Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald

The attempt to blame left-liberals for Kirk's murder relies on the same dangerous theory liberals invoked to blame conservatives for the white supremacist slaughters in Buffalo, Charleston and the El Paso Walmart (e.g., those who accuse Dems of "replacing" Americans with immigration inspired those massacres).

Everyone says bad things about the other side in politics. The left calls MAGA fascist and the right calls the left deranged commies. You're not responsible for psychopaths who murder in the name of your cause (it'd be like blaming pro-life advocates for the murders of abortion doctors, which liberals also do).

As Kirk himself said: "WORDS ARE NOT VIOLENCE. ONLY VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE." Stop trying to convert words and the expression of views into criminal violence.

No, Gleen, it's not the same. We are not attacking the left for having differences of political opinion. We are not attacking them for having weird beliefs.

We are attacking them for celebrating assassination and murder. We are attacking them for calling for the next "pew pew" against the President Donald Trump.

If Trump goes down -- we are at war.

You are right that most words are not violence. But some words are: Specifically those calling for someone to be killed, or praising an assassin for killing someone, with hopes that additional assassins will emerge.

That is what we are condemning. I do grant that some people are making the mistake of attempting to criminalize mere strong political invective -- but what we're really incensed by is that Taylor Lorenz continues to praise Luigi Mangione for his assassination and absolutely zero people in the supposedly "Respectable" media have even so much as chastised her for it.

Indeed, CNN had her on to giggle about it.

Either the left stops openly glorifying violence and calling for Trump or other Republicans to be "pew pewed" -- their puerile, cutesy way of saying "shot" -- or the right is going to start publishing our own Pew Pew Lists.

This is not a difference of political opinion. We on the right will not have a "debate" about whether leftwing assassins are allowed to murder us, our friends, or our leaders.

That will be a civil war situation.

It's not up for debate. Leftwingers arguing that it is justified to murder me, my friends, and my family, and my president, are not offering a political position. They are openly conspiring to commit murder, and we don't debate murderers. We arrest them and, if necessary, we kill them.

The left cannot put itself above the social compact. The basline, rock-bottom social compact is just "you and I are in the same tribe, the same nation, and I agree to not murder you if you agree not not murder me. And we also agree not to incite our more dangerous, mentally-unstable members to kill each other, either."

If we do not have that, we do not have a country, and we are in state of war. The rules of society do not apply, only the rules of war and violence do.

These poor fools are missing the big picture.
When there's a killing the left always tries to assign the killer to the right. We're used to it. And the vast majority of the right always overwhelmingly condemns the killer.

Only this time all the moderate normie republicans out there saw MILLIONS of liberals celebrate and justify the brutal murder of a man... all because that man held beliefs similar to theirs. Beliefs that regular Americans consider completely normal and common sense.

These normal folks were going about their day, then they saw some shocking brutality, and before they could even process it all their liberal friends were dancing in the blood and gleefully justifying it. "He deserved it for believing X and Y." And that normal person realized that they also believe X and Y, so them getting murdered would be just as celebrated too. At best they saw a "Murder is bad, BUT... he deserved it for believing X and Y."

And the lights go on.

It doesn't matter how hard the left scrambles to put the shooter in some particular ideological bucket to cover their asses and take no blame (as usual), because regular America saw how fucking gleeful libs were when somebody just like them dies horribly, and they realized that the left wants them dead. Not metaphorically. They want you to die. Some of us have known this for a long time because we pissed off the left somehow previously, but for the regular folks coming to that understanding is a life changing moment.

You ain't brushing this one off, Glenn.

We are not going to have a debate over whether we are legitimate targets for leftwing murderers.

If the left continues to cover up for its murderers, to celebrate murderers, to call for additional murders -- then we will too. If it's the rule for one, it's the rule for all.