I too think this article and the previous one were not at all commedable. It was a blind-spot writ large. By both Hannah Spier and Iain McGilchrist.
I am not leftwing. I am not rightwing. I am centrist. And I am well educated in the concept of totalitarianism. You will find few such persons like this today, because many universities dropped these programs after the 1960s.
I read with dismay the original article, and then today's, and wondered whether Iain McGilchrist was just having a bad week, or wished to promote Hannah Spier for personal reasons. An insightful article on totalitarianism it certainly was not.
I was quite shocked with the whole lowly level of supposed insight and relevant knowledge shown here. There was no insight or relevant knowledge, actually. And she claims she had formal training in Psychiatry? Lord help us....
Where were you living in 2020-2022? Hardly a place on earth that was not overrun by communist totalitarians. Please tell me so I can move to wherever you were.
As for Cullors, she has affirmed on the record several times that she’s a Marxist. In fact, with so many journalists denying that she is a communist, Cullors herself released a video on Dec. 14 stating clearly:
Am I a Marxist? … I do believe in Marxism. It’s a philosophy that I learned really early on in my organizing career … .
She subsequently adds:
… the U.S. is so good at propaganda and being like … it has sold the idea of the American dream, and that’s tied into capitalism and wealth. It’s much harder to sell communism … .
In a June 2020 interview, Cullors said of Garza and herself: “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”
I fully agree with this! I find it amazing that many conservative intellectuals say not.one.word about the very real genocide piped through our screens daily, yet proclaim great danger from the opposite political side. It is a case of pointing the finger outwards instead of self aware and neutral examination of the wider political issues as a whole. Iain M seems to have a blindspot.
I thought the article was abysmal because Hannah Spier knows less about totalitarianism than your average high school student. It was embarrassing for someone claiming she has credentials in Psychiatry.
Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy and even Politics are unworkable and incomplete without a good understanding of human nature including evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.
The answer to totalitarianism -- as I have been stating for decades -- is in a cross-disciplinary approach. You must know aspects of Evolutionary Science, Anthropology, Religious Studies, general Psychology, Freudian Psychology, and Jungian Psychology. Any less will not do.
There is no one or two volume work that can cover it all.
Well, I enjoyed yesterday’s article and thought that today’s was on point. I am only amazed that in a McGilchrist discussion circle so many of yesterday’s responses were so ideological! Having spent the past week trying to highlight that Kirk was part of a civil approach to debate, I learn I too have succumbed to fascism. Oh well time to turn off and get back to finishing book 2 of the matter with things!
If you want a cure for fascism I can recommend the scene from Fellini's Amarcord where a boy dreams of getting married in front of a giant Mussolini head made from roses.
If you're not ready to applaud black looting, give everyone who saunters across the border a voucher for a free house, and celebrate gay bondage puppy play on Main St... you are a fascist. :-)
I am struggling to understand this. The writer starts with "The Cult Narrative: How Progressivism Radicalizes Its Youth" and then people marvel at how the reponses are ideological. It is like saying "Libertarians eat children's internal organs" and wondering why people get all hot under the collar.
There is an opportunity to castigate political violence, but you have to choose to do that, not also try to annihilate a legitimate political position. I am not a progressive, but I can see a hit job when I read it.
It’s very insightful just reading the breadth of replies your wisdom and scholarly inclinations, via this post, have stimulated here.
I was so very appreciative to be directed towards Dr Spiers and your later reflections.
Dr McGilchrist you are so very generous and I thank you sincerely for even bothering to offer context.
It is more than the people who pile on probably deserve but how lucky are we to get the chance here on Substack to be intellectually uplifted by greater minds & life experience, whether in agreement or not?
I just wanted to concur with your succinct supportive reply expressing a similar gratitude that I felt for the shared Dr Spiers article & Dr McGilchrist’s response (& all the others).
Thank you very much, I am flattered (I also showed it to my wife).
My initial comment above (just simple heartfelt gratitude) has now garnered more likes than any of my other (usually more prolix) comments. I think I am supposed to take a message from this...Have a very good day.
I think one problem is that each side writes articles in response to the most outlandish online behavior of a few people on the opposite side. They then characterize this behavior as widespread and become more and more entrenched in their belief in the absolute lack of humanity of the other side.
What you say sounds kind of plausible, except I don't think it's true. I believe that the general atmosphere is indeed becoming more envenomed, and a possible underlying reason for that, not easily articulated, is that the very fabric of our reality is coming apart. Hence the tremendous fear, disorientation and clutching for certainty, whether ideological or otherwise. But how can reality come apart? Well, maybe because it wasn't really Reality in the first place...
I think it's the Internet that's unraveling (our perception of) reality. Echo chambers, sensationalism, emotions, stress, anger, anxiety. It's hard to see when you're in the middle of it, from the outside you can see what it does to people. It's not so much smartphones or AI, it's the very virtual reality we immerse ourselves in daily.
"a few people on the opposite side" does not characterize the reaction by the Left to Charlie's assassination.
Nearly every mainstream Democrat tweeted some derivative of, "We condemn political violence. Kirk was a racist, homophobic, bigot, but violence is never the answer."
