While I like that quote, i just went to lookup the speach and was sadden to learn you “sanitized” it. Taking out the phrase “vast majority of white people and vast majority of black people”
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.
It think it says something that you'd be willing to jump to conclusions. You "learned" it was sanitised and make a point about people willing to alter the truth, then you personally attach some meaning to it. You made up your own reality, when the word "[people]" literally indicates that the OP did change the quote. Instead of assuming malice, you could have also just asked why they changed it, or looked up why words would be in brackets, or give the OP the benefit of the doubt.
If you selectively put words in [brackets] and remove others without adding ellipses you can alter anything to have any meaning.
I for one read this and assumed RFK was just discussing gun control in general, only weeks before he was killed. Adding in the context the speech was regarding MLK gives it a whole different meaning. Still powerful, but different.
Attributing “The only thing we [experience] is fear itself” to FDR suggests he said something a little different. That FDR needs to see a therapist for his anxiety.
This assumes facts not in evidence. While the posted quote is sanitized, the assumption that the poster did the sanitization vs. copying from a sanitized source isn't necessarily supported.
Fair enough. But no need for the faux-legalese, it isn't clear whether the OP sanitised it or copied it that way. That changes nothing about my comment though, just who sanitised it.
And the "those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black" which has always stuck in my mind because of the iconic phrasing.
Frankly I find creating an analogue between the death of MLK and Kirk in bad taste only magnified by scrubbing race from an MLK tribute.
Kirk would have celebrated MLK's death as he did the Pelosi hammer attack. Kirk called MLK "awful" and "not a good person" and the Civil Rights Movement "a huge mistake.".
It is fascinating to see how many people are projecting their own best beliefs onto Kirk, while ignoring all his worst ones. It's a reflection of how they see themselves, not of how he was as a man.
Given his comments on the Pelosi attack, it's clear that he didn't believe that people should be safe from violence for their political beliefs. Given his comments on trans people[1], it's clear that he didn't believe that they should be safe from violence for the crime of... Being trans.
He would fail to meet the standards of civility set for this thread, or for this forum.
Politics is a barrier that protects us from political violence. The worst practitioners of it know this, and act to encourage escalation that will obliterate that barrier. So far, they've been rewarded by wealth and power for their efforts.
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[1] Charlie Kirk has called for "men to handle" trans people "the way they did in the 50s and 60s."
Is this how someone just harmlessly opening up a civil dialogue behaves?
I had never heard of this guy and thanks to the Streisand effect I learned that he was a piece of shit.
And now het gets canonised like MLK?!
Tells you a lot about right wing America.
If you are concluding that he was a piece of shit based on what people have claimed here I would encourage you to see some of his videos for yourself. Here is an example of his interaction with a transgender male student - https://m.youtube.com/shorts/FhzqKQzueKU
there is a time and place to try to heal the damage you believe that he did to society -- but you're clearly celebrating the death of the man in a thread about his assassination.
You seem to be nonplussed about his suffering, you're criticizing the way a dead man expressed his religious beliefs to the audience, and are implying that his beliefs on gun control somehow balanced his death.
Doesn't that help fuel the narratives about his political opposition that he tried to drive while living?
>Not everyone is some crazed extremist.
...maybe so, but the death of this dude sure did pull some out of thin air.
There's nothing in the parent post that celebrates the assassination. It expresses no empathy for him, but lack of empathy is not a celebration.
It does outline the various ways in which Kirk worked to make the world a worse place, but an accounting of it is not a celebration of a public killing.
"Religious beliefs" is not a weapon or a shield that you can just raise to deflect all criticism of a man's actions. It rings especially hollow for one whose behavior was so highly un-Christ-like.
I see nothing "celebrating" anything in that comment. Just some facts about someone who's ideologies they found reprehensible - as most should by the sounds of it.
> but you're clearly celebrating the death of the man in a thread about his assassination.
I'm not celebrating anything. I'm pointing out irony. You call for gun violence, thinking you're untouchable (because of your skin color and political ties), but you're not.
>you're criticizing the way a dead man expressed his religious beliefs to the audience
Hang on here. Let's unpack this. This is actually pretty humorous.
Let's take the story of Jesus of Nazareth. A poor, brown skinned Jewish guy from Israel born out of wedlock who worked as a carpenter and preached love, compassion, and understanding, whose supposed miracles included healing the sick and disfigured. He worked to feed the needy, clothe the naked, advocated for paying taxes, and treating one's enemies with compassion as if they were their own kin. This person was executed by being nailed to a cross and in his final moments, still asked his followers to forgive his executioners.
We have a rich white dude, raised in a wealthy first world major city suburb using the above gentleman's message to preach hate, racial superiority, phobia, and outright bigotry, all under the guise of "asking tough questions". This dude would go around and "debate" young adults (and children) half his age and use "gotcha" tactics and quick speaking to overwhelm and gish gallop his opposition into giving up. He would then selectively edit the "debates" and post them online to create a strawman for his political allies to punch.
