Meme - Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11: "Assassination culture is spreading on the left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elan Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump. In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione. The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb."
"Figure 1: Justification for Murder of Elon Musk and Donald Trump
Percent Who Say Destroying Tesla Dealerships is Partially Acceptable"
Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk shot dead in 'political assassination'
Thread by @wokal_distance on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Radical Left has used political violence to advance their cause for decades. What's new is the progressive left's professional class building a permission structure to justify the use of political violence It's called Assassination Culture, and we need to talk about it 🧵
To understand what's happening, you need to understand that the line between progressive-left professional class and radical left has been blurred. The extremist radical left and the socially progressive "bluesky left" are increasingly intertwined both socially and politically. This is because many of the extremist radical from the 60's and 70' who advocated for, and participated in, the use of political violence have been welcomed into the mainstream institutions that are run by the progressive left professional class. Let's look at examples:
In 1974 a terrorist group called The Whether Underground released a paper arguing directly for armed struggle, and then carried out 25 bombings. One of the groups founders, Bill Ayers, became a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and worked with Barack Obama. Another founder, Bernadine Dohrn, went to prison before ending up as a law professor at Northwestern University. Jeff Jones, also part of The Weather Underground, ended up as a reporter, and then as a consultant working in a mainstream environmental non-profit organization.
Notice the pattern here: Radical leftists who engaged in political violence are integrated and assimilated into mainstream social institutions run by the progressive left's professional class. Let's take a loot at a few more examples so we can see how widespread this is
Susan Rosenberg joined the May 19th Communist Organization (which bombed the United States the Capitol building in 1983). She was convicted in 1984 for illegal possession of firearms and explosives. She sat on the board of the parent organization for Black Lives Matter. Rasmea Odeh was a convicted terrorist who admitted bombing an Israeli supermarket back in 1969, killing 2 civilians (see pic ). She helped found "The Women's March," and co-wrote a manifesto that got published in national outlets to great applause. (pic 3)
It is common knowledge in Academic circles that Marxists, communists, and radical leftists are welcomed into Universities and often end up in positions of power and influence. Isaac Gottesman says this explicitly in his book "The Critical Turn in Education." The institutions which are staffed and run by Progressive leftists, and which credential the professional class, have spent decades welcoming radical leftists with extremist views. The result is that those extreme views are spreading through the leftist professional class.
The result has been entire disciplines have been developed in Universities which are dedicated to studying and developing radical leftist critiques of society and it's institutions. Post-colonial Theory, Queer Theory, and Critical Race Theory are just three examples. Additionally, the radical leftists have taken over the education colleges, so now almost all of Americas teachers are trained to bring radical leftist politics into the classroom... This entire process repeats itself across the credentialing institutions of the professional managerial classes. The result of this is that the extremist politics of the radical left are being normalized across the institutions and of the progressive left. This radicalization can be seen on bluesky, where radicalized members of the progressive leftist professional class tend to congregate. There you can see lawyers, doctors, teachers, and journalists post political thinking that sounds just like "The Weather Underground."
The result of this has been that the professional disciplines end up sympathizing with the causes of people who assassinate CEO's, and making them out to sympathetic figures (or even outright martyrs) for whatever leftist cause is at hand. By lowering the social opprobrium and disapproval directed towards those who kill CEO's or engage in other forms of violence, they end up destroying the stigma associated with violent crime, and thus encouraging anti-social people to engage in such violence. The fact that political violence against the right is not against the norms of the professional left and the fact that they sympathize with those who engage in political violence, creates a permission structure which allows them to justify violence against conservatives. The result of this is the "assassination culture" which Charlie Kirk was talking about in the post I quoted to start this thread. This is a huge problem, and we need to do something about it. Now."
UBERSOY on X - "The House of Representatives attempts to hold a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk but the Democrats protest"
Matt Walsh on X - "All that Charlie ever did was have conversations with people. He didn’t insult anyone. He made arguments. He debated. He wasn’t an extremist in any way. Everyone who knew Charlie personally loved him. That’s the kind of guy he was. And they still killed him. I am furious and heartbroken in equal measure. I cannot put into words how I feel. Maybe that is for the best."
