He had shitty opinions, we know. I won't follow them. I will have empathy and I will not celebrate his death. Still, I think the world's population improved with one less hateful person around.
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He had shitty opinions
I think we should stop saying this.
He was killed for his actions, not his opinions. His audience members are the ones who kill for opinions.
Discussing his personal opinions feels like a bit of a republican both sidesing talking point, honestly. I mean, if one side can kill the other just for having conservative opinions, then certainly they can fight back and kill people just for having blue hair and using the "wrong" bathroom!
It was the same with talk radio hosts decades ago. People would argue whether Limbaugh or Hannity really believe all the BS or if they just do it for ratings.
I only remember caring about that distinction when I was still immersed in the conservatism I was born into.
edit: added many word was not there
I had someone try to tell me I was stooping to his level with my dark humor memes.
I told them, I can't do that because I'm not 6ft under.
Here’s the frustration and why this should not be celebrated:
Charlie Kirk spent years dehumanizing people, making lives measurably worse, and profiting from hatred. The cosmic irony of him being shot while calling trans people dangerous and minimizing gun violence feels like the universe delivering a punchline he wrote himself. There’s a cathartic release in seeing someone who seemed untouchable suddenly silenced by the very violence he dismissed.
But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive. Every celebration post, every "rest in piss" meme, every "fucked around and found out" joke is already being screenshot and weaponized. The worst people imaginable, those eager to exploit violence, are being handed exactly what they want: supposed proof that “they were right,” justification for crackdowns, and, most dangerously, a martyr whose blood sanctifies every awful thing he stood for.
Celebration may feel like a dunk on fascism, but in reality it accelerates it. It may feel like strength, but it exposes a movement so strategically bankrupt that it mistakes emotional satisfaction for political victory. Kirk alive was one influencer among many; Kirk dead is a rallying cry that will outlive us all.
The rage at what he represented is justified. But celebrating his death guarantees those very ideas will flourish. American democracy is dying, and a gravedigger falling into the hole is no victory when it only deepens the grave.
His ideas needed to be defeated. Instead, they’ve been immortalized.
Ohhh! I love Starship Troopers! The book, not so much, but the movie I adore.
Let's dig into your choice to respond with this scene.
That's the moment where Verhoeven shows us 'Federation Victory'! The good guys have won! They've captured the Brain Bug! It's afraid! Humanity wins!
Except what's actually happening is fascists celebrating the torture of a sentient being. One that extracted human minds just as they'll now extract from its mind; each side justifying their horrors by pointing to the other's. All while convincing themselves they're heroes.
The Federation doesn't attempt communication or diplomacy. They literally probe its brain for intel while cheering its terror. The troops cheering 'It's afraid!' aren't the good guys. They're Verhoeven's mirror showing us how righteousness becomes the very tyranny it claims to fight.
NPH's character literally becomes a full SS-uniformed intelligence officer who feeds his best friends into an endless meat grinder. The bugs were defending their home. The Federation manufactured its own eternal enemy. And everyone cheering becomes complicit in forever war.
You've sent me a scene about people so drunk on their enemy's fear that they can't see they've become the monsters.
So either you're agreeing that celebrating suffering makes us indistinguishable from what we oppose, or you've accidentally proven my point by quoting the villains as heroes.
Either way, I couldn't have picked a better metaphor myself.
Or I used a well-known movie scene to poke at historically violent people using violence to score political points. Noting hypocrisy in a group is not to stoop to their level.
They were gonna do it, anyway. They were just waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. In a world as big and complex as ours, probability would have provided them with some pretext sooner or later. As we can see, they don't know anything about the shooter, or his ideology. It's just an excuse. If the world didn't provide them one, they'd manufacture it. Walking around on eggshells and trying to avoid giving them one was never tenable.
You're right that they manufacture pretexts, but there's a crucial difference between forced fabrications and genuine ammunition. When they have to invent threats, their propaganda requires constant maintenance and reality-bending. When we hand them actual violence to point to, we transform their lies into prophecies. Yes, probability ensures incidents will occur, but the question is whether we contribute to that probability or work against it. "They'll do it anyway" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that absolves us of strategic thinking. I say, let us not make the Fascist's job easier.
Only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
He wasn't just a racist he was a fucking Nazi.
But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive.
My friend, you've got the right stuff. You have a very smooth and relatable style of communication and I really do value when those like you say something that I espouse and would otherwise butcher.
I won't tell people not to celebrate because I know how disliked that sort of sentiment is on a thread like this. But you're absolutely right and it sucks. They know that they just hit the "not crying wolf" lottery and will never stop banging that drum.
I'm frightened for whom the bell tolls.
Thank you for that. Even though he died, he has won. Look at the amount of hatred he has nourished. Furthermore, I don’t believe his death will bring any justice to the people he impacted with his hatred. While I see people celebrating, I’m terrified.
Terrified this is how things are at the moment. If you can celebrate the death of Charlie, it means you have it in you to celebrate anyone’s else given a motive. And I think that is The first step of the dehumanisation process he so fondly used.
You've identified something crucial that others miss: we don't defeat dehumanization by becoming better at it. The moment we celebrate death, we've accepted their fundamental premise that political disagreement justifies violence.
