Charlie Kirk assassin was living with trans roommate

There's no such thing as a 'transwoman'.

How so? Are you saying there aren't men that identify as women?

There's no such thing as a 'transwoman'

He was a gay man in love with another man.

The far Right will do their own version of course. The actual story emerging doesn't properly suit the purposes of either side.

I think that's a racing certainty.

I wonder how many of the people who have been spinning the far Right shooter narrative will soon be talking about the equivalent of grassy knolls.

You don’t know any of these things, apart from the relationship with the supposedly transitioning roommate - even that seems a bit dodgy right now as the text messages sound strange.

It doesn’t ring true to me either but I imagine the FBI will get to the truth.

I think one thing that's very clear is that he was living in a fantasy world. We just don't know the exact contours of his fantasy world.

How so?
it rings very true to me, except that my mind is boggled by the killer’s naivety in thinking he could get away with it.

Of course heterosexuals can support gay rights.

But my point is that the language mum uses and the language Tyler uses (especially with his in-group) are likely to be quite different, even if on the surface the words are the same.

That text message “exchange” doesn’t ring true. It sounds like they fabricated it to exonerate Lance. I don’t believe it.

No one ever said that a trans person was involved! But it's now clear that, as usual, us feminists were right, that 'trans rights' is what drove him. He is in a relationship with a transwoman. His own mother said he had been radicalised over trans 'rights'. He was sick of Kirk's "hatred". We were right. We were right all along. He is not some Groyper or far right person or maga. You'd think people would get so sick of us being right all the time and would just... believe us in future when we say it's about trans.

I disagree. The UK very much had a New Left, student radical culture in 1960s. In fact Britain was arguably the intellectual source and template for its appearance in the US. For example, in the spat between the Hitchens brothers, Christopher Hitchens denied that he personally said that he'd rather see the red army in London than out of the Czechoslovakia, but admitted that many on the left did believe (and say things similar to) that - however he was Trotskiest (like Howe) and rejected repression, violence and authoritarianism. John Lennon's "Revolution" was a commentary on UK (and international) left wing radicalism "If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow." (Maoism making a cult of violent revolutionary struggle)

It is the case that UK didn't have the actual violence the US had. And that's been historically true. There weren't the street brawls between the communists and fascists that were seen in the US, and especially Europe, during the 30s. And there wasn't the political violence of the Symbanese Liberation Army, Black Panthers or the Weather Underground of the late 60s and 70s. Though, there's an argument to be made (which you allude to) that that's an historical accident - the original IRA did style itself as a New Left liberation movement. But the movement split and the traditionalist elements became ascendant. The opposite happened in the in US with respect to racial motivated political violence, which was the primary focus of the most of the violent groups in the US.

I also think those cultural constraints against violence still operate in the UK - or maybe more correctly the cultural propensity for violence has continued to escalate in the US. But my caution is against complacency because it is an international phenomena.

In any case, the core of my argument isn't necessarily that the florid, violent rhetoric on the left is bad because it is the cause of actual violence. Certainly in specific cases I think it's a mistake to argue that too strongly - it's certainly a misrepresentation to say that the New Left was the cause of a Charles Manson. The problem is that it's corrosive, self-amplifying, and destroys the foundation of democracy by paralyzing legitimate debate, compromise, and rational coalition building.

I've wondered about the cognitive effects of massive amounts of gaming in teens.

Britain mostly escaped that, except if the violence was Northern Ireland connected which is very much its own thing. To the extent there was a New Left in Britain, it was moderated by the likes of Tony Cliff or Ted Grant wanting to get into the unions and appeal the the mass of the working class.

Looking at Germany though, the Red Army Faction probably never had as many as 100 real members at any time, and usually far fewer. The movie of The Baader Meinhof Complex gives a quite realistic portrait of a handful of people forming this purist ideological bubble where they were always winding each other up to greater radicalism.

The trouble was that Germany had an abundance of dopey sentimental lefties who weren't violent but who were prepared to provide cover for those who were.

