Second article I've seen asking people not to lionize Charlie Kirk, glad to see pushback on deifying this lunatic

On X, Kirk insisted, "Gun control, like vaccines and masks, is focused on making people feel 'safe' by taking freedoms away from others. Don't fall for it."

I'm against political violence but as Kirk would say about a raped woman that was wearing a short skirt "what did he expect?"

Dude literally died for what he believed in. We should be happy for him.

He was a propagandist.

Most politics is propagandist as it works to suggest we shouldn't lead ourselves, but need representatives, and that we need to support and work for the gamified tokens (money) of the nation.

I love how they titled the article as a direct retort to the NYC’s fucking idiotic platforming of a fascist sympathizer.

Was never elected nor held office so never a politician, just a hate monger.

I haven’t been this elated since Luigi.

A few hours before this article was published Jason Koebler at 404 Media published something remarkably similar:

https://www.404media.co/charlie-kirk-was-not-practicing-politics-the-right-way/

Kirk was a radical right-wing extremist. Groomed though he may have been (well, that hair was terrible), he just spewed hate speech.

I think it's entirely possible to simultaneously be horrified by his murder, feel deep sympathy for his family, and be glad he's no longer in the world.

It's impossible to be against violence and say anything good about that two bit hateful grifter.

Fuck, where's the byline? I get if they are afraid to publish under their real name but gimmie more from this author, I want to see if I agree with them in other articles.

Ezra Klein sucks. Has always sucked, will always suck.

Oh my god!!!! He was a psychopath!!!!

I love that psychopath is included in this article.

Of course, the main purpose of posts by Russian trolls is to incite arguments among different groups or ideologies: conservatives versus liberals, pro-life versus pro choice, pro-immigrant groups versus border wall enthusiasts, etc. Researchers say as outrageous as much of this content appears to be, Americans can’t help but to click.

After analyzing over 2,500 of these Russian posts, researchers discovered they generated clickthrough rates as much as nine times higher than the norm in digital advertising campaigns. In a rather poor reflection of human nature, it seems that controversy, lies, and fear mongering do very much equal clicks.

Interestingly, ads that used flat out racist language didn’t do well, but posts that were threatening or contained verbiage like “terrorist,” “sissy,” “idiot,” and “psychopath” did do very well. Ads that invoked fear and anger performed the best, according to the research team.

https://studyfinds.org/study-russian-trolls-supremely-effective-at-exploiting-american-fear-anger-online/

*nonviolent legacy