It often seems like insincere virtue signaling.

  • jonesey71@lemmus.org
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    2 days ago

    This has gone on too long, I agree. Stand up, flush, move on. This is just like every other turd. Every once in a while you have a turd worth looking at for a minute before you flush, but this isn’t that turd.

  • RedSeries (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    Are they still going on and on about one dead guy? Who was unsurprisingly shot by someone more far-right than he was?

    They either really really want this to be the reichtag or they’re still trying to distract from like the Epstein files or some crap.

  • Florencia (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    “News article titled A New Democratic Think Tank Wants to Curb the Influence of Liberal Groups, published September 17, 2025, in The New York Times by Reid J. Epstein. The article explains that the Searchlight Institute, led by Adam Jentleson, aims to persuade Democrats to play down issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights to appeal to more voters. A color photo beneath shows five people standing outdoors: Cam Thompson, Charlotte Swasey, Adam Jentleson (center), Tré Easton, and Danielle Deiseroth.”

  • Bad Jojo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPM
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    3 days ago

    So many headlines of celebs doing stuff like this and they all feel forced and fake, or at the very least detached from reality. Are they going to start singing “Imagine” again?

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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      3 days ago

      Reality is that the assassination is being used to justify oppression and hasn’t done anything at all to help causes Kirk opposed. Far less people would be lamenting if this were just a normal death of natural causes (incl. the healthcare system, even) instead of a political assassination.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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          2 days ago

          protests are clearly not assassinations. Kirk was shot doing a similar kind of political gathering and I wouldn’t shoot a Nazi protestor either

      • Bad Jojo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPM
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        3 days ago

        If liberals were lamenting that Charlie Kirk was turned into a martyr even though he was one of the biggest pieces of shit on this space rock, I would accept and respect that. Instead they are all “he was a Christian”, “he was a family man”, “he was a man of faith”, “please send love to his family”. Meanwhile his widow, who’s rich as fuck already, is milking his followers with Go Fund Me campaigns.

        I am genuinely disgusted by how everyone, left and right, is s constantly being taken advantage of…but that’s for a different post.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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          3 days ago

          Anyone being assassinated for political views, no matter how bad said views were, elicits sympathy automatically due to the long-term effects of political assassinations when there isn’t an uprising going on. I don’t see what’s wrong with that, and confirmation bias finding additional “things” to have flimsier sympathies for is a thing. Also, “he was a Christian/man of faith” is something I only hear Christians say.

          • ViceroTempus@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            With how you put it, it sounds like the problem wasn’t Kirk being assassinated. It’s that there weren’t more politically motivated deaths in a similar time frame, otherwise known as an “uprising” that would have normalized it.

            I think you’re on to something.

            • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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              1 day ago

              Yeah, I’d support a movement led by someone I agree with that would set back the oppression by more than a few months. (“agree with” would include minimizing innocent casualties and stuff.) Though Kirk would be one of the weirdest targets, so they better have a good explanation for the efficacy.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        and hasn’t done anything at all to help causes Kirk opposed

        Why the fuck would it? It wasn’t intended to in the first place!

        I’m starting to feel like I’m taking crazy pills, seeing so many people who should know better act as if the assassination was somehow intended to be for the benefit of the left even though it was a right-wing nutjob who did it.

  • Alpha71@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I just learned that he received a standing ovation in MY Canadian Parliament. JFC…

  • Zgierwoj@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    Are you telling me that liberal elites alienated from violence are shocked that someone would want a white man dead?

  • halvar@lemy.lol
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    3 days ago

    the number of people who don’t care about political assassinations just happening left and right (in both senses) is too damn low

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      political assassinations just happening left and right (in both senses)

      They’re not, though. They’re literally only happening by the right.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      here’s the thing. they’re not happening left and right by the left and right. the political right dominates the violence based terrorism and assassination space. to imply otherwise is to run cover for them.

  • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I am sure some of it is virtue signaling, or at least people restraining themselves from saying what they really think to not be cancelled or whatever. Prominent figures do still need to worry about censoring themselves so they maintain their platform, or at the very least that they aren’t easily strawmanned by taking them out of context.

    But I think most of it is sincere anyway. You can dislike someone, even think the world would be a better place without them in it, and still feel bad about them suffering a tragedy. You probably know someone who is annoying to interact with, but that doesn’t mean you want them to be publicly gunned down. Because even if they behave in such a way that befits some sort of karmic retribution, you recognize a punishment can be overly cruel and not justified by the associated “crime”.

    And honestly, you could even coldheartedly criticise the strategy of it. Killing someone like this makes them a martyr and gives them and their cause a great deal of public sympathy. They are immediately cemented in the public consciousness and forever added as a historical figure instead of simply becoming forgettable when their influence wanes. Before this, me and my friends would probably recognize the name Charlie Kirk but wouldn’t know much else about him. But now it’s given everything he’s said a lot more attention to us and others and made it harder to be able to criticize things he said that really do deserve a lot of criticism.

    In the political commentary I’ve listened to, it’s like there’s a feeling of winning on a technicality, or by cheating, or something similar. You did not beat him in the marketplace of ideas and have been robbed of the opportunity of ever doing so. If it is indeed a victory, then it is a hollow one.

    • frostysauce@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      You can dislike someone, even think the world would be a better place without them in it, and still feel bad about them suffering a tragedy. You probably know someone who is annoying to interact with, but that doesn’t mean you want them to be publicly gunned down.

      No, no, no. Stop this. He was a horrible person, I’m glad he was gunned down, and he deserved to be gunned down.

      • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Look, if he did some actually criminal shit that I don’t know about, he should have been arrested, tried, and sentenced accordingly. That would have been justice. An individual simply choosing to kill him is murder from a vendetta. No accountability. No argument for others as to why he deserved it. It means he can’t be made into an example of a villain that we overcame as a society. He is instead made into a victim, so him and everything associated with him is treated with sympathy it should never have.

        But as far as I know, he was hated for spreading ignorant shit ideas. Those can’t be defeated with a gun, and that is the real danger he represented. Bad ideas need to be identified as such to establish the person giving them as ignorant and not worth listening to. Gunning him down like this bolsters his arguments instead of dismantling them.

        Celebrating the murder legitimizes it as a valid response for saying things that people don’t like, and that’s a dangerous precedent for anyone trying to change the state of things for the better.