r/askanything • u/Vert_der_Ferk25 • Sep 02 '26
Political Question Why am I supposed to be impressed with who Charlie Kirk was?
He was a paid professional debater. He went to a college campus, set up a tent and cameras, and engaged with amateurs who had no experience doing what he did. And the right loved him for it. His media team would then cut clips of him scoring points against amateurs, and they would push them out on all their social media feeds.
Isn't this like LeBron James going to a campus and setting up cameras while he played pickup games against kids who, at best, were on the college team but more likely dabbled in basketball, but were no match for the expert? And then what would people think if LeBron's media people cut clips of him dunking on these young amateurs and pushed them out as "highlights"?
"LeBron's TOP 10 Most SAVAGE College TAKEDOWNS đđ„"
"COCKY College Kid gets OWNED By Lebron James! Follow for moređ"
"LeBron James SHUTS DOWN 3 Arrogant College Students Best DUNKS Compilation"
"1 NBA Hall of Famer vs 25 Amateur College Students (Feat. LeBron James) | Surrounded"
Isn't Kirk's legacy just sad?
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u/gentrumpet Sep 02 '26
He wasnât a debater. He was a propagandist.
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u/supergooduser Sep 02 '26
In standup comedy, as a learning tool comedians will record their sets to refine jokes, perfect timing, etc.
Comedians got the idea to go in to their archives, hire an editor and pull out 60 second clips that were really funny to post on social media. Usually involving crowd work.
This created a whole crop of comedians that "seemed" funny but couldn't really do a full hour of standup. Matt Rife being the most obvious example.
Charlie Kirk's "debates" were the same thing. He'd be there for a full day film it, but ultimately it was about getting a handful of clips of him "dunking" on someone and then reposting it on social media.
So basically couldn't be taken serious as a right wing pundit a la Tucker Carlson, Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro... so he essentially had to clip farm. He was a hacky version of a disingenuous pundit. But he sold a lot of merch.
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u/romicide07 Sep 02 '26
Tbf thatâs what almost every debate lord entertainer does. Look at any one of these guys when theyâre not dunking on dumb college kids. From destiny when sitting down with finklestein, to Charlie on Oxford campus, to Dave Rubin and Tim pool on whatever dumb ass debate show they were on, to Ben Shapiro debating the British conservative and rage quitting at record speed. All these guys know their talking points, but when confronted with actual knowledgeable opposition the kind of just crumble
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u/guitar_vigilante Sep 02 '26
Kirk's Cambridge and Oxford videos were great to watch. They really exposed him for what he was, one note and script based.
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u/throwawayinthe818 Sep 04 '26
Rationality Rules on YouTube does a great job breaking down Charlieâs rhetorical tricks and showing how the Oxbridge students donât allow him to get away with them.
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u/RationallyBerserk Sep 02 '26
Can you link a clip from that 5 hour debate where Finklestein schools destiny on anything?
Iâll admit I havenât watched the full thing and tapped out after about 90 mins but the only clips Iâve seen are Norm launching some personal attack, âsuch a fantastic moronâ etc.
Does he level anything substantive at him at any point?
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u/CharmCityKid09 Sep 03 '26
No he doesn't. Finklestein in a separate interview states that he wasn't there to debate in good faith, just to embarrass/attack Destiny.
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u/JackTheHerper Sep 04 '26
You were 100% correct until you insinuated that any of those other guys could be taken seriously either. Theyâre all grifters and rage farmers.
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u/doctordoctorpuss Sep 04 '26
Especially since Tim Pool and Dave Rubin have specifically been caught getting wild money from Russia to push talking points
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u/biblebeltbuckle2 Sep 06 '26
I went to a Kirk event (granted, as a protestor lmao) in college and this was my takeaway at the time. I had much less undertaking of American political media at the time and even then it was like âman he only got like a single clip from this entire charadeâ because most of it was so boring or him just saying nothing to a college kid trying desperately trying to defend their existence or beliefs. At the time I thought he was a sad person in a sad industry and didnât think too much beyond that.
I felt like I was being gaslit last year when folks wanted me to suck off an effigy of him. Dude was a c tier poster at best, and at worst a fucking fed.
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u/Significant-Way9330 Sep 04 '26
There really is just so much cross over in this shit era of politics and comedy. They're all the same kind of guy. Just dudes with gaping holes in their psyche that they fill with money and validation while making everything just a mite bit shittier. Shapiro wanted to write scripts and Rogan wants to be a comedian. But they both ended up as dupes for political agitation.Â
A real bummer, hope they can figure their holes out someday.Â
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u/willow_glade Sep 04 '26
It's the man on the street interview method. Go out to a place with a bunch of people, keep trying to interview them all until you find someone crazy, air/post interview on your preferred platform where you can tell your audience that "all people who have X feature are crazy and this interview is proof"
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u/makefascistfearagain Sep 04 '26
Lmfao none of those can be taken seriously.
