Supplementary Material 37: Public Murder Discourse, Heterodox Psychodramas, and Generous Tit for Tat-ers
Why are we never invited to these dinners? We wonder if it was something we said or if our invitation just got lost in the mail, as we endure the inevitable discourse wave that followed in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 21 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 3700:00 Introduction01:10 Cooking Gurus?05:39 Sensemaking Overindulgence07:19 Feedback on The Elephant Graveyard Segment14:07 Gary is awarded an Honorary Doctorate by SOAS19:15 On the Murder of Charlie Kirk24:49 Murder is Bad & Charlie Kirk was a Polemicist38:07 Hypocritical Calls for Violence: Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson41:32 The Superficial Celebrations of Luigi Mangione44:52 Michael Shermer is an entirely non-skeptical partisan47:16 Eric Weinstein and the rush to post49:48 Joe Rogan argues with his friend on vaccines58:11 Predictable Pivot01:05:30 Blocked and Reported discuss the Interpersonal Psychodramas of the Heterodox01:07:07 The Thick Skin of Michael Shellenberger01:11:41 Being Bret Weinstein's +101:13:39 Dave Rubin does not appreciate public criticism01:16:29 A Heterodox DM encounter01:21:01 Money and Macro's Video on Gary's Economics01:27:56 The DTG approach vs Debunking01:29:43 The Nature of Expertise and Criticism01:31:17 Researching Guru Claims01:36:37 Destiny invokes the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tit for Tat strategies01:40:59 Generous Tit for Tat01:46:28 Konstantin Kisin's warning about alternative media01:54:26 Konstantin's "Consistency"02:01:44 Next Gurus and Fake Outro02:03:44 Decoding the Gamers: Caves of Qud and Two Point Museum02:08:11 Retro School Games: Drug Wars, Beachhead and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?02:11:53 Real OutroSourcesSOAS honorary awardees for 2025What did Elon Musk say at far-right UK rally and did his remarks break the law?“We Either Fight Back or Die” – Elon Musk's Fierce Speech at London 'Unite The Kingdom' Rally | APTShermer's tweet after Charlie Kirk's murderJoe Rogan and Bryan Callen on vaccinesHe Had One Product, $80K in Funding, and One Influencer - And Unilever Just Acquired His Company for 9 FiguresMichael Shellenberger Mixed Up Two Guys With Sorta Similar Names And Falsely Told His Readers — And Congress — One Of Them Might Be A Spy As A ResultBlocked and Reported Premium: Taylor Lorenz And The Perils Of Journafluencing (Part...
Hello and welcome to the coding the guru's supplementary material.
The sister podcaster the bigger brother decoding episodes, which is at the minute stuck deep in a sense-making swamp.
But um the person that is enjoying that with me is is Matthew Brown, the psychologist opposite me there.
And I stand before you, both a psychologist and an anthropologist, but mostly mostly just a man.
Mostly a man.
Mostly a podcaster, Chris.
I'm not mostly a podcaster.
I'm mostly an academic with a sidekick in podcasting.
Isn't that more accurate?
I'm mostly a home chef and um flavor maximizer.
That's how I can.
Oh, flavor maximizer.
Is that your like you're in the optimizing world of uh why is that that seems like an area ripe for guru dumb?
Like I I know that you have Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal and all those kind of things, but not really anybody like that's combined Andrew Tate style or Jordan Peterson guruism with cooking.
No, it doesn't, it doesn't suit.
Uh yeah, it's been noted on the the Patreon discussion boards, Chris, that there's a bit of a schism.
Uh a schism, even isn't it schism, is it?
Yeah.
Shishm schism.
It wouldn't be the podcast about a debate about pronunciation at the beginning.
So okay, there's been a schism or a schism.
Yes, right.
There's there's there's Chris's monastery of modest effort where middle-aged people share their tiny physical accomplishments, like going for a walk or something.
They're not tiny, they're modest, they're just modest, Matt.
Okay.
People are doing grand.
And then there is the fun loving epicureans, uh, in my area where we're just we're just looking for the flavor, man.
Um, yes, we're getting bit flabby and pasty.
Yes, we we we're loading up on carbs.
Well, that is true.
We're not moving around as much as we should be, but we're happy, Chris.
We're happy.
That's the most important thing.
Yes, well, actually, we should give a shout out, Matt, that somebody in that Patreon chat, you know, you get various nice photos of food that people have prepared.
