bc, thanks for this too. I knew of Charlie Kirk, but I didn't follow much, so I'm not going to try and dig up stuff, I think that was a mode of commenting that caused/causes a lot of problems (remember fisking?)
However, I have to say that his turn to Christianity seems a bit of a grift. In a podcast recently, he claimed it was 5th grade when he saw the light, but there is no sign of that until after Trump's second election. While it's possible that his marriage was an important influence (his wife graduated from Liberty University), the claim about the 5th grade conversion is probably a lie.
btw, you can see turning point ads (and find other ads) here
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/1E9X/turning-point-usa-help-us-take-back-our-country
There are a few with nods to Christianity, but those seem to be in conjunction with Trump trying to please that demographic.
2025-09-25 21:47:09
lj: The Horst Wessel comparison came first.
Ahhh, got it. I'll have to slap Hartmut on the wrist /joke/
In my defense, I was more suggesting that Lei Feng was closer (and I wish I had remembered Stakhanov) and saying that all four have some commonalities. While I appreciate taking time, the difference between Kirk and the other three is that only in the US case were people fired from their jobs.
Even though I cannot tell you how letdown I am by Ezra Klein's recent stuff and I have found Corey Robin to be a bit glib, this youtube dialogue between the two is quite good (here's the deadtree link, though it may disappear behind the paywall soon)
Here's a bit Klein: What we were talking about with the Red Scare, it took a long time to build that. The Trump administration is speed-running this — very fast.
Robin: This is the scary part of the story: The Second Red Scare succeeded.
Part of what deprived McCarthy of oxygen wasn’t just that he went after the military. It was that they had really drummed out — at the level of what their ambitions were, they had succeeded in stopping the New Deal from where it was heading. His electoral returns were diminishing to some degree.
The parallel I would highlight is just as the Red Scare came about to stop the New Deal, the MAGA movement has come about to erase all of the things that AOC listed.
2025-09-25 11:43:30
I did some surfing about this and I see what bc is getting riled up about was the proclamation that nous linked to and what I was thinking about was what broke out over the prayer for Kirk LATimes article
Here is AOC's response to the Resolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3D0MkqjQU
2025-09-25 05:30:08
bc, maybe I'm misreading, but it looks like you brought up Hitler by talking about Godwin's law. I found the 'felon love' facebook post, but why is that something that puts what he wrote off-limits rather than a joke that missed the target? I won't go back to the archive, but unless you have never complained that liberals can't be such snowflakes, well, physician, heal thyself.
I'm not sure how much we weigh the various eulogies and such. Is Trump's proclamation and flying flags at half mast, along with the resolution in the house when none of these steps were done for Hortman indicative of something? Why did/does the right's reaction to what seems to be much more like politically motivated violence not rise to being a "turning point"? Or is the phrase under trademark now?
I accidentally skipped over a part to go to the dialogue where Klein notes that he had taped his coversation with Shapiro before Kirk's death, so it was wrong for me to link the two.
2025-09-22 00:45:05
I mentioned that I hadn't seen the video associated (if there is one) to the first Klein piece, though looking at it, it is probably too short to record. I have seen the link for the YouTube video of the Shapiro conversation (It's here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8&t=1s ) but haven't seen it, so I appreciate GftNC for putting it up here.
Some thoughts about the two. Klein says in the second that Many appreciated the [previous] piece, particularly on the right. It saw their friend and ally more as he saw himself. There were many, closer to my own politics, who were infuriated by it.
It's amazing that he doesn't really analyze what his piece did, which was basically white/sanewashing Kirk, and take the divided response as supporting it. I'd also say that the fact that he brought Shapiro on is indicative that Klein doesn't want to take a side and thinks that bringing Shapiro will let him play the centrist. He seems to edge up to understanding when he says Much of what I would describe as Kirk’s worst moments were standard-fare MAGA Republicanism. And the leader of that movement is the president of the United States. He is now in the White House, having won about half the country’s votes in the last election. But then he ends the paragraph with We are going to have to live here with one another, believing what we believe, disagreeing in the ways we disagree.
I don't understand how, if one side doesn't want us to live here, doesn't want us to participate in society, doesn't want us to exist, we can actually do this.
