Had you heard of Charlie Kirk before yesterday?

[Havetoagree]

Just that really? I hadn’t and wondering if I’m the only one. And why is it such a big story? I guess the association with trump. What would be the equivalent level of fame over here?

Here's a small sample:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs

Yes, I had heard of him, as had my children.
So weird to hear so many on here describe him as a good man and a loss to his country. To his family, sure. Sad for them even though he had absolutely no problem if other children lost their parent/s or parents lost their children.
Anyway, yes, I knew of him.
I remember that he had compared abortion to the holocaust and said abortion was worse.
I knew he'd been very clear that if his 10 year old daughter was raped and ended up pregnant as a result, she would be birthing that child. (Father of the Year right there)
And when he said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them"
Prowling blacks, moronic black women, black pilots who can only be DEI hires. He stated that there was no such thing as systemic racism, that white privilege was a racist idea. Oh, lets not even go into black women lacking brain processing power or that the texas flood death toll was so high because of DEI hires
He was also firm that true liberty could only be possible with a christian population. White, I'm sure
He also thought that public executions should be televised and that childen watch
I know he was a big promoter of the great replacement theory
I remember how he believed that "homosexuality was an abomination worthy of death" and that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake
I do forget how many busloads his organisation sent to the Jan 6 riots

There is so much more but apparently, he spoke nicely 🙄

To answer the original question, it is a big story because someone who looks just like them was killed. And the hypocrites come out decrying political violence while political violence is going on all around them. US backed and/or funded political violence is robbing tens of thousands of children of parents but one white christian male is killed and the response is so blatently hypocritical. Either all politically motivated violence is wrong or you really don't care as much as you insist you do 🤷‍♀️

How many threads were there for Melissa Hortman and her husband who were assassinated in their homes not so long ago?

Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?"

Same! I’d not heard of him at all but my 3 teen boys all had & were surprised I didn’t know who he was!

Do you agree that children shot in schools are just collateral damage and worth it for the right to bear arms or do you think that's an abhorrent view?

Do you think that calling black people "prowling blacks" is nasty? (Not to mention horribly racist)

Do you think that saying if your daughter was raped at age 10 and became pregnant you'd force her to birth that baby is evil?

Yes. I’m 45 and liked watching him debate very much.

I feel quite sad today.

God bless Charlie and God bless his family.

Yes, of course, entirely odious views

No

I think you are blessed if you haven't heard of Charlie Kirk. It's a sign you aren't steeped in the "culture wars," and given that the culture wars only bring anger and misery, then it is a beneficial thing if you're disconnected from all of this.

Thank you for creating this thread @Havetoagree - I was feeling extremely old and out of touch when I saw the other thread about him and didn’t know who he was.
So I’m feeling quite reassured that so many others haven’t come across him either.

I’m in my 50s and I don’t have TikTok or Insta or Twitter/X.
And I don’t follow American politics that closely either.

Had seen him do a few debates in clips on social media including one at Cambridge but had no idea how popular he was with conservative Gen Z.

They are words. Chill out. He hasn’t killed anyone.

Wholeheartedly agree, he expressed dreadful divisive odious views
However, because he had curated the concerned wholesale dad image he rarely got held to account or a deep level of scrutiny

Yes. From way back when he set up turning point over ten years ago. He’s been a very consistent bigot.

There's quite a few posts on this thread using CK's views on empathy as a gotcha. It doesn't work. People can have sympathy for those who have none. People can empathise for those who won't. People can have compassion for those who rejected it. If your principles get modified depending on who is on the receiving end of them, they aren't principles.

I wouldn’t personally use a term like “prowling blacks” but if he was saying that there is a higher rate of offending in some ethnicities in the US he wasn’t wrong. This is cut and pasted from Wikipedia, not the greatest reference source but I doubt it’s completely wrong:

Robbery
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey in 2002, robberies with white victims and black offenders were more than 12 times more common than the opposite.[57][58]
Victim surveys
In 1978, Michael Hindelang compared data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (then known as the National Crime Survey, or NCS) to data from the Uniform Crime Reports, both from 1974. He found that NCS data generally agreed with UCR data in regards to the percent of perpetrators of rape, robbery, and assault who were black.[59] For instance, Hindelang's analysis found that both the NCS and UCR estimated that 62% of robbery offenders were black in the United States in 1974.[60]: 327 A 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey report which analyzed carjacking over 10 years found that carjacking victims identified 56% of offenders as black, 21% as white, and 16% as indigenous American or Asian.[61][62][63]

I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational

Killing for opinions, not a good look for the left really!

I certainly wouldn’t agree with his position on gun control but I’m British; conservative Americans have a very different (foolish IMO) take. Unfortunately one which has given his enemies much to gloat over.

Great summary and may I add a few more:

Saying that the Civil Rights Act was a 'mistake' while dragging Martin Luther King.

Saying that the contraceptive pill makes women 'crazy and bitter' and that women over 30 are unattractive to men.

Quoting a post from the Bible about stoning to death being a fitting punishment for being gay.

Calling on a 'hero' and 'patriot' to bail out the person who attacked Nancy Pelosi's 82yo husband with a hammer.

I DO NOT CONDONE HIS MURDER. Indeed, I am and will always be stronger opponent of political violence and gun violence than the man himself ever was.

I made the quotes above not as a commentary on his murder but so everyone can judge the Mumsnetters posting their support for his views and trying to tell us he was a stand-up guy.

I think you may be referring to a question put to Charlie in a quick-fire debate about whether he would want (not force) his daughter to carry a pregnancy to term if she were raped. He said yes, not because he excused or minimised rape (in fact he called rape “evil”), but because, as a Christian conservative, he believed abortion itself was also evil. For him, life begins at conception, and even in horrific circumstances, that life was still sacred and worth protecting.

He made the point that when we meet someone in adulthood, we cannot tell whether they were conceived in love or violence, that their humanity and value are equal. His stance was that you don’t fight one evil with another, but with goodness. He said he would want to surround his daughter with love and raise the baby within his family.

You don’t have to agree with his position to see that he was being ideologically consistent. In this example, Charlie was holding on to a moral framework he believed in, however difficult the example put to him.

I was saying exactly this to dh this evening. Most people in real life just sit somewhere in the middle, maybe a bit 'left' on somethings, maybe a bit 'right' on others. It is all just so extreme and doesn't really have any basis in what I see around me day to day.

Words have consequences, just like actions do. They matter an awful lot.

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?

If you don't live in the USA and you rely on main stream media for your news, you are missing 99% of what's happening and much of it is alarming. MSM simply doesn't have the time to report all of what is going down there.

I'm in Australia and I can tell you the MSM here is almost silent re USA. They miss so much that is news-worthy. I watch social media to follow what is happening - mostly FaceBook.

There have been murmurings for a while that retired and ex military folks have been talking among themselves about what is happening. eg The US Constitution specifically forbids the military being used against US citizens. I would guess Trump's occupation of Washington and his recent threat of doing the same in Chicago might be pushing some of those guys to take action. You won't see or hear about that on MSM.

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