Translation: "what'd y'all think 'by any means necessary' meant anyway?"
Nah, he's merely a garden-variety racist, it's just that since he's a coward, he's happily and proudly doing it against the defenseless, socially-approved targets of the era. Unthinking hate and spite against an entire human ethnicity, without any self-reflection or awareness. Seething malice disguised as performative empathy.
Oh, Clever P, you also are brilliant and should not debase yourself by noticing him. This is just some nose-picker in his dorm room, collecting freshman bits of wisdom to use on his sister at Christmastime.
Doesn't take long to see the crux of the issue: " The assassination of a young man - a young man, I should add, of whom I knew nothing until he was killed". Ian, you are again, grossly oversimplifying the situation. Charlie Kirk was a major figure of extremist political activism in the current American social environment. You admit your own ignorance of the situation, yet somehow feel confidently assured of the analysis you shared. I am American: If I met anyone here who was unaware of Charlie Kirk, I would immediately be forced to question their knowledge of our political landscape. The fact you didn't know who he was should have been your first step in realizing you don't know enough about this situation to comment on it. This is really sad. Instead of taking the critiques of your readers seriously, you have simply dug your heels in and have lost the respect of many in doing so.
When people whoop with delight when a political commentator is murdered, you don't need a knowledge of politics or the USA to know that the delighted people are mad and bad.
Also an American, here. Charlie Kirk was not an "extremist," and your parroting of this accusation makes me question *your* knowledge of the political landscape. He did have some strong views that were grounded in his version of Christianity, and the majority of us might think those views were backward. But he explicitly drew a line between his personal religious beliefs and his political activism, even while he spoke openly about both and wanted to be persuasive about both. There is nothing in the world wrong with this.
Much more importantly, I'd like to echo Tony Buck's observation that zero acquaintance with the man is required for recognizing that "Speech is violence; our violence is speech" is lunacy and, in the old way of speaking, evil.
You're trying to imply that something about who Kirk was changes how we should judge the action of murder. If you're not implying that then you have no grounds for your critique.
That’s the point, isn’t it? Regardless of what he said, he didn’t deserve being shot dead in public by an unknown assassin. The people who attended the event and witnessed the murder were traumatized. Can’t believe the convo immediately degenerated into commentary on his statements. I have been very affected by this myself and am still not over what happened on Sept. 10th. We have lost our humanity if we are going to defend his murder on the basis of his remarks.
"I am American: If I met anyone here who was unaware of Charlie Kirk, I would immediately be forced to question their knowledge of our political landscape".
I am not American, and some time ago I became intensely weary of American's perpetual self-absorption and immersion in their provincial political intrigues. Occasionally someone surfaces and talks sense for a while, and then they are cut down. It's such a familiar pattern that it's not even news any more.
I am forced to question whether anyone outside the UK cares about "our political landscape". There are other, more important countries. The USA has about 4% of the world's population, and needs to get over itself.
Trust me, we do care. Because your international status (which is rapidly diminishing, I give you that) is one of the factors holding the chaos at bay.
Said that, I agree that Americans could do without much of their navel gazing. But for entirely different reason. Not because them being 4%, but because of their long held responsibility to the rest of the western world. And the same, at a lesser extent, is true about Britain, Canada, France, Australia etc. You guys allied yourself to the worst regime in the world to get out of the WW2 relatively unscathed and then enjoyed the prosperity and influence for decades because of it. Now you mess up your internal politics and pretend you are irrelevant? That's one serious case of hypocrisy.
Mostly USA, but other Allied nations too. And to make it clear, I'm not expressing judgement here, I'm well aware of the high price that was payed fighting Axis, I'm just pointing out that accepting Soviet Union as an ally was a deal with the devil, and as such things go, it had consequences. Most notably - the ideological distortion of the academic and cultural discourse in the West, which brought the sociocultural crisis you are facing right now.
My point is, to turn inward now would mean the last step away from the ideal that was abandoned during WW2. If the West cuts that last string the world turns into a fighting pit and there is nothing, not even a pretence of the moral stance left.
Hi Alma, quick check: when you say you guys, do you mean Americans or the broader West?
What the US does spills everywhere, and there have been some ugly compromises: strategic power with a dash of values.
I see the inward turn less as navel gazing, more as AI panic over economic and political shifts, repackaged as resilience. Jobs and fairness sell, but they are distractions. One driver is the fear that, as AI squeezes labour arbitrage, chips, energy, and compute become strategic stockpiles, and model integrity becomes a security concern. Add in fewer white collar and entry level jobs, and a pay as you go benefits system without nationalised healthcare, and the politics tilt inward. China as the world’s workshop was tolerable when the offshoring play was low skill assembly; less so now. That helps explain the chip centred focus on Taiwan and the scramble for cheap, reliable, dispatchable power to run the stack.
Norms and institutions keep being rewritten. The goal should be revisions others can live with, through alliances and transparent governance. Culture war politics in America make that harder, and they show how the US handles disagreement when norms and institutions shift.
You're exactly the kind of fruit loop he was targeting. To say Charlie was anything other than a moderate is grossly inaccurate and a lie. You're so deep into your leftist nonsense that there's no saving you.