And Elisa prepared a nice pastry, very tasty looking piece of bread that um had the DTG logo on the front of it.
And that was yeah, it's impressive.
I asked, I said I'd be more impressed if she could make a gingerbread man uh that looked like you.
Did you say that?
I did say that.
That and if she can make a piece of toast where if you squint at it, it looks like like the shred of Turin, except it's me.
So wow on the burnt toast.
That would be impressive.
She hasn't done that yet though, right?
No, no, that's that's not I feel like she could though.
I I I mean, it was very impressive.
In general, her bread is very impressive.
Whether it's carved in our likeness or not.
Well, but there's a lot of impressive cooking there.
Um I thought I was pretty fancy with my homemade ravioli, the lasagna I made too.
Um, but yeah, people have outdone me, especially with the baking.
Yeah, I can't bake.
Uh it's too hard.
I I I once I once tried to make croissants, and um, yeah, it was a big blow to my ego.
Um ever again.
I yeah.
Well, I I don't like baking.
It's it's like an alchemical science.
It's too complex.
There's too much, you know.
I get very stressed by cooking in general.
I I can cook to a certain extent.
Don't dare Matt try and correct that.
I can.
Okay.
But whenever I do it, it's always constantly like a fear that I'm gonna destroy everything, you know, and I'm um like running multiple timers at them.
I'm spinning like multiple paradigms, and I'm not very good at that.
I get stressed and I I snap at my kids and stuff of doing that.
So it's okay if I know the rest.
Like I wish too.
That's a pretty relaxed affair now because I know what's gonna happen.
I know how to make it good, right?
Everybody can help.
We can have fun with it.
But if it's something new where I'm like trying to follow a recipe, yeah, God, it's like all of my cognitive power needs to go towards that.
So yeah, it's a bit like that.
Yeah, yeah, it's meditative making something that you know how to make very well, and you can just relax and yeah.
I find that pretty groovy.
What happens to me is when I'm making stuff and it's like a bit overwhelming.
There's too many puts and pans going, or I'm worried about what the pastry for the ravioli.
What happens is the kitchen becomes a disaster area, just fly out all over the place and this washing up stacked up with the thing.
Doesn't make me popular.
You'd think the toasty food would have, you know, make up for it, but it doesn't actually.
Um, that's that.
That's that.
How do you feel about the decodings we did recently?
What did we do?
We did the um uh the sense making we returned to sense making land, which I know by the time we finished, we're absolutely fed up with it.
And uh well, people have only heard part one so far.
Oh, I yeah, sorry, yeah.
Anyway, we'll finish.
So you're spoiling it.
It gets a bit annoying.
Spoiler, it doesn't get yeah, it doesn't get better.
I mean, who would have guessed?
Yeah, just three grown men playing around speaking alone in a room.
Yes, but you know, the the thing about that is though that as you and I noted in the response the episode got on on Patreon and Meta and whatnot, people were like, Oh, Martin Chris are enjoying the like it's nice in a way, because it's you know, it's stupid and it's it's like pretentious waffle, but there is an element of enjoyment to listening to it, right?
Um that doesn't last the whole way, so like because it's split up in these two parts.
I feel like we've lulled people into a false sense of oh, this is you know, but actually, it's like a chocolate cake.
You know, your first couple of bites, you're like, oh, this is this was a great decision.
Um then when you're like lying at the end of the cake with the crumbs all around you, and you you feel bloated, and you think, should I have eaten that whole cake?
Like, what was I thinking?
Yeah, this is horrible.
I hate chocolate cake.
What was I thinking?
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
It is it is like a chocolate cake.
I don't need to go back to sense makers for quite a while.
I mean, I know they'll drag us back, but this was enough sense making for the foreseeable future.
But what you might be thinking of, Matt, is that Andy editor Andy, um, a man of many talents, put up the video about the elephant graveyard video on Rogan, um, art versus conspiracy.
So, if you remember, we did a segment about the elephant graveyards video about the comedy cult in Austin, Texas, and Joe Rogan, right?
So, a new audience, the online YouTube audience came across our tick, which already existed in podcast format, but um it spurred another round of discourse, and that was that's quite entertaining because allow me just rat.
Let me just read what I put as the the like notes on YouTube for that, okay?
It's only like three lines, so let me just read it.
After receiving many requests, we take a look at the elephant graveyard's popular satirical critique of Joe Rogan's comedy career and influence.
