All: if you can't respond in a non-violent way, please don't post until you can.
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer need to express it aggressively.
The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0
Speech made in April, 1968, assassinated on June 5, 1968. Wild.
The most sustainable vision wins. And this is a great vision. Thanks for posting. Helped clarify how to think about today.
That would be a great world if that vision could materialize. But as long as people continue polarizing society, exploiting emotions, and using divide and conquer[1] tactics to gain political power, not much will change, and things may even get worse. Social networks have amplified this dynamic more than ever before.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer
While I like that quote, i just went to lookup the speach and was sadden to learn you “sanitized” it. Taking out the phrase “vast majority of white people and vast majority of black people”
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.
A nitpicky note: Aeschylus didn't say that.
RFK probably studied Aeschylus in the original Greek, and did an on-the-fly translation. A more literal translation is:
"Zeus, who guided men to think, who has laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our will temperance comes. From the gods who sit in grandeur grace is somehow violent."
There's no "turning the other cheek here." It claims violence does indeed beget violence, and there's no human way around that.
To be clear, I'm not advocating violence, or even criticizing RFK. I'm simply defending the purity of Aeschylus.
Thanks, this is what I needed to hear.
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> what we need in the United States is not hatred
What saddens me is people take different political views as hatred, and medias run with it. I can't remember how many times a person is labeled fascist or communist just because their views are different.
Aeschylus is a great greek poet. For our purposes here I might advocate for Jung (paraphrasing from memory)
In the end there is no going forward in the current context; there are no solutions there. It requires renewed vigor to move to a higher, better frame where growth is possible.
For us americans: political identity (libs v. Trump) has no solutions. Better: the political parties need to serve us. Dead kids or abused kids by adults (Epstein) cannot stand. What can 3.5 std deviations of center left and right get together over? Kids surely. And the knowledge (as Aeschylus narrates well elsewhere with the furies) that violence begets violence surely.
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History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels.
I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.
====
Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
In light of the top post by "dang", I'd like to apologize for my own comments. Forgive me brothers and sisters, I was obviously on edge.
In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait.
To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.
The sad irony is that he's at a college campus debating/arguing with people. At their best that's what college campuses are for. I know they haven't been living up to it lately but seeing him gunned down feels like a metaphor.
I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.
That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?
There was a school shooting on the same day as Kirk's death: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/students-wounded-shooti...
If he were still alive, he would be writing and speaking about how such violence is unfortunate but ultimately acceptable— even necessary— to "preserve our freedoms", brushing it aside to be forgotten. He of course did so many times in life, notably in 2023 when he was quoted doing so in the media:
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
Kirk's death has already overshadowed the news of that school shooting, which will indeed be forgotten by most long before we stop talking about him.
One final victory for Charlie Kirk, I guess.
There are a number of outspoken people on the other end of the political spectrum from me, that I vehemently disagree with. While I would love to see their words either ignored or condemned by the masses; I have no desire to see them killed or harmed in any way.
I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way. Either committing or supporting violence against those we disagree with, has no place in a civil society.
Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow
pragmatically, you can't kill an idea with bullets. terrorism does one thing only: it triggers retaliation. nihilistic accelerationists who want a war can use terror to provoke one.
some of Charlie Kirk's last words:
> ATTENDEE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
> KIRK: Too many. [Applause]
I don't think the shooter was trans. but I'm trans, and I don't see this going well for me, or for my community. the DoJ was already talking about classifying us as "mentally defective" to take our guns. now there's a martyr. the hornet's nest is kicked.
murdering this man was not just wrong, it was stupid.
Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’s assassination attempts and targeted violence seem to follow a similar pattern during periods of significant social and political shifts.
As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then.
Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.
