Understanding the shooting of Charlie Kirk
Understanding the shooting of Charlie Kirk
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- Date published:
11:10 am, September 17th, 2025 - 95 comments
Categories: uk politics, us politics -
Tags: authoritarianism, black pill, Charlie Kirk, populism
I’m putting this post up for two reasons. One is the US is at a sociopolitical tipping point, and appears to be rapidly tipping further into the very bad reality.
A tipping point is a point in time when a group—or many group members—rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice
A key thing about tipping points is it’s possible to influence where they go, but we’re generally not prepared for that.
There are any number of examples that could illustrate the chaos unfolding in the US (or the UK) from the past week, but probably the most important is the US and the UK right’s shift from free speech warriors to outright cancel culture. Only against the left and liberals of course.
The other reason is New Zealand isn’t at that point yet, and we should be preparing for when we reach our own version so we can have some influence in pushing us the good direction. Or better yet, prevent going there in the first place.
The following two videos are on the context of the shooting of US religious conservative Charlie Kirk. It’s almost impossible to know the truth of alleged shooter Tyler Robinson’s motives at the moment, but as you will see, the impossibility of knowing is part of the point. We can however better understand the milieu it happened in.
The first is from Cy Canterel, media theorist and technologist who focuses on decoding systems of power and meaning, gives an eight minute exposition of the culture Robinson was living in, beyond left/right. If there’s one thing you watch/read on the shooting and what has followed, this is it (hattip Jane Clare Jones)
The second is Aiden Walker, internet culture researcher, talking more specifically about Robinson but also about the nihilistic subculture he most likely came from (hattip Joe90).
There’s a lot in both of those, I’m just going to highlight the centrality of belonging. Not just in black pill culture, but across the political spectrum, people increasingly want to feel safe and are moving towards those that offer a sense of belonging, often at the expense of values and policy positions. This is the most urgent thing for the left to get its head around.
Canterel,
Why the black pill is sticky. It packages three things people crave when they feel powerless.: certainty, community, and a role.
I think that’s true for many people who have even a peripheral awareness of the metacrisis (climate, ecology, politics, war, economics, rising fascism)
One other thing that stands out for me is that the Trump administration are probably more aware of this than we realise, and using it. Ditto Musk. Both the black pillers, and the need for belonging. Charlie Kirk’s whole thing was appearing reasonable while recruiting people to the conservative position and away from those evil lefties. He offered belonging.
Meanwhile, Brian Tamaki gave a speech on banning non-Christian religion at a free speech march in London this week. I didn’t realise he’s so shit at being charismatic, but here he’s been elevated from a fringe position in the New Zealand political landscape to being on a very large stage speaking to over 100,000 protestors against immigration and the left. The protest was led by white nationalist Tommy Robinson.
This is what follows the rally,
The authoritarians are organising, the thugs are on the streets, and the kids are saying fuck you all. Time for us on the left to talk strategy.
Ken Klippenstein has the Discord messages. No one understands the motive.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-leaked-messages-from-charlie
agreed about no-one understanding the motive. Even if the theories in the post are correct and apply to the shooter, it still doesn't explain why he personally, did this particular act, at this particular time.
Lots of contradictions. Was he really a friendly, quiet kid? Was he becoming liberal or not? Was he hiding his family life from his friends and vice versa? Did he consider the shit storm he was going to rain down on his family, boyfriend, friends? Did he care? Why has there been no discussion about his mental health?
In the end some of that will be clarified if he retains his not guilty plea. But I think the broader issues around culture and politics are probably the more pertinent.
In-group bias – The Decision Lab
Frustratingly, this is not new, but maybe the left will get better at taking it into account. A particular danger that is sometimes (often?) forgotten is that if people are put into an out-group, that's still a group, and once they're in it, it's hard to get them back out of it (gangs being an obvious NZ example of this).
The right suddenly getting back into cancel culture isn't surprising – they were going after "unacceptable" themes/subjects in music and games (like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: the Gathering) in the 1980s and 1990s. It paused for a bit because anyone can organise boycotts etc. and suddenly the right were on the outer over subjects like gay marriage, so were the subject of some very effective boycotts.
@ Weka, you nicely took me to task a couple of days ago for making assumptions about Robinson's motives. I do not know that we are any clearer at this point yet.
Three things are very clear though. First, in a week you had impossible to avoid evidence of a deranged person murdering someone in cold blood. Second within days you had, lets call him an icon of the right gunned down in front of his young family. Rightly or wrongly, those two events have triggered a visceral reaction in what looks to be a lot of people who are not normally active in American politics. Let alone re-energising people of the right.
Second, the reaction and behaviour of many, many people on the left has been put (by themselves) into the public domain. I think the spitefulness of some of those reactions has and will continue to stick, broadly to people of the left. Some of those folk are now on the receiving end of treatment they have championed being inflicted on others – being doxxed and cancelled etc. People have seen the lack of empathy displayed in response to these two events and are drawing their own conclusions.
Which leads me to point three. From the videos I have seen from the UK, the number of people attending the march in the UK was more like one million than one hundred thousand. How many more felt the same way but didnt attend? Labelling them far right is disingenuous in my view. So what we are seeing is the bear has been poked and it is showing signs of waking up grumpy.
Call these events what you will, but coincidentally we have clear signs of a significant percentage of the population in both countries taking vocal issue with the direction of their respective countries. What we don't know yet is how this will play out and how it will echo here.
What I'm seeing, and yes its just my uninformed opinion, is that what we are witnessing is the start of a strong, organically driven reactionary cycle. Reactionary in the sense that a lot of people are fundamentally unhappy with the trajectory of the west and their focus is inexorably shifting to the architects and champions of that trajectory – right or left be damned.