Wall Street Apes on X - "Are you f*cking kidding me Illinois Governor Governor JB Pritzker literally just blamed Donald Trump for Charlie Kirk being shot and killed “I think the President’s rhetoric often foments it” (Political violence)"
Matt Walsh on X - "I see all the posts of vile piece of shit leftists celebrating Charlie’s death. I’m disgusted by it. But also I see it as a great tribute to Charlie’s life and work. May we all be so successful and effective that our enemies celebrate when we die. May we all be so devastating to the Leftist project that they pray to their demon gods for our demise."
UBERSOY on X - "Destiny urged the Democrats not to disavow Charlie Kirk’s assassin, otherwise they are weak and cucked. You don’t hate them enough."
Thread by @wanyeburkett on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "This is the kind of stuff that nudged me rightward way back in the days of the gay marriage debate. I knew these people — good people, husbands, fathers, people who really didn’t cause trouble, people who had jobs, were contributing members of society — and my liberal friends thought that they were just total trash, completely reprehensible pieces of shit, useless waste of space…because they disagreed about gay marriage. And I just thought, you know, no. That cannot be right. These people, the people saying this about Charlie Kirk right now, are just so obviously worse for society in every way then somebody who opposes gay marriage. These people create a far worse society than one in which gay marriage is still illegal. You would much rather live in a society with no gay marriage than one in which these people had political power. This is just so totally obvious to me."
William Wolfe 🇺🇸 on X - "This gets even worse when you consider that Charlie Kirk—more than anyone else in America on the right or the left—built his platform making a good faith effort to model civil poltical discourse and debate in the public square. His entire project was built on reaching across the divide and using speech, not violence, to address and resolve the issues!"
JD Vance on X - "This is such a good point. If you actually watch Charlie’s events—as opposed to the fake summaries—they are one of the few places with open and honest dialogue between left and right. He would answer any question and talk to everyone."
Dani on X - "When one of the smug, bratty college students would ask him why he was on campus, he said, many times, something to the effect of: "Because when you stop talking, that's when wars start. I'm trying to remind everyone how to have civil disagreements""
Meme - Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok: "The Simsbury, Connecticut Democrat Party just posted this. Believe them when they tell you who they are"
simsburydems.bsky.social: "Charlie Kirk who advocates for guns everywhere, got exactly what he deserves."
Charlie Kirk was shot : r/Jordan_Peterson_Memes - "Just got banned from r/pics for correcting them that he was straight up murdered, not 'attacked'"
MSNBC Apologizes For Matthew Dowd's "Insensitive" Comments On Charlie Kirk Assassination - "The president of MSNBC has apologized for remarks made by political analyst Matthew Dowd during the network’s coverage of the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk... Appearing on “Katy Tur Reports,” Dowd was asked by host Katy Tur to discuss the environment surrounding the shooting. Dowd began by cautioning that the full details of the incident were not yet known, stating, “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration or, so we have no idea about this.” He then continued, “But following up with what was just said, 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.” Following Dowd’s comments, Tur went on to connect the incident to past political responses. She referenced a previous alleged attack on an employee of the Department of General Services (DOGE) in Washington D.C., which she claimed President Donald Trump used as justification to send federal troops into the city. Tur then speculated that the current administration might use the shooting as a similar justification, stating, “you can imagine the administration using this as a justification for something.”... In a statement released Wednesday night, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler addressed Dowd’s remarks directly. “During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable,” Kutler said. “We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”"
MSNBC Fires Matthew Dowd After Charlie Kirk Assassination Comments - Newsweek
Ian Miles Cheong on X - "MSNBC says Charlie Kirk had it coming: “You can’t stop with these awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place”"
Disagreeing with the left wing agenda makes you "awful"
Zack on X - "Anyone surprised at what happened to Charlie Kirk hasn't been paying attention. Go anywhere, reddit, Twitter, ect, and you'll find thousands of unhinged direct calls to violence over politics. Until it's addressed for what it is, things like this will continue to happen"
Andy Ngo on X - "Celebatory reactions from liberals (not the far-left) to the shooting of Charlie Kirk on @Reuters's Facebook post about the incident."