Just the other day I was reading about the Italian "Years Of Lead" [1] which I wasn't old enough to understand myself at the time in the UK. I was wondering if we could see something similar as various forces internal and external strained at the seams of western democracies. For context, there is quite febrile atmosphere in the UK at the moment so I feel it is useful to attempt to calibrate these things for stochastic effects.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)
I posted this article about political violence from Politico 3 months ago. It got 3 votes and sank. But it resurfaced on their website today because of this event (they revised the title of the front page link to make the subject more clear) so I'll bring it up again:
How Does the Cycle of Political Violence End? Here's What an Expert Says.
(Was: The Kindling Is a Lot Drier Than It Used to Be)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/02/political-...
The author's point is that political violence does occur in cycles, and one thing that makes a cycle run down is when it gets gets so awful that universal revulsion overtakes the political advantages of increasing radicaloric and action.
He gives examples, which may be within the living memory of older HN readers (like me):
"I can remember back in the ’60s, early ’70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the ’60s or the ’70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out."
and:
"You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don’t know, but it did. It wasn’t just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down."
This is not particularly optimistic, but it it's an interesting analysis.
Nick Fuentes built his entire empire on hating Charlie Kirk, and his fans (groypers) are insane. Laura Loomer just came out and attacked Kirk a couple days ago. It's entirely possible he was fragged from the right.
I don't want to live in a place where people are killed for expressing opinions I consider highly offensive and damaging.
I went to college at this place (when it was Utah Valley State College [UVSC], before it was UVU). I spent a lot of time in that part of the campus over several years. How strange to see these events unfolding there. Kirk seems to be a person with whom I have scant philosophical agreement, but I prefer to converse with such people rather than watch them die. What an awful mess this all is.
There is an increased amount of energy in the system. This is a bad thing. The amplitudes of the fluctuations are too high. Time to bring things back down to normal. Political violence cannot be accepted: Luigi Mangione, the Hortmans' killer, Kirk's killer all have to be brought to justice by the law. And from the rest of us, they all have to be denounced.
Increased political violence is bad. The state starts breaking down since the price for everything is death so action stalls.
This is the worst kind of censorship. I guess debate is also dead.
I have such disdain for the e/acc crowd given that I believe that "we do not understand the consequences of what we are building".
But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.
The wikivoyage page for the United States explicitly advises that neither politics nor religion should be discussed when meeting people in this country.
How did we get to this point.
I'm mildly curious what the reaction to this will be compared to the reaction to other recent political murders, like the Hortmans, or of Thompson.
That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
I bang on a lot about not saying things like "this person is a threat to democracy" and other such apocalyptic statements. This right here is a perfect example of why: when you steep people in a culture that tells them someone is (or their ideas are) an existential threat, eventually someone is going to be the right level of scared + unstable that causes them to kill people to try to defend their way of life.
If you find this horrifying (and I hope you do, because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder), then I encourage you to really think about whether we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds. We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.
There's video of the police carrying someone away, with his pants down. They drop him on his face at one point. Apparently the wrong guy.
Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.
So sad, he was more willing than most to hear and debate contrary viewpoints (the "prove me wrong" table).
For the few that find this acceptable (or even celebrate this), then they must also be able to say:
“If I say something that someone doesn’t like, then they are justified in killing me.”
And accept it.
A therapist once explained to me that the human mind first processes things through the emotional regions of the brain (limbic) and only afterwards can it reach the logic center (pre frontal cortex).
This has helped me to understand a lot of human behavior and social media posts and reactions (also propaganda, cults, sales, etc)
You may think you have come to a logical conclusion about political issue x or political party x, but very likely the vast majority of us are first having a triggered emotional reaction and later using our pre-frontal cortex to logically create a narrative on why we feel this way and justify it.
Taken to extremes I think you can see things like today happen and see how people react.
Sometimes I catch myself defending someone or a position and later realize I am just wrong, it’s just that I had an emotional reaction felt a possible connection with the person or a cause or vibe they expressed or are connected with and then my attorney brain kicks into overdrive trying to make it all add up.
