If Charlie Kirk had been a liberal activist instead of a conservative, how do you think the media and politicians would have reacted to his death?
If Charlie Kirk had been a liberal activist instead of a conservative, how do you think the media and politicians would have reacted to his death?
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The same way those democratic politicians that were murdered got treated. Just shy of open hostility from the right wing media and leadership
Seems like you could look to the assassination of Melissa Hortman for that. They would cover it, say it was bad, and then quickly move on.
In fact it was covered so little that when Kirk was killed plenty of people didn’t even seem to know or remember it happened only three months ago.
Do you recall Melissa Hortman? They would react like that.
Didn’t trump mock Nancy Pelosi husband when some right wing nut job tried to murder him with a hammer?? I member
We would have heard more about the school shooting that day
About like when Pelosi’s husband got hit with a hammer and they tried to make it into a gay drug deal gone bad
When I heard Trump had ordered flags to half-mast til Sunday in honor of Kirk’s passing, it struck me as absurd. I tried to think of left-leaning “equivalents” and the first thing that came to mind was Biden lowering flags in honor of the hypothetical murder of Rachel Maddow. Silly, and not an equivalent because Maddow is a journalist. I then thought of AOC, which is probably closer given her age, but, again, not the same as she is an elected official. So…David Hogg? Never mind, I think we all know a Democratic president would be very unlikely to make a similar move, and if he did, he’d be mocked by the right.
Well, he wouldn’t be getting any medal of freedom that’s for sure.
A lot of people are looking at the Hortman assassination as an example, but she was a relatively unknown state politician. Not to minimize it, but that’s just the fact. I don’t think the left really has somebody you can quite compare to Charlie Kirk in terms of influence over the youth, which might be indicative of the problem, but I digress. I think if Kamala Harris had been shot during her campaign, or somebody like Bernie Sanders or AOC was assassinated, it would make bigger headlines, and probably be covered as more of a tragedy than Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I do also think at least your more mainstream conservatives would condemn the violence, and even though more right wing conservatives might be “secretly“ cheering it, they would probably express condemnation of political violence (I suspect that’s what most liberals and center leftists are doing right now.)
Candidly, I think the reason this has blown up so much is because of how incredibly graphic the video of his assassination was. There’s a reason the JFK assassination has remained in the public Zeitgeist for so long. Obviously, he was a president, but if somebody had just blasted him with a pistol while shaking hands and kissing babies, I really don’t think it would be something we talked about all the time in the way that we do. I realize most of us on Reddit have been at least unfortunate enough to stumble across r/meatcrayon but the general public doesn’t usually watch videos of people having their brain stem bifurcated and blood spewing out of their neck in a way that might make the directors of John Wick tell the props department to cool it with the special effects.
The video elevates it quite a bit.
I remember Ray Rice (nfl player) domestic assault came out. Some criticism, couple game suspension.
Then the video came out. Public outcry. Full season suspension. Cut from his team.
There was no new info in the video. But seeing something happen changes perception.
Edit: for the record I don’t agree with Kirk’s ideology and am not defending ambivalence on other killings. I just think it hits different.
A reminder that Utah senator, Mike Lee, said, “This is what happens when Marxists dont get there way” after Vance Boelter, a Republican, murdered the Hortmans and injured others.
Lee would go on to post, “Nightmare on Waltz Street” because they do not understand what bipartisanship is.
Still in office.
Edit: This comment blew up lol
I feel like the government is trying to guide this country to a civil war. Fanning the flames of conflict, fostering hate between political parties, polarizing them at every opportunity.
They’d have blown it up either way. Because a population divided against itself is too busy fighting to unite against the corrupt government leeching off of it.
Two Democratic Minnesota state reps were shot in their hone by a man with a long list of other Democrats. The president made fun of the incident, it was in the news for a day, and nothing fundamentally changed.
When Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer, he was made fun of by Fox News hosts. All kinds of nonsense circulated about how he was secretly gay and his attacker was a slighted lover.
If Charlie Kirk had been a liberal activist, people wouldn’t be getting doxxed and losing their jobs for being rightfully critical of his platform and who he was. The president would be on Truth Social making jokes about it, conservatives would be peddling every conspiracy and fake story under the sun to blame everyone but themselves. There would be weak calls from leftists for gun reform that would be laughed off by republicans calling them cowards and giving the usual spiel of “thoughts and prayers” and “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. They would escape all accountability for speaking ill of the dead that conservative figurehead and people on the left themselves are enforcing in the current eulogized whitewashing of Kirk and his disgusting trash record, and then the news would stop talking about it the next day because the president decided to deploy the army in another US city.
It’s been driving me up the wall seeing all the nonsense from places like r/Conservative about how “THIS IS WAR” and “THE INTOLERANT LEFT”, like there’s collective amnesia over how much sympathy is given whenever anything bad happens to anyone aligned with the right and how little is given every other month when a trans person, or someone who was only perceived to be transgender is attacked, members of the press are attacked by the army who have been deployed domestically, a clinic that provides gender affirming care or abortions is firebombed, a democratic political office is shot up, an LGBT venue is shot up and the memorial is painted over, etc.
We know exactly how things would have played out had Charlie Kirk been a liberal activist and it’s infuriating that so many people have collective amnesia over how incidents of violence against leftists played out just a few months ago. Anyways, end of rant.
Remember when there were democratic elected officials assassinated 90 days ago and the story got buried somewhere under Jimmy Hoffa’s body?
Yeah, that’s what would happen, because it already happened…
Trump would have done exactly what he did for the Minnesota State House leader, Melissa Hortman and her husband (and their Golden Retriever) that were murdered in their home by a right wing shooter who also shot Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman who survived.
Didn’t even send thoughts and prayers much less order flags to half mast.