Charlie Kirk's beliefs

[MsAmerica]

If You're Wondering What Charlie Kirk Believed In, Here Are 14 Real Quotes
In light of his death, Charlie Kirk's legacy is being remembered through these viral quotes.
BuzzFeed

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexalisitza/viral-charlie-kirk-quotes

I think there’s three parts to this.

1. I think that words can cause harm in some circumstances. I’ve experienced verbal abuse and bullying myself. I also think words can be used to directly incite physical violence. However, I completely disagree with the contemporary concept of words as literal violence - I think this is a very dangerous road to go down, because disagreeing with someone’s beliefs or worldview should not be seen as tantamount to causing them harm in a democratic and free society. Furthermore, I think that respectful discussion of each other’s conflicting beliefs is far more productive in the long term than driving certain beliefs underground - it can, if anything, give them more legitimacy as those who hold them start to feel wronged and unheard.

2. I’d never heard of CK until his death and initially was horrified by the quotes I was seeing attributed to him. I decided to research some of his videos to judge for myself, and noted that many of these quotes had been taken massively out of the context of his wider arguments. I found no evidence that convinced me he was racist or homophobic, and while I disagreed with his views on the role of women, I didn’t feel that he lacked respect for them in the manner of, say, Andrew Tate. I found that while I disagreed with many of his statements, they were expressed logically and made sense within the moral framework of his religious beliefs. I felt he listened to those who disagreed with him in a respectful way. Based on this evidence, I therefore changed my opinion - not of the rightness or wrongness of his views, but of him as a person.

3. I find myself thinking that taking a dead man’s words out of the context of an intellectual debate and using them to frame him as something he wasn’t is far more harmful than anything he actually said himself.

Show me where anyone here has said he deserved to die?

Nobody on this thread has said this at all.

It is bizarre that some posters keep arguing against things that literally nobody here has said in the first place.

Show me where he said anything unkind. You might not like his views but doesn’t mean he wasn’t a kind person. Many many people have come out to say all the kind and good things he did behind the scenes. I actually found that one of the most upsetting parts about this as he went out of his way to help people.

@BoredZelda

Oh you are hilarious.

I am hilarious, thanks for noticing.

I haven’t seen anyone saying the assassin “had a bit of a point”. I don’t see anyone here saying the killing was justified. In fact, the only people talking about any justification are Kirk’s supporters saying his opponents claim it was justified.

I have seen a small minority actively celebrating, including a few high profile cases such as the OU president, Bob Vylan & the BlueSky thread of "Who's next?". As well as the many more just random people popping up in comments in various social media platforms. I think the first reply I had when expressing sadness as the news 1st broke was "chat sh*t get bangd". And that was in the comments of a fairly respectable newspaper.

Below that level of rejoicing there are a much larger number of people who immediately leapt to ensure that no one could express shock at the murder without expounding on his flaws. To me this is disrespectful and distasteful, but everyone has their own idea of what is appropriate in this situation.

But in that second group, there are many who as well as exercising their right to criticise a murder victim, are doing so using out of context quotes or outright fabrications. And in all the interactions I have seen of Kirk misquotes being debunked, I have yet to see an apology, retraction or any reflection.

I've watched quite a bit of CK's content since he passed.

I think he was a great man and will be sorely missed and I don't care who doesn't like that.

It's performative outrage. Weird that it's coming from the "fuck your feelings" bunch but there you go.

Glad you agree it’s hilarious to suggest that left wing victims of political violence haven’t been celebrated.

The small minority you refer to exists in any given situation. What’s happened here is, Kirk’s supporters have taken that and amplified a narrative that says “the left” are celebrating. This is despite every single high profile democrat and those lower down the pecking order have condemned the violence. How many high profile republicans have done the same for the Democratic victims? The highest profile Republican has never come out and roundly condemned it, not once.

As I said, where someone makes their career and their name out of being controversial, espousing opinions which are very unpleasant to a very large number of people, it is naive to think everyone will ignore that part of his life when he has died. People are exclaiming what he said was fine because free speech is important. That also goes for anyone talking about him after his death. You can’t have it both ways. Disrespect would be to mischaracterise him, as far as I can see, the only people here who want to do that are people who supported him.

He advocated for forcing rape victims, including female children as young as ten, to continue with any resulting pregnancy and give birth.

Is that your definition of kind?

There are many other examples, some of which have been noted on the thread. I guess you just didn’t read those posts, huh?

Why do you think he was a great man?

You think it’s kind to say that President Biden should be subject to the death penalty and that blacks were better off when they had less rights?

This is why sometimes I hate discussing topics like this about certain people because there are people like you who just see the world in black and white and people like me who do see there are shades of gray all around us. People can be kind and have views I don’t agree with. I don’t condemn people because of one thing.

