If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes. These places amplify and feed upon themselves, and can lead you to a dark place where you’d glorify this kind of death.
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
boothby · 3h ago
> If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
throw0101a · 1h ago
> The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
softwaredoug · 3h ago
I’m not sure there’s much use to “staying abreast of current events” for most people. Media (social/traditional) focuses on amping up your anxiety and putting your side against there’s. Rather than a balanced view of the details. Alarmist headlines and hand wringing tweets are engineered to anger and outrage you. It’s very hard to keep up with news while keeping your rational brain engaged.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
boothby · 2h ago
> If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
From who? And where are they getting their information?
It bears mentioning that you're presently participating in a political conversation on social media.
notmyjob · 1h ago
Discord again?
Seems like all of these shooters get a lot of encouragement and support on discord.
cyanydeez · 3h ago
Far as reporting goes, theres two tracks. Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
wkat4242 · 3h ago
> Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
3np · 3h ago
> I don't think you can get much further right than he was though.
Groypers.
Bender · 1h ago
Groypers
How does that square with the issue that he texted his trans significant other to go pick up his rifle which he could not do as feds found the rifle first. [1] The feds are interviewing the trans partner as we speak. To be clear I am not anti-trans, rather just confused how he could also be a Groyper. Maybe this is possible, just a new concept to me.
> According to public records, Lance Twiggs, 22, resided at the same address where Robinson lived. A relative of Twiggs confirmed to The Post Saturday that “yes, they were roommates.”
> The family member, who asked not to be identified, said Twiggs was the “black sheep” of their St. George, Utah, family, but declined to speculate on a romantic relationship between the two men.
> She said she didn’t know her relative’s politics or whether Twiggs was transitioning to become a woman, but added that it wouldn’t surprise her.
So basically the source is "it was revealed to me in a dream". For all we know they were just roommates.
Bender · 35m ago
For all we know they were just roommates.
It's possible. I keep hearing terms used interchangably on different YT channels and all of that could be people just projecting their preferred narratives so I guess we will have to wait for the Discord and cell phone text message transcripts assuming those ever drop. They so rarely do. Either way at least we know the roommate was involved to some extent. The Discord transcripts may be the most telling of the relationship.
When Nick Fuentes first appeared, him and his little gang of nerds were definitely more far right than Kirk. TPUSA had a gay man on staff, and put him all over those little memes they made.
Israel is about the only thing Charlie and Nick disagree on now.
shadowgovt · 3h ago
You'll want to look into the "groypers," who are the group the alleged shooter may have been most closely affiliated with. They and Kirk's Turning Point USA had a falling out over TPU's unwillingness to be as ultra-nationalist, isolationist, or white supremacist as the groypers are. They assert that Kirk's brand of conservatism was carrying a kind of stolen valor over claiming they got Trump elected when the groypers would argue they were the ones most instrumental in cementing Trump's support among traditionally disenfranchised white nationalism.
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
breppp · 2h ago
From what I read everything pointed at a killer from the extreme left
(bullet engravings, his partner, his father's testimony)
shadowgovt · 2h ago
I'd be interested to know your sources. Information is flowing fast (as it often does in such a tragedy); I'd be interested to know what's being said outside my sphere.
zahlman · 1h ago
The bullet engravings are well known (and people pushing the groyper theory seem to believe the engravings support their theory just as well).
There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Many sources similarly assert that Robinson's father "recognized" him in photos and "encouraged him to turn himself in" (see e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/tyler-rob...). However, I don't know anything specific about his "testimony".
yepitwas · 1h ago
> There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Could turn out to be true, but considering the hilariously wrong stuff that was being published even by mainstream sources in the 24 hours after (the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance) I’d not yet treat this as meaningful at all. I’ve not seen anything above tabloid-level pushing it yet.
zahlman · 2m ago
> the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance
I am unaware of any mistakes of fact as to the actual text of the engravings published by any mainstream source at any point.
"Not getting the reference" is not the same thing as making an "extremely-wrong report".
The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
breppp · 1h ago
Your post prompted me to reread everything after perviously reading social media processed information, and you are right, it's not clear cut. Especially once they redacted/not-redacted (actually read both in the same article) the bullet engravings story.
(https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/charlie...)
However from what did seem credible I think this still looks left-wing motivated
fallinghawks · 2h ago
I got flagged here on HN for stating (right as the news was breaking) that the shooter could just as likely be right wing as left, and nothing was known right now. Literally facts, and people downvoted them. (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
zahlman · 1h ago
> I got flagged here on HN for stating (right as the news was breaking) that the shooter could just as likely be right wing as left
I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd. It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder. False flags really aren't that common, in general. This is the same kind of conspiratorial thinking behind Alex Jones' "crisis actors".
Also, your comment was off-topic to the sub-thread. People were discussing whether Kirk would be seen as a martyr. The ideology of the shooter has quite little to do with that.
> (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
Commentary like this is inherently obnoxious, and tends towards self-fulfilling prophecy.
throw0101a · 1h ago
> I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd.
Especially if you look at the data. The political right is more likely to do violence:
You’re being disingenuous of course but the reality is that politically motivated killers kill people they don’t agree with.
danaris · 39m ago
But politically-motivated assassinations in the US are very rare, and almost exclusively lone actors (not part of a movement).
The assassination attempts (whether successful or failed) on prominent political figures in this country have almost all been carried out by people with personal reasons to want to kill them, not politically motivated killers killing people they don't agree with.
throw0101a · 44m ago
In what way do you think I'm being disingenuous?
yepitwas · 1h ago
> It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder.
Is the likelihood lower or higher if it already happened (at least) once last year?
