[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Itse

I don't agree.

As long as Charlie Kirk had a platform, someone somewhere was going to die because of far-right violence. The only real question was "who?"

"Charlie Kirk himself" is by far the best answer that question.

There is no reality where someone like him has a platform and no one is attacked by the far-right lunatics inspired by him and people like him being allowed a platform, which is why free-speech absolutism is a fundamentally amoral position.

Sure, in a perfect world he would have been de-platformed and/or put in jail, but that's not the world we live in, and in this world him dying at the hands of another far-right wacko is a good thing.

There was always the opportunity for literally anyone to debunk his BS. I have yet to see one of his talking points that I agree with, it sounds to me like you didn’t agree with many of his views either, and neither did a lot of people if not an overwhelming majority of people on this site.

To me that suggests that his words weren’t an unstoppable juggernaut that necessitated him being assassinated to stop.

If we start normalizing people getting shot over their words you’re going to dissuade the people capable of countering his message from doing so while giving those with power who agreed with his message an opportunity to exploit his death for their own gain.

(It also will likely spread fear and suspicion inside the far-right, which is good.)

Yeah assuming of course they don’t convince themselves and their supporters that his assassination made him a martyr and try to get some retribution instead. But maybe you’re right and wingnuts are actually highly sophisticated people who don’t fall for BS like that or overreact when their emotions are running high.

In a 2 party democracy wingnuts aren’t the ones you need to be concerned about when trying to change course. You focus on the moderates to win elections to effect the change you want to see. A moderate voter who didn’t know who he was but sees a bunch of people celebrating a family man getting shot dead in public because of the morality of his political messaging are in most cases probably going to initially question the morality of your own messaging. Don’t know how you consider that to be a good thing or net benefit.

(Edited for brevity and clarity.)

It was brief, I’ll give you that much. But I’m still not clear on where you draw the line on this sort of thing. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for people to feel relieved that his messaging may be slowed down as a result of his death(even if I think it will have the opposite effect, at least in the short term) but celebrating the way it happened in my opinion is completely counter productive. Even if he was a jackass.

Justifying violence to silence politcal opponents generally leads to more violence and induces fear in those who otherwise might have through nonviolent means been able to stop his messaging and the future messaging of the people who followed him.