Interview with Kara Dansky and Charlie Kirk

[Appalonia]

There's been a lot of pp saying how hateful he was, especially as regards to women, but I think it's useful to know that he was willing to platform someone like Kara Dansky, a self professed left wing feminist, and to know that he actually listened to what she had to say. I hate how polarised politics has become, and I think what we need right now more than ever is to actually listen to pp that we disagree with.

Kara is at just the same risk of being murdered for her views as Charlie was, and he definitely didnt deserve to die for them.

https://open.substack.com/pub/karadansky/p/my-2022-interview-with-charlie-kirk?utmcampaign=post&utmmedium=web

If Joe Biden was determined to hire a woman of colour for the role, it leaves the door open to imply that colour of skin is a more important criteria than qualifications.

Otherwise she’d get it on merit alone.

You criticised CK for pointing out that Ketanji Jackson was a diversity hire. Biden said that colour of skin was a very important criteria in his hiring.

You now appear to be moving the goalposts.

No it doesn't leave the door open because KJB's qualifications speak for themselves which Kirk was fully aware of but chose to pretend didn't exist.

What you don't seem to comprehend is the deliberate conflating of inclusion & merit. As the links show all those women were highly qualified.

And these bad faith actors on the far right will point to individuals & imply they are representatives of the entire project. Their MO is always the same 'look at his bad person here, see what's going on everywhere'….

This is an excellent post and sums it up well.

The problem is people are frighteningly easily manipulated and distracted.

One of the reasons he went to universities was to manipulate young people ripe for influencing.

More qualified? I think that's rather debatable.

I suspect it wasn't really relevant to his point though. Someone can be totally qualified, even the best qualified, but if they were picked for diversity reasons, they are a diversity hire. That's one of the arguments against it, it follows people whether they are qualified or not, and casts doubts on their competence even when those doubts aren't deserved.

And the Democrats make those kinds of decisions a lot. And it's suspect to people because if they were really the best qualified, why make a diversity decision? If they weren't, then the criticism has teeth. A lot of American conservatives see this as a statement that Democrats don't think black Americans can achieve at the same level as white Americans.

I'll just add - this is also one of the major criticisms black conservatives make about the Democrats. They think they are racists who treat black Americans as idiots who can be bribed with shiny things for votes, and then when don't vote the way they are told, those same Democrats call them racists and Uncle Toms.

Kirk wasn't saying anything that hasn't been heard from prominent black conservatives in the US. Or even in the UK.

Interesting to observe how commonly the specific phrase "cozying up to" gets used in an attempt to shame women for speaking up.

It's a useful indicator of dishonest rhetoric.

Facts aren't "debatable".

Apart from the fact that KJB graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review she is also:

"the most experienced trial court judge to join the Supreme Court in almost a century.

Jackson served on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for nearly 8 years, giving her more trial court experience than any sitting Supreme Court justice and more than any justice since Edward Sanford, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1923.
Jackson would be only the second sitting justice to serve at all three levels of the federal judiciary.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor has also served as a District judge, Circuit judge and Supreme Court justice.
Jackson would bring more years of experience as a judge than four of the sitting justices combined.
Jackson has more than eight years of experience as a judge; that’s more than Justices Thomas, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett had combined when they were confirmed.
Jackson would be the first public defender to become a Supreme Court justice in the history of the Court.
She would be the first justice with substantial criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991."

https://demandjustice.org/judge-ketanji-brown-jackson-is-one-of-the-most-qualified-nominees-for-the-supreme-court-ever/

https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/kbj/

"I suspect it wasn't really relevant to his point though. Someone can be totally qualified, even the best qualified, but if they were picked for diversity reasons, they are a diversity hire. That's one of the arguments against it, it follows people whether they are qualified or not, and casts doubts on their competence even when those doubts aren't deserved.

And the Democrats make those kinds of decisions a lot. And it's suspect to people because if they were really the best qualified, why make a diversity decision? If they weren't, then the criticism has teeth. A lot of American conservatives see this as a statement that Democrats don't think black Americans can achieve at the same level as white Americans."

It only casts doubt because of far right indoctrination of what diversity inclusion means…. a lot like what Kirk is doing here by pretending these women were not qualified. Diversity inclusion has never suggested merit isn't necessary rather that diversity is beneficial to organisations & as such should be considered for inclusion.