As you know, the name of Kirk's organisation is "Turning Point". I fear we will look back on the second half of 2025 as being exactly that.
All the main groups featured in this post seem to be male/masculine dominated and male led. It seems to signal a rise of aggressive, masculine authoritarianism, even tho cloaked in sophisticated camouflage by the Black Pills, and even though some women, eg (non feminist populist) Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and her acolytes were some of the cheer team supporting Brian Tamaki at that London march.
"Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and her acolytes were some of the cheer team supporting Brian Tamaki at that London march."
Alternatively:
Kellie-Jay Keen attended the march. Brian Tamaki also attended. They met up and acknowledged each other.
The tweet I saw had a photo of her with Brian Tamaki and his crew, and her comment was something about meeting some great New Zealanders.
2 X posts by Kellie-Jay Keen that indicate to me that she's a bit of a fan of the Tamakis and crew:
Pics with KJK, Tamakis and crew:
KJK's caption:
Brian Tamaki's post that was re-posted by KJK, includes a pic of KJK & Hannah:
Caption:
Good idea to repost these two clips Weka. They could have been lost in yesterday’s Daily Review. I would encourage people to watch them as they certainly opened my mind to a reality I had no idea existed.
I watched both twice trying to get my head around them. They made my old, grey head spin. Before he was killed I wasn’t aware of Charlie Kirk, I had heard references to Nick Fuentes, I had no idea what a groyper was, or that there was an intersection between gaming culture and politics and its nuances.
I was going to reply to your comment last night but pondered some more trying to understand what’s going on and why, and up popped your post.
One could just watch the USA with its overblown self image of exceptionalism going down the toilet and think what goes around comes around, and to some degree that they had it coming to them.
I have always thought they are the last country to be lecturing other countries about democracy. Their own corrupt system trumpets its vaunted triumverate of the executive, Congress and the Supreme Court balancing each other out, but has been shown to not have the guard rails they thought they did, and it has all been so easily subverted.
I was left wondering about the implications for the rest of us. Even as a failed state the USA has so much influence economically, culturally and especially militarily. Sometime back someone passed on to me William Blum’s book “Killing Hope – US Military and CIA Interventions Since WW2”. Shamefully 😊 I haven’t read it yet but the list is long and sobering.
As the US slides down its self-created slippery slope how much more of the world will it pull down or harm as it goes?
Having watched (and cheered) Spanish people demonstrating for Palestine and against the presence of the Israel Premier Tech team in the just-completed (cycling) Tour of Spain it was such a shock to see so many people on the streets of London for the Unite the Kingdom march. WTF!!
How is Aotearoa positioned with arguably the weakest and most incompetent Prime Minister in living memory and a defence (war) minister like Judith Collins and foreign minister like Peters to respond to the grave challenges we all face?
Excellent post. Thanks Grey Area:
It sounds interesting. I will check my library for a copy.
Be assured NZ was not left out of the "US Interventions" in the decades post WW2. I have my own personal story which initially started with my father, and I still cling to the hope I may one day be allowed tell it.
Interestingly, I saw a similar thesis to Cy Canterel's (black-pill nihilists with no agenda beyond civilisational ruin) from a conservative commentator in The Times, of all things. That level of agreement across left and right is rare. The Times piece is paywalled, but here's the last part:
His point about "living in a cosseted corner of history" also struck me in Cy Canterel's video: this groyper edgelord stuff is grade A luxury beliefs for people with no problems they haven't inflicted on themselves. They can picture societal collapse and then nothing if they like, but 'nothing' doesn't follow societal collapse – 'something' does, and the people living through it wouldn't enjoy that something.
if they're living online, they probably have a serious disconnect from reality.
link from behind the paywall https://archive.is/11jPt
See I don't find that indecipherable, which is one of the values of having intentionally made sure my social media and my real life isn't a bubble.
The main thing I want to burn down is the internet. We basically tossed an extremely sophisticated and dangerous tool to a bunch of children and said have at it. What did we think was going to happen.
I agree with to an extent and I think he is missing the degree to which so many young people have no future. Climate and class, the world looks different to those born since the millennium.
I'm not so sure of that. "No future" was a slogan when I was a teenager, and the first song my friend wrote for his punk band in 1981 was called "Ronnie's Dropped the Big One," so we didn't exactly have a rosy view of the near future. My youngest is 25, only three years older than Kirk's murderer, and she's more mature and has better prospects than I did at her age (the "she" part makes the difference, I suppose).
I think your previous comment has it covered – what's different now is the Internet. I can't find it now, but someone on X only a couple of days after the murder posted something like "This guy seems more like the typical school shooter than anything else: chronically online masturbator who loves Hitler." We didn't have those.
I think so. I remember that early 80s angst about nuclear war. We got taught at school where the concentric circles of blast radius and radioactive fallout where if a bomb was dropped on Chch, ffs. But it was background to our lives generally. We weren't immersed in it all the time. I think about this a lot about how much time I spend online now and what I am exposed to. But I garden and live in the country and have plenty going on that's not cyber but is grounded in physical reality.
I knew some Germans here for a while, who didn't believe in a lot of climate, peak oil etc stuff because they'd grown up with the Russians having nuclear warheads pointed at them and the constant reality of the end of the world. When that never came to anything, they decided that living in that kind of manufactured fear was a poor way to live and so they protected themselves from the belief systems that presented the same kind of future doom.
