Restraint examines the 2023 assassination of Charlie Kirk by Tyler Robinson and Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd, both acts of extrajudicial violence—one by a lone gunman, the other by police inaction. The episode critiques accelerationism and online rhetoric from white male advocates, warning their tactics empower state repression against marginalized groups while backfiring on progressives. It argues restraint and collective democratic engagement, like school board elections, are far more effective than individual violence in resisting fascism, stressing that such actions will always be weaponized against broader movements. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that's building and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
I'm speaking 11 days after Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University.
I have mulled over my thoughts for a long time.
I've listened to many people speak about this.
Some have done so very well, and I respect many things I've heard so far.
But I've found that I still have some thoughts that I'm not hearing.
So here we are.
Violence, of course, predates humanity as a species.
It seems silly to think of violence as an animal response to an environment given that we have evolved tribes, communities, cities, and societies in which we have set down laws by which we should live.
But climbing onto a rooftop with a gun, to shoot a political figure, to silence them, feels like it bypasses the laws of our society to satisfy one of those more primal urges.
So I feel like it should be part of the conversation, at least a little bit.
Feelings affect us.
We feel fear, hatred, anxiety, stress, worry, sometimes also love and happiness and hope.
But maybe a little less of those lately.
Everyone will feel things, and no force is ever going to stop that.
But the laws that are set forth in our stack of books dedicated to the subject don't address feelings very well.
Sometimes judges and juries factor those into judgments and sentences, but they're like the leftover human element in these situations.
The law itself is mostly meant to be about factually what happened and whether or not it should have.
I have feelings about this too.
I'm angry.
11 days ago, Tyler Robinson climbed onto a rooftop at Utah Valley University and took the law into his own hands to relieve himself of his own anxieties.
It wasn't done for anyone else.
He did it for himself.
He was selfish.
A lot of people are making comparisons between Charlie Kirk and George Floyd.
The comparisons have mostly been about which side of the political spectrum supported which victim.
I also have a comparison to make between them.
Neither should have died on the day on which they did.
Both were taken too early because someone in their life had power and decided that having power justified their use of it.
That the ability to kill someone was the most important thing and that the world needed to be reminded of that ability on that day.
I had the arguments with people after George Floyd died.
The claim was that Floyd was going to overdose.
Was gonna die anyway.
The arguments against this today is exactly what it was then.
When Derek Chauvin took George Floyd into custody, Chauvin removed Floyd's ability to care for himself.
The word custody means that the person who has it now is now responsible for the life over which they have it.
If George Floyd was overdosing, then Derek Chauvin had a responsibility to make an enthusiastic effort to save Floyd's life.
And a shin across the neck is not a recognized life-saving technique.
Furthermore, George Floyd was being arrested for passing counterfeit currency.
The penalty for that is not death.
And there's a significant amount of procedure that's mandated for the provision and acceptance of evidence, as well as a chance for self-defense that's meant to occur before Floyd could ever receive a sentence.
And all of that procedure was denied him.
Charlie Kirk was a racist provocateur.
This can and has been played and replayed on clip reels since shortly after he died.
The reasons why people put these together is long and complicated.
Some do it because they're petty, uncharitable, and angry.
Others do it because they refuse to watch a man who organized a campaign of exclusion and division become lionized as a hero and martyr.
But whatever the reason, those reels of Charlie Kirk being racist are out there in many forms, so I have no need to review them here.
But being a racist provocateur is not a crime.
And even if it were, it's unlikely that the penalty for that crime would be death.
And even if somehow it was both a crime and carried the death penalty, our society of laws demands a certain amount of procedure before a sentence like that could ever occur.
Provision and acceptance of evidence.
And a chance for the accused to defend themselves from those charges.
Charlie Kirk had none of those.
Tyler Robinson, the man who shot Charlie Kirk, was selfish.
He took it upon himself to do what he did.
And it was the wrong thing to do.
It wasn't a more wrong thing to have done to Charlie Kirk than it was a thing to do to George Floyd.
Nor was it a less wrong thing to do.
In both cases, a human life was taken by the direct actions and or willful inactions of someone else.
To do violence like this is to satisfy yourself, your own sense of injustice, and for merely a moment.
As Patton once said, all glory is fleeting.
He meant it in a slightly different context, but I feel like the spirit still applies here.
Lashing out in violence as a response to the anger you feel inside yourself is weakness, not strength.
And by the way, this exact same equation applies to all instances of violence and anger.
Using violence against your spouse when you become angry is also weakness.
It's a moment in which having the strength to restrain yourself is something that should be given higher social value.
And by and large, we've done a lot of work in this society when it comes to intimate partner violence.
So why haven't we applied that logic to other moments in which restraint would be better?
Violence is mindless, self-indulgent.
It satisfies one's own inflated sense of justice while ignoring the wider context of the world in which that violence occurs.