Cultural diversity by virtue of sex, ethnicity, class, geography etc brings different approaches & skills to the work place of which provide higher service/profit delivery. Now that's not to assume just because an individual has a different life experience they mustn't think the same as others but that often it does which is a qualification in its self.

The great con the far right pull off here is the 'suspicion' angle. 'You are only raising suspicion' which in the context of who actually substantially gets the free ride in the college system is white people via legacy, donor & 'country club' sporting admissions. That Affirmative Action admissions are a minuscule fraction of this is conveniently ignored. Of course white people must never be 'sus'….they have always 'earned' their place…..

I suspect it wasn't really relevant to his point though. Someone can be totally qualified, even the best qualified, but if they were picked for diversity reasons, they are a diversity hire. That's one of the arguments against it, it follows people whether they are qualified or not, and casts doubts on their competence even when those doubts aren't deserved.

And yet no one seems to worry about white men being picked. Given what I know about legacy admissions and the networks in the US (I live in the US and my children all went to private prep schools that fed places like harvard) the average white graduate in Harvard is as likely to be a legacy or network hire as a black candidate is to be a DEI hire.

But no one worries about that. Wonder why?

Please do enlighten us all as to what exactly Dansky gained for her cause by preaching to Kirk's already converted choir? The answer is nothing. By virtue of being part of Kirk's audience membership means they don't need any 'persuading'/'awareness'. On the other hand, Kirk needs to persuade the centre/centre left that he's a reasonable guy with reasonable views. He wants to further legitimise his far right nationalist misogynistic cause to a wider audience. 'See, we are on the same page, let me tell you more….'

Exactly the tactics proponents of Gender Ideology and various other political ideologies use - manipulate and influence the young in schools, universities and on various platforms on social media, I guess that is okay by you though because you agree with them.

Universities especially should be where all sides of various political, religious and social ideologies are heard, evaluated, discussed, debated, agreed with or disagreed with.

Yes, conservatives love practicing their own version of diversity hire. Their 'favourite' economist Thomas Sowell is often trotted out not so much because he's more qualified than others but because his 'lift yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality is exploited to evade social responsibility.

She expressed a left-wing radical feminist perspective that most of Kirk's audience won't even have known existed, and explains why they'd be unaware:

"Radical feminism is all about protecting the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. And we cannot do that as a movement if we cannot define the category of women and girls to exclude males."

"Most mainstream media outlets will not talk about us. The New York Times will not talk about us. The Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC. None of them will platform leftist, feminist, gay rights, critiques of 'gender identity'."

"And I also just want to say, because your listeners have no reason to know this, opposition to 'gender identity' in the UK is mainly coming from rank-and-file members of the Labour Party. And their media will talk about it."

"There are rank-and-file Democrats all over the country who are so fired up and angry about this, but they don't get a voice because the media will not cover our angle."

Um, look, I don't know how to break this to you, but the far right believe the actual "rights of women" are the problem. IE they don't believe in equality. As far as privacy & safety go that's not news to anyone including them. In fact they happily exploit that angle to remove the rights of women. IE it's a defense why women are safer…at home……

So do you agree that introducing such people to left-wing radical feminist perspectives, as Kara will have done while being interviewed on Kirk's show, is a positive approach to take?

She wasn't introducing them to feminist perspectives (not that it would have any impact on MGA cultists) she was introducing them to a particular perspective they already knew about.

Yes she was. Please watch the video or read the transcript of the interview.

No she doesn't. I just watched it & she only speaks about the problems with gender ideology. Nothing at all about general feminist principles or issues.

I love how Kirk winds up (to parphrase): 'it's funny your'e a feminist & I'm a Christian Conservative & we have so much in common"….😂

Kara speaks about it from a left-wing feminist perspective.

Most of Kirk's audience, even if they see some of the problems with gender ideology, are unlikely to have considered this:

"Radical feminism is all about protecting the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. And we cannot do that as a movement if we cannot define the category of women and girls to exclude males."

Or this:

"It is meant to make us forget that biological sex is grounded in material reality. If we can all be persuaded that men can get pregnant, then all of a sudden femaleness has been made distinct from pregnancy in our minds."

