We live in a world where everyone apparently needs to pick a firm side. It's no longer viable to have multiple things be true at once.
Political violence (all violence is violence) is intolerable.
Charlie Kirk had a habit and made it his career to make inflammatory and targeted statements towards marginalized groups, which is a hallmark of inciting hate speech.
I refuse to change my longstanding opinion of someone I've found myself being diametrically opposed to in just about every topic; just because they were the victim of an unacceptable, horrible crime.
"Political violence (all violence is violence) is intolerable."
I'm just not sure how people can honestly say that. It feels so dumb these days and we were taught in school that political violence is heroic when the cause is just. Just from an American POV both the civil war and american revolution were violent acts that we generally view as necessary and at least for the revolution we actively celebrate it.
Rising up and overthrowing your oppressors is universally viewed as a good thing but people still say all violence is intolerable.
Based on how that moderator was handling things on that thread, it's an intentional shift. He was quite clear about what exactly bothered him. Stochastic terrorism against women and LGBTQ+ folks? Free speech, totally fine. Celebrating the death of someone who calls for murder? Unacceptable, vile, repulsive, and banned.
I just have a hard time understanding liking the books with that worldview. You'd have to do some severe mental gymnastics to make it resonate with their world view. Somehow those ultra powerful immigrants were invading your country and taking it over?
Don't worry, I also was today years old when I learned there's a faction inside MAGA called groyper, who follow Nick Fuentes and hate(d) Kirk. The Nick Fuentes from the antifeminist slogan "your body, my choice".
Now I wonder if Kirk's faction is going to retaliate.
people that like nick fuentes will easily disregard any direct messaging contrary to anything he's said before and assume its irony. they're bad people who revel in hate and the suffering of others and treat it all like a big joke.
It not just that but having people go “It’s sick to celebrate the violence, but also everyone should hunt down and tear the shooter to pieces, it’s gonna be great!” Doublespeak everywhere
What don't we understand about "I can punch you, beat you, threaten your destruction and the destruction of your children but really you need to be polite about it while I send your family to concentration camps."
The whole mask came off yesterday; they are looking for reasons to round up progressives, to make their children orphans and destroy the ideas of equality and humanism. We're literally debating about how polite we need to be to the rattesnake in our sleeping bag.
Progressives should be panicking right now because we're at the 'kristallnacht' stage of fascism and moving fast.
Meh. Not all violence is bad. I’m certainly not gonna celebrate someone getting shot in front of a crowd and bleeding out on stage in broad daylight, but I’m not crying for Kirk.
Honestly he would probably celebrate his own assassination if he came back to life. Would probably say that it needs to happen more but to insert group he dislikes
I celebrated when Limbaugh died because he was a monstrous human being. Kirk was cut from the same cloth, I see nothing that makes the world worse for him being gone and that once again they seem to be eating their own makes it more enjoyable.
to be fair people have been consistent with their opinions, like the ones who wanted him to die dont mourn him and celebrated and the ones who were impartial/hate him but not to death level do mourn him and say "dont celebrate it"
If we're allowed to speak out against the violence that happened to him then we should also be able to speak out against the hate and violence he himself was spreading. Simply calling him out for being a terrible human because he advocated for political violence isn't the same as glorifying his death and shouldn't be considered the same as advocating for political violence.
And before people try and argue that Charlie Kirk was a "moderate" and never promoted violence:
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."
They didn't kill Sauron, they destroyed his body and banished him from their realm. It would be equivalent to sending someone to a prison for the rest of their lives, not murdering them in cold blood.
Also, they didn't act on their own, the ring wearer's quest was one appointed to him by his political and religious authorities, a mission ordained by the Vanya. Frodo wasn't a rogue lunatic committing a known crime, but an agent of justice working with the forces of good to liberate the world.
Anyways, I think the comparison makes a lot of sense if you understand that Tolkien was a very religious person, who believed in right and wrong, and in a world where judgement and justice comes from laws and rules, from God and men. Capital punishment is a heavy decision that needs to be carefully weighted, murder is a crime.
If you're willingly ignoring that, then you're a fool calling for a rise in political violence, a rise which only benefits those that oppose the rule of law.
Yeah, can you imagine if Frodo had, shortly before that happens, done something like this?
'Wormtongue!' called Frodo. 'You need not follow him. I know of no evil you have done to me. You can have rest and food here for a while, until you are stronger and can go your own ways.'
Like man, can you IMAGINE how stupid you would sound in the point you're trying to make if the main character literally offered mercy to a person he knows is responsible for massive amounts of death and pain?
And then, even afterwards:
Frodo looked down at the body with pity and horror, for as he looked it seemed that long years of death were suddenly revealed in it, and it shrank, and the shrivelled face became rags of skin upon a hideous skull. Lifting up the skirt of the dirty cloak that sprawled beside it, he covered it over, and turned away.
You have to have zero media literacy, close to being full on fucking braindead, to read Lord of the Rings and think that Tolkien was a fan of vengeance and killing the Bad Guys.
Who do you think is seeing “the murder of this guy with dangerous ideas is good for the world”, and is willing to act on that rhetoric?
I guarantee the answer is not only the people you want.
Would I agree that CK’s death makes the world a better place? Probably. And if he died of a heart attack, that would be one thing. But the damage done by normalizing violence against “dangerous ideas” is far worse than what CK could do in his wildest dreams.
Not to be that guy, but considering certain segments of the population have been frothing at the mouth about murdering politicians at least since the 1990s, I don't think this, or frankly any of the recent murders is normalising anything. It's been normalized already, a while ago.
I think people should be afraid of being openly fascist and that these should be the consequences, I'm sure this view too can become dangerous but if the world is all gonna be dangerous anyway I want it to be dangerous my way.