To say he was a "moderate" means that hate speech, wishing death to groups of people, and a history of cruel statements is the middle must mean the world of compassion, love, kindness, fairness, equality and understanding are crazy "far left" notions. We are a far sicker world if he was your middle.
Please be careful. You're dangerously close to being able to justify violence. Because if Charlie is really that evil, and he and Trump and Vance are really Nazi's trying to destroy democracy and only the values of the "far-Left" can prevent fascism... a violent response would be entirely appropriate. One does not sit idly by while Hitler comes to power (see Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.)
But NONE of that is true. It's all a delusion. You may not have bought into that delusion completely, but you've clearly tasted the Kool-Aid.
Charlie may have been wrong, but he wasn't evil. He may believed in a moral order you don't, but he didn't hate people. This is the essence of Solzhenitsyn's famous "the line between good and evil divides not man from man but runs through every human heart." If you convince yourself another group of people is evil, anything becomes permissible. Anything.
I made that mistake with Muslims after 9/11. And it took me 10 years to pull out of it. I've watched the Democratic Party make the same mistake with MAGA over the last 10 years. Nothing good comes of it.
Your reply infers that I “hated” him. I don’t hate people. I also don’t believe humans are evil. They may behave in ways that are called “evil” in the religiously based use of the word. I disagreed with all of his values, morals and ideas of how our world should look. No left or right vision can prevent or create anything beneficial for the good of humanity. The vision of the world through a man’s eyes is very different than one through a woman’s eyes. I believe in a world without ammunition. You want to fight? Use sticks and stones. Look the person in the eyes before you kill them. We are a morally weak society based on a patriarchy founded on morally bankrupt ideas of power. How does a Hitler come to power? Morally bankrupt (men) allow it. They give them power. Oh, and while we’re at it Capitalism is a destructive economic theory!
You've made my case for me. You are very deep in a radical feminist, men-hating, alternate reality. Come up for some air. As the young say, touch grass.
All the ills of the world can never be placed at the feet of any one group (whether conservatives, women, men, blacks, liberals, progressives, communists, gays, straights, or any other.) Good and evil exist in the heart of all men (and women).
As a side note, I find it funny that you say that men and women think completely differently, yet your side (I presume you are a liberal) has spent the last 7 years insisting it doesn't know what a woman is. :-)
Again the assumptions and unfounded accusations. Sounds like your masculine ego was touched. Your inability to critically look at our history of male dominance and conclude that it is not the cause of much of the horrific things that have occurred throughout human history makes my case. I don’t hate “men” at all. It is possible to hold two thoughts in one’s brain at the same time. Scientifically women do a much better job of this. We can very much place the ills of the world at the feet of male dominance. Good and evil are religious designations of what you seem to designate as good and bad. All morally relativistic terms. Teach your children of any gender that they matter and valued for her they are not some societal designation that men determined was good or “evil”. Look inward my comrade!
He was a basic conservative and Christian. I watched a lot of his campus events. Have you?
I never heard him say anything radical, cruel, divisive, etc. He just spoke the truth through the lens of middle-of-the-road conservatism. That this is now considered "extreme" is alarming.
I am an American, and can say we have always sided with speech. Provided you do not incite violence you are allowed your voice and platform. As Hannah Arendt said the answer to poor speech is better speech. No murder should be celebrated.
"Charlie Kirk was a major figure of extremist political activism"
Charlie Kirk was an utterly normal Republican whose views are shared by tens of millions of conservatives in America. His commitment to free debate was as liberal (in an Enlightenment sense) as could be and far more inclusive than many on the Right.
And yet the Left radicalized some 22 yo kid who shot him for being a Nazi.
That's why this is so radicalizing to conservatives. Because Charlie was a normie conservative. And if the state won't get justice for him, it tells me they wouldn't for me either. That includes coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone who encouraged, supported, or celebrated his murder. Failure to do that is abrogation of the most basic duty of any legitimate state: protection of its citizens.
If Charlie Kirk is a Nazi, then 70M of our fellow Americans are too. Of course, that's exactly what the Democrat Party has been saying for years ("cling to guns and religion", "deplorables", "they'll need deprogramming") so perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised.
Dr McG, I agree. For what it’s worth, I think there is a massive selection bias online where the nutters tend to comment (not me obviously!!) and normal people tend to just “like” and move on. It’s very easy to get angry online but I find it’s the same squeaky wheels who are looking for reactions. Keep up the good work and don’t feel the need to respond because someone started crying in the comments
My view is the cluster of utopian goals that characterize the West are now colliding with reality. Utopia isn't real, but reality is. Relentless mass immigration, unwise energy policies based on climate alarmism, and the intentional denigration of our culture and amazing heritage, the glue that keeps us together in many respects. That is just some of what is happening in Britain, and none of it makes any sense to normal people. It is replicated in most Western nations.
We have a massive problem with elites who increasingly seem mentally disturbed. Left versus right is wrong; living in fantasyland versus grounded in reality seems closer to the truth.