Presented in a style reminiscent of Adam Curtis's documentaries with a sardonic spin.
The video critically dissects Rogan's impact on the comedy scene, making some comparisons with cult-like behavior.
We offer our thoughts on the video and discuss the nature of some of the claims made about broader tech elite conspiracies.
The summary, very entertaining, mostly accurate, but don't take it all at face value.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, I let me just read a few of the responses, the top comments under that video.
Now, far be it from people on YouTube, you know, to react Without paying attention to the content of the video, but give them a little credit, everyone.
It isn't easy to miss the point so entirely.
Two scientists trying to wrap their heads around the cinematic technique of montage.
I feel like either I'm missing something or you two are it's conspiratorial as a joke, not because elephant graveyard is actually pushing a conspiracy.
Joe Rogan is known for conspiracy theories.
So Elephant Graveyard used that angle as a setup.
The video was straightforward satire, a parody of Rogan's conspiratorial mindset.
Nobody is taking it literally.
Okay, nobody's taking it literally.
That's a strong statement.
You're gonna you gotta be careful making absolute statements on the internet because someone's like Chris, we'll prove you wrong.
Quite right.
So I mean, just a couple of comments down.
Dudes, you just scratched the surface with Peter Thiel, the rabbit hole goes much deeper.
Right.
And uh Lex is a teal protege.
Getting all those people on podcasts because it's a safe space is naive.
If you if you go down, you will see two takes predominant.
One is did you guys miss that this is satire?
And no, we didn't.
We talked about that, and the parts of the satire that we enjoyed.
We talked about the bits that we thought were like kind of irony rapping and so on and so forth.
But if the other genre of comments you see is oh, you guys are so naive.
There is indeed a very significant conspiracy.
You think he's like just being satirical and and just making fun?
He hasn't even scratched the surface with this this teal thing.
So in our comments is an illustration of exactly what we were talking about.
That yes, there is like satirical ironic presentations, but the way that it's done, especially the stuff around teals and tech elites, is not presented as that this is supposed to be a sproof and a parody.
And it's not even clear that that is the case, that that's what the creator of Elephant Graveyard thinks in general, given the other videos.
Now, all the people claim it definitely is like if you go and look, but if you look at his his subreddit as well, it's the same two conflicting presentations.
So I feel that the reaction illustrates the point that we were making, which was not that you can't do a satirical parody of Rogan and you cannot invoke conspiracies, and that insofar as that's what the intention is, it's an excellent video at doing that.
But in the way that it presents the stuff around Teal being responsible for Joe Rogan's rise, and all of that basically the Rogan comedy sphere being a vanguard for this secret tech elite agenda.
That is not accurate based on the existing evidence for how Rogan became popular, and no, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk showing up on Rogan's show does not illustrate that that's the case, or Thiel being a billionaire who supports various people online that are annoying, like Curtis Jarvin and JD Vance and so on.
Okay, I'm hearing you.
Hey, how dare you?
Look, that's not fair.
You're the one that brought this up and said, Oh, we should cover that and make it fake.
And now in your reaction there, you're like, oh, I'm glad you got that off your chest.
You're the one that said that.
That's true.
That's true.
It did seem unfair because we were very complimentary.
We made some incredibly measured cautions about look, don't take it literally.
It's it's kind of odd, it's all ironic.
But don't take the stuff about it all being like this secret plot.
Like it was quite detailed, you know, the secret plot to sort of place operatives within the world of comedy and then to ruin it and then to but there were a lot of moving pieces.
Now, it could be that this is all satire, and what he's doing is kind of illustrating the kind of conspiratorial reasoning that Rogan does in a critique of Rogan, which would be very meta.
If that were the case, I would I think there are aspects where that is happening in the video, like so there is that, but yes, carry on.
Yes, but as as you showed, not every listener gets it, if that's the case.
And that's why we voiced a note of caution.
That is all.
It's interesting how people react to like that's gonna be the mildest criticism we've ever given.
It was so tempered, it was almost in you know, you always couldn't say imperceptible.
That's the word.
Um yeah, but anyway, what do you do?
It's it's read it, he kids.
It's read it.
It's kind of talent.
Well, that's YouTube, but yeah, YouTube read it, you know, it's the it's the internet, Matt.
It's the internet, yeah.
And uh we also need to give a note of recognition because someone that we've covered previously, Matt has been awarded recognition.