Is it lower or higher if you’re aware of the hostile dynamics between TPU and at least one popular very much violence-encouraging even-farther-right influencer? Nb this group has opposed Trump for being too timidly white supremacist. Would that shift your guess at the odds?
Safe bet if you’ve been paying attention to this stuff for a few decades was about equal odds right or left winger, and maybe somewhat higher right, if the target’s a right winger (almost certainly the attacker is, if relevantly affiliated, right-affiliated if the target’s a Democrat or otherwise left) or else (in either case of political affiliation of the target) there’s fair odds of apolitical notoriety-seeking or straight up lunacy without a strong political motivation.
[edit] nb I’m not saying 100% that the guy won’t turn out to be coming from the left, but I think if you’re playing the odds on something like this and go “must be a leftist” you’ve misread the situation in this country.
forinti · 3h ago
Howard Stern noted once how people who disliked him spent more time listening to him than those who liked him.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
lostlogin · 2h ago
His rallies didn’t seem to be full of people who didn’t like him.
melling · 3h ago
Stephen King made the mistake of chiming in on X then having to apologize.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
zahlman · 1h ago
> I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.
shadowgovt · 3h ago
The things is... The things said do have consequences. Stochastic terrorism is real. Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
zahlman · 1h ago
> Say people deserve to die (or are expendable)
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
yepitwas · 3m ago
The statistics are bloodless, when attempting to dismiss them in the abstract. “Bloodless” modified “statistics”. That the real thing is not bloodless ever was the point, I believe.
shadowgovt · 51m ago
Agreed the above are not the same thing. Independent of what Kirk was saying at the time, he has also said "I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal." In other words, some people are expendable (for a greater good).
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
zahlman · 4m ago
> In other words
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
bilvar · 2h ago
You mean the Stochastic terrorism perpetrated on Charlie Kirk by the media relentlessly brandishing him a Nazi?
melling · 2h ago
Who’s the media? I don’t follow a lot of news and I didn’t know Mr Kirk until last week.
People are in these media bubbles where they’re amped up all the time. Each side does a lot of name calling.
Each group boils it down to us vs them.
shadowgovt · 2h ago
Who is "the media" in this context? MSNBC just let someone go for even suggesting Kirk deserved what happened. If anything, it seems at least mainstream media is very conservative about the labels it assigns to political speakers.
melling · 1h ago
Here’s exactly what was said.
“””
“We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur shortly after Kirk was shot at a Utah university Wednesday
“””
yepitwas · 31s ago
Nb this was said when this was breaking, and they didn’t even know anyone had been shot yet.
boredhedgehog · 3h ago
I wonder what Kirk would have thought about these firings.
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
platevoltage · 3h ago
You don't need to wonder too hard. He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for. He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
He was not pro-free speech. It is not hard to see what he actually believed. Maybe it is right now with all of the news happening.
zahlman · 2h ago
> He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for.
Yes; it's for freely expressing the idea that the people on the list have expressed harmful ideas with their own freedom of speech.
Or, in at least one case (Eric Clanton), that they have committed serious physical violence for ideological reasons.
platevoltage · 2h ago
Please continue. What is the end goal here? To inform students so that at class signup time, they don't pick these professors?
Or is it something else?
zahlman · 2h ago
You are engaging in an obnoxious form of rhetoric (referred to as "darkly hinting" in the rational community). It is counterproductive and doesn't, in my view, meet the standards described in the HN commenting guidelines. Please stop.
If you believe that the watchlist serves some sinister purpose, the burden is on you to a) state it explicitly and b) proactively provide evidence. Persuading people that you're right requires accepting and working with the fact that they don't already hold your worldview and prior assumptions.
platevoltage · 2h ago
Fine. I'll stop "darkly hinting".
It's to get them fired, or worse.
And I could "provide evidence" of his intentions by simply posting a list of quotes thats he has said over his career, but that would DEFINITELY go against HN commenting guidelines.
zahlman · 1h ago
> or worse.
With this, we see that you did not, in fact, stop darkly hinting.
> And I could "provide evidence" of his intentions by simply posting a list of quotes thats he has said over his career, but that would DEFINITELY go against HN commenting guidelines.
Indeed, it would. Most importantly, because that is not how evidence and rational argumentation work.
boredhedgehog · 2h ago
> He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
platevoltage · 2h ago
> According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
Well that clears things up...
danaris · 36m ago
> According to its About page, it's for documentation only;
Sure, and all those trolls online are "just asking questions."
layer8 · 3h ago
You don’t have to rely on second-hand reporting, there’s no lack of material from the man himself to form an opinion from, like for example: https://www.youtube.com/@RealCharlieKirk/videos
silverquiet · 3h ago
I doubt Kirk believed in anything, but he was happy to say whatever would get him attention and keep his benefactors happy. He wasn't particularly ideologically consistent, though to be fair, Republicans of his time weren't either.
sidibe · 3h ago
We shouldn't care too much on what Kirk thought. Obviously it's horrible he was assassinated, but partisan hacks who make their living dividing people are not people we should try to emulate, even if they're dead. I'm sorry for his family and sorry for violence, but it's worrying how much people are demanding respect for him
lostlogin · 2h ago
Your comment seems critical of him.
So where is the line? What commentary on his death is acceptable and won’t get a person sacked or sanctioned from a government job?
zahlman · 1h ago
I was talking with a friend about this and came to the conclusion that people in certain lines of work should be held to a higher standard when it comes to situations like this:
* government officials (as you say), members of federal agencies, civil servants etc.
* journalists
* healthcare workers and emergency services personnel
* educators
There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.
