This post is not going to win me many friends, but here goes.
We have a severe information problem right now. Not just propaganda in the common forms, but disparities in delivery and framing that change how we perceive the world for good or ill and impact our senses of justice, healing, and progress.
The truth of the matter, as far as I and my data can tell, is that Charlie Kirk happily courted and encouraged violence of many kinds and frequently dabbled in the sorts of us v them rhetoric that one might think had been relogated to the holocaust museum. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated that in the flurry of harassment, calls to violence and war, and automatic selecting of targets that followed in the total absence of good information after the shooting.
People knew who to assume because they knew who Charlie Kirk had been making an enemy of — and telling them to view as enemies. Leftists. Trans people. Especially trans people.
But that’s slightly aside from the point. In the wake of his death, all you could hear about is who his detractors were about to target and victimize. The rage permeated every bubble you could imagine.
But it is not hopeless, nor is this situation (the world in general) beyond healing — if we are willing to heal it.
If I put myself in the perspective of one of Charlie’s followers, on seeing the joy, indifference, and even celebration at his death, I would have to reasonably conclude that there is an entire swath of the country and the world that not only hates me but which would never allow me any sort of redemption or forward momentum.
It hasn’t been lost on me that people have gotten in SO deep into Kirk’s rhetoric that they considered him “moderate” in their spaces — so much so that Nick Fuentes and his Groypers found Kirk to be a threat to their political order — and they’re finding out the hard way about the world outside of their bubble now.
I don’t think Kirk can be redeemed from his legacy, no matter how much effort goes into white washing it at this point. Even if he had never said or done the horrible things he had, he still took hurting, isolated people and used them for his own political gain and fame.
But for his followers and for people who didn’t know what they’d slowly gotten into, we have to make a decision: do we want the only path forward to be war and conflict?
That’s it. If the answer is no, that we don’t want war and conflict, then we have to be willing to do the healing work that involves telling these folks that they are not the worst things they ever did and said and that there is a path foward and out of that dynamic.
There are a lot of people who are doing good work, not just the WLMN, to allow that healing and to prevent people from ever falling into that trap of hate — but that work is invisible right now because the drama, the violence, and the fear sell FAR better and easier to people who have come to view every other person in the world as a character in a political story rather than humans that we have to share this world with.
Nobody following Kirk’s lead has to end up remembered the way Kirk was. There’s a way, if they’re willing to step away, and things are not as hopeless as the world would have you believe. If you found yourself in his circles, fuck it, you can message me and I will personally talk to you about stuff and help you get out of that situation.
Shame on every media personality, including Kirk, who take the grievances of people and overload them until they explode out — offering no healing, no way forward, no progress. Hopefully our hate speech project can identify the actors sewing division and turning families on each other under the guises of video games and religion and put a stop to this.
But in the meantime, I know that hate is addictive and so is self righteousness. I mean it full well, if you got into his circles over time you can message me and I will talk to you like a real human being and at the end we may not agree on everything but I bet you’ll not see me as the enemy.
Treating each other like humans is the only way to establish a new way forward. I should know, I’ve sat down and had those conversations with hundreds of people who were active threats to my life and safety, and together we got them back to their happiness and away from political organizations that used their grievances for their own gain the way Kirk did.
JAYSPEAK 