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

As always a good summary from Jonathan Pie:

Nailed it.

I think it's inherently racist to illustrate your anti-DEI stance by talking about 'moronic black women', accusing successful black women of 'stealing a white person's slot' and chucking in your thoughts about 'prowling blacks'.

I think he's racist because of all the racist language he used, over and over again. I don't know how many times I can explain that NON RACISTS DON'T TALK LIKE THAT.

You are right about the expense of energy. But I have been on Mumsnet since my teenagers were babies; I can't just hand it over to racists and let them proclaim that 'many reasonable people think like this' when talking about a man who spoke of prowling blacks FFS.

(The FFS wasn't directed at you, Plastic, BTW. Just my general exasperation!)

Am I racist for questioning whether Kirk was racist?

You have defended racist speech and claimed it isn't racist. You have twisted and contorted to find loopholes that somehow will explain away the use of 'moronic black woman', 'stealing white people's slots' etc (they don't, but you persist!) You have remained silent on 'prowling blacks' as you're too busy to look into that one, though you did find the time to dig up some evidence of Kirk's supposed good works. You cannot seem to look at the scope of his speech as a whole, instead taking each example in isolation as though they don't fit together in a cohesive picture. One misjudged comment, maybe you could wave away in the context of someone who has talked as much as Kirk did. But it is comment after comment after comment, all of them derogatory and sneering towards black people.

I can't understand why you are so invested in explaining away that lengthy catalogue of racist comments, if you are not racist yourself because it just seems bizarre to devote yourself to excusing the inexcusable like this.

Oh look, a comedian 🙄

This is wise advice, and sadly I think I have to accept that you are right.

My children are still young and I really fear for the world they will grow up in if these extremists are allowed to dominate public discourse, yet as you say such people seem intent on trying to provoke a reaction, or pretending that other people are a fantasised equivalent at the other extreme to them even when this plainly is not the case, so they seem to feed off any opposition and use this to try to stoke further division.

The mental contortions people will go through to try to deny what is indisputable - even in the face of video evidence - are very disturbing. I still find it shocking that so many people now are prepared to attempt to make excuses for overt racist, homophobic and misogynistic bile but, sadly, there is a limit to how much each of us can give to the futile exercise of trying to reason with a brick wall, as you have said. It’s a very sad state of affairs.

You have remained silent on 'prowling blacks' as you're too busy to look into that one, though you did find the time to dig up some evidence of Kirk's supposed good works.

The gay rights one was posted on this thread by someone, various stories of Kirk reaching out to black people in their careers* have been on MN threads and another popped up on my Instagram feed. I didn't seek them out.
(*This you dismissed as performative despite being done privately).

Anyway, I watched your favourite Kirk interview this afternoon with the "prowling blacks" comment. Then had to watch the "New York Karen" YouTube video that it referenced to make sense of it.

The language made me uncomfortable. The incident is seen through a very racial lens with every protagonist described as white hospital worker or black youth etc etc. Kirk lashes out against the word "Karen" which he sees as racist and misogynistic.

Interestingly here (as in other videos) he seems wary of being seen as racist "If I said ... I'd get accused of racism" appears in a few videos. He also worries here about people stoking a race war. He sees his political opponents of doing the things he is accused of doing.

He uses "prowling blacks" (twice IIRC) as a justification for the woman in the video being alarmed at being jostled by the young men. Clearly his argument would have been far more convincing without it. I can absolutely see why someone would call Kirk racist from watching the video.

My most charitable interpretation, which i know you will reject utterly, is that his meaning isn't inherently racist (he believed the "karen" was in the right, the young men were trying to stop her taking the bike she rented, and she was legitimately afraid) but his language was. If he had said, she was fearful because the area had a high rate of violence by groups of black youths, including crimes against women, it would have sounded very different.

Well, since you appear to think that words are edible, perhaps you should put a dictionary on the menu for tonight and then, once you’ve digested it, you may not find so many perfectly normal words confusing.

Exactly. The disingenuousness is fooling nobody.

Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense: he just “accidentally” used language in an unfortunate manner that didn’t represent his real views. He was simply very accident prone so had these verbal accidents publicly over and over and over again. Such misfortune and no ill intention whatsoever! And the things he said that were explicitly and overtly racist/ homophobic/ misogynistic and even his statement that he would force his own 10 year old daughter to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth if she was made pregnant by a child rapist were what, involuntary verbal hiccups and not what he really meant, either?

Why would someone who was so incapable of expressing what they actually meant clearly and was - according to you - allegedly “accidentally” and repeatedly (and bizarrely consistently, if it’s an accident) expressing racist/ homophobic/ misogynistic views most times that they opened their mouth choose a career involving public speaking? Surely such an accident prone person with such embarrassing and uncontrollable verbal incontinence would pick one of another myriad careers that didn’t involve humiliating themselves like this because if they didn’t mean these comments they’d be extremely ashamed by these repeated incidents of supposedly uncontrollable verbal outburst?

