I had only the vaguest clue who “Charlie Kirk” was until yesterday and by “vaguest clue” I mean I remember he was, until yesterday, a great hate-figure on the Right and Nutter Nicky Fountains found his last great claim to fame by pwning him in some sort of debate. I have nothing against him, I am sure he was a nice man and needless to say political assassinations are NAWT COOL KIDS.
So, I stress that I know nothing about Charlie Kirk’s role in American politics and Americans should probably stop reading now. I write entirely about the reaction to this event in Britain and the fact that there even is a reaction, with former PMs and the leader of Reforce U.K giving tributes, is absurd in itself. Charlie Kirk was a local American activist, he wasn’t Ronald Reagan, he wasn’t an elected representative but you *are* a Member of Parliament.
Normally this wouldn’t be sufficient to warrant a Post in J’accuse but I want to draw attention to the following attempt to ‘cancel’ some upcoming head of “the Oxford Union”
There have been many attempts to define a ‘Right Wing Woke’ or ‘Right Wing Cancel Culture’ and so we are in a Boy who Cried Wolf situation. For example, I disagree with Trump deporting people for being pro-Hamas but it is not a free speech issue. If you are a foreign national in another country you don’t have a ‘right’ to stay there and participate in their discourse, even if your cause is just. Let us be clear. Insisting that someone resign from a position because they don’t have the correct sentimental response to a foreign news story is Wokeness. If George Obongo can be sacked for not weeping in public when a man he’s only ever met in a professional setting suffers a tragedy, then I can be sacked for not showing ‘respect’ at the death of Elizabeth Guelph, or George Floyd.
There is absolutely no reason why a student at a British university should have an ‘appropriate’ reaction to a political assassination in the United States. There is nothing in the concept of free speech which entails you have to like your opponents or adopt certain moral norms other than refuting what they have to say. Celebrating unpleasant events does not somehow ‘incite’ them by the apparatus of sorcery. It was by allowing this sort of morality creep that Woke was able to define certain speech as ‘harmful’. Is it ungentlemanly and trashy to gloat about an intellectual rival suffering a grim fate? Maybe. But that doesn’t make it grounds for revoking an elected position. This is moralism. Mr Abaraonye has one job and one job only: that is to refrain from censoring visiting speakers. It is completely irrelevant whether he treats them with courtesy in his private correspondence.
BUH…. BUH BUH BUH BUH BUH HUMINA HUMINA BUH WHU MUH MUH MUH WHU ABOUT THE TUH BUH MUH FUH TUH TUH TUH FUH FRIEND ENEMY DISTINCTION!!! THIS CAN BE OUR GEORGE FLOYD.
No, this isn’t true. If one was to behave in a Schmittian fashion, one would be ‘cancelling’ him for being a Leftist: for expressing Left-wing views, and refusing to condemn the Rotherham atrocities. I have zero problem with the Right protesting Left-wing speakers or trying to ban Left-wing parties. The fact that you cannot actually do this right now is a sign you are totally powerless: there still is censorship in Britain, there still are people involved in actually heinous left-wing bullshit like covering up grooming gangs with paid positions in major public bodies. Cancelling him for being ‘disrespectful’ (to someone with zero relevance to British politics) isn’t Schmittianism, it is just Woke, you are not gaining any political victory by doing so, the Overton window isn’t shifted, you are simply engaged in a conventional moral panic. “We need a right-wing George Floyd”? — George Floyd didn’t work! Within three years of George Floyd everyone stopped caring about actual Fascism because it was all so ridiculous. It is the opposite of Schmitt’s distinction between a hostes and an inimicus – treating personal scandal as a form of political activism. This goes for all the predictable whining this article will provoke about him being a foreigner and not especially bright. The fact that someone might be undesirable in their present position doesn’t mean it is a ‘win’ to get rid of them for something totally irrelevant. If you actually had power, you’d cancel him for being incompetent and not make up an absurd moral panic to justify your own impotence.
In America, and for American readers, it makes sense to use this event for political capital because the American Right understands political capital. Using this as an excuse to purge the Antifa complex and restrict left-wing media is grown-up politics. They are going after MSNBC broadcasters, left-wing politicians; the British Right is increasingly a resentment-fuelled parody of all that was genuinely transgressive in 2016, they will say nothing about the grandparents condemned to die in prison for peacefully protesting in the wake of Southport, they don’t dare criticise the Epstein clients in the British establishment, they aren’t even using this as an opportunity to pitch a ban on Hope not Hate to prevent similar things happening here, instead they stir up the lamest normie rage at a random student with zero power whatsoever.
I stand by anyone persecuted for using vulgar or intemperate language out of my own instincts for survival. I know for sure that I have reacted in similar ways in the past and could easily do so in the future. I do not want to live in a society where people in their 20s have to refrain from being edgy with their friends in case it turns out they dissed Ben Shapiro. It is an attack on Gamer Values. And before I am anything, I am a Gamer.
Charlie Kirk was one of the most influential political figures in the United States of America and was a brazenly international political actor with operations in Britain and Japan alongside the States. Should Nasty African Oxford Guy be expelled for being a libtard and espousing unilaterally accepted libtard beliefs? Not my business. But it is important to remember that someone like Kirk was a big deal. The best analogy would be the student president of Harvard publicly mocking the death of the head of the AfD, or Rupert Lowe, or something. Perhaps that doesn't change your mind, which is fine, but I believe it to be worth mentioning. I agree with the sentiment that Woke is Bad and that the transcendent Values of all true Gamers ought to be protected from Wokeness, however. Even if I as an American gain from the political persecution of Nasty African Oxford Libtard Guy, whom a sexually attractive member of my family met last year and did not care for. This is all to say that you are not particularly wrong about the application of emotions here, but that Americans, who are actively tortured by Woke, libtards, and the glee libfarts take in glorifying the death of chuds, White people, and men in general, have every reason to be angry with the chap, if I may borrow a term from the people I have been separated from for 350 years or so. Much love and appreciate your forward-thinking perspective as always.
I think this person should be opposed for whatever reason is available, he is a product of the violence of DEI against native brits (PPE at Oxford off the back of ABB at A level??!!) and will be nothing but a force for ethnic dispossession and resentment for the rest of his life. These people are poison, his immediate urge to "lol, lmao" about someone he had met being shot belies a fundamental tendency toward hostility to non-black, non-leftists, such trollishness and contrarianism is not of the same sort as that of the gamer, which is laden with irony and rooted in the sense of Justice Thwarted rather than this man's humourless tribal clucking at the death of a perceived enemy. Getting such people fired is an end in and of itself and must be celebrated.