I’m going to challenge you all, right here, right now. Put down the thought of what’s right, what’s wrong, how people should be reacting, ect. I’m an apathetic bastard and I really could care less either way.
What I have noticed though is there’s a LOT of divide on this one, more than usual. Lemmy’s pretty homogenous but go outside to Facebook, Instagram, reddit, any of the mainstream places, hell, even talking about it with friends or family, you get some really differing views and people seem ready to discard longtime relationships over it. Hell, I’ve seen it happen 3 times now so far.
°So what do you think, take off the politics hat for a second and put on the sociology hat. Take a breath, and examine your surroundings.
°How does what’s going on make you feel, sad? Angry? Scared, tired or relieved?
°What do you think this says about which direction our society is going, have you got any predictions? Any old timers who have been through near societal collapses before want to throw in their perspective?
I’m genuinely interested in what you all think
Obviously the ideal amount of political violence should be zero. If any other option exists, I think those must be taken first.
But sometimes the status quo is violence, and letting the status quo continue doing violence will overtime do more harm than one act of political violence. So mathematically, there must be some point where some violence is worth the cost of less harm in the future.
I might have felt sympathy, but I’m too busy caring for people that he himself hurt. They deserve my attention more.
You don’t run over a crowd of people, crash your car, and then get to lament that there are people in front of you at the emergency room.
Rightists have spent decades building and nurturing a fascist culture. Fascism has well defined and recognizable traits, including machismo, action for actions sake, weapon obsession, derision of pacifism and diversity and science, dying a hero, and demonizing out groups and dissenters.
Violence is the end result. They use fear of violence to seize control, while stoking and promoting violence among their followers, which results in perpetuation of real violence, which creates an escalating cycle of violence. There is a reason that almost all shooters are radicalized rightists. It is because their culture has carefully groomed those traits into them.
On the flip side, leftist violence erupts only when people are pushed far beyond their breaking point. We are not there yet, but the rightists have escalated the cycle of violence to levels where we are getting close.
Charlie Kirk was a victim of his own rhetoric, his own political violence, and his own stochastic terrorism. I weep for the world, because his hateful, dangerous, violent ideals will live long into the future even without him. And with a false martyrdom narrative now in place, many other hateful, violent terrorists will spring up to further accelerate the cycle of violence, fascism, and oppression.
We are all fucked. Not just the US, the world.
Hard to give a fuck about the murder of some rich white hate monger when, on average, 28 innocent kids get shot and die in Palestine every day.
Not surprised. Kinda hard to believe there haven’t been more public attempts on official’s lives. What was the most shocking was the rapid and wide-spread spool-up of hatred online against liberals/democrats without them ever knowing the shooter’s identity or affiliation. They didn’t care. Aided by Chinese and Russian troll farms, of course.
Society? The American Experiment is over. I fully expect Republicans to remain in power indefinitely, forcefully, through falsehood, or simply just throwing the rules out the window. The only thing that remains after that will be if there is a purge and how deep it goes. Will your social media post history critical of Trump get you fired? Disappeared? Jailed? Will the regime stop at open persecution of democratic officials or will they take it all the way down to the regular citizens?
I don’t support murder, but when people who do call for it like checks notes Charlie Kirk get murdered, I’ll enjoy the irony.
There are some people who the world would be better off without. Can anyone honestly say the US would be a worse place now if Trump had been killed instead of “wounded” at his own shooting?
I think the fact that there is a divide at all about murder is pretty informative. Generally speaking, that isn’t a sign of a healthy society. It speaks to how frustrated many people are with society these days. I do believe that social media makes this occurrence drastically different than any other potential societal collapse. So any predictions are worth the cost you pay for them.
Yes it is indicative, it would be interesting to see the parallels from this age of interconnectedness and how things progressed to this point versus, say, leading up to the civil war or something.
I don’t support him being murdered whoever is doing the killing.
I think we should focus on the class war and not this right vs left bullshit.
Left vs Right is part of the class war. Class consciousness is a political concept of the Left, a concept that the Right has invested a tremendous amount of time and effort to subvert.
Super rich vs everybody else if you want to argue semantics.
That’s still a political dispute between the left and right?
You can’t address class without engaging in politics.
Never heard of him before he died. He was obviously a cunt of the highest degree. In my country he would have been a right wing extremist and probably been canceled by most serious organizations. In the USA his views are apparently so normal that he got assassinated by someone that thought he was too much of a lefty?
I don’t care about him at all tbh. We get news of Americans killing each other everyday, I don’t see how he is much different from all the other murder victims. Because he had a stage and a following? Apparently he hated emphaty so I’m considering dishonering him by being emphatic…
How fucked up can a nation be? I would mourn my country if I was US American. Since I’m not all I can do is shake my head aphaty and think “oh well, they’ll just continue doing whatever they’re doing over there”
To be fair, I think myself and many of my countrymen mourned it long ago. Its strange to say but I don’t really see this as “my country” anymore, it’s just kind of the place that I survive in
I’m not American, so this is an outside perspective I guess. I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before he was shot, and it’s been interesting watching it all play out. Ring wing leap to assuming it was a leftist attack, with a huge amount of violent rhetoric; suspect arrested & turns out to be from conservative background; trickle of suggestions he might be further to the right of Kirk.