It isn't strategic.
In almost every situation, it prevents more useful strategies from existing.
Speaking of those strategies, the fascist playbook is extremely simple.
It's why it's so easy to understand, both from the perspective of those who oppose it and that of those who wish to use it for advantage.
It's easy for influencers on the right to slide past the parts they know should be ignored and highlight the parts they know should be given attention.
What they want is a way to justify their own violence.
Not merely the violence they've already done, but the violence they have plans yet to do.
So, what's their plan?
They've already started.
Blame everything on minorities.
Squeeze and marginalize those minorities to do to whatever extent they can get away with.
Take away as much from them as possible.
Watch for anyone from those minority groups, or anyone who supports them, to use violence in response to this society-wide and sustained pressure.
Then use that violence as justification for more of their own violence, which becomes a downward spiral.
In every instance, the loss of freedom gets labeled as necessary for increased security.
Violence is not an expression of strength.
Real strength is found in your will to restrain yourself from acting on baser instincts.
But don't let your emotions determine your actions.
You probably think your own anger is inviolate, justified, pure, that it could never be used against you, that it could never mislead you or bring you to ruin or allow someone you oppose to control you.
But your emotions, especially anger, are used against you every day and will continue to do so as long as you allow them.
And right now, the emotions of some of us are being used to speed the fascist project toward its goals.
Committing violence now, in a fashion that enrages the right, will increase their rhetorical fodder, their repository of actions they get to use to justify their own violence.
And their violence will have the cold, mechanical organization of the state bureaucracy and infrastructure.
As I have conversations online about the foolishness of using violence to solve this fascist problem, I'm sometimes told that it won't matter if liberals are violent or not, because the powers that be will just manufacture them.
We'll fake them or construct them from the flotsom of life like anecdotal evidence and a sea of otherwise sad but normal humanity.
That's undoubtedly what was happening with the story of Irina Zarutska.
Mentally unstable man attacks and murders young woman in a moment caught on video.
Also, the unstable man was black and the young woman was blonde.
In a country the size of the US, this sort of thing will happen from time to time.
We shouldn't accept it.
But we shouldn't create national policy around it either.
Maybe this is a call for assistance for people who suffer from poor mental health.
Maybe.
And while the Trump administration will attempt to use these acts of otherwise random violence to advantage, we should not actively give them more names for their emotional trigger list.
In fact, I argue that we should make a concerted effort to prevent these kinds of things from happening.
If a larger number of these violent events will bring the fascist kettle to a boil more quickly, then maybe that's not worth doing.
We have a word for actions that speed us towards the end.
We call it accelerationism.
And I want to make that clear.
To consciously make actions that will bring the calamity or point of no return sooner is to accelerate to the end.
And claiming that the violence committed won't do that is just the denial of the reality we're in now.
What has the Trump administration done since the day Charlie Kirk was murdered?
Blamed the quote-unquote extreme left for violence.
Declared Antifa a terrorist organization.
Spent resources at the FBI looking specifically for ways in which Tyler Robinson was connected to left-leaning groups and finding none.
Some people that I've spoken to about this have countered with the idea that I'm only saying this because I'm afraid to be violent.
That I'm some secret pacifist or perhaps a coward who won't rise to the occasion should the need arise.
Such an argument is constructed to justify violence.
It smuggles in the idea that this problem will not be solved without the application of violence.
That anyone who advocates against violence is complicit in the rising fascism facing us.
After this comes the idea that some fool will eventually get that if this won't be solved without violence, then the next step will be violence.
And if they have the opportunity to do the violence, then maybe they'll be failing their society and the future by not committing it.
Some person who takes it upon themselves to do something terrible and stupid and destructive.
Someone who talks themselves past all the fail-safes in their mind by reminding themselves how many times they saw people discuss the idea that violence will be needed.
Maybe some of their favorite social media influencers made offhand comments about how they don't really believe in capital punishment, but if it could be used just one time, and then leaving the rest of that statement as a blank check for some lunatic to write in their own answer.
That's something that everyone who attempts to influence others needs to understand.
You do influence, even if only in a small way.
Sometimes you only influence other people to say similar things as you say, but what knock-on effect does that have down the line?
Once you've influenced a few hundred others to all speak in hinting insinuations and proud chest-thumping ultimatums about what needs to happen next, what impact and weight does that have?
And if you put violent rhetoric out into the world and someone, anyone, picks it up as a justification for doing whatever they think can and should be done, you don't get to choose what shape that violence takes.
Unless you're being explicit about what level of violence you think should or shouldn't happen, you no longer get to say anything about the shape or magnitude of someone else's actions.
If someone watches you give open-ended comments and subsequently brings the violence that you spoke into existence, then you help that to occur.