Or this:

"So I mentioned I was on the board of Women's Liberation Front from 2016 to 2020. Now I'm the president of the U.S. chapter of Women's Declaration International, which anyone can find at womensdeclarationusa.com."

And it's always worth pointing out this, no matter who the audience is:

"But the idea that a man can suppress testosterone for one year and then thereby compete on the women's team is so insulting to women and girls. We are not men with less testosterone. We're actually complete human beings."

Plus it's important to express how this negatively affects gay rights:

"And they're very frustrated because for lesbians and gay men, biological sex is really relevant. You can't protect same-sex attraction if there's no such thing as actual sex."

None of these views are news to the mainstream or far right. In fact most people including centrists & centre left intuitively believe sex is binary & safety/fairness is implicated when it isn't AND its been long publicised in their media. These aren't exclusive feminist theories rather 'common sense'. The only difference with all these groups & gender critical feminists is the activism involved in applying pressure on institutions & media.

She may well be highly qualified but as Biden said he was hiring based on skin colour, she may not have been the best person for the job.

Charlie Kirk was correct.

What you are missing here is diversity is a qualification. Diversity brings its own qualifications in the form of experience to the table that others lacked.

Cookie cutter copies as in old white men aren't going to bring anything new to interpretation of law.

And it's not as if Trump didn't indulge in his own limited pool of applicants/DEI when he appointed hard line Christo fundamentalists Amy Cony Barrett & Brett Kavenaugh to facilitate the demise of Roe V Wade.

All supreme court justices in fact are appointed based on political leanings by the prevailing party in power in the US.

Meanwhile Trump hires people he sees on Fox News who definitely have questionable abilities.

If you are going to hire people based on appearance, at least Biden was picking from a much larger pool.

hard line Christo fundamentalists Amy Cony Barrett & Brett Kavenaugh

They're Catholics. They're entirely mainstream Catholics. Perhaps Howie regards that as a disqualification.

But there isn't much point, because Howie is not interested in a discussion, but merely in lecturing us that we're all far right adjacent.

And his political tribe regards that as just cause for murder.

Thanks eatfigs.

I think some people forget just how little the general public understood about how the needs of female people were being disregarded in the push to prioritise gender over sex in February 2022.

Considering that even in 2023, it was highlighted that one third didn’t know what the term ‘trans woman’ meant in the UK.

In February 2022, discussion about Thomas’ participation in the NCAA swimming had just started being discussed when you compare the knowledge and understanding of then to now. Washington post only dipped their toe in the water about Thomas’s participation just before this interview was released to the public. It would have been in production at the time of Washington post’s first article. And it was notable that Washington post was the first mainstream media to mention it.

I think some posters forget how little this was discussed in the months preceding February 2022. So this interview was indeed reaching an audience that may not have known about the feminist perspective.

Considering just how many of those mocking male social media commentators are still saying ‘where were the feminists supposedly fighting for women’s rights on this topic’, there seems a major disconnect. Apparently, feminist voices were everywhere and the information was so very well known yet misogynists and some conservative women across the political divide still haven’t heard those feminist voices.

What Kara wrote last year was even more applicable in 2022.

“I get a lot of flak for going on conservative media. To anyone who would criticize me for accepting conservative platforms, I say: “If you can get me a platform on CNN, MSNBC, or the New York Times, great. I’m happy to accept.”

As I mentioned in a 2024 post called “Why Can’t We Talk About this”:

In large part, this is because Democratic elected officials and mainstream media outlets have an unspoken agreement: The leftist feminist critique of sex denial must never be mentioned. If states pass bills to prohibit “gender-affirming” pediatric cosmetic breast and genital surgeries, the feminist testimony submitted to the legislature is not reported. If feminist meetings are protested or even attacked to the degree that news outlets cannot ignore the story, Democratic elected officials like San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin characterize the women’s meetings as “right-wing hate.”

So feminists like me are in a bind: Accept the occasional Fox News platform that reaches millions (as I did by appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight several times before he left Fox News) and confirm the left’s smug certainty that we are not “real” feminists or leftists, or decline any platform with the slightest whiff of conservatism about it, and continue to toil in obscurity.”

But apparently February 2022 was the age of knowledge where supposedly everyone knew what they know now.