I mean, he isn't trans either.

But you can be pro gay as a heterosexual, no?

Under trans ideology rules he’s dating a woman, therefore he is straight or bi, maybe a ‘chaser’ or ‘trans amorous’ but definitely not gay*.

I realise that in the real world that makes no sense.

*unless he secretly identifies as a woman, in which case he’s a transbian.

It’s an anti suicide outfit, Brian Kohberger (Idaho 4 murderer) was often seen dressed in one of them.

https://prisonguide.co.uk/what-is-a-turtle-suit-in-jail/

They do look rather Ninja Turtle-y.

Just reading the latest updates. His mum said he was increasingly 'leaning towards the left' and had become more 'pro gay'. So it's potentially as much about gay politics as trans politics. Although I doubt we'll see that in thread titles.

NB Irving Howe was criticizing the New Left from a leftist perspective. In fact he was one of the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, which was itself created to distance socialist politics from the New Left.

You have to assume he won't be wearing his jim jams when they get to the actual trial.

It seemed like a lot of repetition, but in Utah you need a charge of aggravated murder for the death penalty to be available, so I suppose it's necessary to mention all the aggravating factors right at the start.

@GallantKumquat There are other historical examples too – 1890s Russia is another horrific example, with nihilism let loose to cause a ton of violence and killing all for no particular reason. I can see a lot of parallels between that time and this.

I know. I caught that. What a nice man.

And there's poor, lawyerless 'indigent' Tyler, all on his tod, sporting what looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle apparel.

I mentioned this earlier, but I'll elaborate a bit more. My own concern is not whether the Kirk shooter was on the right or the left, it's that there is an historical nexus between people expressing counter-culture, anti-social attitudes and behaviors and leftist politics. The following is a quote from Irving How's (editor) Beyond the New Left, 1970.

Dohn (Bernadine, member of the Weathermen and former interorginsation secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society) characterizes violent, militant response in the streets as “armed struggle” against imperialism... “We're about being a fighting force alongside the blacks, but a lot of us are still honkies and we’re still scared of fighting. We have to get into armed struggle.”

“Honkies are going to be afraid of us,” Dohrn insisted. She went on to tell the war council about Charlie Manson, accused leader of the gang which allegedly murdered the movie star and several others on their Beverly Hills estate. Manson has been portrayed in the media as a Satanic, magnetic personality who held near-hypnotic sway over several women whom he lent out to friends as favors and brought along for the murder scene. The press also mentioned Manson’s supposed fear of blacks— he reportedly moved into rural California to escape the violence of a race war.

“Dig it, first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” said Bernardine Dohrn.

Dohrn wasn't the product of online culture, and she wasn't an isolated male. She was a highly intelligent participant in her own youthful radicalization. Likewise, Manson was neither left nor right, much less a selfless champion for racial equality. In hind sight, knowing now the facts of the Manson case, which was rapidly developing at the time, Dohrn's comments seem so unhinged as to be made-up defamation.

I think it's important to note this is not an inevitable product of leftism (that's a contentious statement that some disagree with but I firmly believe) But it is a long standing historical danger. Others have mentioned it on this thread and I don't think it should be dismissed. The New Left totally collapsed in the early 70s. In fact Howe's writings were one of the reasons - exposing its essential nihilism. The left can and did reject New Left style radicalism. Dohrn herself went on to have a highly successful law career and later became a law professor. Her husband, Bill Ayers, likewise a New Left radical, was a professor and mentor to Obama who incidentally was allergic to anything that had a whiff of New Left rhetoric.

But to escape the danger, violent rhetoric and ideation and extravagant language must be forcefully and continually rejected. That's not happening (IMO) on the left, it's being ignored, minimized and on occasion even justified.

I'd add that it's wrong to identify this as solely and uniquely an American phenomena: it's international in the same way the New Left was (counter culture, youth oriented); and also that the right has a problem with violence too, arguably an even greater one, though the dynamic is different than on the left.