What do you think would happen? Would Jews and Palestinian Muslims hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
What happened to the Palestinians is that the Arab world declared war on Israel in '47. Instead of wiping out the new Jewish state, the Palestinians lost and were put to flight as Israeli forces overran their annihilation attempt. — BitconnectCarlos
And there we have it. — NOS4A2
I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality. — Christoffer
Note here the charge of “spreading hate”, and the making of a threadbare connection between the act of holding and espousing one’s belief and being evil, — NOS4A2
Yes, that's what happens when people suddenly lose control of their political sovereignty/self-determination. Flood a nation of 5 million Muslims living under Sharia with 5 million Hindus and see what happens.
It would be like asking the US to absorb 200 million Muslims. — BitconnectCarlos
Occupying what? Gaza? Jerusalem? — BitconnectCarlos
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194
Understandable, but a sign of a degenerate society. Even during WWII Jews didn't go around murdering or mass murdering German civilians. — BitconnectCarlos
Are you doubting that ~1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, the majority of whom were innocent civilians? They went from house to house indiscriminately murdering. It's proudly recorded on video. — BitconnectCarlos
I remember the second intifada in the early 2000s, where Palestinian terrorists would go into bars, restaurants, and buses full of civilians and blow themselves up. I recall they'd attach unclean material to their explosive devices, so for anyone who got hit with shrapnel, the wound would get infected. It never made sense to me. If you hate a government, why attack random people living there? Unless that hatred is much deeper. — BitconnectCarlos
And Malcolm X was full of shit. He wouldn't have accomplished anything but to get a bunch of black people killed. — frank
Also, we're sure it's a political assassination now? When did that happen? I wanted to think it was my imagination but for some reason it just seems like more and more modern day conservatives take joy in crudeness and "crossing lines" for little reason other than to do so and illicit a negative emotional response in others I.E. to spread misery. Major turn off for me, despite being in favor of many stereotypical "conservative" things. Point being, you don't have to give a hoot about politics to not like a guy or what he has to say to the point of drastic action. People assault and murder people they don't like every single day. This guy just happened to be a bit of a minor celebrity who yes is known for engaging in political activity. — Outlander
We're not going to agree on this. — BitconnectCarlos
When I think "genocide," I think October 7th, when thousands of Palestinians went house to house murdering, raping, and torturing Israeli civilians living in border regions with the Palestinians as their neighbors. — BitconnectCarlos
You like that word "valence" don't you? :grin: There's a big valence band around the whole nucleus of the situation. — frank
It sounds like your concern is primarily political. — frank
Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return. — frank
I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works? — frank
So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? — Christoffer
When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence. — Christoffer
I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.
Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.
I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.
If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds. — frank
Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege. — BitconnectCarlos
This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. — Hanover
Me neither, but I still believe that Trump will ultimately fail because he’s a completely mediocre individual and not even competent. Amazingly it hasn’t stopped him yet, but I still hold out hope. — Wayfarer
This is something I was hoping to express in my comment upthread. The thoughts brewing in the young killer in the school shooting scene are not political in the way people organize to bring about a change in their circumstances. It is a different culture. — Paine
I don't know who David Hogg is. — Wayfarer
Trump/MAGA is doing everything it can to deepen the division; Trump is 'the great divider'. It is the way that demagogues have to work - anything like a liberal consensus is kryptonite to them.
So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder. — Wayfarer
Anyway, having researched Charlie Kirk, it appears many of his views (anti-semitic statements, racism, homophobia etc) are not all that far off from the bigotry level of early era Nazi party rabble rousers. — Baden
I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.
They are not the dogs, we are, in their eyes. It is a symmetrical understanding of each that the other is the dog. — unenlightened
The reason for this is economic. During the 20th Century, wealth was produced by mass production and sustained by mass consumption. This required a mass of 'wage slaves' that also functioned as consumers. But the advent of robots and 3d printing eliminates the need for mass production and consumption as everything can be made 'bespoke'. The masses are surplus to requirements, and are therefore being turned against each other. It becomes a dog eat dog world.
Neither ballot nor bullet will save us because we are the dogs of war fighting amongst ourselves. "Oh ye of little faith!"
The population will crash to the point where everyone becomes glad to see another human, of any kind, that is not a corpse. Love triumphs in the long run.
I'm a moral nihilist. — frank
My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse. — frank
The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now. — Baden
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call. — Hanover
If you actually think it’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. — Hanover
The OP would not be at all provocative if it were presented this abstractly, simply asking the question of when violence is permitted and when it is not. The OP, however, presented the question of whether the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified under the logic employed during the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting that the plight of today’s left is much like the plight of African Americans in the 1960s, and so now is the time to take up arms. — Hanover
The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.
If you actually think it’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. It is a conversation with someone who doesn’t know basic right from wrong. — Hanover
In such a world I don't want to set up heroes and anti-heroes. That'd lead to even more death -- as much of a cynic as I am I do think all life is important, even Mr Kirk's. — Moliere