“I can say that he has been very cooperative,” Cox continued, possibly misgendering the roommate. “This partner has been incredibly cooperative, had no idea that this was happening and is working with investigators right now.”
This has to be intentional. Shitting in one hand calling it “civility” then in the other lobbing a grenade of transphobia. Love it.
Ok so, this is going to sound extremely blunt but it sounds like your position is actually that you’re totally ok with collaborating with cops against someone who kills a fascist because other fascists are going to be mad about it involving a specific minority and that will harm other members of the minority?
So like, let’s say we’re in the 1920s/30s - if someone with connection to a jewish person kills a nazi and that would cause a crackdown against jews by other nazis, is it acceptable for people to collaborate with those in charge to catch this nazi killer? At what quantity of collaboration do these jews start getting viewed as kapos?
I’m not sure if “he’s gonna get the death sentence anyway” matters as the roommate was collaborating with police before the killer was arrested.
This is all with the assumption that the other party wasn’t aware of what’s happening. Yes, if you’re going to be a savior of marginalized people, don’t put those people in the situation where they’re having to lie to the cops unless they’re in on it and okay with doing so.
You don’t have to lie. Just become temporarily very forgetful.
That is still lying and still carries all of the same psychological difficulties in terms of actually pulling it off.
Have you ever had to lie by omission to any sort of authority figure? Particularly likely already being traumatized by interactions with authority figures, like a LOT of trans people are?
If you don’t have difficulties with that, you genuinely have nerves of steel and that’s extremely impressive, but even if you’re convinced ‘temporarily becoming very forgetful’ is something most trans people are capable of successfully doing, this is a situation that is 1000x worse than anything anyone would reasonably expect to deal with it.
It’s not just cops, it’s cops investigating a fucking political assassination and looking for anything they can to blame this on you specifically and people like you, it is the number 1 news item in the entire country! The stakes and psychological stress are so much fucking higher - I definitely couldn’t keep my shit together while being ‘very forgetful’ with all this stress on me, honestly. Especially not with cops poking and proding for any cracks in that front.
Emotional distress is beneficial to the claim of forgetting. The more emotional stress and poking that is attempted, the more forgetful you become due to being so overwhelmed by the situation. The more they lay it on the easier it actually becomes to hide not knowing something or forgetting or drawing blank or whatever under the overwhelming nature of the scenario and emotional distress of the situation.
The more emotionally distressed you become the more your “I’m not sure” “I don’t remember” and “I don’t know” uncertainties become relateable to others. It’s much harder to pass off drawing a blank or forgetting or missing details in calm and less stressful scenarios because you have less excuse for brainfarts.
Ride the stress of the situation to your benefit. It is your ally in keeping up appearances.
Yes
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I have made no value judgement in any of the above replies regarding the event.
A fascist was shot. A person is collaborating with the cops to catch the shooter of the fascist.
Those are just the facts. I haven’t given my own opinion at all, I just wanted to do an exercise because I suspect everyone has a different line for where it becomes ok vs not ok and I think causes many problems.
My personal take is that I think no amount of collaboration is acceptable. I think people should shut the fuck up. You saw nothing. You say nothing. You do nothing. You give the absolute fucking minimum to cover your own ass and that’s it. Any tolerance of collaboration - any amount of leeway given - will result in everyone judging that their own personal situation makes it acceptable to give information. Is this hardnosed? Fuck yes it is. It’s about as hardnosed as it was in Ireland during the Troubles where you say one fucking word out of line and you’ll have some nice IRA men visiting your house for a beating. Why is it necessary to be this firm about it? Because any inch given will result in people collaborating. So not even one single inch should be given.
That’s my personal position. I don’t think there’s any room to allow people to judge on a case by case basis.
Was killing Kirk a bad idea? Yeah it probably was. Does it change the fact people should shut the fuck up? Not for me.
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I’m not really arguing either. We have different thoughts and that’s ok. Events that have already happened can’t be changed with our opinions.
Not trans, so let me know if I’m off base, but my thoughts:
A major difference is that this is adventurist. Being a snitch about something that was useless and possibly actually working against a greater strategy can be the correct choice for a broader movement. Killing Nazis was basically always part of at least a broader movement, even if not every event was planned/known to others in the movement. Killing Kirk was in no plan for improvements or part of any meaningful strategy. If nobody knew, nobody wanted it, then it’s qualitatively very distinct from resistance movements and should be treated very differently. ‘Sacrificing’ the person who was no part of your movement by collaborating can be the correct choice in those cases.
