Again, he was far beyond “political disagreement.” He was promoting actual, race-targeted violence domestically and internationally. If you’re going to be a Nazi terrorizing your community, you’re going to be a target for retaliation.
Comment on Too soon?
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 days agoSee the issue with this mentality is that THIS is the mentality of authoritarians. You try to find ways to justify the murder of the people you politically disagree with while not applying the same standard to the people you politically agree with.
What you’re doing is helping set a precedent that political violence is justified if you frame it in a certain way. If that’s the case then other extremist whackos, including conservative ones, are going to start doing the same thing. What’s there from stopping some conservative nutjob from shooting someone like Hasan Piker or AOC or Mamdani or anyone on the left really as a retaliation? After all, if what you’re saying here is now passing as a valid justification, then they’ll just use your very own justification to justify their own actions.
The things that authoritarians don’t understand is that when principles aren’t applied universally, the standard becomes subjective, and sooner or later, their abuse of power will come back to bite them in the ass by the very standard they helped establish. I am fully aware that Lemmy is usually off the deep end on politics, but this is too unhinged even for this platform.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Can cite specific examples of this?
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Pick any single episode he published.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
So you can’t cite a specific example? Nobody is disagreeing that Kirk had vile views, but you made a very specific claim that I want verification for. Give me something, anything that directly shows Kirk actually did this:
He was promoting actual, race-targeted violence domestically and internationally
Geldaran@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I agree with you in principle. It sucks a well-worded dissenting opinion is getting downvoted to oblivion. I’m not an advocate for political killings. But I want to pose a counter question… When does it become acceptable to cross this line? When can an otherwise reasonable person give up on a broken system, and go from political resistance to violent resistance? Because for a lot of people, their rights, their lives, and their futures are under attack. Both politically AND with the full force of the government.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I take issue with your question because it conflates two completely separate things as the same. There’s a very difference between a “system” and an “individual”, especially when that person is a private citizen. Ideally, political violence should be a line that’s never crossed, however, we don’t live in an ideal world. If people are tired of the system they live under, and they have no meaningful way of getting change then violence might be inevitable. However, in these cases people go after the system itself. That means the actual institutions that keep the system in place. Want an example? Look at what’s happening right now in Nepal.
What you don’t do to fight a system is shoot a private citizen over their political views. That’s not meaningful resistance, that’s just violence. It doesn’t do anything or change anything, all it does is help establish a dangerous precedent where violence becomes an acceptable part of political discourse. Don’t like someone’s political views? Shoot them, they probably deserved it anyway… at least that’s what people here are saying to justify it, but what these don’t understand is that it’s a two way street. Just as you cheer and condone political violence, others can as well, including the people you don’t like. You can’t condemn people you don’t like for doing it but then cheer for the same actions when the people you like do it, because you’ll just be a hypocrite and your words will hold no weight. It’s not a defensible position.
It should be noted that for any principle to mean anything, it is absolutely mandatory for it to be applied fairly and universally. If we want to remain a society that values civil liberties, then those have to extend to everyone, including those who you don’t like don’t or don’t agree with, and this includes people with vile views. When a system becomes a dysfunctional mess, it means that it has deviated significantly from it’s founding principles, and a new system needs to take it’s place to embody them. However, if the people no longer believe in civil liberties for all, then we’re looking at a very grim future because we would have tyranny’s pandora’s box.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 3 days ago
when they talk about removing rights from the “others” in society.
Geldaran@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I don’t know your backgrounds or motivations, but that simple a response feels flippant.
I too believe that you should obviously resist and try to counter someone who wants to stamp down the “other” just because they are the other. But simple talk probably shouldn’t warrant execution, unless you want those same rules to apply against you as well. Fight them with words and actions, yes. Discredit the speaker and their ideas, embarrass them, ostracize them. Drive them and their bass-ackwards views out of polite society. I know this is difficult in the current environment. They appear to have no shame. But I think the bar for for violence has to be higher.
I wont shed any tears for this guy. I wont use his name. I want him to be forgotten. But I don’t think his killing should be celebrated either.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 3 days ago
i am saying that the time to act is now. unless you want to wait until the genocide starts. it sounded flippant because it was.
TomArrr@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s a conundrum. But remember, this guy said It’s fine for some to die from guns. So I sure as hell ain’t wasting a caring thought on him.
medium.com/…/the-paradox-of-tolerance-or-how-sile…
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s not about him, it’s about the implications of embracing actions like this. Vigilantes killing people for political reasons without due process is not justice
TomArrr@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Not caring isn’t really embracing it though, is it?
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
No it isn’t. You being not caring is perfectly fine, but the OC was wasn’t being apathetic to the situation, they were embracing it.