It also explains a lot of domestic issues, if you are upset or scared your brain stays in the limbic center and is literally incapable of rational thought until you calm down or feel safe.
Just my two cents
It's been a few hours since the shooting and no suspect is in custody.
I wonder if he/she/they will ever be caught?
I understand why people would hate him, but even being a terrible human being doesn’t carry an automatic death penalty.
We are better than that.
It has been extremely disheartening to see people celebrating this across other social media platforms.
Regardless of your take on political violence. Studying the history of especially the French and Haitian revolutions is instructive. Going down the road of civil war sounds good to some of us, but the reality of civil war is incredibly bleak. The Haitians have still not recovered after 225 years.
It’s mind boggling how violent and destructive it can get once people completely give up on the humanity of other people.
So, let’s keep trying for more peaceful lives. Even angry peace is better.
As an outsider, I can only offer my hope that somehow you all manage to collectively take a breath, agree that you're heading down a dark path, and take a few steps back towards consensus and compromise. Godspeed.
I wonder how quickly the gunman will be found. I've always wondered if the authorities would ever be able to find someone who patterned themselves after a character like The Jackal.
Leaving personal feelings about the person. What exactly does 2nd amendment guys think using guns to fight "tyranny" looks like? People rising up to a group of people clad on black clothes and an eerily fascist reminiscent symbol ala rickandmorty?
Some people using guns to defend themselves against who they believe are the harbingers of this authoritarian State is 2nd amendment working as intended. Not a "tragic but necessary sacrifice" as some will put school shootings, but actually what right to bear arms is supposed to be about.
And it's immaterial if you ultimately disagree to whether this administration is authoritarian, but these things will keep happening as long as enough people believe that to be the case. It's a feature, not a bug.
It feels like the two extremes in this country are not partisan, but rather "extremely angry" and "we can't do anything". A very bad combination.
Never really followed this guy and only knew of him because he'd randomly be mentioned in news stories.
Regardless of your political bent, this sort of shit is sickening and genuinely disturbing, particularly when it occurs at (as this did) at a university whose ostensible raison d'etre is to ventilate different ideas, offensive or not. I realise this event wasn't a 'debate' per se but nevertheless it's the ethos and optics that matter.
There's also the incredibly myopic immaturity inherent in using violence for the sole or primary purpose of silencing the speaker and signalling to others that violence is somehow an acceptable form of dialogue. The myopic absurdity of this is of course that it is a cycle that can never end if all participants share that view, ensuring that it is inevitably self-defeating. Violence can make sense under certain circumstances - coups, revolutions, wars - but in the context of mere rhetoric it's abhorrent to witness.
Just a grotesque reflection in a long list of them that we as a species, or very many of us - perhaps more than we want to admit - are extremely violent and brutal.
Sickening and sobering, and again you could plug in any speaker/polemicist from whichever part of the political spectrum in here and it would be no less true.
the entire situation is dripping in macabre irony
the question about gun rights, the "prove me wrong" tent, the "constitutional carry" state the event is held in
My 2 cents from Australia. At the very least he encouraged debate, and motivated others to challenge and vigorously discuss ideas, data, history, politics and perspectives. That's healthy, not dangerous. We're meant to defend the right of such activities.
I didn't agree with his religious convictions that underpin much of his arguments, but that's because I'm not religious. He presented other arguments on various social issues that sounded sensible. He also respected anyone who fronted his events, listening & engaging intellectually in a civil manner.
Apparently his last word spoken was "violence" (unconfirmed). Anyone celebrating his death is an extremist, and if that turns out to be a lot of people, then we have a bigger extremism problem than people care to admit. How to fix that? We need more bipartisan condemnation and unity across the floor - in my country too. Sounds like they couldn't even agree on a moment of silence without a shouting match. The division is fuel for extremism.
This is crazy. Healthy debate and disagreement should be free in a democratic country, without any fear of violence, let alone death.
