The 27th Episode of the Progress Pondcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, >Apple, Amazon and I Heart Radio. Please give a listen, like, and subscribe.
Brendan and I talk briefly about a rules change in the Senate that no one noticed because everyone was focused on the murder of Charlie Kirk. And then we talk about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
You’ll probably hear some takes that are at least a little different from what you’ll find elsewhere. There’s a lot, from Nick Fuentes and Laura Loomer to gun laws and the demonization of transgender people to the idea of building a statue of Kirk for the Capitol. There’s our take on Josh Shapiro lowering the flag in Pennsylvania and Ezra Klein saying Kirk practiced politics “in exactly the right way.” Was Kirk really engaging in a healthy debate with the left?
We also talk about whether people should or should not watch the graphic video of the shooting, and how it might affect their response. Relatedly, we discuss the undeniable fact that many seemingly normal and decent people were pleased that Kirk was murdered and why that it is and what it means.
I’d tell you more, but then you’d have no need to listen.
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A very thought provoking podcast, guys. Martin’s comment at the end about not allowing this to subsume our humanity really hit home with me. Like many others, I have been struggling with a wide variety of emotions around this killing of Charlie Kirk. Thanks for reminding me to keep myself grounded in a place that’s keeps me true to my humanity. I also fear where this is going to lead. I have already heard some very troubling comments among people I know who hold pretty far-right views. Like was mentioned in the podcast, the facts surrounding the possible motivations of the shooter are irrelevant to these people, I can hear that they have already pre-determined this happened because of people like you and I. We are rapidly sliding down the slippery slope, and there is nothing good waiting for any of us at the bottom.
Glad you enjoyed it.
It’s not clear to me at this moment what the picture is about this guy’s politics. The claim now is about his transgender roommate and that Robinson hated Charlie Kirk on behalf of his attacks on transgender people. True? I don’t know.
But this strikes me as very much like that Dylan Roof moment. I’m not precisely sure what it means though. We’re definitely moving in the direction Dylan Roof wanted.
A key point I tried to make on the podcast is that we should not try to fit this guy’s ideology to suit our purposes.
That’s not really the direction I was taking this. Like a lot of these semi-politically motivated shootings, it’s a young man (they’re all around 21, right?), influenced by accelerationist thinking, way too into video games, and otherwise maybe not totally adrift in life, but maybe without a lot of direction. That was Roof, that was Crooks, and that’s Robinson. What I said earlier was that I didn’t expect him to be on the left, so much as just what I described: into video games, accelerationist, etc. But, the key difference is that when Roof and others from his era committed acts of violence, they targeted what they saw as the “liberal establishment” and its avatars like the black church.
Now those young men are at least as likely to take aim at the conservative establishment.
I don’t know if I’m just overinterpreting a set of cherry-picked data points. I haven’t done any deep study of it. But maybe it means something – nothing good, but nonetheless something that’s worth considering.