I don't believe the Left or the Right has ever had any great claim to the truth or to be correct. But it is difficult to ignore that the progressive left who now dominate every institution are now identified with insane, unworkable ideas that exist only in their heads. They have taken aspirational ideals like notions of equality and even decency then used the absence of them to punish us. They have weaponized them and they seem to enjoy it. None of us can ignore the authoritarian streak emerging from institutions.
So I think it is more than just anti-conservative animus or a few crazed leftists. We are seeing unworkable utopian fantasies coming unstuck and their adherents so heavily invested in their success they are becoming unstable as reality asserts itself. They are lashing out. That includes the unwise, insensitive comments in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk murder. I think we saw who they really are.
I think you're exactly right! Your diagnosis of the situation has left me a bit breathless.
It occurred to me recently, alongside your observation of an elite who are now "identified with insane, unworkable ideas that exist only in their heads"; that many of these people are possibly some of the most emotionally damaged and consequently intellectually underdeveloped of their class. And for a constellation of reasons, they've built a movement of people who've learned the habits of mind of the effectively mentally ill (judgement, guilt-pushing, catastrophizing)--including, now, the vomitting of blind ugly hatefulness "as reality asserts itself."
Thanks for your remarks. Really, I wanted to reply specifically to your every thought that struck home the most, but I was pulling quotes from beginning to end. . . .
I totally agree elites seem more and more disturbed. I’ve written in one of my posts how the left hemisphere,right hemisphere distinction that McGilchrist makes adds to this madness and creates mad left brain bureaucracies with no wisdom.
Yes, they are addicted to their mental models. Their exciting visions of how the world ought to work. Increasingly they seem to conjure up a vision or model then become enraged it does not exist.
The famous example is academics angry at the existence of poverty. Yet poverty is the norm throughout history. It is affluence we must somehow explain. That part is ignored.
Once you see this you cannot unsee it. It is everywhere.
Do share the link. I would be happy to read your piece.
Precisely why I fled from Higher Education three years ago. The third sector is very lost also (the likes of Citizens Advice, housing associations, probably even Food banks. I'm not a user. Yet.). Grounded in reality puts it so fundamentally, and I think you are correct.
Yes it is shocking how far the rot goes. My sister volunteered for a homeless charity a few years ago and almost all of it catered to non-homeless illegal immigrants. She was shocked no one questioned any of it. They were on a mission, just not the one people thought they were contributing to.
Education seems truly lost mind you. I am familiar with the university sector and it is beyond parody.
My office neighbour was an EDI Organiser or somesuch bs title. The VC basically ran away, so they've have had two years with an Interim and are now forced into a marriage of convenience with A N Other.
Banks have been calling the shots for about four years, behind the scenes… but the multicoloured flags and gigs by Pussy Riot lol carry on anyhow.
thank you for yesterday's post and this one today. I have not been able to have important discussions with my family since 2016.. I've been trying to use Charlie Kirk’s “can we have a conversation?” but everybody is too busy to talk. I will send these two excellent articles and pray we can actually have dialogue. it's been heart breaking for me to hear about what is going on in Europe. Thank you again.
Thank you for commenting on those reactions. I was disappointed reading the comments. I was surprised by them at the time, and on reflection, surprised that I was surprised. I fear for our future. Thank you for speaking out.
I too think this article and the previous one were not at all commedable. It was a blind-spot writ large. By both Hannah Spier and Iain McGilchrist.
I am not leftwing. I am not rightwing. I am centrist. And I am well educated in the concept of totalitarianism. You will find few such persons like this today, because many universities dropped these programs after the 1960s.
I read with dismay the original article, and then today's, and wondered whether Iain McGilchrist was just having a bad week, or wished to promote Hannah Spier for personal reasons. An insightful article on totalitarianism it certainly was not.
I was quite shocked with the whole lowly level of supposed insight and relevant knowledge shown here. There was no insight or relevant knowledge, actually. And she claims she had formal training in Psychiatry? Lord help us....
Where were you living in 2020-2022? Hardly a place on earth that was not overrun by communist totalitarians. Please tell me so I can move to wherever you were.
You know what I am talking about.
Here is one dot for you to connect, there are many more:
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/marxism-underpins-black-lives-matter-agenda
Except:
As for Cullors, she has affirmed on the record several times that she’s a Marxist. In fact, with so many journalists denying that she is a communist, Cullors herself released a video on Dec. 14 stating clearly:
Am I a Marxist? … I do believe in Marxism. It’s a philosophy that I learned really early on in my organizing career … .
She subsequently adds:
… the U.S. is so good at propaganda and being like … it has sold the idea of the American dream, and that’s tied into capitalism and wealth. It’s much harder to sell communism … .
In a June 2020 interview, Cullors said of Garza and herself: “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”
I fully agree with this! I find it amazing that many conservative intellectuals say not.one.word about the very real genocide piped through our screens daily, yet proclaim great danger from the opposite political side. It is a case of pointing the finger outwards instead of self aware and neutral examination of the wider political issues as a whole. Iain M seems to have a blindspot.
I thought the article was abysmal because Hannah Spier knows less about totalitarianism than your average high school student. It was embarrassing for someone claiming she has credentials in Psychiatry.
Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy and even Politics are unworkable and incomplete without a good understanding of human nature including evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.
In other words, you're an idiot proclaiming that only evolutionists are NOT idiots.
