I watched this yesterday, and I agree that it was a very good speech.
“Cmon guys, talk it out! Now is not the time to enact political violence against Nazis who are continually stripping you of your rights and freedoms! Actually the fact you haven’t talked to them enough and changed their minds means you’re weak!”
🤨 OK Bernie.
Well, yeah, if you reframe what he actually said into something totally different, obviously it’s not going to make a lot of sense.
American people at the local, state, and federal levels, and we hold free elections in which the people decide what they want
Do you think elections are what the people decide? I love Bernie, but he is out of touch now.
Hey, you’re right. We do need to urgently work to improve the systems of media and education so that people have some idea of what the fuck is even happening, so that they won’t elect open fascists to power and think that they’re doing a good thing. We have some urgent problems now that can’t really wait for that, of course, since that whole vital apparatus has been deliberately destroyed by the rich people over the course of about the last 50 years. But yes, the elections aren’t the only piece. If we could have a Mamdani level event in even one out of every ten elections that happens, that would be fuckin’ fantastic, instead of just letting one open socialist get within a hair’s breadth of the literal US presidency in 2016 and then giving up because the rich people cheated him out of power. It almost fuckin’ worked. Also, gerrymandering, mail in voting, open fraud enabled by Trump and his allies, et cetera. There are a ton of problems that we will never in a million years vote our way out of.
I’m glad you said that. It would have been absolutely nuts if you were agreeing with my parent comment which more or less to me could be interpreted as “Let’s bring political assassination by random nuts into the mainstream of the US political spectrum as a way of making change, that’ll help and the left will definitely win that game in the end.”
But none of that “working on” stuff is or will ever happen. It’s 2025, we should not be backsliding into fascism. Clearly the methods the people are using are failing.
I will be donating to Tyler’s fund just like I did for Luigi—and anyone else who has the stones to stand up against fascists and their cronies.
You should donate (and volunteer) for the people organizing against ICE, or legal defense for people in their crosshairs. That can develop into an actual resistance as things get worse and steadily worse (which they probably will). Donating to encourage random assassination will instead make things exponentially worse, it will basically hand it over to the Charlie Kirks of the world.
I disagree. While I certainly empathize with the people who are being targeted by ice, the immigration topic is not going to be something that sways politics away from fascism. Too many people on the left don’t want illegal immigration. I don’t want illegal immigration. But, I really am disgusted with how it’s being handled now (and in the past too).
The people need to go on the offensive instead of just constantly defending ourselves (in court or otherwise). Now, I don’t mean we should all go shoot people—but those politicians and “influencers” promoting hate and fascism need to feel deep down that they are truly unsafe.
Action can have many forms. But action is not asking them to stop while standing on a street corner holding a sign. We need to make them stop—with escalating intensity that stops when they stop.
1 (please stop) — 10 (death)
“Pick a number that works for you!”
(*Not you, them)
Too many people on the left don’t want illegal immigration. I don’t want illegal immigration. But, I really am disgusted with how it’s being handled now (and in the past too).
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
I personally don’t care about “illegal immigration.” I’ve had good friends who came here “illegally,” and ones who’ve experienced some extremely severe consequences because of it. Fuck that. But even regardless of all that, what ICE is currently doing has absolutely 0 to do with enforcing immigration law. They’re actually breaking immigration law left and right and violating a bunch of different court orders. If you care about “legal vs illegal,” which again in this case I couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck about, you should be extremely upset against ICE right now, and agitating to stop them.
Now, I don’t mean we should all go shoot people
Good, glad we agree on that part.
but those politicians and “influencers” promoting hate and fascism need to feel deep down that they are truly unsafe.
I don’t necessarily disagree. But, there is a way to do that that can escalate into a real revolution of the people that will still maintain a working country. There is also a way to do it that can escalate into AOC and Bernie being the first up on the assassination list, along with Hasanabi, Paul Pelosi, the local mayor if he tries to put in bike lanes, fuckin’ whatever.
This particular way of “fighting” for improvement is guaranteed to make things worse.
We need to make them stop—with escalating intensity that stops when they stop.
This part, I completely agree with. Is your impression that shooting Charlie Kirk will make them stop? I think it will make them accelerate. There is no number of Charlie Kirks that you can shoot that will ever make them stop.
They have a lot more money for security than Elizabeth Warren does. There is one side and one side only that will be disproportionately impacted by this.
Bernie is defusing a highly explosive situation and doing that very well. Good work, I say.
A centrist would agree with him. Bernie has accomplished nothing to stop fascism. More cheap talk, no successes.
Maybe he’s accomplished nothing to stop fascism with this specific quote, but to suggest that he hasn’t for his entire career is a little silly.
I love Bernie. But, we have fascism. So the efforts of anyone fighting fascism this far have failed.
Yeah, we have it now and not at any point in the last 50+ years, in part due to him.
lol no.
Words have repercussions, always have and always will.
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Since when has America been about a free and democratic society?
Or are we just taking platitudes as fact now?
It’s certainly better than some statements I have seen, but it ignores the commonplace violence inflicted on non-elites every day.
Why is every politician pretending this dude’s entire platform wasn’t just vitriolic hate.
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It doesnt help though. All it does is justify Charlie’s actions during his life and serves to sanewash him. The move would have been to not defund public education all those decades ago. Doing this now just legitimizes hate speech
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You have a downvote but you aren’t wrong. Though I do have to say it seems to be largely ineffective using grievances against the current Republican diaspora.
