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Charlie Kirk shot at UVU event

LogGrad98 said:
They haven't. A school shooting happened at exactly the time Kirk was shot, got almost zero coverage and barely a mention here. To be honest I don't even know if anyone died, I think the shooter killed himself but the others were just wounded. Just. **** me at how this has become normalized in our society. Oh there was another school shooting today, hey and bread is on sale at Walmart! Better make a note. Buy bread. Disgusting what's happening to our society in front of our very noses.
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Yes under democrat majority for 16 of the last 20 years
 
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PJF said:
Up yours Cy.


View: https://x.com/akafaceUS/status/1966543033379524895?t=5wXTVT-uhzCgHaSuRAWhBg&s=19
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I’ve seen many statements regarding comments made at that dinner. Not much detail. And I can find no source whatsoever that spells out what that tweet says, anywhere. It appears to be made up. Likely to provide confirmation bias, but with things that were never said in the first place, so just made up. Not surprised, and I do think we all do it, look for confirmation that is, whether we want to admit it or not. But I had to look this up, because it went well past what all other accounts state about that recent dinner.


View: https://x.com/grok/status/1966664156012310913
 
I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk. He wasn’t speaking to me, or for men like myself. At the moment I’m examining the common belief, at least on the Right, that he was a champion of free speech. And now a martyr for free speech. I do think his murder is a turning point in our history, the irony of that fact lining right up with the title of his famous organization, was not lost on me. I’m not sure I can see the man as a true champion of free speech. I do like the “Prove Me Wrong” debate style, and he treated students who came to the mic and disagreed with him respectfully.

But, saying he was a champion of free speech?

AI Overview


There is a strong argument that Charlie Kirk's actions, particularly his organization's "Professor Watchlist," directly contradicted his claims of supporting free speech by attempting to silence or intimidate professors with differing viewpoints
. This has led many critics to describe his free speech advocacy as hypocritical.
The "Professor Watchlist" and free speech debates

In 2016, Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, launched a "Professor Watchlist," a public database of academics accused of advancing "leftist propaganda". The watchlist has been cited by critics as a clear attempt to silence professors by intimidating them and mobilizing public pressure to punish them for their views.

Critics have argued that this targeting of professors goes against the spirit of free speech for several reasons:
  • Intimidation and fear: Professors included on the list have reported receiving threats and harassment, creating a chilling effect on academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors called the list "the opening salvo in a broader right-wing attack on higher education".
  • Encouraging censorship: By branding opposing ideas as "propaganda," the watchlist encouraged students and others to demand the removal or punishment of professors based on their speech. Some conservative politicians have since followed similar tactics, with incidents in Texas leading to professors being fired after students reported them for discussing gender identity.
  • Disagreement vs. blacklisting: While Kirk often framed his campus visits as promoting open debate, critics argued that the watchlist was not about disagreement but about blacklisting opponents in a modern form of McCarthyism.
Kirk's position on free speech
Despite these actions, Kirk and his supporters presented themselves as champions of free speech on college campuses. They argued that:
  • Challenging "indoctrination": Kirk's efforts were a necessary pushback against what he saw as "woke indoctrination" and liberal bias in higher education.
  • Promoting debate: His campus tours, which featured debates with students, were framed as a way to encourage dialogue and challenge dominant narratives.
  • Defending conservative views: Supporters maintain that Kirk was fighting to protect the free speech rights of conservatives, whom he believed were being censored and marginalized on college campuses.
The tension between Kirk's stated support for free speech and his specific actions targeting professors with different views remains a central point of conflict in discussions about


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n3vkVjlkTOE


krcrtv.com

Turning Point USA's professor watchlist sparks fear and controversy

Turning Point USA, founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, continues to maintain an online database of university professors they claim "discriminate aga
krcrtv.com krcrtv.com


View: https://medium.com/@mboedy/debunking-charlie-kirk-and-his-followers-on-campus-speech-a773b9225ab5


www.theguardian.com

How Charlie Kirk turned campuses into cultural battlefields – and ushered in Trump’s assault on universities

The slain head of Turning Point USA stoked campus culture wars and ‘treated faculty and students as enemies’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The man is going to be lionized and hailed as a champion of free speech. Unless you are a left leaning professor at an institution of higher learning. I’m also expecting the Right to go full throttle on cancel culture. Describing Trump’s words and actions for what they actually are may become all but impossible, with Bondi launching investigations of anyone doing that. So, his death may really have a chilling effect on free speech.