What a strange thing to post. Steve didn't say that, or anything recognisably like it.
Everyone's gone insane
The answer to totalitarianism -- as I have been stating for decades -- is in a cross-disciplinary approach. You must know aspects of Evolutionary Science, Anthropology, Religious Studies, general Psychology, Freudian Psychology, and Jungian Psychology. Any less will not do.
There is no one or two volume work that can cover it all.
Well, I enjoyed yesterday’s article and thought that today’s was on point. I am only amazed that in a McGilchrist discussion circle so many of yesterday’s responses were so ideological! Having spent the past week trying to highlight that Kirk was part of a civil approach to debate, I learn I too have succumbed to fascism. Oh well time to turn off and get back to finishing book 2 of the matter with things!
I must be a fascist too then. I don't even have a snazzy uniform. This fascism doesn't seem to come with any perks.
If you want a cure for fascism I can recommend the scene from Fellini's Amarcord where a boy dreams of getting married in front of a giant Mussolini head made from roses.
Such a brilliant film, I need to watch it again soon.
Viva Fellini!
Yup! Me too! Thanks for the Reminder. Add in as well "The Death of Stalin"
Agreed.
I've - so our personality disordered PM, been far-right for years. I mean, I love my country. Doesn't get much more Fascist than that, eh?
Thought this was a good response to the claim that Charlie Kirk was doing politics in the right way (which I appreciate is not quite what you wrote):
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/charlie-kirk-legacy-ezra-klein-2020-election-trump-turning-point/
If you're not ready to applaud black looting, give everyone who saunters across the border a voucher for a free house, and celebrate gay bondage puppy play on Main St... you are a fascist. :-)
Wow! Civil debate is a bit of a stretch. Have you not heard Kirk promoting the idea of bring back public executions and mandating all children watch them? It’s worth reading this thoughtful article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/14/charlie-kirk-killing
I am struggling to understand this. The writer starts with "The Cult Narrative: How Progressivism Radicalizes Its Youth" and then people marvel at how the reponses are ideological. It is like saying "Libertarians eat children's internal organs" and wondering why people get all hot under the collar.
There is an opportunity to castigate political violence, but you have to choose to do that, not also try to annihilate a legitimate political position. I am not a progressive, but I can see a hit job when I read it.
So painfully ironic!
Thank you, Dr. McGilchrist for a thoughtful and insightful essay. You and Dr. Spiers have provided a service to us all.
It’s very insightful just reading the breadth of replies your wisdom and scholarly inclinations, via this post, have stimulated here.
I was so very appreciative to be directed towards Dr Spiers and your later reflections.
Dr McGilchrist you are so very generous and I thank you sincerely for even bothering to offer context.
It is more than the people who pile on probably deserve but how lucky are we to get the chance here on Substack to be intellectually uplifted by greater minds & life experience, whether in agreement or not?
Thank you very much for your kind reply (although I think it is meant for Dr. McGilchrist).
I just wanted to concur with your succinct supportive reply expressing a similar gratitude that I felt for the shared Dr Spiers article & Dr McGilchrist’s response (& all the others).
Thank you very much, I am flattered (I also showed it to my wife).
My initial comment above (just simple heartfelt gratitude) has now garnered more likes than any of my other (usually more prolix) comments. I think I am supposed to take a message from this...Have a very good day.
I think one problem is that each side writes articles in response to the most outlandish online behavior of a few people on the opposite side. They then characterize this behavior as widespread and become more and more entrenched in their belief in the absolute lack of humanity of the other side.
What you say sounds kind of plausible, except I don't think it's true. I believe that the general atmosphere is indeed becoming more envenomed, and a possible underlying reason for that, not easily articulated, is that the very fabric of our reality is coming apart. Hence the tremendous fear, disorientation and clutching for certainty, whether ideological or otherwise. But how can reality come apart? Well, maybe because it wasn't really Reality in the first place...
Well that’s kind of why I said “one problem” as opposed to the grand unifying problem of all time.
I think it's the Internet that's unraveling (our perception of) reality. Echo chambers, sensationalism, emotions, stress, anger, anxiety. It's hard to see when you're in the middle of it, from the outside you can see what it does to people. It's not so much smartphones or AI, it's the very virtual reality we immerse ourselves in daily.
The fabric of reality is not coming apart. We’re still here, we eat food, sleep and think. Most of us still live in the world, in our bodies.
Not looking to see what is now happening is one way I have found to switch off the chaos. Just do what is needed. And pray.
"a few people on the opposite side" does not characterize the reaction by the Left to Charlie's assassination.
Nearly every mainstream Democrat tweeted some derivative of, "We condemn political violence. Kirk was a racist, homophobic, bigot, but violence is never the answer."
Translation: "what'd y'all think 'by any means necessary' meant anyway?"
Old white man thinks white men are persecuted. News at 11.
You're a reverse-racist and a snob.
White working-class men are victims of the Left.
Nah, he's merely a garden-variety racist, it's just that since he's a coward, he's happily and proudly doing it against the defenseless, socially-approved targets of the era. Unthinking hate and spite against an entire human ethnicity, without any self-reflection or awareness. Seething malice disguised as performative empathy.