> You call for gun violence, thinking you're untouchable (because of your skin color and political ties)
Neither part of this is true. Being willing to accept that guns kill people is not the same thing as calling for gun violence. And this happened in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt.
> A poor, brown skinned Jewish guy from Israel born out of wedlock
It's abundantly clear from any translation that Joseph and Mary were at least engaged. Here's a detailed argument that they were in fact married per the customs of their people: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bi... Regardless, the entire point of the story is that Jesus did not result from extramarital sex.
The quotes that people are using now to try to paint Kirk as "anti-Semitic" are clearly criticisms of current-day Israeli government, not of Judaism as a religion.
> who worked as a carpenter and preached love, compassion, and understanding, whose supposed miracles included healing the sick and disfigured. He worked to feed the needy, clothe the naked, advocated for paying taxes
Yes, and Kirk would have said all of those things are virtuous.
> and treating one's enemies with compassion as if they were their own kin. This person was executed by being nailed to a cross and in his final moments, still asked his followers to forgive his executioners.
Kirk clearly had compassion for the people he disagreed with. This is abundantly clear from any of the video footage. Disapproving of someone else's life choices does not represent a lack of compassion.
Jesus, per the Bible, went through days of ceremony and was well aware that he would be executed as part of a religious persecution. He made this petition because he knew who would kill him and supposed they were misinformed and could still be redeemed. Kirk had no such opportunity (it's still amazing to me that there were people proposing that we should hold off on declaring his "last words" in case it later came out that he somehow said more, after having been shot in the neck). But he did commonly say that he (and TPUSA) would "pray for" people whom he thought misguided.
> We have a rich white dude, raised in a wealthy first world major city suburb... "asking tough questions"
This is the true part of that sentence.
> This dude would go around and "debate" young adults (and children) half his age
The most popular video on Kirk's channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk4Nkmfgxzk) directly addresses this, at the beginning. In short: there is obviously and clearly nothing wrong with an adult speaking to adults at a college campus (college age people cannot reasonably be called "children") to espouse his beliefs, encourage and respond to critique etc. This is in fact the purpose of an institute of higher education.
Kirk died age 31; this is much younger than most college professors, younger than most leftists invited to speak on campus, younger than Hasan Piker, and younger than Cenk Ugyur was when he started The Young Turks. People "half his age" do not generally attend college. And this is at the end. When he started — when he co-founded TPUSA — he was one of these "kids", aged 18.
> and use "gotcha" tactics and quick speaking to overwhelm and gish gallop his opposition into giving up.
Watching any of the video footage available makes it abundantly clear that this is not true. The only "gotcha" here is supposing that there's something wrong with Kirk being older than his interlocutors.
Another common part of this narrative (which is mentioned by the student in that video) is that Kirk somehow exploited students being "unprepared". This is entirely their own fault. The footage makes it clear that people (including that student) would come to the mic with very little idea what they wanted to say beyond a general topic, and no idea of how to defend their position even to a neutral party. They all had ample time to prepare. These debate events are announced in advance; and modern technology allows people to access unfathomable amounts of information via the "Internet", even while walking around in a crowd of people outdoors.
> He would then selectively edit the "debates" and post them online to create a strawman for his political allies to punch.
Curiously enough, the most popular video on the channel also directly addresses this. The only selection that went on was choosing which students to showcase. The only editing is to mute words that would potentially cause problems on YouTube. Any of these videos of individual students clearly illustrates that.
> Religious beliefs, eh? Come on.
Proselytism is in fact completely consistent with Christian faith.
Removing the black and white people part makes it more relevant to the current times when it is not just black and white people but non negligible numbers of Hispanics, first peoples, Asians, Arabs and other minorities.
But advocating for the struggles of one group and not another shouldn’t make one bad.
The whole idea of intersectionality makes it hard to build coalitions and turns everything into a problem that’s impossibly complex to solve and difficult to build a coalition around.
It’s the basic reason many leaders who the majority of a country dislike rise to power. Because that majority can’t put their differences aside.
Why does a group have to marginalized to be worthy of advocacy? Charlie only ever expressed his opinion in written and verbal form. That is the bare minimum requirement for free speech. Once you start getting to “oh but this is hate speech” or “ free speech, but XYZ” then there is no free speech. The first amendment becomes meaningless.
He never suppressed or oppressed anyone like what DEI has been doing by openly discriminating against people based on their skin color (and therefore presumed financial status).
He had no version of correct and he didn’t want anyone to suffer. He merely spoke and wrote his opinion and for that “crime” and that alone, someone decided to hate him so much that they decided to silence him forever.
This is sad and shameful (as have been the attacks and assassinations of any elected official or public figure in the past many months).
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.