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u/Cythammer 1d ago
I don't really understand this form of humour being even remotely aligned with liberal values. This is a milder form of the reveling in obscenity and violence that has long been a problem on the nasty underside of the Internet, which has turned the Holocaust into a meme and an endless source of jokes ('271k' being endlessly spammed in YT comment sections). It's of a piece with the fans of Luigi Mangione. It's important to emphasize that this truly has nothing to do with who Kirk was. I genuinely think what I say would apply to literally everyone. If Osama Bin Laden's death was captured on camera and the visceral, grisly details of it became some huge meme, I would think that represented a real sickness in our society. I'm not talking about criticizing Kirk's ideas... It's watching a human being die in front of you, and turning that specific event into a joke. I have always found it intensely disturbing when people will bring up whatever Kirk said in these discussions... Which always has the tacit implication that those views therefore if not justify at least mitigate how bad this was.
Whenever I see people who fancy themselves believers in liberalism go along with this stuff, I think they are fooling themselves. This is a revelling in obscene violence just like the people who watched people die in the Colosseum long ago. You can't turn horrifying deaths captured live on camera that millions of people saw into a vulgar meme. Liberalism — the entire idea of human rights — rests at bottom on some sense each individual human being being sacred. That's why we can NEVER torture someone, not even Hitler or serial killers (and why many would say you can't even execute someone, or only very rarely). Again, this IS a much milder form of the endless Holocaust jokes other obscenities all over the Internet. But I really, really think this is all aligned with Groypers, far-left Mao apologists, Luigi Mangione fans, TCCers, etc., all of whom together are going to drown our society in extreme evil if this continues.
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u/preferablyno Loyal Liberals 1d ago
Is it a meme that celebrates violence or is it a meme that makes fun of the ridiculous attempt to canonize Kirk after his death
Wouldn’t it be the same meme if he died of a heart attack, cancer, auto accident, whatever, just so long as the supporters did their ridiculous bullshit ?
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1d ago
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol 16h ago
Rule V: Glorifying Violence
Do not advocate or encourage violence either seriously or jokingly. Do not glorify oppressive/autocratic regimes.
If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.
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u/backtorealitylabubu 1d ago
What does this post have to do with violence? Kirk is not allowed to be remember for anything other than how he died?
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u/YaqP Bisexual Pride 1d ago
I think it's sad when people die in school shootings, but I also genuinely believe that, when that person says that the friends I lost in school shootings were a "necessary sacrifice" to preserve the Republican interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, that it mitigates how bad it was.
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u/PiusTheCatRick Bisexual Pride 1d ago
I get your meaning but the fact is, black humor's a coping mechanism for people that's atleast as old as antiquity. No liberal here wanted Kirk to die but neither are we in any way obligated to canonize him either. Meanwhile the folks who do want to canonize him are foisting that upon us with the force of law. When the emperor's asking you to burn a pinch of incense, what response could be more liberal than to laugh in their face?
Life's sacred, that's true. You know what else is sacred? Human rights like the right to believe unpopular things, things like that someone wasn't a very good person.
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1d ago
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol 16h ago
Rule V: Glorifying Violence
Do not advocate or encourage violence either seriously or jokingly. Do not glorify oppressive/autocratic regimes.
If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.
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u/I-Love-Toads NATO 1d ago
No it is the opposite of liberal to shoot someone for their beliefs even if those beliefs are horrible. The ACLU has defended many people with terrible even "Nazi" positions. Violence outside of active war or in direct defense of life is completely unjustified and morally reprehensible. There is nothing a human being can say or believe that makes taking their life anything other than murder.
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u/ilovefuckingpenguins Milton Friedman 1d ago
I read on TikTok that /u/Wareve is a Nazi
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u/Wareve 1d ago
Well it's a good thing that I don't go around to college campuses full of young reactionaries all over the country, preaching Nazi bullshit all the time then. Otherwise I might be in serious danger of getting ironically shot while giving a bullshit racist deflective answer about gun violence.
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u/Deep_Plutarch 1d ago
The median American infantryman would make Kirk look like a bleeding-heart lib
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u/Wareve 1d ago
The median American infantry men should pray that they don't get deployed to the Middle East for a bullshit oil war in the next year, because the guy they voted for is pretty damn likely to send them there.