All of these are places where a mindset that glorifies or justifies political violence and death seems like it would be an impediment to actually doing the job properly, which is the only thing that would make me accept "cancel culture". Others may be morally unjustified in "crossing the line", but should not lose their jobs for it.
For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone. The "stochastic terrorism" argument is especially insidious: it attempts to launder "speech" into "violence" (and thus justify "an eye for an eye" etc.) by hand-waving at some vague notion of, basically, extremely non-imminent incitement. The idea is that convincing a wide audience of people to have a more negative impression of a group stochastically increases the number of members of that group that will die to violence. But none of the dots are ever actually connected in this argument; and taken seriously and applied even-handedly, it would make basically any form of political discourse impossible.
Initially, I thought Matthew Dowd's comments (I had very little exposure to them) didn't fall into that category — that they were simply made in incredibly bad taste. But I looked up some more of the transcript and, yeah, I can't excuse that. Certainly he wasn't as aggressive about it as, say, some Bluesky users. But part of it does fundamentally boil down to making the "fuck around and find out" argument, and "finding out" is just not supposed to involve being shot and killed.
> For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone
It's really difficult. How do you apply this to government worker? Some are actively involved in killing people, foe example the military, (some) police, the judiciary in some jurisdictions, politicians.
In places with a judicial death sentence it's acceptable to decide that someone deserve to die.
zahlman · 6m ago
I spoke too briefly in spite of myself. Consider standard exemptions to apply: war combatants, people actively threatening your life, etc. I personally oppose the death penalty, but not strongly enough to deny other jurisdictions the right to impose it.
sidibe · 2h ago
I don't know the specifics about most of the firings. I think saying it's good someone was killed is inflammatory and not something people should do and expect no consequences. That MSNBC guy getting fired was ridiculous though. Kirk isn't suddenly due respect and zero criticism because he died.
zahlman · 1h ago
Dowd didn't say that it was good, but did seem to agree that it was justified:
> Dowd responded by saying about about Kirk: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
Now this is absolutely a tragic event, and it is horrific it happened. I feel nothing but empathy for his family and wish them nothing but healing and happiness. It is also horrible to celebrate a death especially like this of someone you could justifiably hate. Even down to the most selfish level why give your brain those neural pathways? I wouldn't want that type of person in my workplace or work with them, for sure. All that said, I think that we need to keep in mind that people are also pointing out he was a horrid person in opposition to the angelic remembrances he is receiving and need to be heard; it isn't disrespectful to refuse to misremember who he was. He has vouched for absolutely insane things, not even left/right policies that sound like a Victorian novel villain's takes. Paraphrasing some of his arguments: children should watch live executions, empathy is wrong and newage, gun violence and shootings are worth the freedom of the Second Amendment(in response to a school shooting).
reliabilityguy · 1h ago
> All that said,
So, basically, what you are saying is "it is bad to celebrate the death of people, but...".
So, you have to choose what to be: a person who is fine with political violence, or someone who is against any sort of political violence.
HAL3000 · 27m ago
You are purposely misinterpreting what he wrote. He said that it doesn’t matter how you die, it shouldn’t whitewash you. If you were radical and widely considered dangerous to the fabric of society, your death doesn’t magically absolve you of that or erase everything you said while alive.
AnEro · 1h ago
Sorry if you misunderstood, it is a nuanced take, I'm saying acknowledging one as a terrible person in response to flowery embellishments of their life isn't celebrating that death. My statement wasn't about political violence, rather, we shouldn't be punishing people for pointing out the false depiction of the dead. I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
reliabilityguy · 1h ago
> I think ideally we all should be mature enough to both mourn the loss of a human and also acknowledge who they really were.
I have a nice little trick for it: when you go to a funeral of a person in your family, or close to your family, who was an asshole, I bet you won't be saying to other people "yeah, sad, very sad. But, please remember, he was an asshole". Right? I would not -- not the time, nor the place.
Yes, Kirk is not a family (probably not yours, and definitely not mine), but the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
dns_snek · 41m ago
> the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
reliabilityguy · 32m ago
> I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
Perhaps I missed the part where Charlie Kirk organized a group of guys to hijack a bunch of planes with civilians on board, and then crash them into buildings.
On a serious note, if you cannot see a difference between these two, I have no idea what to say.
dns_snek · 25m ago
Let me be more specific, how much division, hatred, pain, and violence does a person have to be responsible for before it's socially acceptable to express an opinion that the world is better off without them?
How much before it's okay to party on the streets after learning about their death?
Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
If people are whitewashing his history then it's to be expected that other people will speak out to set the record straight. That's how free speech works and trying to silence it on the basis of "decorum" is dishonest and manipulative.
twixfel · 26m ago
We aren't at his funeral and he's a public figure. It was Voltaire who said "We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth". I tend to agree. He's a public figure, he's fair game to criticise. He didn't magically become a good guy by virtue of having been murdered. If I were somehow at his funeral, I'd absolutely show respect and not mention all the weird and nasty as fuck shit he said.
Simulacra · 2h ago
What we need is for politicians to not keep labeling their opposition with violent rhetoric. Everything from punch a Nazi, to death to communism, we've got to get the violent rhetoric out of politics. Too many unstable people.
seanmcdirmid · 1h ago
Both sides have their nut cases. And you can’t actually restrict nut case speech with our current constitution at least, you can’t even prevent them from being elected.
lostlogin · 2h ago
How do you apply what you’re saying?
Apply it to current US politicians. Who is doing this, how do you stop them?
analognoise · 1h ago
Didn’t the President of the United States say he didn’t care about bringing the people together, and has wished violence upon people who don’t support him politically?