But I think the difference now is that while nuclear war was a threat, it was entirely possible it wouldn't happen, and it didn't. The climate crisis is baked in now and will be with us for far beyond whatever we can see of the future. We're also in a completely different situation than the 80s in terms of employment, housing, careers etc.
I hesitated for a while. Nihilism, perhaps not full-blown but aspects of it, has been around forever. The movie Rebel Without a Cause came out in 1955 and was based on a 1944 book entitled ‘Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Without_a_Cause
The death of Robert Redford made the connection for me.
The timing of Redford's death is poignant. The golden boy is gone, who is left?
Michael Douglas?
I meant symbolically 😉 If you strip out the Redfordness from US culture, what is left?
I don't mean nothing is left, I mean it's useful to consider.
I can’t answer that and ran it through AI; the (quite interesting) output might be fodder for a Post but not by/from me.
George Clooney?
It is part of a connection between Hollywood and liberal/left politics.
And that connection has various political strands, including celebrity politicians, which NZ has not been immune from in recent years.
I can't help you, Sundance…
In the current environment Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There has often been a celebration of romantic, rebels (outlaws) without political causes in US popular culture.
1953, Marlon Brando in The Wild One: famous line, when Brando's character is asked what he's rebelling against, he says,"Whadda ya got?"
Robert Redford really rose to star status from his role in the 1969 movie, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", with the final freeze frame of Redford and Paul Newman running into a hail of army/police bullets.
Both USA and England are prisoners of First Past the Post.
Proportional Representation saves New Zealand from rule by extremes. Much as there are extemists in Parliament, and in this government, they are shackled to a degree by PR.
Strarmer had at one stage backed PR for Westminster but changed his tune when he saw a massive majority on the horizon. He won with 33% of the vote.
If UK had PR Brexit would not have happened because UKIP would have had about 70 seats and people would not have had to vote for Brexit to get heard. 70 Ukippers in WM would have exposed the profiles of the people who made up UKIP. Many Labour people were and are smug that Reform have very few seats in WM. That is lethal. I see no hope for Labour having the courage to introduce PR now.
Reform/Tory, brought together under a resurrected Boris Johnson, is a likely the next English Governement. It will be full fat Peronist like Trump's America
In America they have gone past the tipping point. I think a violent civil war and break up is now inevitable. Thnakfully there is no easy access to guns in England.
Much as I have comtempt for Luxon/Peters/Seymour I'm grateful that PR muffles their ability to execute their more extreme ambitions.
The reply curse struck again so in case this gets displaced again, it is a reply to Bill Drees:
"Much as I have comtempt for Luxon/Peters/Seymour I'm grateful that PR muffles their ability to execute their more extreme ambitions."
I have to ask. Do you actually live in Aotearoa NZ? MMP has enabled them to enact their more extreme ambitions because of having the weakest, most incompetent party leader in living memory who sold his soul to be PM.
I think the future Sir Christopher is like dear BoJo. He wanted to be PM, and will sure be glad to have been PM; it's that necessary spell in between the two that he isn't competent for, isn't enjoying, and is making such a howling mess of.
I actually disagree with that. I think MMP is more extreme because the tail wags the dog. Our own saving grace at the last election was that NZF counter-balanced ACT to some degree. If National had only needed ACT then Luxon would have let Seymour put out even more batty ideas and tied up even more government time going nowhere.
The problem with FPP is that it's not representative. Democrats voters outnumber Republican voters but do not hold the power of the president, senate or congress. Similarly for conservative/labour in the UK until the last election.
The American issue is also about Gerrymandering and numerous Vote Supression tactics.
Our MMP allows a voice to extremists but generally blunts the sharper policies and forces comprimises. Whatever we think of where ACT/National would like to go Aotearoa will not have the massive swings that England and US are suffering.
So you don't think the lurch to the extreme right by the current coalition is a "massive swing"? MMP coupled with a weak and incompetent major party leader has lead to Mr 8% leading Luxon by the nose.
I consider the ground shifted under our feet with the coalition agreement and the implementation of the policies agreed in it.
My remark on Aotearoa were relative to the extremities in US & UK.
Very to true but it might be case of it only delays…
The Cordon Sanitaire keeps the AFD from power in Germany but as their vote rises it becomes harder for the rest to form viable governing coalitions which then tend to perform poorly due to ideological differences which seems to be leading to an increase in AFD's vote. The day is fast arriving that the AFD's vote will simply be to large to block and and 'Midnight' coalition will arrive.
France tactically voted in the second round last election to keep RN and Marine Le Pen out but that's resulted in a ungovernable National assembly and RN's popularity seems to be rising.
Reform are gaining popularity currently but it remains to be seen if they'll get their hands on power at all in a FPP system.
Seems to me that the establishment parties have taken their constituencies for granted for so long that people are basically seeking the 'nuclear' option to voice their frustration and get change. There's probably a lesson in that somewhere.
It's also not a given that a hard right government will collapse either, after all Giorgia Meloni's popularity has consolidated rather than fallen away.
Large MSM outlets would do well to be far more careful with the Hard Right and Hard Left labels they like to throw around as well it's just another factor that contributes to the distrust.
Trump did win the popular vote last time out by a couple of million
My comments were on the Federal and State legislatures. Of course a Presidential Election is different.
Never trumper Nichols on narcissist young men.
.