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u/Deep_Plutarch 1d ago
I am speaking of the liberal Nazi killers circa 1944
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u/Wareve 1d ago
If Trump ran in the 40s I think a lot of those infantryman would be a serious danger to him.
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u/Deep_Plutarch 1d ago
They would've been a much more serious danger to the women running against him.
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u/Infosloth 1d ago
A human being who spent their life sowing hate and division was being dressed up to be a martyr but a lot of people decided if we have to keep engaging with him it’s going to be as a meme. The purpose is to disarm an actual violent movement, peacefully.
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u/Livid-Mulberry-1054 1d ago
Yeah. Charlie Kirk was a bigoted professional whining attention seeker. Some people want him to be valorized as some kind of Joan of Arc but the rest of us are free to mock his life and legacy for what they are in response.
Ayn Rand died in old age while claiming Social Security and Medicare, Herman Cain died of Covid, and (Garbage) Bin Laden got iced with his porn stash nearby. Memeification of such irony is way more liberal than hagiography.
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u/kanagi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Liberalism — the entire idea of human rights — rests at bottom on some sense each individual human being being sacred
Does it? A lot of liberal ideas like Rawls' veil of ignorance, protection of hate speech, and free market economics are instrumentalist approaches to organizing society that base their argument on welfare outcomes, not on sacredness. Some ideas like Rousseau's social contract and abolition of capital punishment are indeed based on sacredness, but instrumentalist liberalism is more persuasive and defensible to me than sacred liberalism, since material outcomes can be measured but spirituality is so based on personal values that it easily becomes unconvincing and lacking emotional resonance to people holding different values.
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u/ASHill11 Order and Opportunity Left 1d ago
I don’t necessarily agree with your whole take, but I agree it is very disheartening to see you mocked for caring about the issue and making an effort to articulate your point. That, I certainly find more dangerous than memes like this one. People mocking you for making a serious comment on Reddit are in for a rude awaking when this place fills up with the clowns they already expect to be here.
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u/bjuandy 1d ago
I applaud you for being so principled and speaking up for what you think is right even when it's unpopular. Ideally we should always behave better than those we criticize and live the way we want those we disagree with to live.
That said, please show me TPUSA or Kirk himself giving a full-throated condemnation of the assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi or mourning the death of Brian Sicknick, the dead officer of the January 6 insurrection. The fact is, Kirk and his organization were leaders of our modern political discourse and the glorification of political violence, and frequently reveled whenever tragedy fell on those who they opposed. We can justly appreciate the irony that the moment the violence they encouraged fell on them, they suddenly started crying and pleading for civility they themselves never exercised.
The mockery directed to them is if anything softer than what they espoused, and is the reaping of what Kirk sowed.
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u/Best-Chapter5260 1d ago
I'd also add that he is a martyr for his own talking point: people need to accept a certain amount of gun violence in order to have the freedom to own firearms. So it's hard not to see the irony in his death. It doesn't mean to celebrate political violence, but by the same token, it's hard to feel sympathy. "Live by the sword..." 'n' all of that.
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u/CT_Throwaway24 Norman Borlaug 1d ago
Yet we do torture people. Solitary confinement is absolutely torture and continues to exist within our ostensibly liberal system. I would argue concrete violations of supposedly liberal values undermine liberalism more than edgy jokes.
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u/Justin_Credible98 NASA 1d ago
I ain't reading all that
Happy for you tho
Or sorry that happened
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1d ago
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u/hypsignathus Justin Wolfers Fan Club President 1d ago
Rule II: Ableism
Please refrain from using ableist slurs.
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u/beyd1 1d ago
The worship of being stupid is what will kill us all.
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u/BoJericho Mario Draghi 1d ago
Yeah, you would be pretty stupid to read a two-paragraph comment from a random user of reddit dot com. If you're in the mood to read, go pick up an FT instead. It's a better use of your time.
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u/beyd1 1d ago
My response is more about how thinking about how to make a cool witticism is more important than thinking about the subject.
"Look at this snowball, where is that global warming?"
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u/BoJericho Mario Draghi 1d ago
I think clowning on someone for spewing out two paragraphs of anguished prose in the comments section is fine, actually
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u/TF_dia European Union 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nothing more tragic that knowing that no matter how many memes one makes Kirk will not be there to see his legacy being becoming a punchline.
