daemos_
this message may be offensive
Not bothering to announce this to everyone because it's petty, and there's no point filling people's inbox with it. But to the user who said "you gotta be white", blocked me without waiting for a reply, and then made an announcement misconstruing my stance on gun violence, you know who you are. Same user who is involved in a book depicting underage sex and gore, meaning 0 moral high ground and honestly whose opinion of me means nothing, but I figured it'd be worthwhile to reiterate my (actual) stance should anyone come across my account.
I do not care if you don't have empathy for Charlie Kirk. Your perogative. When I talk about not glamourising political violence, I'm talking pragmatically. Anyone who understands politics understands the significance of public opinion—when we uphold gun violence, we widen the extremist chasm and lose the moderates. We legitimise the far right, feed into their propaganda, and make room for justifications for things like ICE in the minds of Middle America. Mind you, Kirk was a political commentator, this is not anywhere near the equivalent of taking out Trump or Netanyahu, it would be like assassinating Tucker Carlson a few years ago.
Do I like all of Carlson's takes? No. But he's done wonders in influencing Middle America over Palestine, and assassinating him would only have done more *harm*. That is the entire point.
I'm not a blind pacifist, sometimes political violence is necessary. Putting lead into people with no legitimate power in the way H*tler had is not an instance of that. Was Kirk part of a propaganda machine? Absolutely. Did killing him stop the propaganda machine whatsoever? Absolutely fucking not. Things have only gotten worse, and if you can't see that, you're wilfully blind.
daemos_
Plus, assassinating far right political commentators lends to the idea they can do the exact same to people like Mamdani, which is the last thing we need.
There is meaningful violence and meaningless violence, and that discussion has nothing to do with 'empathy politics.' That's my entire point. We are in an awful time in history because we cannot unite, we cannot have discussions with people we largely agree with when we disagree on a single thing. I can promise you I've done more for Palestine than 99% of the keyboard warriors who interpret my words as an ideological attack, my own dad was martyred fighting for equality and peace and I've always been dedicated to taking up that mantle. I study philosophy at Cambridge in the hopes of going on to study international law to dedicate my livelihood to opposing genocide and ethnic violence.
What are you doing? What are you doing when you render someone's life down to something as arbitrary as race, or when you make a pointed announcement with 0 context just for the superficial applause? It's pathetic. Tag me next time instead of intentionally misrepresenting my point.