Gary Stevenson was issued an honorary doctorate by my old university, so us, which people kindly pointed out on the subreddit, Kian.
So there you go.
No longer can you say Gary just has a master's in economics.
Now he has a doctorate, uh admittedly.
Honorary, an honorary doctorate.
Yes, it it is an honorary doctorate.
But yeah, but you know honorary doctorates, uh kind of a ridiculous thing.
Not actually not entirely, because like the basic concept is reasonable, right?
That people have excelled in some area and they haven't got a doctorate, but universities want to recognize that regardless of the person having achieved a formal qualification, you know, they want to give recognition from the academic field to what they've been doing.
But technically, this is given to people that are lifelong authors or human rights lawyers or developmental practitioners, or whatever, right?
They're like if I look at the list here of people honored beside Gary, you have Nurodin Farah, a renowned author of 14 novels, novels, several plays, and non-fiction books on the Somali diaspora.
Nurdin has been recipient of several major international literary awards, including the prestigious Nutstadt Prize.
Okay, Elizabeth Kivitashvili, an accomplished development practitioner with global humanitarian and crisis response leadership and field operations expertise with the United States Agency for International Development, USE.
Extensive humanitarian work and expertise in development of conflict related and disaster response problems.
Ramachandra Guha, historian and biographer, currently distinguished university professor at Kriya University, previously started Stanford, and so it goes on, right?
Gary is a bit of an outlet that because when they're talking about what he's done, you know, the they talk about his book, the The Treaty Game.
It was a Sunday Times bestseller, and they mentioned that he has been a leading voice on the state of the UK economy, speaking to a following of well over a million on YouTube.
So it's just like he published a book, and he's a YouTuber who mentions inequality, and yeah, yeah, that's and he is the figure at the front of the SOAS PH announcement,
and he gave the like you know, the kind of commencement speech type thing, or the UK equivalent of uh I think it kind of reflects the growing uh influence of like independent media podcasts, YouTube, that kind of thing.
And I think I think the legacy institutions are kind of wanting to be, you know, hip and up to date as well.
Um, but yeah, I mean, if it was up to me, I'd uh I'm uh like I think honorary doctorates are a little bit silly, but uh yeah, if you're gonna give them out, give them to I don't know, people that have done exceptional things and are not being recognized for them, as opposed to you know, someone whose job is kind of building their recognition, that they've got enough recognition anyway.
But anyway, that don't want to be mean, congratulations to him.
That's I know, I know.
I mean Kermit the Frog has a honorary doctorate.
Now that that honor that I'm I think I'm kind of I'm behind that.
Yeah, but uh yeah, I think people just enjoyed that he got an honorary doctorate from my my previous undergraduate university.
But that's completely in keeping with with SOAS.
This is exactly what I would expect SOAS to do.
So it does not it does not in any way surprise me.
But it just means that I know at some future point when people are debating this, they will say, Well, the fact that a university give him an honorary doctorate, that means that they recognize that he's on the level of a an economics doctorate holder.
And is that what that means?
Uh yeah.
Yeah, well, you know, not everyone agrees with our takes.
Um that's true, that's true.
So congratulations to Gary.
Well done.
I hope he could be recognized uh in in more ways um for for his YouTubeing.
I wonder if he'll mention it.
I wonder if it'll come up at any point.
I don't know.
It's it's hard to say, but we'll we'll see, we'll find out.
Um Matt, there was an event which took up a lot of the discourse this week, right?
That we would be remiss not to mention the polemical right wing pundit, Charlie Kirk, was executed, shot in the neck when he was giving a talk of one of his turning point USA speeches, right?
And the details around the shooter are still there's various pieces of information that have come out, various inscriptions on bullets or casing or you know, something, and people are straying the tea leaps as they do in the aftermath to discern the particular ideology.
I believe the main takeaway from the evidence as it currently exists is that he was too online.
There's a lot of references to you know, gaming culture and and so on, even in reference to like anti-fascist songs and stuff, it's it's also stuff from gaming playlists and whatnot.
So the the ideology that he may or may not have subscribed to particularly is not yet like completely clear.
Uh given the target is Charlie Kirk, a lot of people would assume, right, that it's it's somebody left-wing, but Charlie Kirk also having uh lots of infights with right-wing communities, including far right ones, gropers and whatnot.
So it's not automatically clear, but whatever the case might be, they've they've caught the person who seems to be responsible, and uh his death, his violent death led to an explosion of takes online and responses.