To attack at an open debate event like this is an attack on democracy itself. Discourse should never be discouraged.
While I'm not a fan of Charlie's beliefs, actions and his brand of conservatism, he was willing to go across the political divide and foster debates with those that do not share his values.
Condolences to his young family and everyone close to him.
A sad day for America.
Very few will like where this leads.
I hope cooler heads prevail and pray for him and his family.
Sure seems more and more like some person or nature is seeking to destabilize us. Seems anti-American to blame the other side and not realize we are better together.
this is a sad day for America, violence is not an answer to extreme voices on both ends, praying for peace and space for true free speech.
This network of far-right influencers was begging for it, it fuels their narrative even more
It’s interesting that these kinds of things happen in the US, the very country that keeps blaming and justifying interference & invasion in nations where similar events occur
So, which country should now deploy its military to the US in an attempt to restore law and order?
This is nuts. I am deeply worried we are headed towards open armed conflict. The violence against political opponents must stop, no matter who it is.
The guy was the embodiment of the "prove me wrong" meme.
His choice of getting in to the middle of people and answering anyone's questions in a situation where there's no re-takes, no edits, even if he might've felt overbearing, was quite a fire test of the commenter's arguments versus his counter-arguments.
His assassination really is a direct attack on debate itself.
There really isn't a world where the sick people cheering this have any real respect for democratic values of a free world full of all kinds of thinkers. Maybe for something more akin to that one dialog "choice" in Avowed. You know if you know.
As of 3:39PM ET, CNN is reporting shot and Wikipedia has already a death date.
I completely disagree with Charlie Kirk's rather unsympathetic preachings on many topics. But this act - it gives me a very sinking feeling. What worries me more than the yet undetermined identity of the killer is how a lot of people are responding to the news.
Why do some people celebrate his death? This was not a person who was declared as an enemy of the state. He was someone holding a public political debate. Can't they see that this incident is going to have extreme repercussions on their own welfare and the values they stand for? Can't they see the fear, pain and tears on the other side, that's gradually getting replaced by outrage and resentment? How do politics make people so blind to the suffering of the others? Doesn't the nation exist to support opposing ideas without such carnage? I know that Kirk has expressed opinion that downplayed the value of human life (like in case of gun rights). But how does that make the side that advocated for dignity, equality and empathy just suspend those values in his case?
You can't seriously convince any opponent with violence or hatred. And guns aren't the best tools for genuine persuasion. The mockery of their pain will only lead to their conviction and resolve. And at some point, it will become irreversible. Please don't let politics and bias cloud your judgment. This isn't a victory for your cause.
And no matter what sort of a person Kirk was, his role in this world is over rather abruptly. His grizzly demise displayed around the world leaves terrible wounds in the psyche of his family, friends, followers and numerous others. I hope that their pain doesn't mutate into destructive energy. I hope that they find the strength to overcome it and find peace.
Can people just upvote a post instead of repeating exactly what another person has said?
Yeah we all know violence has no place in our society and gun's are controversial and politics should be more civil.
many on the left point out charlies comments on gun crime, school shootings. this has nothing to do with any of that because it was a political assassination. this is not gun violence in the colloquial sense. you could ban guns fully and there would still be political assassinations using rifles because these people are either enabled by high level political forces or highly motivated in an idealistic, political manner and will do whatever is necessary to get a rifle unlike most common criminals.
I don't know who this is, but given the number of comments, seems to have mattered. Only point of this comment is assure others who don't know his work that you are not alone.
My theory on this and other recent shootings of this type: it is driven by the over medication of our youth, convincing them something is wrong with them for not wanting to sit still in factory schools. Our medical understanding of the drugs prescribed to kids that affect their brains is far smaller than it should be for how pervasive these drugs have become.
The NSFW video is haunting, don’t watch it. I feel literally sick.
Remember to turn off autoplay on Twitter.