The side of "empathy", "kindness" and "being a decent human being"
Meme - Colin Wright @SwipeWright: "Popular transgender "journalist" @ErinInTheMorn has repeatedly spread lies about Charlie Kirk, saying that he "calls for anti-trans violence." Yet when you watch the actual interview, he says no such thing. Spreading this kind of genocidal rhetoric is dangerous."
"Erin In The Morning. This Must Stop: TPUSA's Charlie Kirk Calls For Anti-Trans Violence "Like In The 50s/60s""
Charlie Kirk’s killing: The Left has fanned the flames of political violence - "Just consider the obscene reaction to his killing. As footage of Kirk’s assassination circulated – a sudden gout of blood punctuating a comment on gang violence – the ghouls crawled out. One MSNBC commentator appeared to blame Kirk’s “hate speech” and “divisive” behaviour, suggesting that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions”. The governor of Illinois gave the impression of blaming Trump. Do you get it? Kirk brought this on himself. If he’d just behaved. If he’d just got with the programme. It could hardly have been more tone-deaf. And it could hardly have been a better summary of the moral abyss now occupied by America’s so-called progressives... Kirk was a man who gave talks on campuses, who sought to challenge groupthink and open minds. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that seems new. And it’s terrifying. A political assassination targeted at a speaker, used to silence, used to intimidate. And the groundwork is in place for it to happen again. And whatever the precise motive of Kirk’s killer turns out to be, it’s fair to point out that much of the responsibility for the legitimisation of this sort of violence lies with the Left. It’s spent decades making politics a matter of identity, carving up votes based on who people are rather than what they believe, agitating on race, on belief, on sexuality, inflaming tensions freely to stir up the base. Disagreement is “violence” against “bodies”. The other side winning means you are “erased”. You are called to punch Nazis, kill Terfs, bash the fash. Their words are violence; respond with violence... Democratic politicians had talked of their base’s desire for “blood to grab the attention of the press”, to “fight” in a show of force. Almost every incident has been used to inflame, to whip up fear and hatred of Republicans and the Right, to shatter the fragile consensus upon which American politics is built in order to create a true friend-enemy distinction. It has succeeded. Left-wing politics has slipped seamlessly back into an old tradition of direct action. Online, they harass, dogpile, insult and threaten. Offline, they turn out on the streets to protest. They seized on the death of George Floyd to burn and loot. They act as a permanent heckler’s veto, shutting events, raising security bills, cowing people into silence while their speakers continue to broadcast. They must know the risks. They must know that when they talk about white people being evil oppressors, that Trump will destroy your family, that their most unhinged followers are listening. They must know how the smirking jokes about gulags and guillotines will be taken, how the stone-faced warnings of catastrophic defeat and the death of America will land. “Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country,” said Trump on Wednesday night. But when swathes of the Left began celebrating Kirk’s murder on their favoured social media platforms almost immediately, it’s a chilling reminder that not everyone agrees."
Speech the left hates is violence. Violence the left loves is speech
Charlie Kirk’s assassination serves as a chilling warning to Britain’s intolerant Left - "There are people who will celebrate the murder of a father of two young children and still think themselves on the side of the angels... This is pure malevolence, dressed up in the form of chirpy memes and TikTok videos catapulted into the moral vacuum in which parts of the Left now operate. It is disgusting... While we do not yet know the motivations of the killer, what has disturbed me so much about Kirk’s murder and the reaction to it is how it shines a light on the absolute aversion so many people have to any notion of debate or disagreement. Kirk has been dismissed as some kind of Hitler – as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage are also lazily described by their critics. To the strand of the Left that cannot tolerate any dissent from their ideology, he was a white supremacist and a defender of Israel and therefore it’s a good thing that he’s been killed. So many so-called Antifa – self-declared anti-fascists – appear to prefer violence to debate. If this is the case then we are truly lost. For, unlike them, Kirk did believe in the exchange of ideas and toured campuses in the US and UK proving just that. As we now know, that was at great risk to himself. The truth is that anyone who wants to debate or challenge Left-wing orthodoxy in Britain also faces risks, from losing their jobs to constant verbal abuse and serious physical threats. Women who are