2025-09-20 11:38:01
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
2025-09-20 07:13:51
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.
bc, thanks for this too. I knew of Charlie Kirk, but I didn't follow much, so I'm not going to try and dig up stuff, I think that was a mode of commenting that caused/causes a lot of problems (remember fisking?)
However, I have to say that his turn to Christianity seems a bit of a grift. In a podcast recently, he claimed it was 5th grade when he saw the light, but there is no sign of that until after Trump's second election. While it's possible that his marriage was an important influence (his wife graduated from Liberty University), the claim about the 5th grade conversion is probably a lie.
btw, you can see turning point ads (and find other ads) here
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/1E9X/turning-point-usa-help-us-take-back-our-country
There are a few with nods to Christianity, but those seem to be in conjunction with Trump trying to please that demographic.
lj: The Horst Wessel comparison came first.
Ahhh, got it. I'll have to slap Hartmut on the wrist /joke/
In my defense, I was more suggesting that Lei Feng was closer (and I wish I had remembered Stakhanov) and saying that all four have some commonalities. While I appreciate taking time, the difference between Kirk and the other three is that only in the US case were people fired from their jobs.
Even though I cannot tell you how letdown I am by Ezra Klein's recent stuff and I have found Corey Robin to be a bit glib, this youtube dialogue between the two is quite good (here's the deadtree link, though it may disappear behind the paywall soon)
Here's a bit
Klein: What we were talking about with the Red Scare, it took a long time to build that. The Trump administration is speed-running this — very fast.
Robin: This is the scary part of the story: The Second Red Scare succeeded.
Part of what deprived McCarthy of oxygen wasn’t just that he went after the military. It was that they had really drummed out — at the level of what their ambitions were, they had succeeded in stopping the New Deal from where it was heading. His electoral returns were diminishing to some degree.
The parallel I would highlight is just as the Red Scare came about to stop the New Deal, the MAGA movement has come about to erase all of the things that AOC listed.
I did some surfing about this and I see what bc is getting riled up about was the proclamation that nous linked to and what I was thinking about was what broke out over the prayer for Kirk
LATimes article
Here is AOC's response to the Resolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3D0MkqjQU
bc, maybe I'm misreading, but it looks like you brought up Hitler by talking about Godwin's law. I found the 'felon love' facebook post, but why is that something that puts what he wrote off-limits rather than a joke that missed the target? I won't go back to the archive, but unless you have never complained that liberals can't be such snowflakes, well, physician, heal thyself.
I'm not sure how much we weigh the various eulogies and such. Is Trump's proclamation and flying flags at half mast, along with the resolution in the house when none of these steps were done for Hortman indicative of something? Why did/does the right's reaction to what seems to be much more like politically motivated violence not rise to being a "turning point"? Or is the phrase under trademark now?
I accidentally skipped over a part to go to the dialogue where Klein notes that he had taped his coversation with Shapiro before Kirk's death, so it was wrong for me to link the two.
I mentioned that I hadn't seen the video associated (if there is one) to the first Klein piece, though looking at it, it is probably too short to record. I have seen the link for the YouTube video of the Shapiro conversation (It's here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8&t=1s ) but haven't seen it, so I appreciate GftNC for putting it up here.
Some thoughts about the two. Klein says in the second that
Many appreciated the [previous] piece, particularly on the right. It saw their friend and ally more as he saw himself. There were many, closer to my own politics, who were infuriated by it.
It's amazing that he doesn't really analyze what his piece did, which was basically white/sanewashing Kirk, and take the divided response as supporting it. I'd also say that the fact that he brought Shapiro on is indicative that Klein doesn't want to take a side and thinks that bringing Shapiro will let him play the centrist. He seems to edge up to understanding when he says Much of what I would describe as Kirk’s worst moments were standard-fare MAGA Republicanism. And the leader of that movement is the president of the United States. He is now in the White House, having won about half the country’s votes in the last election. But then he ends the paragraph with We are going to have to live here with one another, believing what we believe, disagreeing in the ways we disagree.
I don't understand how, if one side doesn't want us to live here, doesn't want us to participate in society, doesn't want us to exist, we can actually do this.
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.