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Ridiculous.
yepitwas · 1h ago
I was borderline, almost, kinda, 10% rethinking whether I was actually wrong to label MAGA fascists.
Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
I mean, that’s literal Nazi shit. They say literal Nazi shit, this isn’t isolated. What do you call it? WTF. Elon sieg-heils twice at the inauguration and they don’t disown him. What is it going to take before we get folks who still think calling them fascists is the problem, actually, to blame the party that twice elected a guy president who told his supporters they could shoot his opponent if she won?
throw0101a · 1h ago
> Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
"...or you know, involuntary lethal injections. Just kill em." -Brian Kilmeade, Fox and Friends
yepitwas · 1h ago
Yeah, it was an escalating suggestion from what another host had put on the table, which was the once-far-right “if they refuse help, lock them up” (the missing step here that someone from the left-leaning-middle would want to perform, is being curious about why homeless people refuse help and seeing if that’s something we can address without the very-expensive and sharply illiberal [classical sense] step of imprisoning them) but I guess now we have to call that moderate right because even the part of the far right that’s within Fox News’ window is saying “do Nazi stuff”.
Granted, you’ve been hearing little suggestions like this for a long time from ordinary republican voters, if you’ve been in their spaces much, but hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
somenameforme · 2h ago
The most disconcerting thing about this murder is that it seems like the killer was relatively normal beyond being excessively involved in online politics. In many of these things there's fairly obvious symptoms of major mental illness, or at the minimum it's some guy who's basically way down out in life. This was a young seemingly smart guy who just decided to throw his life away, and murder somebody else, probably as a result of spending way too much time in online circle jerks.
No reaction occurred when Melissa Hortman was killed to people doing the same thing as people are doing now with Kirk.
Edit: make things a little bit clearer, AFAIK, no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
zahlman · 1h ago
> no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
And what does your article — which basically just establishes "Trump doesn't like Tim Walz and didn't consider Hortman's case as important" — have to do with that?
If you're referring to Senator Mike Lee's comment, I don't think it's anything of the sort. It comes across to me that Lee was speculating that the murderer was a "Marxist" (i.e., anyone he would consider more radical than Hortman). Political football, and offensive, sure. But not the same kind of thing. Besides which, can Senators be "fired"?
danaris · 27m ago
> Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
Well, gee, it sorta seems like that kind of behavior would be more prevalent when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Did Melissa Hortman say such things?
Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Because if she didn't say stuff like that, then it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
zahlman · 14m ago
> when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Charlie Kirk has said nothing of the sort, so none of this is relevant.
> Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Kirk's organization is not dedicated to anything of the sort.
> Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Kirk did not say anything about being happy about it; regardless this statement does not support killing people.
> it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
But anyway, this still doesn't matter. Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
sointeresting · 3h ago
Huh? The link you posted shows that Trump condemned the shooting, calling it "horrific" and saying the shooter will prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. You're equating not flying flags at half mast, despite condemning the violence, to gloating over murder. You're trying to justify the gloating and celebration of violence and it's disgusting.
lostlogin · 3h ago
It is disgusting.
And it’s also free speech to gloat about it. Is it legal to sack someone who is gleeful?
The consensus on Hacker News was that New Zealand made an error blocking and banning the video of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
What’s the right way to handle these scenarios? Kirk was a free speech advocate with strong views on gun violence, further complicating things.
sointeresting · 3h ago
The 1st amendment doesn't protect your job, never has.
platevoltage · 2h ago
This is exactly right. People get fired over social media posts all of the time. The 1st amendment absolutely gives people the right to boycott these employers if they see fit though.
lostlogin · 2h ago
Do you mean ‘The 1st amendment absolutely gives people the right to boycott these employees if they see fit’.
Sorry, I’m not American so have little idea how it works.
platevoltage · 2h ago
No, I meant what I said.
I also did not agree against the legality of being fired for a social media post. It's been happening since social media first existed.
You also can't boycott an employee. I really don't know what point you are trying to make here.
lostlogin · 2h ago
I’m not trying to make a point. I was trying to understand if it’s legal to sack someone in the US if you don’t like their views and I didn’t read your comment carefully enough.
platevoltage · 2h ago
No, you can't fire someone for their views. That's 100% illegal, but given the track record of our current Supreme Court, I don't see that being the case for long.
delichon · 2h ago
Yes, in general a private employer can legally fire an employee for their political views. There are exceptions in some states, including California, New York, Colorado, North Dakota, that have protections for firing by political affiliation or activities, but that's the exception to the rule. Another exception applies to any public employee, since the first amendment applies to their employer.
The default employment rule is at-will, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited. Political affiliation is not a federally protected category.
zahlman · 1h ago
> The default employment rule is at-will employment, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited.
Even then, in practice they can fire people for prohibited reasons, as long as it can't be proven that those reasons were used. Which in practice could be very difficult.
platevoltage · 1h ago
I guess I've been living in a free state for so long that I overlooked this fact.
platevoltage · 3h ago
This whole "Kirk was a free speech advocate" nonsense needs to stop. It wasn't true then, and it certainly isn't true now.
>This whole "Kirk was a free speech advocate" nonsense needs to stop.
That’s different. ‘They’ don’t have the right to say those things, but Kirk maintained his right to say what he liked.
frugalmail · 3h ago
What are you talking about, tons of people were asking for the guy to get investigated and his manifesto to be released.
At least on X/Twitter.