Some years ago, I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about the young men who perpetrate such crimes. I suggested that an overview of these killers showed them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies. I called them “Lost Boys” as a nod to their arrested adolescence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/lost-boys-violent-narcissism-angry-young-men/672886/
https://archive.li/e533S
This is the battle cry of the narcissist, and we’ve heard it before. Western societies are producing more and more of these Lost Boys, the fail-to-launch young men who carry weighty social grudges. Some of them kill, but others lash out in other, more creative ways: whether it’s Edward Snowden deciding only he could save America from the scourge of surveillance, or Bowe Bergdahl walking away from his post to personally solve the war in Afghanistan, the combination of immaturity and grandiosity among these young males is jaw-dropping in its scale even when it is not expressed through the barrel of a gun.
https://thefederalist.com/2015/07/09/the-revenge-of-the-lost-boys/
Thank you for posting those videos from 2 very articulate young people.
I can't help but think the people with the power- the oligarchs, the Bigs (Oil, tech… etc), the miniscule number of people who hold the vast majority of the worlds wealth are behind all of this.
They like chaos and disruption. They benefit from division. They benefit from people scrapping and fighting each other for the dwindling supply of crumbs. They benefit as people search for connection and status in dark holes of the internet. They benefit from all these things as they advance their agenda and rugs are swept from under our feet with us hardly noticing. Worse is to come.
I feel the left is being attacked from all sides, but in all seriousness, I believe only the left has the vision to see what needs to be done. To bolster democracy. Take meaningful action on emissions. Fix inequality. Rebuild community and human connection.
But the forces against it are monumental.
Had been wondering / asking who benefits from societal divisions, and your idea that the very wealthy and sorted might benefit makes sense to me. Certainly they have the wherewithal to shield themselves from any immediate fallout, and move elsewhere.
The CoC's new scheme to attract wealthy foreigners to NZ may get a boost from societal disintegration in the US & UK – we don't know how lucky we are, and were.
The CoC is ‘government’ by the sorted, for the sorted – all the sorted are welcome
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/525687/billionaire-peter-thiel-eyes-possible-permanent-move-to-new-zealand [careful now RNZ]
Who knows given the mother's efforts to scrub her social media presence but the room mate?
(2x videos)
https://x.com/MarcACaputo/status/1968046876378403026
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/groyper-charlie-kirk-nick-fuentes-tyler-robinson
https://archive.li/Jyi8h
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26098838-tyler-robinson-indictment/
I have thought for over 40 years and told my mates that the US would have another civil war. All of the pre-conditions were there, the disparity of income, the treatment of Vietnamese vets with their physical and mental illness, the proliferation of arms, the festering political hatred, racism and the totally unrealistic expectations and promises that everyone would be a millionaire, leading to huge disappointment and eventual vengeance and revenge. My son is passing through California on the way to Bolivia at the moment and can’t wait to catch the plane out, the cost of everything is horrific, wages are awful especially for the under educated.
I do think a lot of people there are going to die amongst the aggrieved and also the innocent bystanders. One only has to look at the film of the National Guard that Trump has rousted out, these are not seasoned well trained troops, these are fat, untrained part time layabouts role playing as soldiers, they are the wick on the powderkeg, if they start shooting innocent people, 80% of the rest of the population will be reaching for their so far under-utilised guns.
Never trumper and former repug congressman Kinzinger on civil war.
It doesn't have to be a civil war. Could be some other apocalyptic event, such as a nuclear strike, or a sudden violent pandemic.
Anything that severely disrupts the supply-chains long-term will have similar consequences.
For compelling fictional depictions of those, watch the unforgettable UK movie Threads, or read the passage about two-thirds the way through John Wyndham's Day Of The Triffids, where the character Coker explains what will happen when existing stockpiles run out.
This is just a complete distraction from the domestic threat that New Zealand faces right now.
Our NZSIS threat environment is crystal clear to the SIS and getting worse:
New Zealand's Security Threat Environment 2025
"At the time of writing, a violent extremist attack is assessed as being a realistic possibility in New Zealand. Realistic possibility explains the likelihood there are violent extremists in New Zealand with the credible intent and capability to undertake an act of ideologically motivated violence.
While this has been our assessment since 2022, the global violent extremism environment, which New Zealand is part of, has deteriorated in many respects over the past year.
The most likely attack scenario in New Zealand is someone who acts alone, who has radicalised online, who has prepared for violence without anyone knowing and carries out their attack using basic weapons such as a knife or vehicle. Only a very small proportion of people expressing violent extremist views online will actually attempt to carry out an attack in the real world."
We ought to be teaching ourselves, about our own threats, not reaching for obscure US or even UK parallels. This is what faced us in 2019.
try reading the post Ad.
We are at risk of individual violent acts. We're also at risk of the slide into populism that leads to Reform in the UK polling higher than Labour or the Tories. You'd be a fool to ignore that and think it can't happen here. It already is.
The point of the post wasn't about Kirk's murder, it was to look at the bigger sociopolitical shifts happening. As your quote names. Dynamics like black pill culture are years in the making.
I can see your point – it sucks up a lot of bandwidth & oxygen – but how do you think somebody already (?) here in NZ will have [be(come)] radicalised? It won’t be through watching Shortland Street online, will it?
we've seen a fair amount of radicalisation via the freedom movement since the pandemic.
Also useful things to learn from gender critical people moving from the left/centre left/centre to the right or to being politically homeless. Those people aren't radicalised, and I don't see them as being a risk for violence, but the dynamics are similar in terms of belonging.
A feeling of belonging to a group who feel they don’t belong anywhere and are ‘homeless’, politically speaking? This black pill stuff does my head it, BTW.
the gender critical movements are a whole range of things now. But early on it included alot of left or centre left women, including lesbians, who were told by liberals and the left that they were bigots and to stfu about their own politics. They watched women be punished for believing in biological sex and women's rights and talking about it out loud, at the same time as losing rights.
When push came to shove, many women chose women over leftist positions, mostly because of how they were treated and the loss of rights coming from liberals.