I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc. We've all been taught since grade school it was a good thing to kill Nazis, even in small percentages there are mentally unstable people who will hear you call someone a Fascist and take the logical step from "it's good to kill nazis" to "they're a nazi so I should kill them". I am both very pro freedom of speech and right to bear arms, and I think where Canada and the UK have gone with hate speech laws are too far, but I don't know how you solve this.
if you go to https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours as of right now (11 sep 2025 2145h utc) you actually can't find this dude's death in the list any more, and that list includes minimum 51 victim deaths since his
every one of those victims is infinitely more deserving of attention and sympathy than this absolute chucklefuck
Off-topic, but I was about report a very hateful response before I refreshed and saw that it had already disappeared. Thank you to @dang and HN's other admins!
If that video is real, the shooter had incredibly accurate aim.
It's crazy to me how many people are lost talking about gun violence on here when he died as a victim of political violence. The problem is the mainstream narratives that are making people's brains melt who then go out and shoot people who disagree with them. Go read any comments to Kirk's videos on X. It is literally a fucking mental asylum.
Call me crazy, and maybe I'm just out of touch, but something seems... off with the reaction to this. The amount of people on reddit that I'm seeing gloating, openly celebrating this, it's really just something I have never seen before. Not even the Trump assassination attempt had this kind of reaction.
All I'm saying, is that if I was a US adversary, I would absolutely be spinning up a million LLMs to post the most provocative possible stuff. The technology absolutely exists - just yesterday sama@ was talking about the dead internet theory. I'm worried that someone is going to see that horrifying video of the shooting, and then see all these horrifying comments online, and do something equally horrifying.
One quote of Charlie’s that resonates deeply with me is:
"""
When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts.
When marriages stop talking, divorce happens.
When civilisations stop talking, civil war ensues.
When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.
What we as a culture have to get back to, is being able to have reasonable disagreement, where violence is not an option.
"""
This belief in the power of conversation over conflict defined Charlie’s work. He didn’t just preach ideas; he lived them, fostering discussions that encouraged understanding despite disagreement. I did not agree with all his standpoints, but what I admired most was his insistence that dialogue could bridge divides.
I’m Canadian, and US politics is a massive distraction and influence on ours. It gives me an objective view of their system because their problems often spill over into ours. I usually try to avoid diving into US politics, so I didn’t follow Charlie. Still, he was deeply respected by all of my political allies in Canada. I don’t know all of his positions, but I’d bet we agreed a lot.
One thing that’s shifted in my lifetime is the polarization of US politics. Republicans edged somewhat left because several outspoken anti-gay senators were later revealed to be gay. But Democrats swung much further left, and it’s been costing them elections. The polarization worsened as Democrats regularly dehumanized and attacked Republicans as fascists and racists. My expectation is that the recent attack of charlie kirk by south park is a key factor in this political assassination.
Charlie’s mission was to break that cycle. He stood for open discussion without violence. He often said the great failure of today’s politics is that Democrats and Republicans can’t even talk to each other. And when husband and wife stop talking, they end up divorcing.
The democrats/liberals ended that yesterday. There's no 1 entity to blame here. But how can anyone risk their NECK trying to have proper democratic conversations and debate anymore? You cant. The conversation is over. Divorce is coming.
I personally believe that every violent death is tragic and should be avoidable.
But how many of us can say that they died for what they believe in? [1] Isn’t this really a personal victory for him at the end of the day?
> I think it's worth it. 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.
I hope he had solace and peace in his final moments, knowing that he kept true to his words right up until the end. Thanks for the sacrifice for our god given rights to stand up to a tyrannical government!
[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-20550...
And dude had kids and a wife that aren't going to see him again. That kinda kicks me in the feels. You don't have to be in his political camp to feel bad about that.
Whichever side of whatever fence you're on, it's universally a bad thing when politicians, political activists and political representatives get assassinated.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." (Hosea 8:7)
One thing I noticed here and elsewhere online today is that I've not seen any memories of Charlie.
