 I think that most of my viewers know that critical race theory isn't actually a real issue. This is a culture war issue that was manufactured by Republican Party operatives to distract you from the real issues facing society. And being a GOP operative funded by GOP donors himself, Charlie Kirk has been going on what he calls a critical racism tour where essentially he says, critical race theory bad. So that's the context. Now individuals, they can show up, they can hear him speak and other people speak, and they can also ask questions to Charlie Kirk. And one individual asked him a question that I think caught him off guard and Charlie Kirk got to see firsthand how insane his base of support is when this person asks a very disturbing thing. You ready? Yeah. You're brave. You're brave for what you say and the fact that you've seen up there and say, and I appreciate it. I think we all appreciate it actually because there's not a lot of people that have the balls to do it. But I want to ask you something a little bit out of the ordinary. So prepare yourself. At this point, we're living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns? No, and I'm not, and I'm not, that's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people? So, no, I, I, I, no, hold on, I'm, no, stop, hold on. Now I'm going to denounce that and tell you why. Because you're playing into all their plans and they're trying to make you do this. That's okay. Just hear me out. You started with the compliments, so at least give me a little bit. They are trying to provoke you and everyone here. They are trying to make you do something that will be violent, that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have, hold on, we are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us. So to answer your question, and I just think it's, you know, overly blunt, we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side. They fear, let me say this very clearly, they fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They're the ones that are willing to use federal force against us. And I know that people get fired up. We are living under fascism. We are living under this tyranny. But if you think for a second that they're not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level, where they're going to say, OK, we need Patriot Act 2.0. If you think that, you know, Waco is bad, what do you see what they want to do next? What I'm saying is that we have a very fragile balance right now at our current time where we must exhaust every single peaceful mean possible. Yikes. Now, I have to give a credit to Charlie Kirk for explicitly denouncing that. If somebody is proposing violence and you have a really large platform, I think it's incumbent on you to unequivocally condemn the prospect of violence. So I actually give Charlie Kirk credit for handling that in the best way that he as a right-winger could, you know, he framed it in a way that was appealing to right-wingers. You know, don't buy into this liberal narrative. They want you to do violence. But nonetheless, he denounced violence and he does get credit for that. I think that that is important to point out. And we'll talk about, though, that even though he's denouncing violence, the rhetoric that he uses is so bombastic and explosive and incorrect that if you take people like Charlie Kirk seriously, then the logical conclusion of what they're telling you is violence. Because if you're saying that democracy no longer is a meaningful way to affect political change, of course, people are going to resort to undemocratic ways of expressing or trying to affect change. Now, one thing that that guy said, which shows that right-wingers don't really understand their own worldview, is that, you know, at this point, we're living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. Now, I'm assuming that this person is against socialism. I'm assuming this person votes Republican. So why would you as a capitalist who votes for Republican capitalists be angry about corporate control? I mean, this is your ideology. This is what Republicans very deliberately try to do when they institute their neoliberal worldview and Democrats do it as well. But Republicans crank it up to the highest level possible. So why would you complain about corporate control of American politics, but still vote for these dumbass politicians and listen to people like Charlie Kirk who say capitalism good? It doesn't make sense to me. He also talks about medical fascism, and I'm assuming he's referencing vaccine mandates. But I mean, have we just switched from non-medical fascism to fascism in twenty twenty one when the Biden administration instituted vaccine mandates through OSHA? Because since the founding of the fucking country, vaccine mandates have been a thing. George Washington supported vaccine mandates. If you wanted to send your children to public schools in most states, they had to be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination. So for him to just all of a sudden be angered at medical fascism, and all of a sudden we have to take up arms right now and kill these people. It just shows you how irrational these people are. And the rhetoric espoused by far right individuals like Charlie Kirk, it's not helping because people like this, they need to be fact checked, right? They need to be educated because their views, which are incorrect, are leading them to the conclusion that violence might be good. Maybe the guns that we've been collecting for years should be used against