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Charlie Kirk shot at UVU event

Red said:
I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk. He wasn’t speaking to me, or for men like myself. At the moment I’m examining the common belief, at least on the Right, that he was a champion of free speech. And now a martyr for free speech. I do think his murder is a turning point in our history, the irony of that fact lining right up with the title of his famous organization, was not lost on me. I’m not sure I can see the man as a true champion of free speech. I do like the “Prove Me Wrong” debate style, and he treated students who came to the mic and disagreed with him respectfully.

But, saying he was a champion of free speech?

AI Overview


There is a strong argument that Charlie Kirk's actions, particularly his organization's "Professor Watchlist," directly contradicted his claims of supporting free speech by attempting to silence or intimidate professors with differing viewpoints
. This has led many critics to describe his free speech advocacy as hypocritical.
The "Professor Watchlist" and free speech debates

In 2016, Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, launched a "Professor Watchlist," a public database of academics accused of advancing "leftist propaganda". The watchlist has been cited by critics as a clear attempt to silence professors by intimidating them and mobilizing public pressure to punish them for their views.

Critics have argued that this targeting of professors goes against the spirit of free speech for several reasons:
  • Intimidation and fear: Professors included on the list have reported receiving threats and harassment, creating a chilling effect on academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors called the list "the opening salvo in a broader right-wing attack on higher education".
  • Encouraging censorship: By branding opposing ideas as "propaganda," the watchlist encouraged students and others to demand the removal or punishment of professors based on their speech. Some conservative politicians have since followed similar tactics, with incidents in Texas leading to professors being fired after students reported them for discussing gender identity.
  • Disagreement vs. blacklisting: While Kirk often framed his campus visits as promoting open debate, critics argued that the watchlist was not about disagreement but about blacklisting opponents in a modern form of McCarthyism.
Kirk's position on free speech
Despite these actions, Kirk and his supporters presented themselves as champions of free speech on college campuses. They argued that:
  • Challenging "indoctrination": Kirk's efforts were a necessary pushback against what he saw as "woke indoctrination" and liberal bias in higher education.
  • Promoting debate: His campus tours, which featured debates with students, were framed as a way to encourage dialogue and challenge dominant narratives.
  • Defending conservative views: Supporters maintain that Kirk was fighting to protect the free speech rights of conservatives, whom he believed were being censored and marginalized on college campuses.
The tension between Kirk's stated support for free speech and his specific actions targeting professors with different views remains a central point of conflict in discussions about


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n3vkVjlkTOE


krcrtv.com

Turning Point USA's professor watchlist sparks fear and controversy

Turning Point USA, founded by far-right conservative activist Charlie Kirk, continues to maintain an online database of university professors they claim "discri
krcrtv.com krcrtv.com


View: https://medium.com/@mboedy/debunking-charlie-kirk-and-his-followers-on-campus-speech-a773b9225ab5


www.theguardian.com

How Charlie Kirk turned campuses into cultural battlefields – and ushered in Trump’s assault on universities

The slain head of Turning Point USA stoked campus culture wars and ‘treated faculty and students as enemies’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The man is going to be lionized and hailed as a champion of free speech. Unless you are a left leaning professor at an institution of higher learning. I’m also expecting the Right to go full throttle on cancel culture. Describing Trump’s words and actions for what they actually are may become all but impossible, with Bondi launching investigations of anyone doing that. So, his death may really have a chilling effect on free speech.

And I’ll also say I’ve long felt the internet and its social media platforms may be the death of civilization itself. Just as the Governor of Utah said to America the other day. It is a poison. It’s made me say things and exhibit a personality that is combative and angry. That cannot be doing me any good whatsoever. In other words, I do not for one second think I’ve avoided the worst effects of being online so much. What the hell did I do before the internet, lol.

Finally, there are people on this forum who feel genuine pain and grief at Kirk’s murder. I would never wish the pain of grief on any of those fellow posters, no matter how much I’ve attacked them, or their positions. No matter how much I believe they support an American fascist in Donald Trump. If Kirk meant that much to you, like a family member even, I am sorry for your loss.
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I've never seen you become combative and angry. I on the other hand am ready to challenge men much bigger than me to a wrasslin match in my basement.
 