Did you see any of this?
Thanks for the setup, Chris.
Uh yes, yes, yes, I did.
I did.
And um, I'd never really paid much attention to Charlie Kirk before, actually, because um, you know, he doesn't really fit within our remit, you know, he's a political activist.
Um I mean he's he's kind of Dave Rubin-esque, right?
But like if Scott Adams is in our remit, then Charlie Kirk kind of it's clear.
It just seems like he's just pure politics.
Um but you know, there is, I mean, you know, Twitter being what it is and just the online discourse being what it is, whenever you know these things are obviously shocking and terrible events, um, regardless of who's getting shot.
And um, you know, I guess it's natural for everyone to react, but it is a bit annoying how like there's this sort of hunt goes on to figure out the political motivations, and you know, it could be that they that they've got um you know left-wing politics that could be that they've got some other different kind of politics, and the same goes for for for right-wing assassins too, um, or or someone who has uh taken a crack at uh progressive figure.
But the main thing that they've got in common is it's just they're almost always just deeply unwell people, you know, suffering from some kind of mental illness or just terrible personality um disorder or something, and while they may have expressed various political views, it's not like they're an operative working at the behest of the mainstream group.
So yeah, anyway, I just think it's a bit like a I don't think you can tag and and make the left or the right responsible for every little thing that every lone madman does.
I don't I don't think you should do that.
And I I take the point like I agree that very often the people are like primarily their the number one characteristic is that they're a disturbed individual in one form or the other, right?
But I but I do think that ideology and rhetoric can make these kind of things happen.
Like there's a reason that it was Charlie Kirk that was targeted.
And there are lots of other, you know, people have pointed out, well, America is a place with like a a lot of guns, right?
And but it still is the case that whenever there are public figures executed, right?
And they're they're known for being polemical in a particular political arena that that it automatically will get people talking about the rhetoric and justifications for violence on whatever side, right?
Be it the left or the right.
So obviously there was an immediate jump to looking for people on the left justifying that this was fine or good or celebrating it, right?
And in as is the case that you will always find people celebrating when somebody is murdered in a a partisan like political environment, right?
So there were plenty of people that you could find on TikTok or in various social media, Twitter, Blue Sky, you know, whatever that that seemed to not just be saying they weren't sorry, but greatly overjoyed at the events and like kind of taking Gleena.
And that's obviously ghoulish, right?
And and will inevitably get play in conservative spaces or right wing spaces because it's it comes across very badly, and rightly so, but it but it will always happen.
No matter which group is targeted, you'll be able to find people online celebrating it, right?
In the more ghoulish quarters of the internet.
Now that is not to say though that I don't think there's an issue around people celebrating violence, or actually, Matt, like the one of the things that I found in the whole discourse around this was like there seemed to be in general two things that people had a hard time putting together.
Not everyone.
I I did hear various people talk about this in relatively sensible ways, but two things that people seem to have a hard time combining was one I think it's very bad that Charlie Kirk was executed in public in this very violent manner, but just in general, you know, a person being shot at a university when they're giving a speech.
Like just imagine uh if you have to be left-leaning or whatever, imagine it was Chomsky or something.
Like, this is not good when this kind of thing is is normalized, and you can have human empathy for the fact that if you watch the video, you know, it's it's a very violent way to die.
Apparently, his children and wife were in the audience, and and the people in the audience, right, that also saw that just a horrifying moment for the people involved.
Now those facts, right?
So like I'm someone that generally just very opposed to political violence and and justifications for it in in most contexts.
I recognize, you know, people can point to all sorts of things where there's circumstances where political violence is necessary or has led to improvements, you know, Ireland had a a long-standing civil war and and civil conflict around and various things did improve for certain communities and get worse as a result of those conflicts.
But anyway, all of that hand-wringing is to say none of it makes it hard to then say Charlie Kirk, sh not good the way he died, wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Also, a polemical partisan conspiracy Mongering, fairly like misogynist, racist, all these kind of badists person based on his his content, right?
Like he he was a polemicist who was not promoting like the best in people.
So you don't have to pretend that he wasn't like a polemicist and an apologist for the Trump regime, in order to say that you're you're not you know overjoyed at his death, right?
You're not celebrating his death.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's it's a fine distinction.