Your terror is appropriate and I feel it with you. Not just at the violence itself, but at watching people you agree with politically abandon the very principles that distinguish us from what we oppose. The hardest battle isn't against fascism; it's maintaining our humanity while fighting inhumanity.
I take a little solace from the fact that win or not, he will not be here to see it through
I understand finding comfort where you can, but consider: Kirk not being here to "see it through" assumes his death diminishes his impact. The opposite is true. Alive, he was one voice that could be countered, fact-checked, and eventually forgotten. Dead, he becomes eternal; forever young, forever wronged, forever useful to those who will absolutely be here to see it through. The solace is hollow when his absence strengthens everything he stood for.
I'll sleep ever so slightly better now.
I have seen so many right wingers post something along the lines of "leftists are so psychotic for being happy he was killed, we should kill all leftists in response!"
I don't give a shit about Charlie Kirk, rest in piss, but my celebration is mildly stunted by the fact that this is a dangerous thing to normalize and this is a massive notch in that direction given how huge of a public figure he was and the nature of his assassination being so public.
Of course, the right is largely responsible for that normalization, and Charlie Kirk's death is actually on people like Charlie Kirk's very hands. However, for me its just the consequences and the dark future that this seems to push us further into.
Hopefully the right fails to capitalize on his death effectively and we move onto largely forgetting about the piece of shit.
Did he actually say that? That literally what genuine psychopaths say.
I had to look it up. The full context is:
So the new communications strategy for Democrats, now that their polling advantage is collapsing in every single state… collapsing in Ohio. It's collapsing even in Arizona. It is now a race where Blake Masters is in striking distance. Kari Lake is doing very, very well. The new communications strategy is not to do what Bill Clinton used to do, where he would say, "I feel your pain." Instead, it is to say, "You're actually not in pain." So let's just, little, very short clip. Bill Clinton in the 1990s. It was all about empathy and sympathy. I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time.
Later on Twitter:
The same people who lecture you about 'empathy' have none for the soldiers discharged for the jab, the children mutilated by Big Medicine, or the lives devastated by fentanyl pouring over the border. Spare me your fake outrage, your fake science, and your fake moral superiority.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-empathy-quote/
It's not as bad as the out-of-context quote, but I'm having trouble even wrapping my head around it. I guess the argument is something like:
How can you claim to have empathy when you actively ignore or dismiss the pain of these specific groups? Your empathy is not real; it's a political weapon. Fake outrage, fake science, and fake moral superiority used to win arguments and elections.
He's not wrong about (many) Democrats. But even setting vaccine denialism aside, the core of favoring 'sympathy over empathy' is kind of unavoidable. It feels like tankie whataboutism: 'Democrat's empathy is fake, therefore, more distanced sympathy is our justified approach'
didn't elon musk also say something along the lines? "empathy is a weakness and our demise" or sth like that ...
Yes, snopes link: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-empathy-quote/
OK, honestly I’m not going to celebrate a murder. But nothing can stop me from appreciating the heck out of the irony.
"I cannot wish death upon a man, but I have read some obituaries with great delight."
I remember every single time someone they didn't like died. They would rejoice in the most vile manner imaginable. Fuck them.
I am betting that Kirk's killer was a fellow conservative who found him too soft and not hard right enough.
Or... maybe it was the same guy who killed Brian Thompson... because Luigi is innocent.
Literally right-wingers 24/7 are praising political violence, calling for the eradication of all Palestinians, glorifying the gunning down or running over of protestors, praising the murder of homeless people, praising the execution of minorities by cops, constantly glorifying the suicide rate of trans people, etc. Literally you can go on Twitter and find any of these right-wing accounts crying about how we shouldn't glorify violence and read their post history and you will likely not even have to go back more than 1 day to find them glorifying violence.
Back during Trump's first term I would hear people saying "this country is going to fall into civil war" and I told my friends "we are nowhere near a civil war." Because the conditions were not there. It takes a huge buildup to move people to organized violence. You have to have thousands and in the US case millions or at least 100s of thousands of people willing to kill and die for a cause and we didn't have that, and still don't.
But the pandemic came and we saw half the country couldn't be bothered to wear a mask or get a vaccine to protect their neighbors and the other half saw that outpouring of collective psychopathy and realized that their neighbors were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their family and community to "own the libs" and we moved a step closer.
But you can't have a civil war like the 1800's today, there aren't bright geographical lines of loyalty. I predicted in the Biden administration that we would see a period of rising violence scattered across the country, like bleeding Kansas, but spread all over.
And that is exactly what we are seeing.
We still aren't at the point where we could fall into civil war, but we are closer every year. Trump is doing his damndest to create the conditions.
I pray we never get that far. Civil wars are the worst short of full on genocide, and they make the big G a whole lot more likely.
Not wearing a helmet, bullet-proof vest and all and arguing against gun control.
He was asking to be shot...
/s obvsly ffs
God works in mysterious ways.
I firmly believe that there are people who make the world better by dying.
Yep. I've already said this like three times on other platforms: it's ok to be happy about this. He gave you permission. Twice, actually. The "it's worth sacrificing a person every now and then if it means we get to have guns" and this empathy thing.
This is maybe the only time it's ok to be happy someone died.
It's what he would have wanted.
Every single time a fascist dies, is a time to celebrate. And yes, I mean absolutely every single fucking time.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
No really, if he was a nicer guy this probably wouldn't have happened.