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I guarantee you everyone will forget about Kirk dying a couple weeks from now, far from martyrdom. Facts don’t mean anything to these brainwashed morons, one of their “grievances” is the “stolen election” for Christ’s sake. Personally I’ll endure a couple weeks of hypocritical crocodile tears from the right to never hear another racist/transphobic/moronic utterance from that puckered asshole he called a mouth for the rest of my natural life.
Yep. This won’t meaningfully raise the temperature, they will keep doing what they always do. However, this might actually improve things in the long run. He routinely targeted kids for indoctrination, without his influence things will improve.
Yeah like when Rittenhouse murdered two people, am I right?
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It’s so fucking clear he went there when the intent to murder someone.
They canonized him, gave him a speaking tour, turned him into a folk hero.
Did the two Minnesota legislator get turned into heros? Yeah I don’t think so either.
Because they’re in on it.
Controlled opposition.
You can both denounce Charlie Kirk and everything he stood for and also denounce political violence.
Both can be valid stances.
I’m just frustrated that very very few people including Sanders are remarking on that first part. He spread hate speech and misinformation. He and Trump’s rhetoric and actions are what led to this point.
Was so pissed off at Daily Show’s coverage last night when Kosta attacked Warren and the guy from msnbc calling a spade a spade.
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
We don’t know why this happened so why are we calling this political violence?
We do know that he was a successful political activist, that was his job, and he successfully ran a company on it. He was also shot AT one of his company’s conferences or events, while doing that work; speaking about politics.
It would be a stretch to argue that it wasn’t about politics.
Still technically speculating though
Don’t know? Don’t be daft.
American people at the local, state, and federal levels, and we hold free elections in which the people decide what they want
Sorry Bernie, you’re out of touch. We don’t have elections anymore, we have gerrymandering, and tampering, and intimidation.
Nah, fuck Bernie for this.
A free and democratic society, which is what America is supposed to be about, depends upon the basic premise that people can speak out, organize, and take part in public life without fear, without worrying that they might be killed, injured, or humiliated for expressing their political views,
And who was it that was undermining that? Charlie Kirk.
Political violence, in fact, is political cowardice. It means that you cannot convince people of the correctness of your ideas, and you have to impose them through force.
And what if you can’t convince people of the correctness of your ideas because they don’t care about correctness, they only care about hating you? What then, Bernie? What if they keep pressing forward in complete denial of all logic and facts? I suppose that punching a Klan member is cowardice? I suppose when people rise up against oppressors it is because they are cowards? He’s right that it MAY be cowardice that leads to violence. It may also be absolute obstinate stubbornness of the other side. What do we call that?
this chilling rise in violence has targeted public officials across the political spectrum
Ah, I guess that’s why you, as an official on the political spectrum, are so convinced that it is evil. What a charming coincidence. What about the chilling rise in violence targeting thousands of normal people, perpetuated by Charlie Kirk? If I order my lackeys to execute someone, do we say I’m not a murderer? Do we say I was merely exercising my free speech? What if I constantly depict John Doe down the street as the root of all evil? When someone else kills John Doe, am I truly blameless? Stoking hate to get other people to kill on your behalf, now that’s political cowardice, Bernie.
The more Bernie talks the less I respect him. I agree with your points.
As much as Bernie is a good man he still came up in an age of American politics that were relatively peaceful, at least compared to the 1940s and earlier. This means he has a lot of out of date halcyon views on these types of things.
Bro
He marched with MLK. He called the Vietnam War a genocide in 1972, lol
You’re right, but the people defending Kirk are the same kind of people who killed MLK. Not sure how much Bernie has realized it.
A bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., once prominently displayed in the Oval Office, has been removed under Donald Trump’s presidency amid a broader rollback of civil rights iconography, military tributes, and diversity initiatives across federal agencies.
At the same time, Trump continues to court far-right figures like Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, a vocal critic of Dr. King’s legacy. Kirk, who has called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake” and questioned the existence of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The push to erase these figures coincides with a wider campaign by the Trump administration to dismantle what it deems “woke” programs.
That’s all true, but what I’m referring to is basically pre-ww2 political violence like the county and union wars or how local level politics was basically just gang warfare. Most of that settled down before Bernie’s time and was largely forgotten on a grander cultural level, frankly speaking in many ways increased political violence would be a return to historical trends. Personally I’m rather a fan of tar and feathering, it’d be funny to do it to Boebert.
Whenever the US makes a mistake of any kind, Sanders is there pointing to morality like a compass.
Bernie has been on the right side of history for half a century. And while he’s technically right here as well, it assumes both sides play using the same rules. We all know one side only likes rules that don’t apply to them.
Yea, I agree with you… But sadly the likely way out of that line of escalatory path is a civil war.
About 60% of this comments section is a big Lemmy Reading Comprehension tragedy
I too like to observe and post a comment that does not contribute anything of value to the conversation.
Were the British soldiers killed in the Revolutionary War, or the Rebels Killed in the Civil War, or the Nazis killed in WW2 victims of political violence?
Sometimes a political spectrum becomes stretched so wide that there can be no middle ground. No amount of “spirited debate” is going to reach a compromise about who is due their life and freedom. The wolf and the sheep are never going to agree on what is for dinner.
Charlie Kirk absolutely leaves a legacy of misery and death. He shares blame for Jan 6, mass shootings, and numerous hate crimes. He may have never pulled a trigger himself, but the right wing terrorism he encouraged leaves the blood on his hands just the same.
Well said.
its not a democracy and you can’t debate these guys. next.
No! You’re the puppet. Wrong! Our president’s debate prowess.