It's all been about the politics and ramifications of the assassination. But nothing about the man himself and how he positively impacted the lives of others, no matter how small.
I'm certain this is my filter bubble, but it's still strange nonetheless.
If anyone has any positive things to say about the man, I'd love to know them. As I'm on his political opposite, I never really engaged with his content or knew much past any controversy that boiled over.
All the conspiracy theorizing is silly, imo. This is just another shot fired in the long history of American assassination. Charlie Kirk should be proud. The is the America he asked for. And this may be the beginning of a very violent period in American politics.
We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it.
The fact that we're talking about this using terms like "sides" is the problem. American politics has long since stopped being about policy, but is treated like a sport where you follow your "team" and defend them no matter what. It's as though people are incapable of having thoughts on an issue more complex than "does my side think this is good or bad?" and suddenly those who disagree with you are evil, and with partisan media suddenly you see the "other side" as some faceless evil rather than people with differing and complex experiences and views.
I don't agree with a lot of the things Charlie Kirk said, and as someone who is not an American, there was also a lot of things he said I simply didn't care about because they didn't apply to me. I also found that his way of communicating was more geared towards encouraging discussions that would generate views. But despite all that, I can appreciate that he was a man who was willing to have a (mostly) civil conversation with all sides, something I wish more people would try to do.
American politics isn't politics, it's one step short of being like football hooliganism for supposedly smart people.
America feels like it's in mortal danger.
I feel tremendously sad for his death. I also feel desperated when right-wingers talks about vengeance or backlash because it is not clear or doesn't matter if the murderer is left-winger. I thought they were totally silent against gun control when school shootings and latest Democratic politician assassin.
I am not American but looking at society trust falling down does not feel good man.
"On September 10, 2025, at approximately 12:24PM, Conservative political influencer Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at the Utah Valley University in Orem, UT. Mr. Kirk was speaking at the University as part of the American Comeback Tour. Multiple SLC I and III agents responded immediately. The suspect fired one shot from an elevated position on a rooftop in an adjacent building on the campus and surveillance video shows the suspect, jumping off and fleeing the area on foot. ATF and other law-enforcement located an older model imported Mauser .30-06 caliber bolt action rifle wrapped in a towel in a wooded area near the campus. The location of the firearm appears to match the suspects route of travel. The spent cartridge was still chambered in addition to three unspent rounds at the top fed magazine. All cartridges have engraved wording on them, expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology. An emergency trace has been submitted an ATF SLC is working leads generated by the trace. The firearm and ammunition have been taken by the FBI for DNA analysis and fingerprint impressions. Upon completion of forensics, the firearm will be disassembled for additional importer information. Multiple people of interest having contacted or detained because of eyewitness testimony and review of video footage. The primary suspect is yet to be identified. ATF is assisting the investigation with multiple other federal, state, and local partners and the case is co-led by the FBI and Utah SBI."
I watched a few clips of Kirk on college campuses leading up to the election.
On campuses today, there’s no shortage of professors, student activists, and guest speakers beating the drum of modern liberalism, but very few brave enough to take an alternative view.
So I respected him for getting students to question and defend their beliefs.
The argument that I keep hearing that he was just a guy talking does not quite fly.
The most horrible people in history did not do any physical harm to other people themselves. Many were also very nice to hang out with and had lovely families. But they definitely inspired and ordered others to do unimaginably horrible acts.
It's not a gun problem that we have in this country. Iryna Zarutska was murdered with a pocket knife. What we have is a spiritual sickness, which cannot be legislated...
The only thing I can think of that the government can do is to clamp down hard on violence, including speech which advocates for violence (e.g. glorifying Luigi Mangione, calling everyone a Nazi/fascist, etc.). Freedom of speech ends where it actually turns into violence.
Things are not healthy in the USA, and have not been for a long time. It's all about scoring points now, owning the other side, getting soundbites, etc. It's sad that it's progressed to this.
