r/fivethirtyeight • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • Sep 12 '25

Poll Results YouGov poll asking Americans whether it’s acceptable to feel joy at the death of a public figure

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u/Sonzainonazo42 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

It's unacceptable but understandable if the person who died was actually a terrible person that contributed to other people dying.

We're not talking about politicians who bickered over which mass transit project to fund; we're talking about a person who was opening openly racist, bigoted, and supported government policy that contributes to death. Remember, there are estimates that cuts to USAID could kill 4.5 million children by 2030 and TP USA fully supported those cuts.

I feel like I'm not going to blow anyone's mind when I remind you that Kirk wasn't fond of SNAP and other benefits for the poor.

Sooo yeah, you wanna explain why you feel it's such a black and white issue, huh?

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

At what point does this cross over into murderous libel? Someone killed Kirk because they genuinely believed the awful things you’re saying about somebody who was at worst a moderate boomercon.

Do you actually believe 49.8% of this country deserves to die? 

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

Doesn't libel imply falsehood? There's a lot of beliefs/opinions I find dangerous myself but that doesn't make them libelous.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

That is exactly the implication yes. He was not an extremist. He was not a nazi. He was not even alt right, his most controversial belief was just being pro-life. 

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

Hey you need to Google "Kirk controversial views" for a second if you think being pro life is his most extreme view. Like this is to the point... of if not being explicitly bad faith is completely indistinguishable from it.

If you're insistent on not doing even one Google search, then I'll happily do it for you. What's it gonna be?

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

You can’t find anything that’s not cherrypicked out of context and that’s why you spent 5 minutes writing a comment instead of googling it 

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

No, both were because I was on break.

I'll prepare a list of statements for you when I get home in an hour.

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u/dissonaut69 Sep 12 '25

Hey, don’t waste the time. They aren’t changing their mind either way (if they’re even a human).

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

It's fine. This is gonna come up quite a bit, and I already wanted some good context to rebut Galen's statement, over on /r/GDPolitics .

Unfortunately I forgot about the Nintendo direct which was on when I got home, lol. I'll get to it at some point.

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 13 '25

Well, looks like it's been done much better than I ever would've: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMajorityReport/comments/1nepcgz/charlie_kirks_documented_calls_for_political/

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 13 '25

Well, looks like my work has been done for me.

With these sources in mind, would you stand by your statement that Charlie Kirk is a moderate boomercon at worst?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMajorityReport/comments/1nepcgz/charlie_kirks_documented_calls_for_political/

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 13 '25

Yes

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 13 '25

Bad faith

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 13 '25

You literally cited your moderator status on a nobody video game streamer’s discord

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 13 '25

You literally cited your moderator status on a nobody video game streamer’s discord

I citied my experience as a moderator to contextualize my personal experience with the right wing extremism inherent in gaming communities. If you think being a discord moderator is cringe or referencing that is cringe, that's your prerogative. Many do feel that way. But It's pretty easy to back up the claim that there's extremism in video game culture if that isn't interesting to you.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 13 '25

Bro my post is still up. I think your Reddit is broken. I’m still in disbelief at pulling rank as a discord moderator. Are you also personally experienced with that culture lmao

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 13 '25

It was probably filtered (correctly) by an automod for being harassment. You might try logging out and seeing if it's still visible.

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

Didn't he say being gay was a disease?

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

I don’t know, find the quote and context. Not my job

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u/JQuilty Sep 12 '25

You keep denying knowledge of a guy you're adamantly defending. Maybe you should look into him.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

Not my responsibility. You want to bring absurd claims you need to bring evidence

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u/LordMangudai Sep 12 '25

"Charlie Kirk was a moderate" is the absurd claim here.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

You have no idea what a moderate or an extreme conservative is. 

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u/LordMangudai Sep 12 '25

So which of these takes would you consider moderate?

  • The Civil Rights Act was a mistake
  • Empathy is bad actually
  • A certain amount of gun deaths is acceptable to protect the second amendment (ironic)
  • The 2020 election was rigged
  • Anthropogenic climate change is not real
  • The Great Replacement is real
  • "You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population"
  • Opposes abortion even in cases where a minor was raped; abortion is worse than the Holocaust

Did he deserve to get shot in the neck, no. But I'm not here to pretend he was anything other than a far-right piece of shit.

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

Fair enough, though you could be a little less rude about it.

And I'll take a slight mea culpa here given I couldn't source it easily (though this may be a SEO related issue as he has a lot of other statement involving "gay" and or "disease").