politicians that we don't like. But let me explain this to you as frustrated as you may be with the political environment on the left or the right. You don't want to live in a political environment where politicians are regularly killed. Talk to people in developing countries about this. Talk to people in newly democratized regimes like Tunisia, for example. You don't want this to happen, I promise you, because if you think that the political climate is incredibly divisive and dysfunctional now, we'll wait until politicians start killing each other or people kill politicians. You don't want that. So this is why you have to inject some sanity into the conversation. So I appreciate that Charlie Kirk tried to bring down the temperature and said, look, violence is not the answer. We should do what we want to do peacefully. You know, I still have to criticize him because he is responsible for this rhetoric. He works people into a frenzy. So even if he is not explicitly advocating for violence, he is part of the problem. So in a now deleted tweet, he boasted about how his organization sent over 80 buses to the capital on January 6th. Why would you fund this, Charlie Kirk? Unless you wanted them to protest democracy itself. And he did this after he told people that the election was stolen. So if you tell people that democracy has been killed by the Democratic Party, who cheated and you send 80 plus buses so they can protest democracy based on a lie, you're kind of whipping them into this frenzy. And they're going to logically at some point deduce that violence isn't just inevitable, but maybe it's necessary to get what we want since democracy was taken away from us. But the big lie isn't the only misinformation that he spread, even though he peddled that quite a bit and hard, as the Guardian explains. Further, Kirk served before January 6th as an Arizona point person for the Stop the Steel, the group led by Ali Alexander, which was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the House Select Committee investigating the capital insurrection and Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. On the 6th of November, Kirk helped lead a Stop the Steel Rally in Phoenix that was one of numerous such events hosted by Trump allies. That day, protesting Biden's win and spreading falsehoods about fraud as the Center for Media and Democracy first reported. On another disinformation front, Kirk's groups have been busy this year promoting falsehoods on campuses and in social media about vaccine mandates, efforts that the groups have used to raise funds and which have sparked criticism from health experts. Kirk wrote false text messages charging that Biden has sent goons door to door to make you take a COVID-19 vaccine as the Washington Post first reported. Further, a Kirk nonprofit ran alarmist and erroneous Facebook ads, which were seen millions of times stating that the government has no right to force you to inject yourself with an experimental vaccine and warning that in response to advice about shots, lock your doors, kids. So, I mean, we have to be a little bit nuanced here while I commend him for unequivocally denouncing the prospect of violence and discouraging violence when it's brought up. I mean, you kind of do bear some blame for encouraging this in the first place. People can come to the conclusion that violence is something that they should do. If you tell them implicitly, it doesn't have to be explicit. And so again, when you tell people that, you know, the big government is coming to vaccinate you and Democrats are now stealing elections, it's not a surprise when they realize, wait a second, if all of this is true, if all of this that you're telling me is true, then why aren't we killing these people? Why aren't we taking up arms and doing a Civil War 2.0? So I mean, it's one thing to denounce violence, which Charlie Kirk did do and should always do. But another thing is making sure that you tone down the rhetoric and stop lying to people, stop spreading lies and misinformation about the 2020 election. It wasn't stolen. Stop fear mongering about vaccines and vaccine mandates. It is a medical miracle that we have an effective vaccine this quickly. And you're taking what is a positive thing and you're spinning it as a negative because that suits your agenda and that helps you fundraise for the Republican Party and for your organizations. It's incredibly nefarious. I feel like Charlie Kirk is smart enough to know what he's doing. He has to know that his rhetoric is leading to this, right? So I mean, Republican ideologues like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, if they genuinely believe that violence is not the answer, great. But it's time to educate the people who follow them and respect them. They're not going to listen to me. They're going to listen to people like you because they trust you. And if they believe your lies, then odds are when you tell them, you know what? Maybe we were wrong about the 2020 election being stolen. Maybe we were wrong about vaccines. They listen to you, at least most would. So, you know, on one hand, good for Charlie Kirk because you should denounce violence. But on another hand, shame on Charlie Kirk for being one of the main individuals who is a large influence on the Republican Party base and whipping them into a frenzy to want to do violence in the first place. You could support the Humanist Report at patreon.com slash humanist report. But trust me, I'd have way more supporters at Patreon if that was my podcast said.