I I remember, but an important one to because there is a tendency, I think, for people not to want to speak ill of the dead, and when somebody, you know, the natural feeling of sympathy, um, sort of shades into kind of um, I don't know, he's quite white, not quite whitewashing, but kind of smoothing over um who the guy wants.
And um, you know, his politics were pretty extreme, you know.
He he he said, reject feminism, submit to your husband, Tyler, you're not in charge.
And he basically promoted white replacement theory all the time.
Yeah, not just arguing for a bit less immigration, but but making out that it's a plot by the Democrats to import a bunch of docile uh these words, uh foreigners who will do the democratic parties uh bidding, you know, anti-Semitic stuff.
Um, anyway, I could go on, but um and he did Jewish, uh okay.
I I mean that's not hugely so surprising, but he one of the points of disagreement with him in the Nick Fuentes Groppo sect was that he was seeing as too apologetic for Israel, but that that would still not prevent you from being anti-Semitic at other times.
They somehow managed to yeah, do both these figures be both anti-Semitic and pro-Israel, and now it doesn't make sense.
But anyway, um, you know, among his many views, uh, one of his views was that it's worth it basically to have gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment, which is which is a lot of American that's not an extreme view in America, that's a view that a lot of other Americans share.
And I guess uh, you know, he he drew the short straw.
Right, and like on an a podcast from 2024, uh, with a bunch of other, you know, like kind of reactionary Chuck Google heads, including Jack Pasobich, somebody that's definitely engaged in anti-Semitic dog whistles to put it mildly.
He talked about the death penalty and his views that it should be public and that at a certain age it should be an initiation.
You maybe people should be watching public executions as children, right?
Yeah, so look, that does that mean therefore, well, he got what he deserved, right?
No, but it does speak to the fact that he is you know part of that ecosystem, ramping up all this rhetoric so extreme, and you know, like talking about violence, vilifying democrats and transgender people and you know, all sorts of targets.
It's not that that makes him therefore responsible, therefore you just get what you ask for.
No, but it is a fact that like he contributed to that level of extreme polarization and like really hardcore rhetoric in America, and he was defending every single move of the Trump administration, like he essentially was an a propagandist for Trump.
That was the way that he was behaving uh since the new Trump administration started, but also before.
So you you can recognize all of that, right?
Like you don't have to recast what he did and and present them as if he was this guy that was just interested in dialogue and debating you know topics, uh because no, he he wasn't just this kind of moderate conservative guy.
If you choose to only emphasize that bit and kind of present what turning point USA does is like seeking dialogue in in universities and discussion, that is whitewashing his legacy, but you don't have to do that in order to say that you're not on board with him being executed in cold blood, right?
Like Yeah, exactly.
That's a bit that people seem to have it should be an easy distinction.
And I did want to mention, Matt, that in like two rather desperate sources in terms of ideology and approach to things.
I did see this very topic covered quite well on one, blocked and reported, uh with Kitty Hertzog and Jesse Single.
They go through the reaction, the kind of reaction, what is known and whatnot, and and they I think they do a good job of navigating the variance issues and directly like condemning you know the violence without hesitation and recognizing the issue of Charlie Kirk.
On the other hand, I don't speak German, the anti-fascist podcast, right?
With Daniel and Jack, not always our biggest fans.
And they are, as you would imagine, extremely critical of Charlie Kirk, and they cover, you know, basically his output in no uncertain terms, but they also clearly highlight that they're not endorsing the political violence.
They manage to do well, right?
So this is what I mean in saying it's not everybody doing that.
And it's again, those are two podcasts were very different outlooks and political leanings, and um yet they both navigated it fine.
So I'm I'm just giving uh hate that it isn't all people like running around, you know, taking the most extreme kick.
Yeah.
Yeah, good on the I don't speak German guys because you know, I've proven that you can be um a hardcore, like you know, be it anti-fascist, anti-fascist.
Um, you know, I think I think they're communists as well, right?
Yeah, they they're they're about as far left on the spectrum as you can be, and uh they throw that needle.
So well done.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they're not exactly sad that is gone, but you don't have to be in order to express that you're not endorsing that kind of violence as a solution.
So there you go.
I mean, uh you know, it should be said that I didn't see any mainstream accounts or people that I knew um who were celebrating uh his his his assassination.
I did see a bunch of right-wing accounts basically, you know, jumping to the strongest possible.
Calling for civil war, calling for civil war, you know, you know, start fighting back and you know, basically saying it's time for time for violence now to get the Democrats back, or or the left wing in general back.