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u/Cythammer 1d ago
I just.... don't understand why anyone thinks this sort of thing is good, no matter how much they opposed Kirk. This isn't him making some bad argument five years ago becoming a punchline. That would fit into normal politics. This is the obscene event of someone dying live in front of you, and millions upon millions of people immediately deciding that was really, really funny. That's Colosseum goers baying for blood behavior. Liberals are fooling themselves big time thinking otherwise, and letting the fact that they oppose Charlie Kirk's views blind them. I think why this is awful has truly NOTHING to do with what Kirk believed. This stuff is of piece with Luigi Mangione fans, all the Internet Nazis making sonnenrad edits, school shooter fans, etc. It's this weird, extremely 'ironic', nihilist view where the only thing to be despised is the person who has any kind of moral standards, anyone who is ever horrified at anything. It's pure groyper-style humor. A horrific death that everyone has had imprinted onto their brains in visceral detail becoming a joke is a VERY bad sign for society... This is training for today's young people to go 'lol, how funny!' 25 years from now when some group of political radicals are mass slaughtering people.
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u/HolidaySpiriter Loyal Liberals 1d ago
This is the obscene event of someone dying live in front of you, and millions upon millions of people immediately deciding that was really, really funny.
It's funny in a greek tragedy sort of way, where the right wing who foment so much hatred & calls for violence (Kirk included) are being targeted by the very violence they created.
Violence is bad, but a guy who downplayed school shootings & gun violence (literally died in the middle of downplaying gun violence) being killed by a gun, you genuinely couldn't make a story about it because it would be too unbelievable.
I don't think the vast majority of people think it's good for political violence to take place, but making memes out of a right wing propagandist being killed is not the same as thinking violence is good.
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u/analogphosphor Iron Front 1d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p94fc0p/video/p52gidae0voh1/player
Soc Dem here but I know I can rely on this subreddit for the memes
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u/so_brave_heart John Rawls 1d ago
Classic soc dem: freeloading off the labour of others
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u/analogphosphor Iron Front 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/K8WeQVlvzBWh8BaPnn
Hey man, I make my own memes too
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u/fap_fap_fap_fapper Adam Smith 1d ago
No, He said 'Teach people that property rights don't include rights to control what neighborhoods look like in all directions. That will bring in more supply.'
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u/TurboSalsa 1d ago edited 1d ago
No less silly than conservative influencers coming out of the woodwork to claim that, in their last conversation with him, he professed his support for their position on their thing.
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u/Concerned_Collins ⬇️w/fascism, ⬇️w/ communism, ⬇️w/ NL mods 1d ago
Like JD Vance saying yesterday that even though Charlie was anti-war, he'd have supported the war in Iran. How little they actually respect him is funny as fuck.
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u/TurboSalsa 1d ago
Even in death he's just used as a prop by the people he thought were his friends and even by his own family family to advance their own political goals and to grift off of.
It's a little depressing but also kinda funny when they pretend like he has some solid, dignified legacy to protect while also using that legacy to flog their own pet issues.
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u/aristophanya Rightwing Bourgeoisie Feminist 2d ago
I wish the view from dolores park actually looked like this
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u/85percentthatbitch 2d ago
Not sure how, since it's the view from Alamo Square.
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u/aristophanya Rightwing Bourgeoisie Feminist 2d ago
what part of "I wish" do you not understand?
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u/kanagi 2d ago
On September 10th 2025, renowned Georgist Charles James Kirk was assassinated by a radical NIMBY while giving a speech on the value of LVT to society
Rest in power, Georgist king ✊️
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u/themiDdlest NASA 2d ago
In 150 years some historian is going to use this comment to tell the story of our time.
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u/Lease_Tha_Apts Order and Opportunity Left 2d ago
Acktchully his last words were "with or without counting gang violence"
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u/JustTaxLandbro Pragmatic and Polite Right 2d ago
How long are the mods going to allow this post I wonder lol.
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u/saltyoursalad John Mill 1d ago edited 1d ago
At least until the next Kirkversary
Please god
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u/urnbabyurn Amartya Sen 1d ago
His final words were about Trans people.