And I’ll also say I’ve long felt the internet and its social media platforms may be the death of civilization itself. Just as the Governor of Utah said to America the other day. It is a poison. It’s made me say things and exhibit a personality that is combative and angry. That cannot be doing me any good whatsoever. In other words, I do not for one second think I’ve avoided the worst effects of being online so much. What the hell did I do before the internet, lol.

Finally, there are people on this forum who feel genuine pain and grief at Kirk’s murder. I would never wish the pain of grief on any of those fellow posters, no matter how much I’ve attacked them, or their positions. No matter how much I believe they support an American fascist in Donald Trump. If Kirk meant that much to you, like a family member even, I am sorry for your loss.
 
str8line said:
Shocking that people listen to this guy and support him. He wants to take down the USA. That's what he's doing. With everything I used to feel about Hitler, as he arrogantly and psychotically took down Germany, I feel the same way about what Trump is doing right now. He's doing the same things that Hitler did early in his time of unlimited power, years before WW2. My parents lived through that hell and family suffered massively. It's just so shocking we have that type of leader and so many Americans are fully buying into it. Making a martyr out of Charlie ****ing Kirk is just another step in the authoritarian playbook. On the same day as the assassination Congress quashed the Epstein files and The Supreme Court said ICE could profile and drag people away. That is what Hitler did to his own populace. It's so ****ing disgusting I really wish I could move away. So when will Trump invade Poland?
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View: https://x.com/lumea25/status/1966846626343121123
 
PJF said:

View: https://x.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1966578517724078404?t=-HXkc0eWdDPBPpRiRzZiEw&s=19
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Sarah Churchwell’s essay from 5 years ago can help clarify why all those speakers are correct in identifying Trump as a Fascist ideologue. It was never a case of saying Trump is our Hitler. Fascism is always rooted in the history and culture out of which it emerges as a political movement.

I think one of the serious misunderstandings in our divided country, when it comes to the belief that Trump is a fascist is that supporters of Trump immediately equate it with meaning the same as “Trump is another Hitler”.

The paragraphs I’ve excerpted below, from Churchwell’s 2020 essay, can clarify why people have been both willing, and accurately able to, identify Trump as fascist and MAGA as a fascist political movement. It’s become “just another dirty word for Trump”, but it isn’t a dirty word. It’s an accurate statement. Once you understand the elements that define fascism, and once one recognizes fascism will be Americanized when it appears in the United States. Foucus on those two things, the elements that describe fascism, and what an Americanized “specie” of fascism would look like. I knew Jimmy Woods very well, years ago. He’s a genius, crazy high IQ, but that doesn’t make him enlightened.

Telling the truth about Trump is not the cause of Charlie Kirk being murdered.

“American Fascism: It Has Happenned Here”


“An American fascism would, by definition, deploy American symbols and American slogans. “Do not look for them to raise aloft the swastika,” Wise warned, “or to employ any of the popular forms of Fascism” from Europe. Fascism’s ultra-nationalism means that it works by normalizing itself, drawing on familiar national customs to insist it is merely conducting political business as usual.

Samuel Moyn recently argued in these pages against comparing Trump’s policies to fascism, because his administration is “pursuing causes with roots deep in American history. No analogy to Hitler or fascism is needed to explain these results.” But this presumes that fascism does not have its own deep roots in American history. It is arguable—not to say, exceptionalist—to presuppose that anything indigenously American cannot be fascist; this begs the question of American fascism rather than disputing it. Experts on fascism such as Robert O. Paxton, Roger Griffin, and Stanley G. Payne have long argued that fascism can never seem alien to its followers; its claims to speak for “the people” and to restore national greatness mean that each version of fascism must have its own local identity. To believe that a nationalist movement isn’t fascist because its native is to miss the point entirely.

THIS: Paxton has argued influentially that fascism is as fascism does. But conspicuous features are recognizably shared, including: nostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration; paramilitary groups; the delegitimizing of political opponents and demonization of critics; the universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups; hostility to intellectualism and attacks on a free press; anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity; and a distressed sense of victimhood and collective grievance. Fascist mythologies often incorporate a notion of cleansing, an exclusionary defense against racial or cultural contamination, and related eugenicist preferences for certain “bloodlines” over others. Fascism weaponizes identity, validating the herrenvolk and invalidating all the other folk”.

(Red: Tell me that last paragraph does not include very familiar elements seen in Trump’s movement. It describes many of the recognizable elements of the MAGA movement and is largely behind why the American citizens that Woods is singling out to quote, and to blame, for Charlie Kirk’s death, are only stating what is obvious to millions of Americans).
 
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