deemed “gender critical” receive threats of assault, rape and death. That has been my life for more than 10 years. We have not been protected by the police or by parties of the Left. The brave MP Rosie Duffield, for instance, was warned not to go to the Labour Party conference because of such threats. Kathleen Stock had to attend debates with bodyguards. The new parties of the hard-Left, the Greens and the Corbyn/Sultana effort, will not accept women members unless they agree that some men (those born male and who now claim to be female) are in fact women. This is the level of intolerance we have now reached. In 2019, David Lammy, who is now Deputy Prime Minister, tweeted (in a post that remains online to this day) that the Tories had transformed “from a centre-Right, economically conservative party to one that openly promotes hard-Right, xenophobic bile”. That sort of rhetoric is hardly befitting of a mainstream politician. On the contrary, it is incredibly dangerous. More broadly, trans activists genuinely adopted the slogan “no debate” to explicitly insist that their views could not be challenged. Then we had the ludicrous notion that words (at least, those that contradict the views of the Left-wing morality police) themselves are violence. Repeatedly we are told that if we don’t go along with gender-identity theory we are denying the existence of trans people. There has been an unravelling of both reality and plurality that has been cheered on by those who paint themselves as kind and virtuous. Free speech has been imperilled. Authoritarianism rules. There is an ever-growing fault line, which is not easily definable as Left or Right, between those who believe in freedom of expression and those who don’t. This is a very dark time. The worrying fact is that, if society suppresses political differences or debate, then political violence follows. As George Bernard Shaw said: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship”. Ultimately those attempting to use violence to shut out the views of people like Kirk will never achieve their aims. But I fear, when people who purport to deplore violence go on social media to justify murder, a point has been reached from which we, as a society, can never return. This is fascism in action."
Oxford Union president who debated Charlie Kirk appears to celebrate his killing - "George Abaraonye shared comments after Kirk, the free-speech advocate and key Donald Trump ally, was fatally shot at Utah Valley University as he discussed mass shootings committed by trans people. In messages seen by The Telegraph, Mr Abaraonye posted: “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f------ go” – a common celebratory phrase among Gen Z. Another message, believed to be on the student’s Instagram account, stated “Charlie Kirk got shot loool”, an exaggeration of the abbreviation “laughing out loud”.
Liberals cheered when Charlie Kirk was shot, witness claims - "Mariah Petersen, 18, said she was standing around 30ft from Kirk when he was hit by the shooter’s bullet as he spoke to an audience at Utah Valley University on Wednesday afternoon. Ms Petersen, who is studying psychology, told The Telegraph that before the Turning Point USA event started there had been “a lot of back and forth” between a group of “strong, Left-leaning Democrats” and members of the audience. “When he was shot, there were cheers from the balcony [behind Kirk],” she said. “It was horrific to be a part of. There was just no human empathy.” She said she was worried the horror of Kirk’s death would make universities more apprehensive about inviting conservative speakers to college campuses... the celebrity and entertainment news site TMZ issued an apology after staff were heard laughing during livestream coverage of the killing of Kirk... In the House of Representatives there was an outbreak of shouting amid calls for a prayer for Kirk. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson led a moment of silence on the House floor on Wednesday, but Representative Lauren Boebert said: “Silent prayers get silent results.” Democrats then shouted “what about the kids in Colorado” in reference to an incident where several students were injured at a shooting at Evergreen High School earlier that day... Activist Laura Loomer, a staunch supporter of Mr Trump, claimed on X that a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had been placed on administrative leave after making comments celebrating Kirk’s death. There was no immediate response to inquiries from the department of homeland security. Ms Loomer has a track record of forcing the ousting of a number of officials she has deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. In a statement, a Fema spokesman confirmed that a member of staff had been placed on administrative leave for words considered “revolting and unconscionable”... In the United Kingdom, Fiona Wild, an independent councillor in Burnley, Lancashire, resigned after posting: “I don’t condone violence, but I do think he made himself a target and brought this on himself so good riddance to not a very nice man.”"
Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point accuses Lammy of fuelling political violence - "A pressure group founded by an assassinated Maga influencer accused David Lammy of “fuelling violent rhetoric” against Right-wing figures... The expansion of Turning Point’s UK branches in 2019 was met with praise from Conservative MPs, but Mr Lammy described the group as “hard-Right, xenophobic bile”. Reacting to the celebration of the youth group by the Conservatives, Mr Lammy wrote in a post on X: “The transformation of the Tories from a centre-Right economically conservative party to one that openly promotes hard-Right, xenophobic bile in just a few years shows what happens when you appease. “We should fight for our values on Brexit and immigration.” Responding to Sir Keir Starmer’s statement condemning “political violence” after the assassination, Turning Point UK said: “Your Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, described us and Charlie as ‘sinister forces’ and ‘xenophobic’. “Other Labour MPs have protested with violent far-Left activists who attacked us. “The language your party and the wider Left uses to describe people like Charlie and us is the reason why we face this violence. Shame on you.”... Last year, Mr Lammy refused to say whether he was wrong to call Mr Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and a “tyrant in a toupée” in a Time magazine article in 2018."
The Left is celebrating Charlie Kirk’s killing. Democracy’s foundations are crumbling - "Even before this tragic event, opinion polls have shown younger voters shifting sharply away from the Democratic Party and toward Republican and Independent affiliation. They are also voting with their feet, leaving progressive “Blue” states by the millions for conservative “Red” ones. They are flocking South for college, too, having watched the suppression of alternative views in the Ivy League and beyond. How did Charlie Kirk inspire his followers? Not with vitriol or name-calling, but with engagement. His points were strong and clear, but they were not personal attacks. He often made them on college campuses, like the one in Utah where he was murdered. Instead of making speeches and long harangues, Kirk took questions, often hostile ones. He responded to students with a rare combination of coherence and courtesy, avoiding ad hominem attacks. That is where Kirk was killed, doing what he lived for: demonstrating the crucial importance of free speech in a democracy, especially one so deeply riven by partisan and ideological mistrust. His goal was to persuade his audience, not to demean or denigrate his questioners, not to distort their views so he could defeat “strawmen”. In that respect, he was closer to our ideal of a good teacher than many in universities and high schools, the ones who have turned literature classes into indoctrination sessions and repelled so many young people. Kirk’s assassination comes a little over a year after Donald Trump was nearly killed at a political rally in Pennsylvania, followed by yet another close call from a potential assassin on Trump’s golf course in Florida... These assassination attempts come amid increasingly harsh partisan rhetoric. Long gone are the days when adversaries were called “the loyal opposition”. Today, the common term for those adversaries is “a fundamental threat to democracy”. In that chilling context, violence is often justified, either explicitly or implicitly, as somehow protecting democracy, not undermining it. Both sides claim the other does it. And both are right. The other disturbing context is unchecked urban violence, with some criminals grasping for money and control of the streets, others seeking to make political points. The violence by youth gangs and criminal cartels is apolitical – at least in intent – but their actions have political consequences since Left-wing mayors and police departments have done so little to stop them. Like-minded prosecutors downgrade the criminal charges or drop them entirely. Local judges do the same thing. Since so many of the gang members are young, minority males, the lax treatment is defended as “social justice”. Since the cartels are filled with illegal immigrants, the lax treatment is defended as protecting all immigrants. The predictable result is more crime and predation, with the worst impact in the poorest neighbourhoods. There has also been more explicitly political violence in some big cities, with repeated attacks on US federal buildings led by organised gangs like Antifa. Those attacks ramped up after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and have continued ever since in a few cities. In some, notably Portland, Oregon, the police are nowhere to be found. They simply refuse to intervene or arrest the perpetrators. The most predictable results are repeated violence, public revulsion at the disorder (especially on downtown streets, where homeless encampments are also a problem), and partisan efforts to capitalise on the divide, with progressives defending “social justice” and conservatives demanding “law and order”. Restoring public safety, they argue, is the first responsibility of any government, local or national. Donald Trump has been especially effective at grasping the issue, highlighting both local crime and illegal immigration. These are lopsided “80-20” issues, and the president capitalises on them immediately and instinctively. His secret power is his ability to lock-in Democrats on the losing side. Trump knows the opposition party, now led by its Left-wing base, will lineup on the other side of every issue and punish moderates who beg to differ. Democrats can’t escape, lest they be seen as allying with Trump. That’s the position the Left now also faces after Charlie Kirk’s assassination"