FridayoLeary · 3h ago
Fascinating how the guardian can spin people celebrating one of the most destabilising acts of evil committed this year into a free speech issue. There's something very wrong with people when they celebrate cold blooded murderers like luigi miagione. Reddit is full of people almost openly gleeful about this and the Guardian chooses to take their side.
harimau777 · 2h ago
What of the violence advocated by Kirk himself?
zahlman · 1h ago
Even in the cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes I see Kirk's detractors throwing around these discussions, I have seen nothing that advocates violence, except perhaps the government monopoly on force (e.g. to speak in favour of the death penalty).
ndsipa_pomu · 40m ago
I don't think you should be pre-judging Luigi Magione. Is there no respect for people's rights to a fair trial these days?
lostlogin · 2h ago
So what do you do? Ban that sort of talk and speech?
No comments yet
scuff3d · 3h ago
"Free speech for me and not for thee..."
BJones12 · 3h ago
"Freedom of speech not freedom from consequences"
I saw that a lot online from lefties in previous years. The thing the left doesn't seem to understand is that every new weapon you create will eventually be used against you.
scuff3d · 2h ago
1. I'm actually fine with people getting fired for openly celebrating or claiming murder is a good thing.
2. People getting fired for simply pointing out that Kirk is a victim of a system he helped build are getting fired, which is a completely different situation.
3. The Trump admiration openly going after people is infringing on freedom of speech.
lostlogin · 2h ago
This is a strange take. A right wing firebrand just got shot. How is this an example of an action having consequences against the left?
BJones12 · 2h ago
Relating to the topic of the article, lefties rejoicing in Kirk getting shot are getting doxed and losing their jobs. That was a tactic pioneered by the left over the past decade. Now the same tactic is being used against them.
krapp · 2h ago
I suspect the consequences they're referring to are the consequences the right is currently trying to manufacture consent for. Stochastic violence against the transgender community, the government proscribing leftist political orgs as terrorist groups, Trump sending the national guard into blue states to "crack skulls," that sort of thing.
Trump orders all flags in the nation at half mast and Kirk is being treated like a fallen statesman and hero, the State Department claiming it will revoke the visas of any immigrant who speaks negatively of Kirk, the breathless media coverage, Trump ranting about "leftist violence", the right wing's endless calls for violence and war on social media (going entirely unclamped-down upon,) and the narrative being created that Charlie Kirk was a peaceful intellectual scholar and activist of the likes of MLK Jr and Jesus Christ.
It's obvious a stage is being set here. And of course when whatever happens happens, it will be blamed on the left.
trelane · 3h ago
It's been amazing to watch the chair occupants change on this subject (free speech) in the last few years. I still remember "freeze peach" and https://xkcd.com/1357/
echelon · 3h ago
Unlimited free speech for everyone, but consequences for saying things that harm or offend.
If you say "Democrats suck", don't expect them to buy your product. If you say "God doesn't exist," don't expect Christians to come to your business. If you say "I hate gays", expect to get fired from your medical clinic job.
Have free speech, but use it wisely.
Having free speech serves to diffuse social tension. It ensures we don't wind up as cattle, like in 1984. Just don't expect that you can praise the death of certain people and expect everyone to love you for it.
Maybe above all you should be kind. Regardless of your politics. Articulate what you don't like with your free speech, but don't be an asshole.
Unfortunately social media encourages fast engagement with little nuance, so we see a sewer instead of a noble land of open thought and debate.
But we shouldn't throw free speech out with the bath water.
frugalmail · 3h ago
Harm in the physical sense, agreed. But "harm" newly defined 2013-2025 mutated into "speech I don't like" by the government.
"Offend" is subjective, and US Citizens should not have punitive governmental consequences as a result.
But private organizations, should be able to make their own decisions on all the above.
reliabilityguy · 2h ago
> Harm in the physical sense, agreed. But "harm" newly defined 2013-2025 mutated into "speech I don't like" by the government.
By the government? I doubt that “speech is violence” comes from the government.
frugalmail · 3h ago
That was mostly the case pre 2025.
We all have to fight to undo the Obama Smith-Mundt Modernization Act that allowed the executive branch to create domestic propaganda.
shadowgovt · 4h ago
I think it's easy for people to forget sometimes because the interface doesn't make it particularly obvious that much of social media is screaming from a soapbox in some of the world's largest agoras.
The interface makes it feel like you're having a polite conversation among like-minded folk. In reality, you're like one of those folks on a street corner with a megaphone and most of the time the rest of the world isn't listening to you. But they can tune you in anytime they want, and there can be consequences for holding a strong opinion incompatible with the strong opinion of other people you will be wanting to do business with.
... That of course includes this medium. Watch what you say today everyone, your future and current employers are reading Hacker News.
The people getting fired have shown themselves to be exactly the types of people Popper warned about in his Paradox of Tolerance: they "begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
These vigilantes are just socially (and constitutionally!) doing what Popper said to do when faced with those that teach people to answer arguments with bullets: "We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's called being a decent human being. As we say in America, if there’s a terrorist at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 terrorists.
mapontosevenths · 2h ago
[flagged]
tomhow · 2h ago
Please don't post flamebait or inflammatory rhetoric on HN. The guidelines are clear about this:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
This is a talking point I have seen repeated constantly throughout the discussion. It does not accurately represent the point being made, as explained in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45234349 .
I actually have witnessed the concept of empathy used on many occasions for a sort of rhetorical abuse, by alternately demanding it of people and then denying that they are fundamentally capable of it in a given situation due to identity differences. In the literal sense, empathy requires (https://www.simplypsychology.org/sympathy-empathy-compassion...) a deeper understanding of negative emotions based in "putting oneself in another's shoes"; but many will argue that this simply can't be properly done.
A simple example is that men are accused of lacking "empathy" for women who feel endangered in social/dating circumstances where the man might feel empowered. But we simply cannot spontaneously change our perspective on a given circumstance. (And, of course, it is treated as offensive to turn the example around; but that's another discussion.)