And that's what I was getting at with this kind of taking a single person in a single incident as okay.
Now this is a sign that we need to commit more violence against you know half the country.
That's that's the kind of thing that I'm against.
I mean, just calm down and keep it in proportion.
I mean, fortunately, political violence is still relatively rare in the United States.
I mean, the correct amount is zero, but compared to the other um ways in which people um uh sadly dying from guns, it's it's a drop in the ocean.
So I I always tend to go and look at statistics and stuff when these things happen.
And I I found a a study by Reuters that looked at um 14 fatal political attacks since January 621.
And they tried to find the ones where there was a clear partisan leaning, some sort of political motivation to it.
Uh but they found 13 by right-wing actors causing a total of 34 deaths.
They found uh one by a left-wing actor causing one death.
Now, you know, um anyway, that there's other research on this.
There's m academic articles that have looked at data since 1948, and other another one that looked at data from 1990 to 2020.
And uh, you know, you can um quibble about some of the classifications and things like that, but but basically the ratio of political violence is strongly strongly you know, more weighted in the direction of right-wing actors on progressive targets.
That doesn't make it okay, just just putting things in context.
And the other thing to put it in context with is that um, you know, over that period of the rotor study, um, you know, you had a total of 35 deaths.
Uh compare that to the 45 to 50,000 gun deaths that happen in the United States every year.
And that's not all homicides.
Um, actually suicides are more common.
And of the homicides, most of them are not kind of um, you know, super criminals or gangs or random people being targeted by uh evil door on the street.
The it's domestic violence, you know, like so.
If a guy has a gun in the United States, the most likely person they're gonna use it on is themselves.
The second most likely group of people they're gonna use it on is the family, spouse, uh, friends and mandates.
So just the temper of the discourse in uh I notice online is that if obviously these events are very emotive, and so many people are running on emotions, and if you just went on vibes, you would feel like the the highly politicized violence is is the main thing.
And actually, sadly I mean wouldn't sadly, I mean it's it's bad either way, but it's just not.
So I guess my point is just put things in perspective and and don't call for civil war because one person, sadly, was shot.
I mean, like Trump right put the the flags at half mass and stuff, which is normally reserved for you know the the death of presidents or that kind of thing, and similarly that like you're right that this event has been given outsized attention because of the nature of the event, right?
And and like what occurred, but that's to a background of just general gun shooting deaths in the US, which is going to happen when you have an armed populace and the the kind of general culture around guns that you have in in the US.
Like that's that's the nature of American society.
Um and I know that there's various Americans who would prefer that it wasn't, that there was a restricted gun laws and whatnot, but they can't get that passed in Congress.
And the other thing to note is that people are fleaming hypocrites here.
Now you might the this might surprise you, Matt.
The people are hypocrites.
There were a couple of months ago former Democratic politicians, Melissa Hortman and her husband, right, were killed.
And some of the Republicans that have come out, you know, saying that anybody saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk should um, you know, have their employment terminated and whatnot, they themselves have engaged in if not celebrating promoting conspiracies, or you know, whenever Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by the guy with a hammer, there was a lot of joking around that.
And yeah, so like people just are not consistent about this.
They're they're partisan, and politicians like Trump utilize it.
And Elon Musk, that once in a generation arsehole did a video call in to this huge right-wing protest march that took place in London a couple of days ago, right?
And just listen to some of the things he said.
He said, uh, I really think that there's gotta be a change of government in Britain.
You can't we don't have another four years or whenever the next election is, it's too long, something's got to be done.
There's got to be a dissolution of parliament and the new vote held.
And he said This is a message to the reasonable center, the people who ordinarily wouldn't get involved in politics, uh who just want to live their lives, they don't want they they're they're quiet, they just go about their business.
My message is to them if this continues that violence is gonna come to you.
You will have no choice.
This is a this is you're you're in a fundamental situation here where you where whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you.
You either fight back or you die.
You either fight back or you die.
And that's the truth.
Today you don't think we're I think the British public are telling the world that they're ready to fight back.
Perfect.
Yes, come on.
Come on, right, oh that's him talking to Tommy Robinson's audience, far right audience, right?
Anti-immigrant.
So that's the kind of rhetoric and you know, Jack Petzovich, uh, Charlie Kirk, all of those guys were in that ecosystem.
And the fact that he's Christian and that he's made various sentiments saying things about Christian stuff also doesn't matter, right?
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