And if you claim afterwards that you were just bandying about words and engaging online just like everybody else, then what are you even doing on social media?
Ask yourself a question.
Do you want to influence people's decisions?
Do you look at your follower count and wish the number was larger?
If so, why?
And if you have come to terms with the fact that you're there to try to push in some direction, which direction is that?
What do you put into the world and which way does that push?
What outcome would be had if more people listened to what you had to say?
Before you post something that includes an encouragement of violence, do you justify it by telling yourself that it's okay because no one is really listening to you?
Compare that directly with the idea that you might enjoy having more people listen.
And tell me how those two ideas match in your mind.
I've said a few times now that Tyler Robinson was selfish.
He took the law into his own hands.
He looked at the world and he looked at his own capabilities and thought that his ability to kill itself was a justification for doing so.
This is might makes right.
We don't accept that with nations invading other sovereign nations.
And we shouldn't accept it from individuals.
I've mentioned conversations I've had with people on social media and subsequently mentioned that some have argued on the side of not restraining themselves from violence.
I've noticed that every one of the people who fall on that side is a white man.
Someone's going to hear this and say I'm some kind of anti-white something or other, but I don't care.
This has to be said.
In the calculation of how the fascists will use violence as justification for more violence of their own, the state reprisals will not be evenly distributed across the population, as they haven't been thus far.
As I said previously, it's minority groups that are suffering the most fear and anxiety at what has been happening.
ICE agents being encouraged to be indiscriminate in their zeal to deport ever larger numbers.
Trans people being targeted and scrutinized and harried from the public eye.
Now homeless people being shot in the streets.
Take this equation on board.
It becomes extremely easy for white men to chest thump and issue ultimatums and bandy tough talk online.
Easy.
Because if the situation gets worse, by and large, it won't be getting worse for white men.
There's a line from that classic movie, Dazed and Confused, where two guys are beeking off to each other.
And one says, Don't let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.
In this situation, it's the white men whose violent words and deeds are writing checks.
And they have very few worries at all because it won't be their asses that will have to cash those checks.
All of those people ostensibly on the left who oppose Trump and make a show of virtue signaling support for all the correct causes are incredibly irresponsible when they advocate for violence on social media.
To say that they care what happens to minorities is to ignore the fact that violence now will have a direct and measurable increase in awfulness for all of those same minorities they claim to support.
I mean, maybe they haven't thought that far ahead, but that's even more reason for them to shut the fuck up.
Use some restraint.
How many white men are out there right now suffering from main character syndrome and thinking about how the world is a damsel in distress and it's their fantasy to be the one to save her from the fascist bullies?
More than allows me to comfortably sleep at night.
This is the most entitled demographic perhaps in history.
And they're blanching at the notion that their manhoods might take a hit if they refrain from punching back.
But I have a question for those white men.
You give a list of things you would sacrifice to end the fascist threat.
But are you willing to sacrifice some part of your manhood by declining violence when your dignity is offended?
What we have is a group of mostly white men on the political right who think they're entitled to inherit the earth and the quote-unquote other people are just in their way.
And then also we have a group of mostly white men on the political left or what passes for the political left in America who recognize the danger coming from the right but feel subsequently entitled to be the ones to stop it.
Personally.
And not with protests and visible indications of dissent.
Not with words expressed to make the point not with words expressed to make the correct point.
With bullets from rooftops.
So in some of those conversations online, I'm sometimes asked, what I propose anybody do if not for violence.
They've tried words and words failed.
They tried voting and voting failed.
Now what?
First, get better words.
Get better ideas.
If you personally can't come up with any, then look outside yourself for someone else with better words and ideas.
Don't just farm engagement by giving people the performative rage they're all feeling right now.
Boost someone else who has better arguments.
Also, delay.
Delay, delay, delay.
The fascists have a clock.
They have goals, and they have a limited time to get them done.
Eventually, they will burst or turn to infighting.
Everything that runs out that clock works to your advantage and against theirs.
Preserve capability and democratic norms.
Maybe build and strengthen some if you think it's possible.
If school boards in your area are still having elections, then organize for those.
Help others who are organizing for bigger elections.
All the midterms are coming up.
Volunteer for campaigns.
Show the world that American work ethic I keep hearing so much about.
And I need to say one more thing to the white men who think this can be ended so much more simply with violence.
The ones who suffer from main character syndrome, who want to be the hero, to bring the solution in at the buzzer, to end the movie.
In this fight, there are no heroes.
No one person will stand out as the person who saved anybody.
This fight is won through group organization.
Metaphorical hand-holding.
Encouraging others to not give up.
Making sure everyone knows that you're in this for the long haul.
Reassurance to everyone you call an ally that they know exactly what moves you will make and which ones you won't make.
Because unless you haven't been paying attention, being on the left and committing violence is something that will be used against everyone whenever the opportunity presents itself.