Why, also, would such a person set up political organisations with the stated purpose of campaigning to achieve the enactment into law of the things that he - according to you - had said accidentally by mistake when really he meant something different that we should somehow have inferred instead of the meaning of his actual words?

Very strange indeed, and if your apparent conjecture is correct then statistically Mr Kirk was more “unlucky” with these unfortunate, random mishaps than poor Roy Sullivan who was struck by lightning on seven different occasions.

Your attempts to try to defend Kirk are deeply unpleasant, extremely selective and extremely transparently disingenuous. You’ve repeatedly refused to respond to various things he said that posters have pointed out to you and provided undeniable evidence to prove because you know that what he said was indefensible, and you’ve then claimed you’re “too busy” to look at the evidence you demanded, yet mysteriously despite being sooooo busy you have managed to continue posting about other trivial matters. It is quite the charade but I’m afraid it won’t be convincing to anybody who reads the thread and also has a modicum of rationality.

Wow, you really did argue that 'prowling blacks' is not inherently racist. Oh, all the racist things he said are fine though because he kept saying 'I'd be called racist if I said...' - said what, by the way? Said what he really thinks? Have you never heard a bigoted person say 'I'm not racist but...' right before saying something extremely racist?

You generously say you can understand why someone would call him racist, after watching his racist video full of racist language. But still, you desperately want to tell us that he wasn't really racist. Despite all the racism.

Why on earth do you think it's so important to find a way that the 'prowling blacks' guy isn't identified as racist? Why do you want people to not be able to call out racial slurs but instead give the perpetrator endless benefit of the doubt?

When someone tells you what they are, believe them. When someone makes a scaremongering video about 'prowling blacks' they are telling you they are a racist. Just because they try to obfuscate and say they don't want you to notice that they're a racist doesn't excuse them from all the racist things they say.

That you have come away from that video still attempting to say this man is not racist shows the pp was absolutely right; Charlie Kirk could be sitting in front of you in Klan robes telling you that he hates black people and you'd still be defending him.

@TheClaaaw
You're making stuff up again. I haven't once said I'm too busy to look into anything, I just said I hadn't got around to a specific video yet as there were many that had been discussed. I also haven't said Kirk accidentally used racist language. And I also haven't "repeatedly failed to respond" to anything. If there's a point you want me to respond to, or a question you think i'm avoiding, maybe make that the focus of your post, rather than one point among a dozen.

Why on earth do you think it's so important to find a way that the 'prowling blacks' guy isn't identified as racist?

It isn't. It was important to me to point out the misinformation in many of the accusations against Kirk earlier in the thread. I said many times, I don't know if he was racist or not. I think in talking about DEI he could definitely say things that were easy to cast as racist.
It would be great to challenge him and say "in episode X you referred to prowling blacks, do you regret your choice of language?" had he not been murdered, someone could have done that.

@CantCallItLove and @TheClaaaw the voices of reason 👏🏼

Not really. Its just a couple of angry people who hated Kirk, demanding I account for everything the man ever said, accusing me of all sorts of bad faith behaviour and patting each other on the back.

How very magnanimous that would be, apologising for the language he used that you say 'could be cast as racist'. Do you think if you were a victim of racism, a highly influential person saying sorry for repeatedly using dehumanising and hateful words about you would cut it? The damage is done. He did it over and over again, deliberately, and had he lived he would still be spreading his own misinformation about people of colour, still stirring up hatred against them. That's the legacy he leaves.

It's utterly disgusting that you continue to minimise and dismiss racism. That you pretend he just used a bit of ambiguous language but didn't really mean it - again, I wonder why you offer so much benefit of the doubt to someone with such a long list of racist comments made repeatedly over time.

Of course I think it would be better if he hadn't been murdered; I think both murder and racism are wrong. When you excuse racism over and over, you can't really occupy the moral high ground on that one.

You keep saying I hate Kirk; I feel absolutely indifferent to him. I do hate racism and misogyny. You seem to think they're pretty minor.

Wow. What an adult response complete with emoji.

Even if I believed he had genuinely racist views, which I don't, I still wouldn't think it justifies the misquoting and selective quoting to make his statements seem worse than they are.

If you really thought his racism was dehumanising and hateful, you should also like me be against articles and posts that misrepesent them to make them sound even worse and more hateful. But you show the opposite inclination.