Idk the real relationships that existed in these cases, but I’m willing to bet that this roommate was in no part knowledgeable about the killing beforehand. And that there were 0 organized attempts/movements behind this killing. In which case it should be treated like anarchistic noise which harms a movement.
To be extremely clear: there is currently no broader movement in the US materially impeding fascism. What’s being rounding up to a “movement” is disconnected anonymous people posting online about how they’d prefer something different, waiting and hoping for spontaneous internal reform while repeatedly disclaiming any violence or lawbreaking. What’s being done here is indistinguishable from the liberals insisting that Hamas is harming Palestinians by giving the IOF an “excuse” to continue their genocide, undermining the “movement for a two-state solution”, and that Palestinians should work with the IOF to identify targets in the interest of keeping themselves safe.
So you’re suggesting that what makes killing the Nazi bad is that the shooter didn’t implicate more people in a criminal conspiracy before accomplishing the same objective?
I don’t think we disagree much (maybe you do support anarchic actions, in which case I’d suggest you to read more about failures of adventurism), but I do think there’s miscommunication one where or another based on your response.
There is no movement in the US, yes. That fact makes separate, disparate, anarchic actions dangerous.
Hamas does organized (even if decentralized) actions, which are justifiable strategically for that reason (among others). The killing of Kirk was not part of any strategy, which means that there is no organization prepared to defend against retaliation.
Hamas calculated their risks, and does constantly. Kirk’s killer almost definitely did not, and I would guess has little empathy for those retaliated against, maybe even hoping for the retaliation.
Hamas does actions as part of a larger strategy which is prepared and for which next steps are developed with people ready to support. Kirk’s killer did not, and if he did it was for a right-wing strategy.
Your last paragraph doesn’t make much sense to me, sorry. I’m not sure how it connects to what I said at all. Doing something as part of a movement doesn’t always implicate the whole movement? But it does allow a movement to act instead of being blindsided.
My point was, because this is so different from things like Hamas actions, and because there is no group asking for such actions, it’s only dangerous. And so a trans person protecting themselves from it by being a snitch is qualitatively different from snitching on any resistance act that is part of a larger strategy
We don’t know who the shooter is or what their motivations are. This is all pure speculation based on like fifth hand hearsay originating from alleged leaks from law enforcement.
Again, we don’t even know if this informant is trans. We don’t know if they’re roommates or lovers with the suspect, and we don’t know that the suspect had anything to do with the shooting. What’s happening in this thread is people running with unsubstantiated speculation sourced from the most unhinged bigots online, then inventing scenarios to justify rhetorically aligning themselves with imperial law enforcement and against killing Nazis.
I don’t actually have to justify the tactical or strategic merit of somebody sacrificing their life to take out Charlie Kirk. It’s something that somebody did. They didn’t need my permission, twitter’s permission, reddit’s permission, or DSA’s permission to do it. If this person were a member of a demcent party that I was a part of, then I’d be right there insisting that this is adventurism: undermining the collectively determined party strategy with unilateral individual action would be bad party discipline. Given that there’s no evidence this person was part of an ML party outside the delusions of imperial law enforcement, it seems pointless to retroactively scold an anonymous person for not holding to the hypothetical standards of a nonexistent party of which they’re not a member based on an ideology they don’t believe. Whatever they believed, whyever they did it, the world is better off with one fewer Nazi. They’re responsible for that action, and one way or another they’ll definitely pay for it with their life. What they’re not responsible for is the US doing the exact same shit it’s already been doing for the last 250 years.
I really don’t think it is. It’s understandable, for sure. It doesn’t take an enormous leap to see why people sacrifice others thinking it will gain them some favor in the eyes of an abuser. We only know this person exists because they chose to contact the police. The entire internet is wildly speculating about their gender only because they chose to contact the police. I recognize the odds aren’t exactly zero that the cops would eventually consider them a person of interest in the investigation, but I don’t understand the argument that they’re more “protected” now by inviting the attention of the people harassing them than they would be if they’d just done nothing. If anything, this person is infinitely more fucked now. No amount of collaboration will ever be enough to avoid tabloid scrutiny for the rest of their life. Even assuming they’d never broken a law, I’d expect there’s a considerably greater chance now of them facing threats of prison time (or worse) if they fail to produce the testimony that Trump wants. The consequences are dire for ignoring the first rule of the US criminal legal system.