Indeed, your empathy is not being expected here by anyone. But your sympathy is. You are being expected to treat murder as a crime and the loss of a healthy adult life as a tragedy. Kirk had many ideas about how people should go about their lives that you might strongly disagree with, or even consider unconscionable. He also had many ideas about the reality of how businesses and other institutions operate, or about what is fair in that context, similarly.
But from what I can tell, nothing he ever said rose to the level of supposing that ending someone's life is an appropriate response to that person having the wrong ideas. (And the bit you're quoting is so incredibly far from that, that it's hard to assume good faith when people make this argument.)
His killer apparently disagreed. And many people on social media also seem to disagree, although they haven't taken action on it.
spwa4 · 2h ago
Does that, in your mind, apply to everyone? For example, would it be okay to execute a few of the people people who protested in support of Oct 8 just when it happened, long before there was any reaction?
I would also like to point out there is a very large difference between firing and killing. So no, people getting fired is not somehow equivalent to a killing.
There are incredible numbers of people who support, even celebrate deaths. And we're not even talking about the other difficulties, like perspective (e.g. the death of a Russian father fighting in Ukraine, do you celebrate or mourn?)
cornhole · 3h ago
“facts don’t care about your feelings”
zahlman · 2h ago
Putting aside that this kind of pithy quotation isn't contributing to productive discourse, it comes from Shapiro, not Kirk.
mr90210 · 3h ago
Can we flag this post? It doesn't add value to the platform.
PS: Take a deep breath before you reply. Don't let me ruin your day.
neuroelectron · 3h ago
This is much more reasonable than getting fired over questioning mass experimental gene therapy or smiling in a photo with a Native American, or making the "ok' hand sign. Or ...
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
From who? And where are they getting their information?
It bears mentioning that you're presently participating in a political conversation on social media.
Seems like all of these shooters get a lot of encouragement and support on discord.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
Groypers.
How does that square with the issue that he texted his trans significant other to go pick up his rifle which he could not do as feds found the rifle first. [1] The feds are interviewing the trans partner as we speak. To be clear I am not anti-trans, rather just confused how he could also be a Groyper. Maybe this is possible, just a new concept to me.
[1] - https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-t...
From the article you posted:
> According to public records, Lance Twiggs, 22, resided at the same address where Robinson lived. A relative of Twiggs confirmed to The Post Saturday that “yes, they were roommates.”
> The family member, who asked not to be identified, said Twiggs was the “black sheep” of their St. George, Utah, family, but declined to speculate on a romantic relationship between the two men.
> She said she didn’t know her relative’s politics or whether Twiggs was transitioning to become a woman, but added that it wouldn’t surprise her.
So basically the source is "it was revealed to me in a dream". For all we know they were just roommates.
It's possible. I keep hearing terms used interchangably on different YT channels and all of that could be people just projecting their preferred narratives so I guess we will have to wait for the Discord and cell phone text message transcripts assuming those ever drop. They so rarely do. Either way at least we know the roommate was involved to some extent. The Discord transcripts may be the most telling of the relationship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers
Israel is about the only thing Charlie and Nick disagree on now.
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
(bullet engravings, his partner, his father's testimony)
There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Many sources similarly assert that Robinson's father "recognized" him in photos and "encouraged him to turn himself in" (see e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/tyler-rob...). However, I don't know anything specific about his "testimony".
Could turn out to be true, but considering the hilariously wrong stuff that was being published even by mainstream sources in the 24 hours after (the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance) I’d not yet treat this as meaningful at all. I’ve not seen anything above tabloid-level pushing it yet.
I am unaware of any mistakes of fact as to the actual text of the engravings published by any mainstream source at any point.
"Not getting the reference" is not the same thing as making an "extremely-wrong report".
The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
However from what did seem credible I think this still looks left-wing motivated
I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd. It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder. False flags really aren't that common, in general. This is the same kind of conspiratorial thinking behind Alex Jones' "crisis actors".
Also, your comment was off-topic to the sub-thread. People were discussing whether Kirk would be seen as a martyr. The ideology of the shooter has quite little to do with that.
> (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
Commentary like this is inherently obnoxious, and tends towards self-fulfilling prophecy.
Especially if you look at the data. The political right is more likely to do violence:
* https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rar...
* https://archive.is/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/...
The assassination attempts (whether successful or failed) on prominent political figures in this country have almost all been carried out by people with personal reasons to want to kill them, not politically motivated killers killing people they don't agree with.
Is the likelihood lower or higher if it already happened (at least) once last year?
Is it lower or higher if you’re aware of the hostile dynamics between TPU and at least one popular very much violence-encouraging even-farther-right influencer? Nb this group has opposed Trump for being too timidly white supremacist. Would that shift your guess at the odds?
Safe bet if you’ve been paying attention to this stuff for a few decades was about equal odds right or left winger, and maybe somewhat higher right, if the target’s a right winger (almost certainly the attacker is, if relevantly affiliated, right-affiliated if the target’s a Democrat or otherwise left) or else (in either case of political affiliation of the target) there’s fair odds of apolitical notoriety-seeking or straight up lunacy without a strong political motivation.
[edit] nb I’m not saying 100% that the guy won’t turn out to be coming from the left, but I think if you’re playing the odds on something like this and go “must be a leftist” you’ve misread the situation in this country.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
People are in these media bubbles where they’re amped up all the time. Each side does a lot of name calling.
Each group boils it down to us vs them.