These lists clearly haven't all been compiled after Kirk's death. Guardian journalists didn't watch dozens of Kirk episodes after the shooting and independently put together a summary of his most controversial statements going back years, and publish them just hours after his death. These posts have been circulating on forums for years and just lifted into newspapers around the world. Some of the stuff in them is true and fair, much isn't. There have been falsehoods about Kirk circulating for years. One of his college videos features a black guy confronting him about the black pilots quote, the guy starts off angry, within 30 seconds Kirk had explained the context and the guy realised he'd been misled.

Many of the people who hated Kirk, did so on false premises. People who claim to hate racism spent time and effort whipping up fear that this Trump ally wanted to remove civil rights and stone gays. What could have been another right wing youtuber, with old fashioned sexist attitudes, a dislike of DEI and a healthy scepticism of gender ideology, was cast as an existential threat, thanks to people who share your attitude. One of the people who was taken in by this eventually picked up a gun.

This is ridiculous. Yes, of course people were gathering evidence of all the racist stuff Kirk was saying before he died - he was making a lot of money and building a large platform which he used to spread hatred; of course people were paying attention. What, no one should protest against racism in case the racist gets murdered??? We should have stayed quiet about Kirk dehumanising black people over and over again in case drawing attention to it put him in danger? He should have been free to say this stuff uncontested - and to hell with any people of colour who suffered the consequence of attitudes like his - because he lived in a country where anyone who feels like it can go buy an assault rifle, take it out in public and shoot someone?

How dare you blame people who speak up against racism for this murder.

It is you who misrepresents Kirk constantly. You who refuses to understand how the way in which this man talked about black people in numerous videos and interviews over time - characterising them as stupid, animalistic, a threat to white people's jobs and safety - all builds a picture of his views. You dishonestly try to present them all as isolated comments and bizarrely claim that racist language doesn't reflect racist intent - even when he says these things again and again.

You're so determined to deny his racism, there is nothing he could say that would make you see it.

Anyway. I've had a week in between projects at work and I've spent way too much time doomscrolling and engaging in futile, pointless arguments.

Underthinker, a video could emerge next week of Kirk at a Klan rally and you'd scratch your head and say 'oh yes, that COULD be construed as racist, but actually he was most likely dressing up as a ghost for Halloween and took a wrong turn! Look, here's another video of him standing near a black person so he's OBVIOUSLY not racist'. Fine. You've decided a man with a long history of racist rhetoric wasn't racist.

We don't know if Kirk was shot by an anti-racist. We know people in America are murdered every day because of easy access to high-powered guns. Don't worry though, most of the victims aren't prominent racists. They're usually schoolchildren.

I will have to hide the thread or else I'll keep replying. As an early-waking insomniac, I got up hours before my family and so the first person I've talked to today is an apologist for racism. That isn't healthy. I can't keep myself away if I still see the posts, so I am going to do the best thing for my peace of mind and hide it. Have the thread back and keep glorifying and justifying a racist misogynist bigot, go ahead.

Underthinker, a video could emerge next week of Kirk at a Klan rally and you'd scratch your head and say

Videos could emerge next week of Kirk explaining he is against racism, thinks its profoundly wrong to hire based on skin colour, and that its none of anyone's business what gay people do in thier private lives, and you would still say he was a racist homophobe.

...Oh wait those videos did emerge but you ignored them.

See, this is a typical way people like you use these underhand remarks and tactics because you have lost this debate. You have failed on every level to provide evidence, logic and rationale to explain why Kirk was not racist and anti-women. It is unfair to project your anger about this onto posters who have steadfastly and reasonably explained to you, time and time again, why Kirk’s statements were racist, misogynistic and bigoted. No one has claimed to hate Kirk. We hate his hateful and damaging rhetoric, we he stood for and promoted.

These posters persevered when defended Kirk but said you didn’t know what he said. Bizarre - if you are going to spend hours of your day defending someone and being so intransigent about their views being perfectly fine, do a little research beforehand or risk appearing foolish. Eventually you relented and could admit that the things he said were racist and misogynist, but he’s still a victim of ‘misquoting’ and ‘takings things out of context’. It truly is sad and utterly perplexing to me that you are defending Kirk still, when if he had wanted, you would have no rights or body autonomy at all. You, and your daughter, would be forced to go through the trauma of a pregnancy you didn’t want, even in cases of rape. You would be a second hand citizen to your husband, who you would need to submit to. What an utter disgrace this would be to all those women who fought so hard for our rights, really not too long ago.

You’ve not explained why you keep defending Kirk. Denying his bigoted views is like arguing the sky is not blue. It’s fact, but you are too bloody minded to relent. When in fact if you did show any flexibility of thought and changed your position I would have respect for you in doing so. Rather than stamping your feet and making the same tired rebuttals all over again. But of course that is your choice to do, but I would reflect on why you have spent so much steadfastly defending Kirk through tunnel vision and what this says about you as a person.