By Cake Boy

Kevin Carson wrote about the death of Kirk. Let’s read his stuff and respond to it.

Dear American Right,

I read Carson’s books and learned a lot from them. He is a very good academic. But I still often disagree with his statements.

The far right has attempted to turn him into a martyr on the model of Horst Wessel

This is just what happens. When you kill such a person, then the right will turn him into a martyr. You give the right a martyr, and a reason to become more militant and paranoid than they already are. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire.

And far more than far right propagandists, it’s because of the cowardice or opportunism of people like Klein and Newsom that millions of people who never heard of Charlie Kirk and have no idea what gutter filth spewed from his mouth only know of him as that good-faith debater guy who tried to do politics the right way.

Don’t you want to debate? I have debated a lot with rightwing people, so I could understand where they come from. And so now I understand why I disagree with them. It’s like, now I know what they think, and what their assumptions are, and why I disagree with it. I was raised in a culture of free speech and debate. You could say that my parents had a classical liberal lifestyle/viewpoint in these matters. You could call me a liberal, or whatever. I’m, in the end, just a philosopher who understands political theory. I don’t care if you call me an anarchist, a liberal, a coward, or anything.

But that’s a serious mistake. Conceding the debate will only embolden the fascists and strengthen their hand in the future, while weakening the opposition and further demoralizing people who expect it to fight back.

In America, there are millions and millions of conservatives. Of course, some of them will start debate clubs and YouTube channels. What are you gonna do about it? Kill them all? Killing sixty million conservatives?

Did the debate club of Kirk make the right stronger? I don’t know. I don’t think you can say that. The right was already very strong. With this debate setting, we can gain insight into their thought process. We could see that a lot of their thinking was/is based on a very radical version of Christianity, which isn’t strange, because America has always been a Christian country. Calvinist Christianity is the DNA of America, so eventually these right-wing/conservative movements will grow out of that. And when you have these significant rightwing movements, then some of these people start debate channels.

These debate groups didn’t make them weaker or stronger, I would say. There are other reasons why the right in America is strong. Political, psychological, and cultural reasons.

“There are a lot of people who are out there talking about him just wanting to have a civil debate. These people are full of shit, and it’s important for us to call them out while we feel anger and sadness.”

I have personally constantly debated with others. When I meet Christian street preachers, I engage in conversation with them. I’m a bit like Socrates; I engage in open dialogue with anyone. I speak with communists, conservatives, libertarians, and I even once talked with a nazi. I want to understand how people think and why they think the way they do. This will enrich my own knowledge. When I know how you feel, I know why I think differently. You can’t call me out, because i don’t exist, im a ghost.

When I spoke with the libertarians, they suggested I read Mises. I never heard of Mises, so I dug into it. And then I discovered the Austrian school of economics. And that these people had a bit different ideas than the neoliberals. Through this debate, I gained some new knowledge and began to see more nuance in the world. When you debate a lot, you start to see that the world is very complex, and there are many grey areas.

None of this is to say that he deserved to be shot. He presented no imminent threat that would have justified lethal force in self-defense. And even the worst human beings are capable of learning, growth, and change, and becoming better people — an avenue that was forever closed off for him.

Don’t forget, Kirk was changing his mind on Israel. Perhaps this was due to these debates? We can’t say. We know what Kirk says, but we don’t know what he thinks. You know what I mean? Sometimes you say something, and then this is something a person starts to think about in their own private time. Sometimes, out of the blue, a person has another viewpoint. For example, I used to believe that markets are always a problem, but then I read Carson’s work and saw that there are different forms of markets and that there is a distinction between markets and capitalism.

Interestingly, Carson thinks Kirk shouldn’t get shot. There are a lot of antifa/leftist anarchists who think it’s a good thing Kirk got shot.  Carson is different than them, it seems. So, Carson is very woke/progressive, but in a different way than Antifa?  A pacifist form of the woke culture?

The Truth: The Violence Is On the Right

But this is all bullshit. As Alex Nowrasteh points out, political violence by the right has outnumbered that by the left 6-1 in recent years. Consider a breakdown of some recent major incidents:

• The man who targeted and killed Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Minnesota in June was a Trump supporter.
• The man charged with the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, in April was a Trump supporter.
• The man convicted of orchestrating a series of shooting[s] at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
• The man who tried to kidnap then Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband, Paul, in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
• The men who wanted to hang Mike Pence on Jan 6, 2021, were Trump supporters.
• The man who killed the son of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas in 2020 was a Trump supporter.
• The men who were convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 2020 were Trump supporters.
• The man who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other top Democrats in 2018 was a Trump supporter.
• The man who killed left-wing activist Heather Heyer after driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 was a Trump supporter.

This is indeed true. And you are right that the right is very violent. However, we are not discussing this right now. The question is, how should the left behave? What is beneficial for the left? If you look at it in a very technical, Machiavellian way. Is it in the best interest of the left if the left starts to shoot conservative influencers? Of course it isn’t.

It would have been better if the left had just ignored Kirk. Please don’t shoot him, and don’t debate him. But, there were, of course, leftist kids who wanted to debate Kirk to see if they could ‘win’ the debate. Young men are often interested in these sorts of verbal ‘battles’.

The right whines about “woke mobs,” but the actual mobs are Gamergaters and other manbabies swarming people like Anita Sarkeesian, Sarah Jeong, and Leslie Jones with death and rape threats.

Both are mobs. Both are mobs in the American culture war. I can tell you, from an outsider (European) perspective. This is like a religious war between tribes. The transgender movement can be very radical and violent, and indeed, the Gamergate/incel movement will be very radical and violent. I’m not a fan of either of them. But you Americans want me to choose a side in your culture war. I’m not an antifa/transgender warrior, and I’m not a woman-hating incel. I’m too old for this kind of thing. I’m not a kid anymore….

In closing, I quote Erin Reed:

Political violence is corrosive and we must not excuse it — killing Charlie Kirk was horrific. But we also must not sanitize the memory of a man who wished harm on those he disagreed with, and who spread a message of hate to anyone willing to listen or pay him to so [sic]. We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

I get your point, and I get Reed’s point. Of course, the right is full of shit, we all know that. You don’t have to prove this to me. Of course, they say nonsense, of course, they brag, of course, they use violent language. But the question is not, what is the right doing? The question is, how should the left behave to succeed? I view this in a fairly cold/calculating manner. Shooting conservatives is not in your best interest at all.

I personally don’t watch these debates with right-wingers. I don’t really like it. Often it’s very shallow, and people don’t ask the right questions. Also, they don’t take enough time for it. To really get a grip on an issue, you need to spend some time delving into it. They don’t do this; their debates take minutes.

I believe Carson once said that in the past, he was a conservative himself. So, he changed his mind. Why did he change his mind? Through debate? Or through self-study? The times I changed my mind were when I debated other people. For example, when I debated the libertarians, I discovered that there are different economic schools on the right, and that they are not all the same. Through debating libertarians, I discovered thinkers like Kevin Carson, who are also libertarians, albeit in a different sense. Then I began to read Carson’s work, which was a significant development in my own intellectual journey. So, debate brings you further. Staying in echo chambers won’t. Echo chambers turn you into a cultist

The left tends to lose itself in this culture war. Is C4SS closer to reaching its goals? Yes, we know that C4SS doesn’t like the right, of course. But what are the victories of C4SS? Where is this autonomous anarchist zone? Where is this anarchist movement? Where are these thousands of anarchist workers? Where are these hundreds of Proudhonist cooperatives?

The attack on Kirk weakened the left and strengthened the right.

Cake philosopher