Yes. Himself.

Exactly. Hitler never killed anyone himself, but his rhetoric is directly responsible for the murder of tens of millions.

If you take a gas tanker and spray down the lawn and outside of the white house, and something else causes a spark that turns the entire place into an inferno, you didn’t start the fire. That doesn’t mean the fire would have still happened without your actions.

“I was only giving orders!”

Pol Pot killed 30% of the nation using words.

Agreed. Kirk balanced along a very fine line of “just debating” or “expressing opinions” but anyone with half a brain engaged could hear the dog whistles all through his arguments and neither side is as dumb as the media and memes make them out to be. Those whistles are heard loud and clear, it’s why some loved him, and others hated him.

Likewise and with much less nuance, a Fox presenter comments that the mentally ill and/or homeless should euthanized. Then days later a homeless camp is attacked. Wow, what an unlucky coincident?

I wouldn’t want to lose the right to free speech but when it appears to incite violence, I struggle to see how - particularly the Fox presenter scenario - is any different to “shouting fire in a crowded theatre”? Words causing others to take action that lead to the death of innocent people.

HOWEVER, one person’s violence-inspiring words are another person’s Rage Against the Machine or genuine call to action against oppression. Innocent people can and do get caught up in these struggles too.

I don’t have a solution. I have no idea how we fix this without trampling existing freedoms and ruining everything good. All I know is that it’s not an easy solution that some halfwit media personality or politician is going to solve with one easy action.

A righty will just say it was action, directives, legislative action.

But the point is that modern right-wing mouthpieces can effectively toe the line of hate speech versus incitement. Dog-whistles and stochastic rhetoric that indirectly radicalizes others.

When this is all said and done, we’re going to need to overhaul our education for critical-thinking to spot this and perhaps broaden the definition of inciting violence or clamp down on hate speech. Though I look at Germany that has stricter laws and we see AfD neo-nazis rising there too albeit to a lesser extent?

Hitler ordered killings under his authority, absolutely. That healthcare CEO is a much better comparison to when people immediately die as a result of your direct actions and authority to order people to follow through.

It’s not the same. Claiming every racist, bigot, homophobe that opens their mouth is akin to Hitler and therefore can be summarily executed is not an argument that is going to win anyone over outside of lemmy and by the time Stephen Miller is ACTUALLY ordering killings and the public might actually support violent push back you’ll all already be in jail for terrorism and mass murdering YouTubers and even then nobody will feel bad about it.

Cunt got shot. Shit happens. Kids in america get shot daily and no one gives a fuck.

Right wing nutjobs don’t give a fuck when kids get shot because it’s not their kid. Just some anonymous nobody(s) that are probably forgotten before they’re done typing “Thoughts and prayers.” Charlie Kirk was a person. He was approved of. He had ideas. They knew his name, if not any of his actual ideas. You can’t just go around insulting, much less shooting, actual people.

Empathy. The missing ingredient is empathy.

Every single time I see the right wing and the compliant “moderates” fawning all over Kirk, as contrasted with all the people shot nearly daily in this country that don’t get all these memorials and apologies and days of remembrance, I think of Chomsky’s discussion of “worthy victims” vs. “unworthy victims”.