White working class girls are a victim of the left and their Islamic client group.
To reduce a brilliant man of great accomplishments to "an old white man" is to resort to infantile barbarism. You are everything you claim to hate.
Oh, Clever P, you also are brilliant and should not debase yourself by noticing him. This is just some nose-picker in his dorm room, collecting freshman bits of wisdom to use on his sister at Christmastime.
I know, but sometimes the abject stupidity and hatred makes me lose control of my senses. Seems to be contagious nowadays...
Thanks for the kind words.
You're absolutely correct. The response has been appalling. As ssomeone who was not a fan of Kirk, I am increasingly considering my allegiances.
Why would you consider your "allegiances"? Your opinions are yours, no?
Nevertheless I vote and associate myself with labels
Doesn't take long to see the crux of the issue: " The assassination of a young man - a young man, I should add, of whom I knew nothing until he was killed". Ian, you are again, grossly oversimplifying the situation. Charlie Kirk was a major figure of extremist political activism in the current American social environment. You admit your own ignorance of the situation, yet somehow feel confidently assured of the analysis you shared. I am American: If I met anyone here who was unaware of Charlie Kirk, I would immediately be forced to question their knowledge of our political landscape. The fact you didn't know who he was should have been your first step in realizing you don't know enough about this situation to comment on it. This is really sad. Instead of taking the critiques of your readers seriously, you have simply dug your heels in and have lost the respect of many in doing so.
When people whoop with delight when a political commentator is murdered, you don't need a knowledge of politics or the USA to know that the delighted people are mad and bad.
Very well said.
Also an American, here. Charlie Kirk was not an "extremist," and your parroting of this accusation makes me question *your* knowledge of the political landscape. He did have some strong views that were grounded in his version of Christianity, and the majority of us might think those views were backward. But he explicitly drew a line between his personal religious beliefs and his political activism, even while he spoke openly about both and wanted to be persuasive about both. There is nothing in the world wrong with this.
Much more importantly, I'd like to echo Tony Buck's observation that zero acquaintance with the man is required for recognizing that "Speech is violence; our violence is speech" is lunacy and, in the old way of speaking, evil.
You're trying to imply that something about who Kirk was changes how we should judge the action of murder. If you're not implying that then you have no grounds for your critique.
That’s the point, isn’t it? Regardless of what he said, he didn’t deserve being shot dead in public by an unknown assassin. The people who attended the event and witnessed the murder were traumatized. Can’t believe the convo immediately degenerated into commentary on his statements. I have been very affected by this myself and am still not over what happened on Sept. 10th. We have lost our humanity if we are going to defend his murder on the basis of his remarks.
"I am American: If I met anyone here who was unaware of Charlie Kirk, I would immediately be forced to question their knowledge of our political landscape".
I am not American, and some time ago I became intensely weary of American's perpetual self-absorption and immersion in their provincial political intrigues. Occasionally someone surfaces and talks sense for a while, and then they are cut down. It's such a familiar pattern that it's not even news any more.
I am forced to question whether anyone outside the UK cares about "our political landscape". There are other, more important countries. The USA has about 4% of the world's population, and needs to get over itself.
Trust me, we do care. Because your international status (which is rapidly diminishing, I give you that) is one of the factors holding the chaos at bay.
Said that, I agree that Americans could do without much of their navel gazing. But for entirely different reason. Not because them being 4%, but because of their long held responsibility to the rest of the western world. And the same, at a lesser extent, is true about Britain, Canada, France, Australia etc. You guys allied yourself to the worst regime in the world to get out of the WW2 relatively unscathed and then enjoyed the prosperity and influence for decades because of it. Now you mess up your internal politics and pretend you are irrelevant? That's one serious case of hypocrisy.
"You guys allied yourself to the worst regime in the world to get out of the WW2 relatively unscathed..."
You mean the USA?
Mostly USA, but other Allied nations too. And to make it clear, I'm not expressing judgement here, I'm well aware of the high price that was payed fighting Axis, I'm just pointing out that accepting Soviet Union as an ally was a deal with the devil, and as such things go, it had consequences. Most notably - the ideological distortion of the academic and cultural discourse in the West, which brought the sociocultural crisis you are facing right now.
My point is, to turn inward now would mean the last step away from the ideal that was abandoned during WW2. If the West cuts that last string the world turns into a fighting pit and there is nothing, not even a pretence of the moral stance left.
Hi Alma, quick check: when you say you guys, do you mean Americans or the broader West?
What the US does spills everywhere, and there have been some ugly compromises: strategic power with a dash of values.
I see the inward turn less as navel gazing, more as AI panic over economic and political shifts, repackaged as resilience. Jobs and fairness sell, but they are distractions. One driver is the fear that, as AI squeezes labour arbitrage, chips, energy, and compute become strategic stockpiles, and model integrity becomes a security concern. Add in fewer white collar and entry level jobs, and a pay as you go benefits system without nationalised healthcare, and the politics tilt inward. China as the world’s workshop was tolerable when the offshoring play was low skill assembly; less so now. That helps explain the chip centred focus on Taiwan and the scramble for cheap, reliable, dispatchable power to run the stack.