Some of those women moved to the right, because the right said 'we believe in the importance of biological reality too, and we're not going to cancel or punish you'. Some GC women became politically homeless because they'd been forced to choose between their fundamental politics and the left, the left ostracised them, but they couldn't move to the right because of right values and policy positions.
A smaller number including myself remained left and GCF, because our leftist values and principles are also fundamental and because our feminism and leftist positions are intertwined (you can have women's rights without a leftist analysis).
A lot of it is quite personal. Many women were personally attacked, so of course they went to where they were welcomed. The most notable example in NZ is Ani O'Brien. I was on twitter in the days when NZ leftist twitter did massive, terrible pile ons on people, she was one them, and I watched her trajectory from centre leftie to where is now on the right.
I know other women who were previously Labour or Green voters who now vote National, ACT or NZF.
None of that has anything to do with black pill culture. I gave it as an example of the dynamic of how people choose belonging and safety over conventional political positioning. From that, it's easier to understand how some young people might value black pill culture simple because they found a home there and were welcomed in.
one of the scariest things I've seen in politics has been the last week of watching the GC centrists and centre lefties basically fall in behind the pro-Kirk, anti-leftist narratives. Kirk is widely seen as reasonable, and the 'leftists' as nasty, callous agents of chaos. These were the GC people who had resisted the more obvious shifts to teh right of the past few years, and I'm not even sure they've gone rightwards now, but they've definitely gone more anti-left.
The liberals will of course deny this, or deny that it matters, or will say good riddance bigot. But we are losing.
The two phases are linked.
1.Exploiting the disconnect between the gender equality language of the 1960-1970's era feminism with the move to provide space for those with gender dysmorphia (post DSM 1980).
Part of a strategy to restore a natural order society (biological, sexuality and patriarchal), as per women's identity, to being a conservative cause – successful or not, it would disrupt feminist unity.
2.National insecurity being blamed on the left (resistance by the left to a right wing social conservative governments order of rule being posed as unpatriotic).
See Israel as an example, there the Israeli population is ignoring the Gaza war's impact on civilians because the government says they have to defeat Hamas and end a threat.
That alleged post-1960s-70s 'disconnect' between gender equality language came from liberalism/neo-liberalism. It was part of a kind of populist version of feminism, which has been more favoured by the mainstream media.
With the main core of feminism, there's always been moves from the mainstream to dilute, disrupt, and/or misrepresent the original feminist movements. Happened with first wave feminism, which included a range of feminist initiatives, but has since been narrowed to a focus on suffragettes.
And the MSM have also been more likely to do something similar with socialism and the central core of left wing thought.
we've seen a fair amount of radicalisation via the freedom movement since the pandemic.
I remember accusations of 'violence' being leveled at the Freedom Village occupants because of mock gallows and politicians and promises of Nuremberg II.
Tame stuff indeed compared with the rather graphic mock beheadings of National Cabinet Ministers by Labour stalwarts at the 2012 Asset Sales protests.
Asset sales march in Auckland ends in beheading | Scoop News
At the time, if my memory serves, the depictions of hangings of the perpetrators of government Covid overreach (and their MSM stenographers) was labeled 'violence'. When I reminded folks of the 2012 protests… featuring the guillotine and lifesize photos of the Key Offenders and 'blood' stained heads as they were lopped off by the blade….it was determined that this was 'political theatre', as opposed to the 'violence of radicalised activists' of the Freedom Village.
Hmmm.
The Left and Right are equally prone to demonstrations of 'violence' should they be confronted with the realisation that options for righting the wrongs that have radicalised them are very, very limited.
the main differences I see are these:
between 2012 and the occupation of parliament grounds, we've had a mass murder committed by a white supremacist against a group on the basis of religion.
the parliament occupation included neonazis. Phillip Arp got stopped at Picton after he said he was going to the occupation for a public execution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Arps#Anti-Government_protests_after_2019
My memory is there were people at the protest who wanted to storm parliament and put MPs on trial, and/or execute them, like the US storming of the Capitol building. Happy to go look that up when I have more time.
Had any of the people organising and leading at the occupation publicly distanced themselves from the neonazis, they'd be seen in a different light.
All of that, plus the way way the world is generally, means that I personally would argue against the left using execution political theatre now.
But that wasn't what I means by radicalisation. I was thinking of the degree to which the libertarian hippies allied with the far right from within NZ and overseas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220315070813/https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/128067269/intelligence-agencies-warned-of-risk-of-violent-antiauthority-protest-over-covid19-measures-in-november
Forgive the Wayback machine link, but the article is behind a paywall on Stuff.
This stuck in my mind at the time…
The risk posed by politically-motivated extremists who opposed Covid restrictions appears to have become a pre-eminent concern for the national security agencies, as the opposition to Government policies increased in the past year.
“The vast majority of those opposed to [Covid-19] mitigation programmes are overwhelmingly peaceful and are driven by a diverse set of ideological frameworks and personal grievances,” the terror insight report reads.
“We judge, however, that the volume and nature of the rhetoric as a legitimate response to public policy … this, combined with individuals’ personal grievances, increased the likelihood that individuals will be radicalised and inspired to mobilise to violence.”
"Vast majority…" please, let that sink in for a moment.
How many other mass protest movements throughout history can be described thus?
It is certain that anti – tour protests attracted a number of participants happy for things to turn violent, emotions running high as they were. There have been participants in some of the Maori protests that have had 'elements' from the highly radicalised end of the spectrum.