“The debates were simply performances, and he could not have an entertaining public fight without opposition. Turning Point did not work to bring people together; it worked to bring about a country where anyone who wasn’t a white Christian nationalist wasn’t welcome. I won’t celebrate his death, but I’m not obligated to celebrate his life, either”.

www.thenation.com

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning

The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn’t a promoter of civil discourse. He preached hate, bigotry, and division
www.thenation.com www.thenation.com

Charles James Kirk, 31, died on Wednesday from a gunshot to the neck at a Utah Valley University campus event just as he was trying to deflect a question about mass shootings by suggesting they were largely a function of gang violence. He died with a net worth of $12 million, which he made by espousing horrific and bigoted views in the name of advancing Christian nationalism. The foundation of his empire was the group he cofounded and led, Turning Point USA, which is a key youth-recruitment arm of the MAGA movement. Kirk was able to launch Turning Point at the age of 18 because he received money from Tea Party member Bill Montgomery, right-wing donor Foster Feiss, and his own father, also a prolific right-wing donor. He was an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct. He had children, as do many vile people.

It is rude of me to say all of this, because we live in a culture where manners are often valued more than truth. That is why a slew of pundits and politicians have raced to portray Kirk’s activities, which harmed many vulnerable people, in a positive light—and to give him the benefit of the doubt that he did not grant to anyone who wasn’t white, Christian, straight, and male. California Governor Gavin Newsom framed Kirk’s project as a healthy democratic exercise: “The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate.” This downwardly defines both “discourse” and “good-faith.”

There is no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign, and refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins “Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.”

Many of the facile defenses of Kirk and his legacy are predicated on the idea that it’s acceptable to spread hateful ideas advocating for the persecution of perceived enemies as long you dress them up in a posture of debate. This is just class privilege. The man who said, “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot” said it while wearing a nice shirt and a tie on a podcast instead of tattered overalls in the parking lot of a rural Walmart. That does not make it any less racist.

It’s true that we cannot know what was in Charlie Kirk’s heart because we are not telepathic. But we can make reasonable inferences based on the things he said and did publicly because we are also not colossally stupid. He built a large following, and acquired real political power saying these things—to young people, to the president and his minions, to deep-pocket right-wing donors—and there are far too many people who have been ready to suggest that he was able to do this through a combination of natural charisma and good old-fashioned hard work. Speaking about and addressing the late Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who is Black, he said, “It’s very obvious to us you are not smart enough to be able to get it on your own. ‘I could not make it on my own, so I needed to take opportunities from someone more deserving.’” Kirk was smart enough to ask his father for a check when wanted to found Turning Point, and had always been happy to curtail opportunities for more deserving people when they failed to conform to his own ideology.

It’s this that makes it particularly galling to see him cast by some as a free-speech warrior. He created a professor watchlist explicitly designed to get academics fired who dared talk about the right’s usual assortment of verboten topics—anything to do with race or gender, in particular. He also offered the standard right-wing plaint about left-wing indoctrination in American universities even as he went on campus tours trying to indoctrinate young people into his hard-right Christian nationalist worldview.

When we decline to speak ill of the dead, it’s because we have compassion for the living. In this respect, I am sorry for Kirk’s children. I don’t know if Kirk was a good father, but if he was, that does little to mitigate the damage he did to other people’s children. I can only hope for the sake of his kids that they have role models who will teach them that it is wrong to profit off the dehumanization of people because of who they are.

Some of the people valorizing Kirk insist that all of his toxicity was acceptable because at least he was open to debate—a bar so low, you’d have to dig into the Mariana Trench to get to it. And he certainly paid lip service to it. “We record all of it so that we put [it] on the Internet so people can see these ideas collide,” he said of his own streaming operation. “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.”

But Kirk’s actions undercut that notion every day. His entire business was saying the other side was evil and dehumanizing them. The debates were simply performances, and he could not have an entertaining public fight without opposition. Turning Point did not work to bring people together; it worked to bring about a country where anyone who wasn’t a white Christian nationalist wasn’t welcome. I won’t celebrate his death, but I’m not obligated to celebrate his life, either.
 
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PJF said:
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Charlie Kirk was a civil rights activist that happened to be republican.
The first amendment is the first amendment for a reason. It is a fundamental right and a staple of democracy.
If you disagreed with CK you were welcome to go to an event and totally expose his racism or bigotry right to his face through civil discourse.
CK didn't go around the country to meet with all different kinds of people and allow anyone that wanted to confront him that opportunity because he was a nazi.
CK didn't murder people for their opinions, he offered his own platform to people he didn't agree with.
 
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