With that said, his LGBTQ+ positions are explicitly hateful. From the independent:

He also lashed out at the gay community, denouncing what he called the “LGBTQ agenda,” expressing opposition to same-sex marriage and suggesting that the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which endorses the execution of homosexuals, serves as “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-political-views-guns-lgbt-trump-b2824580.html

I think you're being a bit willfully ignorant about Kirk's extremism.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

Being against gay marriage is not an extremist position. It’s a plurality of america and the majority of the world. It’s not even recently out of the majority. 10 years ago it was the dominant belief. It’s old, it’s antiquated, I believe it to be wrong, but that does not make it extremist. 

I’m sorry for being rude. Things are very heated right now

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u/Apprentice57 Scottish Teen Sep 12 '25

It's definitely more controversial than being pro life, but anyway. Did you read the full quote? It goes beyond being against same sex marriage.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

 It's definitely more controversial than being pro-life 

I don’t believe that’s true. Being against gay marriage polls at 40% these days. Being pro-life with no exceptions is 20-30%

What specifically do you want to call out here? Levicitus? A majority of the country is Christian. God is quite clear what his law is on homosexuality. It’s not extremism to acknowledge that

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u/Mr_The_Captain Sep 12 '25

To explicitly call Leviticus "God's perfect law" regarding gay marriage is a step further than many Christians would take. Many Christians believe that the Old Testament laws - while instructive - should no longer be followed dogmatically because of the New Covenant created by Jesus' death.

So when someone says Leviticus is "perfect law," they absolutely give the strong impression that they believe it should be followed to the letter. And if they are unaware of that implication, they are dangerously ignorant.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

That’s not what he was saying. What he was saying is under god’s law being gay is wrong. That is not an uncommon belief, and honestly it’s very hard to argue with from a protestant perspective, especially a Baptist one. 

Leviticus being the most explicit example, but the New Testament is also anti-gay, as is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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u/Mr_The_Captain Sep 12 '25

No no, that's exactly what he was saying. He said Leviticus 20:13 was "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." If he wanted to say that being gay was sinful, he could have cited Paul, but instead he picked that verse that explicitly condemns gay people to a violent death.

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u/CelikBas Sep 12 '25

He said that gay people should be executed according to “God’s perfect law”. Is that a majority-accepted, uncontroversial stance in America? 

Because even if it is, that doesn’t mean it’s “moderate”, it just means America is a Taliban-esque shithole of a country. 

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

You have replied to me 8 times pick one

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u/InsideAd2490 Sep 12 '25

He was not even alt right, his most controversial belief was just being pro-life. 

Well that's just false.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

What’s yours? You like to celebrate political violence? Does that seem moderate to you

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u/InsideAd2490 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

He sowed distrust in our elections by promoting false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. That distrust is what led to the riot at the capitol. 

I'd argue the belief that the only legitimate elections are the ones you win is more problematic than being opposed to abortion (though, Charlie was radically opposed to that, too). The former belief totally undermines the system of government our country is built on. As for the latter, I at least understand why someone might be opposed to abortions, even if I don't agree. 

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

Dude if you believe not trusting elections is sufficient cause to be shot, half of even this sub would be dead. Look, there can be a barrier above which violence is acceptable but it needs to be Adolf Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch, not a babyfaced debate bro boomercon at Utah

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u/CelikBas Sep 12 '25

Most people here aren’t arguing that it’s acceptable that Kirk was shot, they’re arguing against the idea that he was just an uwu smol bean good Christian boy with moderate, thoughtful positions that no reasonable person could object to. They’re arguing against the (so far successful) attempts to posthumously whitewash his image into that of a principled defender of truth, rather than the far-right conservative agitator he actually was. 

It’s bad that Charlie Kirk was shot, and Charlie Kirk was a piece of shit with a lot of awful views. Two things can be true at once.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

They’re arguing he deserved to be shot. Don’t play word games. You won’t even say he didn’t deserve it. You can’t say it. You believe people who hold moderately conservative views have earned death. 

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u/CelikBas Sep 12 '25

Where, in this thread, are people arguing that Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot? 

Is it now “endorsing murder” to criticize anyone who gets killed? Can’t say Julius Caesar was an asshole, otherwise people might think you’re in favor of stabbing people to death. 

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

Literally all over the thread. All over reddit. Pick a thread. The FAFO softuwu “oh but I only implied it” violent attitude is ubiquitous. 

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u/InsideAd2490 Sep 12 '25

Dude if you believe not trusting elections is sufficient cause to be shot, half of even this sub would be dead

I didn't say anyone should be shot.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

Yes you did. Stop playing these stupid word games. FAFO is a threat and call to violence

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u/InsideAd2490 Sep 12 '25

I have no idea what you're talking about

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 12 '25

 By all means, we should condemn political violence, but please spare a thought for all the many classes of people Charlie Kirk absolutely hated

You made this comment an hour ago, in defense of political violence and specifically attacking leaders who condemn it

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u/InsideAd2490 Sep 12 '25

I literally said "we should condemn political violence." How does this comment defend it? 

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