Of course the Freedom Village had extremists and people with long standing grievances against the government in attendance,and once the food tents were set up and unlimited free kai was available practically every indigent (with or without mental health issues) in a five mile radius gravitated to Molesworth St…. but the vast majority were …overwhelmingly peaceful.
As for we 'Covid dissidents' becoming radicalised in the aftermath of the violent break up of the Village by the Police…there was, and still is a very real possibility of this.
Acknowledgement the the Government mishandled much of the Covid response, that the school closures were devastating, that mask and 'vaccine' mandates were clinically unjustified… ?
The much despised-by-the-Left Phase 2 Covid Inquiry was our last hope of some kind of peaceful resolution.
Sadly, a concerted effort by the Left (and supportive media) ensured that pretty much all of the carefully sourced and verified material, data, OIA files showing that frequently the government ignored expert advice will never, ever get the widespread dissemination it deserves.
Silence people's voices, remove their basic human rights, force them to accept falsehoods, subject young people to unnecessary risk…?
The Recipe for radicalisation right there.
Yes, I know. And?
The point I am making isn't that all the people were bad. It's the there was radicalisation. And as I clarified, I wasn't actually referring to the extremes. I was talking about the libertarian hippies who moved to work with the far right. Those hippies aren't terrorists or anything like. But they shifted politically.
Why not just publish it yourselves?
Repeating and asserting "reckons" that are contradicted by evidence doesn't make them true.
None of that happened.
The anti's were given a platform, everywhere, to spread whatever BS was flavour of the day. Some of them have been recently promoted to influential NZ media. New Zealanders who know what happened elsewhere in the world, and saw the results, are very pleased we had the Government we had in the pandamic.
Any enquiry which weighs up the evidence fairly, is not going to come to the conclusions that you, and the rest of Cookerville, want.
It is pointless pandering to those who ignore evidence and science. No amount of reality will persuade them. You, and others, will endlessly repeat the same, regardless of any evidence presented to you, or any enquiry conclusions that don't match your opinion.
Ignorance can be forgiven. Politicians and "influencers" who deliberately exacerbate BS, often knowingly bullshitting to wind polarisation up to gain power or money, cannot! The Seymours, Peters, Trumps, Kirks, Tates, the talk back radio "jonalists" et al, have a lot to answer for.
Again, if you and others have "evidence" showing our Covid response was less successful than most of the world, or that you were told "untruths" where is it?
The idea that masks, mandates, isolation and other measures were not necessary is directly contradicted by the experience of other countries that either didn't have those measures, or only partly implemented them.
The numbers are easily found.
For example Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic with the World Mortality Dataset | eLife
I think you’re conflating two types of (political) anger, one that’s relatively short-lived and event-driven and the other that’s relatively sustained and identity-based. There are many key differences between those two and some overlaps too, of course.
Your comparison matches & mirrors those two types almost perfectly.
Speaking as one of those GC women, I have moved from being solid left.
The left don’t seem to be able to face how censorious they have become. The shutting down and exclusion of women who disagree with trans ideology is something I have never experienced before. Currently there is a case before the human rights commission. A group of lesbians who were excluded from Pride because they refused to believe that trans women are women and can be lesbians. Albert Park was a more graphic example of the left resorting to violence to shut down the voices of women. The left smear people who have opposing views as being bigots, transpbobes racists, Terfs. These aren’t arguments and they have a chilling effect on free speech. Charlie Kirk’s murder was the ultimate cancellation and the attempts to rationalise it or duck and dive for cover make me realise we, in particular the US is in big trouble.
In NZ anyway the transgender community have been feed the line that there is a lot of hate against them and that people such as myself are trying to erase their existence. This is patently untrue and all women like me want is the right to state biological reality and have single sex spaces.
But the rhetoric about people who reject gender ideology has created much paranoia and mistrust amongst the transgender community and thus cries of being “unsafe”. It is a very unhealthy approach to the world. My opinion from reading quite a lot about Tyler Robinson is that within this environment (his partner was transgender and a furry) and his mother said he’d become very political on the left he was radicalised. He was brought up in a family that had access to and exposed him to guns, which is part of American cultural life. It was a callous act in which a 31 year old father of two lost his life and should be routinely condemned particularly on the left
And condemned unconditionally, not with a "but" that goes on to list contentious opinions Kirk expressed.
Also, fwiw, I think Albert Park was the clearest NZ example of "stochastic terrorism," ie weeks of people stirring up hatred resulted in violence against harmless women at Albert Park, with the Police turning their backs on the violence.
It still appears to be of the stochastic terrorism orbit within their wider gun culture (the wider more general aspect acting out with a gun in an anti-social way – people who should not have access to (automatic) weapons etc).
There is no organisation to it, it is not necessarily even a left or right conflict in play.
In this case it seems to more a personal sense of grievance at what Kirk was promoting to young adults in colleges.
The memes seem to be based on the creation of 3 righteous kills for the American gamer of monarchists, fascists and communists (borrowed from the Social Democrats of the Weimar Republic) in defence of liberty and freedom.
But in this case the cause was personal.
Thanks weka for yr mahi about this. Quite informative vids.
TS is my social media and You Tube is the next most thing I indulge in.
I was at Quiz night last night with my 23 yr old son and 2 of his mates. I asked them if they had seen the Kirk murder, all 3 had and one had seen 3 different angles.
I asked if there was anything that would make them drop an app, "No" was the response. Desensitized was the comment. Thankfully they are all well adjusted, employed, in relationships young men. They all have responsibilities and meet them with integrity.
Can't help but think the nihilists don't have much responsibility to enforce self worth.