Norms and institutions keep being rewritten. The goal should be revisions others can live with, through alliances and transparent governance. Culture war politics in America make that harder, and they show how the US handles disagreement when norms and institutions shift.
You're exactly the kind of fruit loop he was targeting. To say Charlie was anything other than a moderate is grossly inaccurate and a lie. You're so deep into your leftist nonsense that there's no saving you.
Spend less time online.
To say he was a "moderate" means that hate speech, wishing death to groups of people, and a history of cruel statements is the middle must mean the world of compassion, love, kindness, fairness, equality and understanding are crazy "far left" notions. We are a far sicker world if he was your middle.
I'm not engaging with someone 40 iq points less than me. Your intellectual defecits are not my responsibility, woman.
Learn to spell low gene pool cretin.
Please be careful. You're dangerously close to being able to justify violence. Because if Charlie is really that evil, and he and Trump and Vance are really Nazi's trying to destroy democracy and only the values of the "far-Left" can prevent fascism... a violent response would be entirely appropriate. One does not sit idly by while Hitler comes to power (see Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.)
But NONE of that is true. It's all a delusion. You may not have bought into that delusion completely, but you've clearly tasted the Kool-Aid.
Charlie may have been wrong, but he wasn't evil. He may believed in a moral order you don't, but he didn't hate people. This is the essence of Solzhenitsyn's famous "the line between good and evil divides not man from man but runs through every human heart." If you convince yourself another group of people is evil, anything becomes permissible. Anything.
I made that mistake with Muslims after 9/11. And it took me 10 years to pull out of it. I've watched the Democratic Party make the same mistake with MAGA over the last 10 years. Nothing good comes of it.
Your reply infers that I “hated” him. I don’t hate people. I also don’t believe humans are evil. They may behave in ways that are called “evil” in the religiously based use of the word. I disagreed with all of his values, morals and ideas of how our world should look. No left or right vision can prevent or create anything beneficial for the good of humanity. The vision of the world through a man’s eyes is very different than one through a woman’s eyes. I believe in a world without ammunition. You want to fight? Use sticks and stones. Look the person in the eyes before you kill them. We are a morally weak society based on a patriarchy founded on morally bankrupt ideas of power. How does a Hitler come to power? Morally bankrupt (men) allow it. They give them power. Oh, and while we’re at it Capitalism is a destructive economic theory!
You've made my case for me. You are very deep in a radical feminist, men-hating, alternate reality. Come up for some air. As the young say, touch grass.
All the ills of the world can never be placed at the feet of any one group (whether conservatives, women, men, blacks, liberals, progressives, communists, gays, straights, or any other.) Good and evil exist in the heart of all men (and women).
As a side note, I find it funny that you say that men and women think completely differently, yet your side (I presume you are a liberal) has spent the last 7 years insisting it doesn't know what a woman is. :-)
Again the assumptions and unfounded accusations. Sounds like your masculine ego was touched. Your inability to critically look at our history of male dominance and conclude that it is not the cause of much of the horrific things that have occurred throughout human history makes my case. I don’t hate “men” at all. It is possible to hold two thoughts in one’s brain at the same time. Scientifically women do a much better job of this. We can very much place the ills of the world at the feet of male dominance. Good and evil are religious designations of what you seem to designate as good and bad. All morally relativistic terms. Teach your children of any gender that they matter and valued for her they are not some societal designation that men determined was good or “evil”. Look inward my comrade!
Yes! Charlie Kirk was moderate. That's why I was so surprised by the reaction.
The guy wasn't "extreme" at all.
He was a basic conservative and Christian. I watched a lot of his campus events. Have you?
I never heard him say anything radical, cruel, divisive, etc. He just spoke the truth through the lens of middle-of-the-road conservatism. That this is now considered "extreme" is alarming.
I am an American, and can say we have always sided with speech. Provided you do not incite violence you are allowed your voice and platform. As Hannah Arendt said the answer to poor speech is better speech. No murder should be celebrated.
"Charlie Kirk was a major figure of extremist political activism"
Charlie Kirk was an utterly normal Republican whose views are shared by tens of millions of conservatives in America. His commitment to free debate was as liberal (in an Enlightenment sense) as could be and far more inclusive than many on the Right.
And yet the Left radicalized some 22 yo kid who shot him for being a Nazi.
That's why this is so radicalizing to conservatives. Because Charlie was a normie conservative. And if the state won't get justice for him, it tells me they wouldn't for me either. That includes coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone who encouraged, supported, or celebrated his murder. Failure to do that is abrogation of the most basic duty of any legitimate state: protection of its citizens.
If Charlie Kirk is a Nazi, then 70M of our fellow Americans are too. Of course, that's exactly what the Democrat Party has been saying for years ("cling to guns and religion", "deplorables", "they'll need deprogramming") so perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised.
"Charlie Kirk was a major figure of extremist political activism in the current American social environment."
There's simply no basis for this statement. It's cheap rhetoric.
I had never heard of him either. I am not American, and I do not listen to any political speeches any more.
I do know he should not have been murdered.