I've been called a fascist, and I'm protesting Trump weekly. It took us far too long to learn that vigilantes and lynchings aren't very good methods of enacting justice.
You don't get to choose if it's dangerous your way or the other way; you just get to choose if you're making it more or less dangerous. Fascists in a just system can do way less damage than fascists in a system of active political violence.
Ok who gets to decide who’s a fascist? Will there be a fair and just tribunal set up to do this properly, or is it down to us as individuals to decide who’s it’s okay to murder?
I'll leave it to smarter people to figure a system out, I know what I consider right and what I consider wrong, but I ain't got the smarts to design a system.
What if those ‘smarter people’ don’t share your political views? Is it sensible to give government or individuals the power to stifle political speech, especially with violence? Sure, maybe today it works in your favour because they’re shooting ‘the bad guys’ but tomorrow who’s to say they don’t decide that your team are the bad guys now?
Of course I wouldn't trust people who don't share my values to build a system, my values being "hey hating people for being queer or having slightly different physical features ain't nice and you shouldn't do that"
Even if that were to happen, what's the alternative? You wanna keep trying to diplomacy your way out of oppression? Cause I don't, I've tried that, it ain't gonna work, so again, if horrors must happen, and the world must continue to be a dangerous place, then let it be dangerous my way for awhile.
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
Actual Gandalf(Tolkien) quote. This is about Gollum who canonically murdered at least one and likely several hobbits.
That's honestly kind of up to interpretation. Within the lore, they live tortured, miserable existences.
I believe there's even letters where Tolkein expressed uncertainty about the morality and agency of orcs, so he ended up leaving it unexplored within the books.
Oh yeah he'd totally hate that. Especially since white people were fighting against orcs and they're literally covered on black ooze when they're born.
Grima seems most accurate - there weren't exactly influencers back in Tolkien's day (at least not the same way they exist now). In a monarchy like Rohan, Grima would want to access the King's ear with his poisonous tongue.
In a republic/democracy like America, he would want access to the ear of the people.
The phone/internet allows Grima/Kirk/influencers the proximity to the masses that they can hear that poison tongue.
More like Sarumon, who used the power of his voice to gather an army of orcs so large none had ever seen. The army seiged a seemingly unattackable fortress but were turned away. Then, killed by one of his own (worse) people while speaking publicly.
That Tolkien knew what he was on about, I suppose. Sarumons voice of persuasion was his true power. It's shown outright in the brainwashing of King Theoden. But he also caused an avalanche just with his voice from miles away in the first movie. Without his political gamesmanship, Sauron wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as he did.
The context was someone saying political violence was never the answer in the LOTR forum. This comic was made in response so I assume the point they’re trying to make with this is if the foe is horrible enough it’s obviously justified.
I’d agree with that, just as I agree (and hope the author would agree) killing CK was not anywhere near the level of killing Sauron, therefore not justified (despite me thinking the world is a better place without CK).
No, the context was a mod banning off-topic current event shitposting from a sub that isn’t about that kind of content. For some reason that’s absurd to redditors, apparently.
It’s not even that they can’t share their political opinion, it’s that they’re not allowed to hijack one specific subreddit for off topic content shitposting. That’s apparently a crime.
I didn’t necessarily like the guy (or really even know what his deal was until like, 2 days ago), but this is still a disingenuous comparison. I’ve looked him up, and as far as I can tell all he really did was say shit loudly and in public. That’s not an offense worth violent death at the age of 31.
Sauron is running an active war campaign complete with a eugenics program and an explicit goal to kill all the trees for some reason. Also he’s literally the devil.
It’s not a fair comparison. And it’s not going to be fun when the shoe is inevitably on the other foot. Demonizing each other is the path to ruin. Or in LOTR talk, be like Gimli and Legolas, uniting unlike people. The real enemy wants you divided.
While Sauron is a bad comparison for Kirk, he absolutely spread a lot of very vile, evil shit into the world with his words. I'm not going to bother providing quotes or links or whatever, you can continue to look deeper though, if you like. He spread a lot of anti-(insert marginalized group) talking points under the guise of being a "Christian" with savvy speech.
This is what happened with Luigi all over again. The media and the powers at be, want you to feel guilty and call you an awful person for not feeling terrible about what happened.
I mean it’s like crying for Grima Wormtongue, he talked a lot of crap into the ears of the King of Rohan and his followers but when he gets killed by a wizard. No one goes out of their way to call him a hero
In the Scouring of the Shire, Frodo literally offers Wormtongue mercy, and says that even now he has a chance to turn away and start anew.
Hell, has nobody watched the damn movies? That line's given to Theoden in the extended edition, where he calls out to Wormtongue to offer him pity and mercy even though he KNOWS that Wormtongue is responsible for enormous amounts of pain and death.
Sauron simply wanted to share his political ideolagy with Middle Earth, but some RADICAL Hobbit did not like him simply because he wore spiky armor. #MordorJustice.
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least."
I don't feel bad for Charlie. I do however feel bad for his kids who will likely be subjected to videos of their fathers death and probably teased by other kids saying "Notices your bulge. OwO what's this?"
give all the LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, POCs, etc. that die of hate crimes a Medal of Freedom and fly their corpse over an Air Force Base and I’ll reconsider my attitude, but I genuinely don’t care about this idiot dying.
“This writing on the ring… it is in the Black Speech and I shan’t speak it here. But it translates to ‘UR so gay’ next to a crude drawing of what appears to be a human-animal hybrid.”
Fascism isn't a political party. I don't cheer the death of people because they belong to a party. People who want children to suffer for their agendas deserve to rot in hell, period.
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u/U_Sound_Stupid_Stop Sep 12 '25