I watched a youtube last night of Bernie Sanders visiting a US mining state, now without much mining and a lot of deprevation. He strongly repudiated trump and, from what was shown, a pretty simple message to look past dog whistle messages from the right and focus on the distribution of wealth, power and privilege. Address that and you cut through much of the extraneous stuff and engage people with what matters to them
Dude was the friendly face selling the far-right’s toxic world view.
https://archive.ph/2025.09.16-234358/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates
https://archive.ph/2025.09.16-234358/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates
See also this from Vanity Fair.
https://archive.ph/lzLUc#selection-1931.207-1931.244
Analysis of Kirk's shooter will go on for weeks. Strange that there has been little analysis of the alleged shooter in the so-called assassination attempt on Trump.
laugh or cry
/
As the killing of Charlie Kirk fuels conservative fury nationwide, Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire launched a fresh push on Tuesday to crack down on teachers and purge left-wing ideas from public schools, with a proposal named in honor of the slain activist.
Representative Mike Belcher of Wakefield, N.H., said he will introduce the Countering Hate And Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination in Education (CHARLIE) Act to push back against the “woke activists” he claimed are disseminating “Marxist ideology” to schoolchildren at taxpayer expense.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/17/metro/nh-worldview-classroom-restrictions-kirk/
https://archive.li/lNu1k
US right making hay while the sun shines.
Laura Loomer, far right activist, conspiracy theorist, Trump supporter with close connections to Trump,
https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/1968252634713989611
https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1966870380443779210
For people thinking this has nothing to do with New Zealand, here's Sean Plunket nailing his colours to the mast,
US Sec of State,
Plunket replies to him,
along with a screenshot of Farrier describing an incident with another Kiwi in the US, and calling Kirk a vile racist etc.
https://x.com/SeanPlunket/status/1968179578276548991
There was almost no engagement with Plunket's tweet, so he tweeted it again to his followers later and pinned it to his account.
https://x.com/SeanPlunket/status/1968181386742993002
That’s one particularly twisted form of ‘virtue signalling’.
Seen the "analysis" of two young men, which I'm sure is a comforting thought for many who consider themselves progressive.
Prefer the conversation between Andy Ngo & Winston Marshall. It is a long watch though:
https://youtu.be/cqG_pFUhehw?si=McImpt_GDHojnRm7
Of course you do, it's comforting to listen to people who share your political views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Ngo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Marshall
His father also owns GB News.
Defence of privilege.
And the scion of the brand is influenced by a right wing propagandist working to discredit protest by the left.
It's also comforting to just ignore what people are saying because they don't share your political views. Pointing out that Ngo and Marshall are right-wingers argues precisely nothing against their claims.
I'd also suggest watching some of the Adam Curtis documentaries starting with All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. His connecting the dots style appeals to me but might be annoying to others. He does provide a great reminder of historical influences that have led us to where we are today – and a reminder that the earlier world was not rosy at all.
Added to that is the rise of the religious cults to powerful positions (I suspect somewhat helped in terms of wealth and power by their tax free status) due to the hi-jacking of home schooling and then boards of schools, then higher and higher political purpose – a deliberate strategy to make the world in their own image.
Understanding also that these various religious groups are also at war with each other. They are not in any way a united front and dislike each other – in some cases from their mutual dislike prior to arriving in America.
The Pilgrims wanted to break away from the church of England, The puritans to create a pure religion and a model city, and the Quakers to create their own model colony.
This then gets compounded by the particularly Barnum revivalist religion in the 1700's, then again in the 1800's with Charles Finney as well as the development of the Mormon Church in the 1820,s the notion of the rapture in the 1830's in the US and then the prosperity religions in the US in the 1950's and then in the 1960's the development of the charismatic religions in California.
US religion is weird and varied and often non-sensical. Cherry-picked to the extreme.
If you can be convinced to believe in these religions I'm pretty sure you can be convinced to believe anything e.g. American superiority, need to have guns, white supremacy, founded on Christianity, social mobility, etc, etc. No evidence needed.
It seems pretty clear to me that the general feeling from these people is that this is the next great religious revival. (as opposed to the next dark ages).
These things matter because the cultist religions are no different to the gangs or the corrupt politicians in the methods used – make someone feel they don't belong, say we're your family against the bad outside world, if you leave there will be bad consequences – hell, ostracism or a beating. These methods to manipulate people have been around for thousands of years.
You then wonder what happens to someone born into these in-groups who then feel they don't belong. They been raised to see the outside world as evil and full of communists, degenerates and woke people, that homosexuality, sex before marriage, etc is bad and evil.
(This happens in NZ as well – think exclusive Brethren and their funding io influence elections)
So what happens if in that environment you don't belong and are expected to conform – you basically have nowhere left to turn (no pun intended). You become disaffected. The internet and the way it has been developed gives you like-minded disaffected individuals.
Many US serial killers were raised in religious environments as well. This disaffection is not the same as left-wing disaffection. Left-wing disaffection is most often that of being outside the system and wanting to modify or dismantle it in order to make things better for all. Right-wing disaffection is of being part of the system and not belonging. Generalisations sure but ones I think here is some truth to – particularly in the US.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/bbc-all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/
Thanks for the link DoS, Curtis is one of my favourite film makers. His series of The Century of the Self has had a profound effect on my thinking.
Ayn Rand, I can see how her theories appeal to a certain type, blind to how they can't be achieved without community.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-century-of-the-self/
You’re right to highlight tipping points and the politics of belonging: that’s where the fight really is. The black pill sticks because it offers certainty, community, and a role when people feel powerless. That's a narrative we need to change, pronto.
But I think we need to be careful not to make Kirk’s assassination the moral centre of gravity for the global left; especially here in New Zealand.