I’ve learned a new word: Groyper.
Meanwhile in the UK we’ve got a kind of fascism-lite going on, with a “socialist” party in charge that’s leaning to the right of Thatcher in order to attract the votes of bigots. There’s a massive right-wing rally going on in London right now, with a couple of anti-fascist, anti-racist counter protests as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/sep/13/aerial-footage-shows-scale-of-unite-the-kingdom-rally-video
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The shooter is confirmed to be “far left”, quit the bullshit.
God damn. You’re insufferable.
I don’t really know who he is. Who is (was) he?
Some guy who apparently made his living by saying inflammatory things if you want the base boiled down version
“some guy”
He was a state-sponsored Christofascist propagandist. Be honest if you’re going to summarize.
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It’s good entertainment.
As usual, morons on both sides of the fence miss the forest for the trees.
Charlie was a mouthpiece of the ruling class. His whole purpose was to sow division to distract the working class from how it’s being exploited by their rulers.
It’s good that he’s gone, because that’s one fewer distraction. It’s bad that people, on both sides, still don’t realize why it’s necessary for people like him to be gone.
We should also be aiming higher. The richer, the better.
I do think the very fact that he wasn’t so high up is probably a big contributor as to why people are so divided. I remember the sympathy for the United CEO being pretty much limited to talking heads and the other Billionaires.
We’re seeing much more vehement discussion on this one
The CEO was basically a nobody. A rich nobody, certainly, but a nobody. I didn’t know of his existence before he was killed, and I’m sure I’m in the same group as a majority of Americans and the rest of the world. Likewise, I don’t know how who replaced him. So why would there be division? You’ll get some objective, impersonal “He was a father and husband, this is terrible,” and some objective, somewhat more emotional “He made his money by refusing sick people care,” but there isn’t a lot of arguing because even though it was very real, it’s still in the realm of the hypothetical for most people. Even kids killed in a school half a world away is more real, and more emotional, for most people because they have kids, will have kids, or were a kid in a situation not too dissimilar, and it could have been them if not for their different circumstances.
A self-elected mouthpiece that thrives on spreading hatred that has cause immerse damage and suffering for innocent people is shot by one of his own people. He died by consequence of the violence he was promoting against others.
The only ones I sympathise with are his children because they didn’t choose their parents and they will have his legacy on their shoulders. His wife and his friends and colleagues and his followers can go fuck themselves ass to eye with a spork.
shot by one of his own people
Charlie Kirk was a radical far left supporter of “antifa”?
I’m not divided. This is a republican on Republican crime. Fuck them, let them eat themselves for all I care.
Since when are radicalized far left antifa supporters “republicans”?
You poor poor summer child who said he is far left? You don’t have to be a person on the left to hate fascist. In America we had a tradition of killing fascist it didn’t matter what side you were on, but I guess you forgot that.
The little groyper killed another republican. You are eating your own while we stare at you shaking our head. Oh well.
Republicans on Republican crime is interesting to watch. Let me know when a “lefty” kills another “lefty”.
Lol.
His friends did. His parents did. Literally everything we have found out about him does.
I see “groyper” is the word-of-the-week among the far left that you all just discovered to try and pretend your side wasn’t responsible for this vile, reprehensible act. You’re all sick in the head.
You’re saying you have no one close to you who disagrees with you? Possibly someone who you were surprised to learn that about? I certainly see many people in a slightly different light now, I probably won’t stop being friends with them but it’s odd seeing them react a certain way
I’ve completely cut out any family that supports the Trump administration, personally. Fuck em. There’s no space in my life for bigots.
No I do not since my family is actually compassionate and care about people even if they are not from their group. You know empathy.
This is extremist eating extremist. Let them eat each other.
No one should feel bad or scared for the stupidity of the few, but yet people want us to show compassion to the folks that call people names and cry when the same gets thrown back.
The only people you hear calling for civil war and for destruction is the same people that are killing themselves.
Fuck them.
I suppose I can see that, though I would not say my friends from long ago are “extremists”. I would say rather that they are very obviously frustrated with life and the country in general. I can’t see any of them picking up a gun and going to war.
Its fortunate that your loved ones are all still getting along over this though, you should cherish that, as there’s many who are having to choose between sticking to their beliefs or people they know, their neighbors, people they’ve loved.
Which I unfortunately think is unnecessary, but who am I to dictate how people should react in this situation
Here’s a timeline to consider
Trump dined with Fuentes - the groyper king. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/25/trump-white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-kanye-00070825
Kirk urged trump to release the files and everything https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-files-update-charlie-kirk-trump-message-2099999
loomer (a groyper) says kirk is unloyal https://www.rawstory.com/charlie-kirk-laura-loomer/