Dr McG, I agree. For what it’s worth, I think there is a massive selection bias online where the nutters tend to comment (not me obviously!!) and normal people tend to just “like” and move on. It’s very easy to get angry online but I find it’s the same squeaky wheels who are looking for reactions. Keep up the good work and don’t feel the need to respond because someone started crying in the comments
My view is the cluster of utopian goals that characterize the West are now colliding with reality. Utopia isn't real, but reality is. Relentless mass immigration, unwise energy policies based on climate alarmism, and the intentional denigration of our culture and amazing heritage, the glue that keeps us together in many respects. That is just some of what is happening in Britain, and none of it makes any sense to normal people. It is replicated in most Western nations.
We have a massive problem with elites who increasingly seem mentally disturbed. Left versus right is wrong; living in fantasyland versus grounded in reality seems closer to the truth.
I don't believe the Left or the Right has ever had any great claim to the truth or to be correct. But it is difficult to ignore that the progressive left who now dominate every institution are now identified with insane, unworkable ideas that exist only in their heads. They have taken aspirational ideals like notions of equality and even decency then used the absence of them to punish us. They have weaponized them and they seem to enjoy it. None of us can ignore the authoritarian streak emerging from institutions.
So I think it is more than just anti-conservative animus or a few crazed leftists. We are seeing unworkable utopian fantasies coming unstuck and their adherents so heavily invested in their success they are becoming unstable as reality asserts itself. They are lashing out. That includes the unwise, insensitive comments in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk murder. I think we saw who they really are.
I think you're exactly right! Your diagnosis of the situation has left me a bit breathless.
It occurred to me recently, alongside your observation of an elite who are now "identified with insane, unworkable ideas that exist only in their heads"; that many of these people are possibly some of the most emotionally damaged and consequently intellectually underdeveloped of their class. And for a constellation of reasons, they've built a movement of people who've learned the habits of mind of the effectively mentally ill (judgement, guilt-pushing, catastrophizing)--including, now, the vomitting of blind ugly hatefulness "as reality asserts itself."
Thanks for your remarks. Really, I wanted to reply specifically to your every thought that struck home the most, but I was pulling quotes from beginning to end. . . .
Thank you for your kind words. I am pleased it resonated.
Here is how I think it all works: https://abysspostcard.substack.com/p/i-have-no-idea-what-is-going-on
I have been writing about the growing disregard (and distaste) for reality in the West. For instance https://tomwelsh441836.substack.com/p/reality-is-that-which-when-you-stop?r=28zej1
I will second cottonkid’s motion; absolutely brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you for the kind words. Glad you found it useful.
Registering the globalist programs of the WHO/WEF, and the people who are aligned with them, can be instructive.
To paraphrase:
Totalitarianism is the utopian’s answer to reality.
Modern liberalism is a mental illness. thank you for making that case perfectly.
The progressive left are clearly mentally disturbed. Their worldview borders on a psychotic break from reality.
I totally agree elites seem more and more disturbed. I’ve written in one of my posts how the left hemisphere,right hemisphere distinction that McGilchrist makes adds to this madness and creates mad left brain bureaucracies with no wisdom.
Yes, they are addicted to their mental models. Their exciting visions of how the world ought to work. Increasingly they seem to conjure up a vision or model then become enraged it does not exist.
The famous example is academics angry at the existence of poverty. Yet poverty is the norm throughout history. It is affluence we must somehow explain. That part is ignored.
Once you see this you cannot unsee it. It is everywhere.
Do share the link. I would be happy to read your piece.
I’m distracted now but looking at your stuff we seem to think along the same lines. https://open.substack.com/pub/samanthawoodford/p/david-vs-goliath-in-the-age-of-the?r=15jt8t&utm_medium=ios
A good read. Thank you for sharing.
Precisely why I fled from Higher Education three years ago. The third sector is very lost also (the likes of Citizens Advice, housing associations, probably even Food banks. I'm not a user. Yet.). Grounded in reality puts it so fundamentally, and I think you are correct.
Yes it is shocking how far the rot goes. My sister volunteered for a homeless charity a few years ago and almost all of it catered to non-homeless illegal immigrants. She was shocked no one questioned any of it. They were on a mission, just not the one people thought they were contributing to.
Education seems truly lost mind you. I am familiar with the university sector and it is beyond parody.
Very much so. I got out at end of 2022.
My office neighbour was an EDI Organiser or somesuch bs title. The VC basically ran away, so they've have had two years with an Interim and are now forced into a marriage of convenience with A N Other.
Banks have been calling the shots for about four years, behind the scenes… but the multicoloured flags and gigs by Pussy Riot lol carry on anyhow.
I sense a bracing collapse is needed to reset things. We can't go on like this.
thank you for yesterday's post and this one today. I have not been able to have important discussions with my family since 2016.. I've been trying to use Charlie Kirk’s “can we have a conversation?” but everybody is too busy to talk. I will send these two excellent articles and pray we can actually have dialogue. it's been heart breaking for me to hear about what is going on in Europe. Thank you again.
We live in polarizing times.
Well said Iain
Thank you for commenting on those reactions. I was disappointed reading the comments. I was surprised by them at the time, and on reflection, surprised that I was surprised. I fear for our future. Thank you for speaking out.