Political violence is always heinous, full stop. But we don’t owe the right any moral hand-wringing, or a surrender of our values in the name of some false “unity.” We can despise Kirk and what he stood for, while still recognising the horror of his sordid death.
The right will inevitably try to turn this into a litmus test: will we grieve in the terms they dictate? That’s not our test. Our task is to build stronger communities of belonging rooted in solidarity and democracy. Let them look for imaginary enemies. Let them alienate their own supporters through purge and counter purge. Then rage and overreach in their anger.
Then strike back. Not with violence. Not with scorn. But with organisation, solidarity, and the clarity of our own story.
Because if we’re honest, the thing we do best as leftists is performative worrying. Time to worry less, organise more, and stop doing the right’s narrative work for them.
are they alienating their own supporters?
If we keep seeing the right as the enemy, I think we will end up like the US and the UK.
Someone should write a post about that 🙂
Twist my arm, why don't you
Too late, the move to make opposition to the POTUS 47 regime reason to place people on a terrorism watchlist and suppress media is now in play.
it's be good if we acted now in NZ to prevent us going down the same path.
Too late!
How so? We still have elections, NZ routinely votes in centre left governments.
We almost need our own enlightenment. The move away from science and logic and community to conspiracy, religion and distrust is being driven by the wealthy right who are dominating economics right now.
A good starting point would be to remove the legislation Roger Douglas put in place that said the priority has to be the interests of shareholders. It should be the customers.
They are coming after your residential property as well with the opportunity dying baby boomers present. They want the world to be a company town where you buy from their shops, pay rent to them and pay interest to them on you loans you have to take out to live.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-blackstone-quietly-buying-american-230115734.html
From Private Equity to a Rental Powerhouse
Real estate is a core division for Blackstone. According toCNBC the firm has an ownership interest in at least 274,000 rental housing units, likely making it one of the largest landlords in the country. Its portfolio includes apartments, single-family homes, mobile home parks, and student housing, with concentrations in Sunbelt states such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
Our own enlightenment is an intriguing idea. Thoughts on how that might happen?
The main way I've seen to respond to the conspiracy/distrust dynamic is to call in the people that can still connect (not completely down the rabbit hole). Many people in my community who fall into that category were a normal part of the community before the pandemic, and their beliefs were more a personal thing that political. Once people are politicised I'm not sure to what extent that can be changed. But a very large part of it is the distain the mainstream had for people having their own lives and beliefs.
I do think alternative economics would reach a fair few of them.
Few things.
I'm quite impressed with the evolution of news type channels on you tube.
MeidasTouch – even though at times they are a bit melodramatic.
People need to stop using superlatives all the time. Tis non-sensical and the purvey of advertising and poor managers.
MSNBC with Rachel Maddows in particular seems to do a good job.
Better use and publication of data so that the public has access to good information. Use OIA's if need be to get the data and make it widely available. There are lots of clever people out there. Basically turn infometrics model of getting the data and repackaging it into a commons model. Get analysts who are left leaning to utilise it and package and explain it to the public. Help people to do their own analysis. Make both the data and the analysis public and show trends not point in time. Drop data into a level people can relate to i.e. their own communities. Highlight positives rather than negatives.
Reinforce secular education and keep religion right out of state schools. Treat religion as the somewhat weird social construct that it is.
The right churns out thousands of books every year saying the same bullshit. Burn them (that's a joke but would get publicity).
Promote the commons – make stuff free to all – build build build this sense of localism and community.
"But a very large part of it is the distain the mainstream had for people having their own lives and beliefs."
The rise of tribalism and identity have had a detrimental impact on what used to be called the left. We all have our little sub-groups which we place a greater importance on over the larger group. Grace has gone out the window with the rise of social media.
I see you often, gently reminding folk that condemning someone, who generally identifies as left, for their views does nothing for unity on the left. This needs to be done more.
We can still engage, but from a less judgey place. Less about prevailing in a discussion.
I am one who has a fairly high distrust of MSM and politicians. Let's be honest, TV, Stuff, Herald are all there to sell ads, even RNZ has an altered tone as it appears to want to stay onside with it's funder the government. I wouldn't say a sucker for rabbit holes but try to consume from a wide variety of sources and often don't buy into BS that gets peddled about some sources. I do have a low tolerance for hyperbole, which can make BHN a tough watch.
The enlightenment angle is a tough one as we have shunned the key institutions that could provide what we are lacking namely contact with members of our community, a reminder of something bigger than ourselves (environment/nature, society) and time for the mind to rest.
February:
https://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-10-02-2025/#comment-2024454
It seems a return to Fascism, world wide, is well underway.
If not a total return to the superstition and ignorance of the Dark ages.
Not a Marxist, but the idea that Capitalism, faced with an inevitable "diminishing rate of return on capital" will end up cannabalising the very system that enabled their wealth, was prophetic.
“Bad actors” are intent on reversing the “Enlightenment”.
“It’s both deja vu and PTSD.” Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and author of the book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” sits down with Jon Stewart for a conversation about Trump’s authoritarian attacks on free speech in the wake of Disney taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air in fealty to the president and his hand-picked FCC Chair. Ressa, who in 2020 was jailed in the Philippines for her journalism criticizing the country’s former president Rodrigo Duterte, warns about the similarities between the dictatorship she lived under and the Trump administration. They also discuss how tech companies use authoritarian governments as case studies to inform their algorithms and manipulate democratic elections, and the importance in this political moment for Americans to take peaceful action before their rights are continually stripped away.
wow. That's incredible and really fucking scary.
But quite consistent with what Adam Curtis has been saying for a long time.