“”” “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur shortly after Kirk was shot at a Utah university Wednesday “””
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
He was not pro-free speech. It is not hard to see what he actually believed. Maybe it is right now with all of the news happening.
Yes; it's for freely expressing the idea that the people on the list have expressed harmful ideas with their own freedom of speech.
Or, in at least one case (Eric Clanton), that they have committed serious physical violence for ideological reasons.
Or is it something else?
If you believe that the watchlist serves some sinister purpose, the burden is on you to a) state it explicitly and b) proactively provide evidence. Persuading people that you're right requires accepting and working with the fact that they don't already hold your worldview and prior assumptions.
It's to get them fired, or worse.
And I could "provide evidence" of his intentions by simply posting a list of quotes thats he has said over his career, but that would DEFINITELY go against HN commenting guidelines.
With this, we see that you did not, in fact, stop darkly hinting.
> And I could "provide evidence" of his intentions by simply posting a list of quotes thats he has said over his career, but that would DEFINITELY go against HN commenting guidelines.
Indeed, it would. Most importantly, because that is not how evidence and rational argumentation work.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
Well that clears things up...
Sure, and all those trolls online are "just asking questions."
So where is the line? What commentary on his death is acceptable and won’t get a person sacked or sanctioned from a government job?
* government officials (as you say), members of federal agencies, civil servants etc.
* journalists
* healthcare workers and emergency services personnel
* educators
There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.
All of these are places where a mindset that glorifies or justifies political violence and death seems like it would be an impediment to actually doing the job properly, which is the only thing that would make me accept "cancel culture". Others may be morally unjustified in "crossing the line", but should not lose their jobs for it.
For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone. The "stochastic terrorism" argument is especially insidious: it attempts to launder "speech" into "violence" (and thus justify "an eye for an eye" etc.) by hand-waving at some vague notion of, basically, extremely non-imminent incitement. The idea is that convincing a wide audience of people to have a more negative impression of a group stochastically increases the number of members of that group that will die to violence. But none of the dots are ever actually connected in this argument; and taken seriously and applied even-handedly, it would make basically any form of political discourse impossible.
Initially, I thought Matthew Dowd's comments (I had very little exposure to them) didn't fall into that category — that they were simply made in incredibly bad taste. But I looked up some more of the transcript and, yeah, I can't excuse that. Certainly he wasn't as aggressive about it as, say, some Bluesky users. But part of it does fundamentally boil down to making the "fuck around and find out" argument, and "finding out" is just not supposed to involve being shot and killed.
This is fundamental for me; see e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/svuBpoSduzhYjFPrA/elements-o... .
It's really difficult. How do you apply this to government worker? Some are actively involved in killing people, foe example the military, (some) police, the judiciary in some jurisdictions, politicians. In places with a judicial death sentence it's acceptable to decide that someone deserve to die.
> Dowd responded by saying about about Kirk: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
(via https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/comcast-execs-criticize-...)
To me, that's approximately as bad.
No comments yet
So, basically, what you are saying is "it is bad to celebrate the death of people, but...".
So, you have to choose what to be: a person who is fine with political violence, or someone who is against any sort of political violence.
I have a nice little trick for it: when you go to a funeral of a person in your family, or close to your family, who was an asshole, I bet you won't be saying to other people "yeah, sad, very sad. But, please remember, he was an asshole". Right? I would not -- not the time, nor the place.
Yes, Kirk is not a family (probably not yours, and definitely not mine), but the same standard of being polite and reasonable person should apply.
I'm curious how standard this "standard" is, did you (and the rest of America) mourn the death of Osama bin Laden? Did you express condolences to his family and try to remember him by the positive things he did in life?
Perhaps I missed the part where Charlie Kirk organized a group of guys to hijack a bunch of planes with civilians on board, and then crash them into buildings.
On a serious note, if you cannot see a difference between these two, I have no idea what to say.
How much before it's okay to party on the streets after learning about their death?
Clearly there's a difference in magnitude between Kirk and bin Laden, but both were merchants of hate and violence, so where's the line?
If people are whitewashing his history then it's to be expected that other people will speak out to set the record straight. That's how free speech works and trying to silence it on the basis of "decorum" is dishonest and manipulative.
Apply it to current US politicians. Who is doing this, how do you stop them?
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Ridiculous.
Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
I mean, that’s literal Nazi shit. They say literal Nazi shit, this isn’t isolated. What do you call it? WTF. Elon sieg-heils twice at the inauguration and they don’t disown him. What is it going to take before we get folks who still think calling them fascists is the problem, actually, to blame the party that twice elected a guy president who told his supporters they could shoot his opponent if she won?
See:
* https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-host-menta...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kilmeade
Granted, you’ve been hearing little suggestions like this for a long time from ordinary republican voters, if you’ve been in their spaces much, but hearing it from a host on the most popular “news” station in the country, with neither of his co-hosts even pausing to go “uh, haha, wait now” is… something else.
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is it limited to people sharing a certain sentiment or common statement?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/people-are-calling-o...
No reaction occurred when Melissa Hortman was killed to people doing the same thing as people are doing now with Kirk.
Edit: make things a little bit clearer, AFAIK, no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
And what does your article — which basically just establishes "Trump doesn't like Tim Walz and didn't consider Hortman's case as important" — have to do with that?
If you're referring to Senator Mike Lee's comment, I don't think it's anything of the sort. It comes across to me that Lee was speculating that the murderer was a "Marxist" (i.e., anyone he would consider more radical than Hortman). Political football, and offensive, sure. But not the same kind of thing. Besides which, can Senators be "fired"?
Well, gee, it sorta seems like that kind of behavior would be more prevalent when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Did Melissa Hortman say such things?
Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Because if she didn't say stuff like that, then it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
Charlie Kirk has said nothing of the sort, so none of this is relevant.
> Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Kirk's organization is not dedicated to anything of the sort.
> Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Kirk did not say anything about being happy about it; regardless this statement does not support killing people.
> it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
But anyway, this still doesn't matter. Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
And it’s also free speech to gloat about it. Is it legal to sack someone who is gleeful?
The consensus on Hacker News was that New Zealand made an error blocking and banning the video of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
What’s the right way to handle these scenarios? Kirk was a free speech advocate with strong views on gun violence, further complicating things.
Sorry, I’m not American so have little idea how it works.
I also did not agree against the legality of being fired for a social media post. It's been happening since social media first existed.
You also can't boycott an employee. I really don't know what point you are trying to make here.
The default employment rule is at-will, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited. Political affiliation is not a federally protected category.
Even then, in practice they can fire people for prohibited reasons, as long as it can't be proven that those reasons were used. Which in practice could be very difficult.
https://www.professorwatchlist.org
That’s different. ‘They’ don’t have the right to say those things, but Kirk maintained his right to say what he liked.
At least on X/Twitter.
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I saw that a lot online from lefties in previous years. The thing the left doesn't seem to understand is that every new weapon you create will eventually be used against you.
2. People getting fired for simply pointing out that Kirk is a victim of a system he helped build are getting fired, which is a completely different situation.
3. The Trump admiration openly going after people is infringing on freedom of speech.
Trump orders all flags in the nation at half mast and Kirk is being treated like a fallen statesman and hero, the State Department claiming it will revoke the visas of any immigrant who speaks negatively of Kirk, the breathless media coverage, Trump ranting about "leftist violence", the right wing's endless calls for violence and war on social media (going entirely unclamped-down upon,) and the narrative being created that Charlie Kirk was a peaceful intellectual scholar and activist of the likes of MLK Jr and Jesus Christ.
It's obvious a stage is being set here. And of course when whatever happens happens, it will be blamed on the left.
If you say "Democrats suck", don't expect them to buy your product. If you say "God doesn't exist," don't expect Christians to come to your business. If you say "I hate gays", expect to get fired from your medical clinic job.
Have free speech, but use it wisely.
Having free speech serves to diffuse social tension. It ensures we don't wind up as cattle, like in 1984. Just don't expect that you can praise the death of certain people and expect everyone to love you for it.
Maybe above all you should be kind. Regardless of your politics. Articulate what you don't like with your free speech, but don't be an asshole.
Unfortunately social media encourages fast engagement with little nuance, so we see a sewer instead of a noble land of open thought and debate.
But we shouldn't throw free speech out with the bath water.
"Offend" is subjective, and US Citizens should not have punitive governmental consequences as a result.
But private organizations, should be able to make their own decisions on all the above.
By the government? I doubt that “speech is violence” comes from the government.
We all have to fight to undo the Obama Smith-Mundt Modernization Act that allowed the executive branch to create domestic propaganda.
The interface makes it feel like you're having a polite conversation among like-minded folk. In reality, you're like one of those folks on a street corner with a megaphone and most of the time the rest of the world isn't listening to you. But they can tune you in anytime they want, and there can be consequences for holding a strong opinion incompatible with the strong opinion of other people you will be wanting to do business with.
... That of course includes this medium. Watch what you say today everyone, your future and current employers are reading Hacker News.
The people getting fired have shown themselves to be exactly the types of people Popper warned about in his Paradox of Tolerance: they "begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
These vigilantes are just socially (and constitutionally!) doing what Popper said to do when faced with those that teach people to answer arguments with bullets: "We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's called being a decent human being. As we say in America, if there’s a terrorist at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 terrorists.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45234112 and marked it off topic.
The full quote said that instead of empathy one should think about sympathy. However, with the full quote the argument looks weak.
Edit: here is a link https://m.youtube.com/shorts/vojXvj2B6RI
I actually have witnessed the concept of empathy used on many occasions for a sort of rhetorical abuse, by alternately demanding it of people and then denying that they are fundamentally capable of it in a given situation due to identity differences. In the literal sense, empathy requires (https://www.simplypsychology.org/sympathy-empathy-compassion...) a deeper understanding of negative emotions based in "putting oneself in another's shoes"; but many will argue that this simply can't be properly done.
A simple example is that men are accused of lacking "empathy" for women who feel endangered in social/dating circumstances where the man might feel empowered. But we simply cannot spontaneously change our perspective on a given circumstance. (And, of course, it is treated as offensive to turn the example around; but that's another discussion.)
Indeed, your empathy is not being expected here by anyone. But your sympathy is. You are being expected to treat murder as a crime and the loss of a healthy adult life as a tragedy. Kirk had many ideas about how people should go about their lives that you might strongly disagree with, or even consider unconscionable. He also had many ideas about the reality of how businesses and other institutions operate, or about what is fair in that context, similarly.
But from what I can tell, nothing he ever said rose to the level of supposing that ending someone's life is an appropriate response to that person having the wrong ideas. (And the bit you're quoting is so incredibly far from that, that it's hard to assume good faith when people make this argument.)
His killer apparently disagreed. And many people on social media also seem to disagree, although they haven't taken action on it.
I would also like to point out there is a very large difference between firing and killing. So no, people getting fired is not somehow equivalent to a killing.
There are incredible numbers of people who support, even celebrate deaths. And we're not even talking about the other difficulties, like perspective (e.g. the death of a Russian father fighting in Ukraine, do you celebrate or mourn?)
PS: Take a deep breath before you reply. Don't let me ruin your day.
You just discovered why dog whistles exist.
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