow up in.
Asians are over represented when it comes to academic outcomes and economic as they obtain better jobs. Yet many go to the same schools as white and blacks so they had the same opportunity to learn and develop their academic outcomes which lead to better jobs and economic outcomes.
In the black communityi read those who attend church are more likely to have good school attendance or work when adults. Not sure where I read it, and I am not religious but there is something to be said about having faith and values that encourage a good life.
Good academic outcomes are followed by employment opportunities. With work ethic better job offers or further study is then available. How is the system racist when everyone is given the same opportunities at the start which access to education.
Except now there clearly are not the same opportunities once it comes to higher education. The scholarships for higher learning for minorities far out way those opportunities for others such as white kids.
Well put FM, easily understood and lucid for even an old idiot like me.
Easily understood as muddle-headed. It is kinda lucid though....I see Fakey quite clearly now
Does Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) have something to say to all of us about modern political violence in Amerikkka? Arendt analysed Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany as flip sides of the same coin. Why? Because if anything unites Arendt's discussion of the conditions for and rise of totalitarianism, it is LONELINESS. Arendt outlined about five steps to totalitarianism.
Step 1: Arendt suggested the essential precondition for the rise of totalitarianism is loneliness. Loneliness, she argued, afflicts the aged the most, but can extend out to all of the masses, thereby making a peripheral problem a core problem. Totalitarianism steps into a social condition Emile Durkheim (The Division of Labour in Society (1983)) discussed as anomie, where there has been a collective fragmentation of values and goals and possible breakdown of any kind of shared moral order. Anomie does not necessarily breed loneliness but fails to address growing loneliness, and totalitarianism can look like a solution to a lonely population. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) discussed a decades long decline in Amerikkkan social capital (the connections among people). Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap (2023) argues a decades-long progressive-identity thesis is a trap, sowing division. Why note these two examples? Because Putnam is a Methodist Republican turned democrat critic of some darlings on the right (including the idealization of rural enclaves and favouring of religious instruction over civics), whereas Mounk is a leftist critic of authoritarian populism turned centrist critic of many of the darlings of the left (identity politics). They are each talking about various aspects of what Arendt would understand as growing loneliness.
Step 2: ethnic-nationalism has always pitted some people (the volk) against ‘the others’ or ‘the enemies’. What happens, though, if that tribalism is fused with a denial of the very possibility of a common humanity? JD Vance took over Charlie Kirk’s (RIP) radio show and said he wants unity but cannot have it with “radical left lunatics”. Anyone thinking that is not Step 2, read Arendt.
Step 3: discerning judgement starts to wane. Convictions characterized as strong and authentic replace truth, becoming unshakeable no matter how often they are proved false. Trump had a whole category of fact-checking named after him, the Bottomless Pinocchio, because he lies so much. Trump pushed the line of the electoral steal until, well, he never gave it up despite losing dozens of court cases to try to prove it. Or back to Vance’s speech on the radio show. Every critique of Kirk’s words was a “misquote” or “misrepresentation”, said Vance. Political violence is not a “both sides” issue, only one for the “malignant” left. If you think every quote of what Kirk is a misquote, and political violence is only conducted only by the left, read Arendt and see if you have escaped her charge of “unshakeable”. Before making that check of Arendt, have a look at Republicans currently say they are going to shut down leftist organizations and punish and silence leftist speech. One means to reduce discerning judgement is put your foot on the throat of dissenting voices.
Step 4: the totalitarian does not direct their propaganda at the adherents, in Arendt’s discussion the Nazi’s or the Communists, because if totalitarianism is developing nicely the Nazi or the Communist has unshakeable convictions aligning with the regime already. The propaganda is directed at the person for whom the distinction between fact and fiction or truth and falsity no longer exists. Make people bad at telling truth from lies and gaslighting. If you know your novels, this is not Geroge Orwell’s 1984 (1949) with an iron boot on the throat and the mind, because while you may have had that at Step 3, in Step 4 you want to lull the population into a state where nobody knows which way is up. This is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), where everything is trivialized (hate speech? Meh, take soma (the drug that makes people forget their worries) and you just want a mass proliferation of claims so that everyone assumes there is no actual truth of the matter behind any of them.
Step 5: it’s all about feelings. Once your audience barely objects to being deceived, because they think everything is a lie of some form regardless, they are ready to believe the worst. Specifically, if on Wednesday you say there is irrefutable proof the shooter was a 100% leftie maniac, and then on Thursday it turns out they are from a MAGA family and had lots of friends in message boards full of MAGA groypers who have been threatening to kill Kirk for ages, none of that matters because by Friday you can just return to leftist idealogue. The reason that chain of claims can go full circle despite contrary evidence is because the only thing that results from reality being made more complex or half-baked claims being refuted is cynicism. It was actually the cleverness or insight of the leaders to have seen through the haziness of reality to the real truth. The populace felt it to be the right answer anyway, and ultimately it is feelings that matter.
Congratulations, if Step 5 is completed, you live in a totalitarian state.
That's intriguing, Daz. Arendt’s notion of loneliness, a detachment from meaningful social connections that breeds extremism, reminds me of the Rat Park experiments.
Isolated rats became destructive, hooked on morphine. In contrast, socially enriched rats largely avoided it, choosong clean water. We see something similar in Blue Zones. Connection, community, a balanced lifestyle with purpose leads to better health.
But Mob tribalism, rigid, non-critical thinking — the US-vs-THEM mindset with “biased empathy” — are the breeding grounds of extremism and totalitarianism. Arendt did say something like "Evil" is found in the "unthinking".
You still claiming Tyler Robinson was motivated by conservative ideology?
So the 5 replies I made last night were all deleted. They were well considered replies, and not abusive. How the fck is any conversation meant to happen if they keep getting deleted?
Moderator, give an explanation why my non abusive replies were deleted?
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