From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".
I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.
YN, please make up your mind.
You censored conversations about the genocide in Gaza because "this is just a tech blog" but now we can talk about this (an assassination that I consider a tragedy BTW)
The american state was brought into existence and persists through unrelenting political violence - internal and external. The estimated 90% of Indigenous population that perished; persistent excess deqths of indigenous peoples https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1698152/; persistent racialized violence perpetrated by the state on Black communities; the exploitation and arbitrary state violence upon documented and undocumented non-citizen workers (or those perceived to be non-citizens); the 5 million that have perished during GWOT; the 5 million or so excess USSR deaths from US policies during the early 1990s; the violence of carceral warfare (the so-called “mass incarceration”) against racialized populations.
Aime Cesaire called it “imperial boomerang”; Malcolm X said “chickens coming home to roost”.
Yet the only form of violence that legible to the bourgeoisie is even the prospect of resistance & counterviolence - most of the recent attacks upon capitalists & those labeled as “right wing” seem to have not come from “the left”.
I'm sorry to say this but I just enjoy the irony of it all. His last words were "Counting or not counting gang violence?". He literally died arguing for less gun control, saying mass violence and death is acceptable. I guess he found out the hard way the consequences of spreading hateful, bigoted, divisive, evil shit. Ben Shapiro cancelled a bunch of his visits to college campuses, I think that's hilarious - I wouldn't shed any tears for him, either.
What if Trump is behind this, and he had him killed to distract from the Epstein files business? He could also blame it on the liberals and the left, and make his own party look like victims.
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot in politically motivated killings, governor says (cbc.ca)
102 points by awnird 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
Interesting to see the 100x(!) attention that this gets on HN, likely representative of similar media reach on more mainstream channels, when it's not even lawmakers in this case.
so this is the end of the debate bro culture he pioneered? i dont imagine any other right wing thought leaders are going to want to put themselves at risk of being shot over and over again, now that its happened.
I have become something of a statist over the years and I apparently annoy a whole lot of people, when I argue for not upsetting the status quo much further. Needless to say, this obviously is not a good thing if you share that perspective with me. This is actual political violence. And it has little to do with guns. If someone really wanted to get to the guy, one would. The issue is further societal deterioration in basic standards.
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.
edit: be
Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but... this extremely unfortunate event is going to be a very telling test for the media and society at large.
A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered and another attacked by the same man only a couple of months ago, back in June. How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?
My cynical side suspects we are about to hear a lot about "violence from the left" in a way we did not about the right back in June.
Prayers for Charlie and his family, violence against people you disagree with is never the answer
I think that this is pinned to the front page says a lot about the user base and moderation here. Disappointing.
You cannot have peace without justice.
Well then, here come a bunch of new, authoritarian laws.
It's all gone a a bit tits up, hasn't it?
Liberalism only works if it has moral social currency. This assassination just made a martyr out of Charlie Kirk. Now think about his wife and child.
This man died promoting non-violence.
People who get excited enough about politics in this country to shoot someone are stupid. Love him or hate him, Charlie is just somebody's puppet. If you see them on twitter or television, they are puppets. Puppeteers are smart enough to stay out of the spotlight. There is only one person in recent memory who was smart enough to go after a puppeteer.
Platforms like Reddit and BlueSky need to be held accountable for promoting violent rhetoric, as well as the users that openly call for violence.
A child could write an LLM backed script that filters out calls for violence.
I have no background context on this topic. Can someone more knowledgeable fill in the details?
The nbcnews website is filled with ad stuff and my blockers basically render the page unreadable.
Do leftists, especially the ones one reddit, not realize that to a normal person, Kirk wasn't George Lincoln Rockwell, but just some boring, establishment Christian, conservative dweeb doing the well-worn campus "debate me bro" shtick of Shapiro and Crowder before him, and that the optics of them celebrating his death are really, really bad?