He had a view. He is religious. He is pro life as are lots of people. His view was an unborn baby was a life. A pregnant 10 year old has no good outcome. You either keep the baby and it lives and you traumatise the child or you abort the baby and it doesn’t live. there is a moral decision to be made. I would absolutely choose my 10 year old without question but I do understand his point of view and I don’t honestly think he was a terrible person for believing he would choose the alternative even if I think it’s bonkers. There are constant moral dilemmas in life. I’m not 100% sure when push came to shove he would have made that decision but thankfully situations like that are rare.

I don’t think unkindness is the relevant emotion. Naivety perhaps, I dunno. People are messy and complicated and have a variety of views. Was that one of his mainstream ones - no, absolutely not but he has a right to be pro life and clearly that particular dilemma falls into that sphere.

I don’t think that made him unkind.

And in all the interactions I have seen of Kirk misquotes being debunked, I have yet to see an apology, retraction or any reflection.

Some very high profile people have retracted and apologised. But it’s also the case that the “debunking” is not the slam dunk you want to pretend it is. You can whine about context as much as you like, when taken in the context of his overall views and opinions, very little of what he said is outside of his overall wheelhouse. For example, him dropping the line about stoning was no accident, it was him cherry picking (and mixing up) his bible verses, but when taken in the context of calling trans people an abomination and a throbbing middle finger to God, is it really believable that he doesn’t agree with the bible? After all, he said we should deal with trans people the way we did in the 50s and 60s. You might want to read up on what that involved. Did he think we should stone people in the street? Probably not. Does that mean he is absolutely fine with LGBTQ and thinks they deserve to live their life free of hate, with the same rights as everyone else? Definitely not.

My perception is, that I've never seen a left wing figure's murder generate an equivalent reaction in that range from nonchalance to jubilation. And I considered myself quite far left for most of my life so its not like I wouldn't have been sensitive to that.

And for me, I know that of the political figures I truly dislike, in the event that a similar tragedy occurred, I would say something nice or nothing at all.

But you didn't address the misinformation aspect. Do you accept that many of the claims made about Kirk have been based on misquotations or excepts taken out of context? Do you not see a problem with that?

Edit: I just saw you addressed that in a second post. Will read that now.

Literally loads of reasons, I take it you don't agree, why?

He called Simone Biles a sociopath and a shame to her country when she stepped back from competing because her mental health meant she was at risk from physical injury. Seems unkind.

Ok and? I thought she had deprived another person of an amazing opportunity to participate in The Olympics when she knew she wasn’t well and could have stepped back to let them have the place but didn’t which I thought was terribly unkind.

like I say we all have different views and se things different ways

Very unkind.

Wow.

If you don’t think it’s unkind to force traumatised ten year old rape victims to go through a pregnancy and give birth and think that “religion” is an acceptable justification for this then there’s no reasoning with you at all. Just think about the impact of that on the child. Do you know any ten year olds? It’s not a situation where there are any possible “shades of grey”, it is deliberately inflicting harm. It’s astonishing to attempt to defend inflicting this on a small child who has already suffered an immense trauma and anybody who thinks this is an acceptable view to hold should be nowhere near children. What’s worse is that Kirk did not just to profess that he’d be this abusive to his own daughter in that situation, but was also trying to force this into law and thereby force other parents to inflict such abuse on their own children. Completely indefensible.

He wasn’t murdered (thankfully) but did you see the aftermath of the hideous attack on Paul Pelosi?

Have you seen responses to mass shootings calling victims families paid actors and claiming nobody died?

Did you see Trump claiming he wasn’t aware of the shooting of Melissa Hartman?

If the misrepresentations are fine because they reflect views "in his wheelhouse" why did the people who make these lists, (both amateurs and journalists at places like the Guardian and buzzfeed in the OP) use the out of context ones, and not full quotes that describe his views?

The answer can only be that no quotes so extreme existed, and they didn't want to accurately portray his views, but a more extremist version of them.

Then my point is going over your head. I’ll bow out after this.

to debate someone you have to listen to their views. You have to listen and understand. Just saying your views stink, you are an unkind person gets people absolutely nowhere. I have listened to what he did, sought to understand, sought to see if I had debated him on it what arguments I would have used to explain why I think he was wrong. I think he would have listened. No doubt not changed his mind but he would have listened and that is why I liked him. If I rejected everyone I knew for one particular view they had I would have zero friends as I know no one with the exact same views as me.

people are religious. People do have views that are influenced by that whatever that religion is. If you want to ban religion then go for it and outline those views then by all means campaign for it. Until then he was and others are allowed to espouse their thoughts and articulate them without people trying to shut them down but acting as judge and jury in the moral questions of the day. who are you to
decide what is moral and what is not?- that is why we have the ballot box so the general public can elect people that best fit their views

Do you think it's helpful to conflate someone disagreeing with some of CK's views with the outright banning of religion?

If some people's interpretation of their religion makes them feel free to say that children should be forced to deliver babies conceived in rape, are not other people free to say that they think that viewpoint is odious?

Yes of course and you can articulate why you think that particular view is odious of course.

doesn’t mean he as a person is. There is a difference. he wasn’t an unkind person generally just because he had a particular view you disagree with.

I agree it wasn’t an odious opinion. It was more like a monstrous opinion.