I’m going to challenge you all, right here, right now. Put down the thought of what’s right, what’s wrong, how people should be reacting, ect. I’m an apathetic bastard and I really could care less either way.

What I have noticed though is there’s a LOT of divide on this one, more than usual. Lemmy’s pretty homogenous but go outside to Facebook, Instagram, reddit, any of the mainstream places, hell, even talking about it with friends or family, you get some really differing views and people seem ready to discard longtime relationships over it. Hell, I’ve seen it happen 3 times now so far.

°So what do you think, take off the politics hat for a second and put on the sociology hat. Take a breath, and examine your surroundings.

°How does what’s going on make you feel, sad? Angry? Scared, tired or relieved?

°What do you think this says about which direction our society is going, have you got any predictions? Any old timers who have been through near societal collapses before want to throw in their perspective?

I’m genuinely interested in what you all think

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    I’m not American, so this is an outside perspective I guess. I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before he was shot, and it’s been interesting watching it all play out. Ring wing leap to assuming it was a leftist attack, with a huge amount of violent rhetoric; suspect arrested & turns out to be from conservative background; trickle of suggestions he might be further to the right of Kirk.

    I’ve learned a new word: Groyper.

    Meanwhile in the UK we’ve got a kind of fascism-lite going on, with a “socialist” party in charge that’s leaning to the right of Thatcher in order to attract the votes of bigots. There’s a massive right-wing rally going on in London right now, with a couple of anti-fascist, anti-racist counter protests as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/sep/13/aerial-footage-shows-scale-of-unite-the-kingdom-rally-video

    • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      3 minutes ago

      You’re saying you have no one close to you who disagrees with you? Possibly someone who you were surprised to learn that about? I certainly see many people in a slightly different light now, I probably won’t stop being friends with them but it’s odd seeing them react a certain way

  • whaleross@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 hours ago

    A self-elected mouthpiece that thrives on spreading hatred that has cause immerse damage and suffering for innocent people is shot by one of his own people. He died by consequence of the violence he was promoting against others.

    The only ones I sympathise with are his children because they didn’t choose their parents and they will have his legacy on their shoulders. His wife and his friends and colleagues and his followers can go fuck themselves ass to eye with a spork.

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
    21·
    3 hours ago

    I think the circumstances around his death were ironic - humourous even - but I don’t take any joy in politically motivated violence. When you respond to rhetoric you disagree with by being violent then you’ve lost the argument.

  • shreyan@lemmy.cif.su
    7·
    5 hours ago

    It’s good entertainment.

    As usual, morons on both sides of the fence miss the forest for the trees.

    Charlie was a mouthpiece of the ruling class. His whole purpose was to sow division to distract the working class from how it’s being exploited by their rulers.

    It’s good that he’s gone, because that’s one fewer distraction. It’s bad that people, on both sides, still don’t realize why it’s necessary for people like him to be gone.

    We should also be aiming higher. The richer, the better.

    • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      53 seconds ago

      I do think the very fact that he wasn’t so high up is probably a big contributor as to why people are so divided. I remember the sympathy for the United CEO being pretty much limited to talking heads and the other Billionaires.

      We’re seeing much more vehement discussion on this one

  • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 hours ago

    I don’t personally feel bad that he is dead. The world is probably a better place without him in it. However, I’m disturbed by how gleeful some people are about his death. It shows how callous and radicalized people have become. I know a lot of people will jump in and say it’s rhe right’s fault things have gotten so radicalized, but that’s missing the point. Taking a life should never be easy.

    I mean, sure, it’s mostly edgy people talking tough online. Give them Charlie Kirk in a dark alleyway and hand them a gun and 99% of them wouldn’t pull the trigger. But that social media environment does produce killers, and the kind of people it pushes over the edge tend to not be very stable and their actions tend to be pretty horrific. Probably the most famous Lemmy user to date is the man who bombed the fertility clinic. Let’s hope it stays that way.

    • Lumisal@lemmy.world
      1·
      47 minutes ago

      Change it to the middle of a forest with no one around for kilometers and that 1% might go a lot higher tho

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Capitalism slowly grinds societies into dust. This is what I’ve seen, sociologically, regardless of any division over Charlie Kirk’s death or however many schoolchildren get killed.

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    6·
    6 hours ago

    People get killed all the time, he isn’t special and you would be too emotionally drained if you got upset over every death that ever happened.

    I actually don’t care about Kirk, or any murdered politician for that matter. I’ll laugh at the memes because comedy is pretty much all we have left to cope with the shit state of many things.

  • IWW4@lemmy.zip
    1·
    4 hours ago

    It doesn’t say anything about our society. Wack jobs assassinating celebrities has gone for as long as our society has existed.

    Charlie Kirk and his ilk thrive on pissing people off, that bit him in the ass.

    Am I ok either way someone being murdered, absolutely not.

    Am I mourning Charlie Kirk? Nope.

  • pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    251·
    11 hours ago

    Political violence is terrible. Kirk was a piece of shit who helped make political violence inevitable. He got what he deserved, and I’m jubilant at his death, even as I’m devastated at what our country has become.

    • hypnicjerk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      think this pretty much sums it up. i’d prefer if american politics weren’t underscored by violence but when our most popular public figures include literal school shooting advocates, peace was never an option.

      go figure that when gun violence is involved that it’s the right eating the right.

  • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
    19·
    11 hours ago

    First of all, I’ve heard of Kirk for the first time when they killed him. I’m in the EU, I don’t follow mainstream socials, and definitely I’m not a fan of right-wing propaganda. So the first impact was: “Charlie who?”

    When I had read about him, I thought that he was (sorry for my French) a bigot piece of shit. I don’t think that violence is the solution for anything, nor that people like him deserve to die, but today there is one less bigot spreading hate and misinformation which is a positive thing. As someone smarter than me said “some men make the world a better place only when they die,” and Kirk seems to fit the profile.

    When I’ve heard the far-right accusing the left (MAGAs and European neo-fascist too), I was swinging between “how these ‘leaders’ can talk like that knowing literally nothing about the killer’s identity and motives?” and “how half of the population can be so stupid to be unable to understand how these ‘leaders’ are exploiting the tragedy they complain about?”.

    With friends I joked: “what if the killer is actually a right-wing white guy with a poster of Hitler in his bedroom?” I don’t know about posters, but so far I find the whole thing incredibly ironic.

    Bonus: one of the first thing I’ve found about Kirk (again, I didn’t know he existed before the other day) is that he was so pro-guns that he accepted murders and mass shootings as a necessary evil to have the right to carry guns. It would be a massive missed opportunity to stop at the irony here and avoid an healthy debate on weapons.

    TL,DR: I don’t care, but the world should not miss him.