They're all full of shit and say anything.
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u/LevelHorn2717 Sep 04 '26
Matt Strife catching strays out here. Hope heâs wearing his neck brace, wherever he is,
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u/EsotericInvestigator Sep 04 '26
Kirk's schtick was borrowed from Shapiro. He'd go to venues where people who had more ambition than sense would try to debate him, and he'd either capture someone just naively in over their head or unable to think on their feet to respond to a specious argument, then clip them as representative of what his enemies think. Besides the cherry-picking, this only works in a context where people are not in a position to really work through arguments and don't know how to interact with the one-liner pantomime, so it's ultimately a thin veneer. It is good for people who just want to believe people they dislike are idiots and cannot be bothered to think it about it too much, though. He was sort of a travelling tour of Facebook boomer memes come to life. The hook that keeps people coming back to try their hand is they could sense he's obnoxiously wrong, but knowing that someone isn't reasoning well and being able to explain that in a quick back and forth are totally different things.
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u/diedlikeCambyses Sep 02 '26
I think we're "supposed to be impressed" is more about his political machinations in DC and founding chapters on campuses.
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u/Empathyinorder Sep 02 '26
Yup and thats why they loved him. He helped spread their BS and farmed clips of dunking on collage kids because they love it when they own the libs.
Guy was disgusting and how his wife is acting after his death is super telling about their relationship
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u/ImWithStupidKL Sep 02 '26
It's also about undermining the college system. What I've realised is that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are more than a bit insecure about their lack of education, so it plays really well to show them that not only did you not miss out by not being able to go to college, but you actually made the smart choice. You're the real clever clogs. Look at these idiot college students being indoctrinated and getting massively in debt. They should have done the sensible thing and got a trade. That narrative is absolutely everywhere nowadays and does really well, enabled by the very legitimate criticism over insane debt levels required to get a degree these days.
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u/Frequilibrium Sep 02 '26
Absolutely. Charlie being a drop out was something they never let their audience forget.
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u/ImWithStupidKL Sep 03 '26
Yeah, it's always these already incredibly well-connected people who are the examples of college dropouts who made a success of it. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, funny how once they have their own business, they insist on hiring people with degrees though, isn't it?
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u/Empathyinorder Sep 02 '26
I agree! It also depends on how in the know the propagandist is. Some know what they say is lies. They advocate to not send kids to collage and get "indoctrinated" while they send their kids and wouldn't dream of taking their own advice of having their kids go to trade school.
Some are true believers who are also duped but spread the propaganda and will suffer its consequences. Then there are the sheep who eat it up
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u/S3simulation Sep 04 '26
Erika gonna make her entrance to the Kirkiverssary like Tony Stark in Iron Man 2
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u/Vert_der_Ferk25 Sep 02 '26
That's what I'm saying.
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u/wam22 Sep 02 '26
Watch him debate students from Oxfordâs debate team. He gets absolutely destroyed by people who are trained.
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u/gorgias1 Sep 04 '26
No, he's wasn't a lebron James of debate. He was a high school debate team member arguing with randos in the audience and cherry picking his successes to show on YouTube.
He's a salesman. His product is validation for folks with a specific ideology.
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u/carson63000 Sep 05 '26
He was the guy throwing a hundred balls at the basket and posting a clip of the one throw that was nothing but net.
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u/tpc0121 Sep 04 '26
came here to say this. kirk was more of a master baiter.
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Sep 02 '26
I've never figured out if conservative ideologues sincerely think that non-conservatives should be impressed by them or not to be honest. Its always halfway between being a complete grift and these people being lost in their own sauce.
I think they -want- people like Charlie Kirk to be viewed with the same kind of bipartisan reverence that figures like Martin Luther King Jr. are, and that wanting something and believing it to be true in some conservative circles are probably the same thing.
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u/FineAndDandadan Sep 02 '26
The goal is to get people emotional and making mistakes, so that they can clip them for propaganda. It works great for recruiting college kids and younger, but as you get older, you realize how pathetic it is. This goes doubly so for when these losers pussy out from debates with people actually known for debating.
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u/TowardStarsOutlaw Sep 02 '26
For sure they wanted their own version of MLK, because you know they certainly do not view him with the reverence that decent human beings do. Appropriately enough though, in the end, they only wound up with a meme
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u/Ecstatic-Ask2326 Sep 02 '26
Its partially because the goal is actually to make political martyrs out of these out and about grifters to equate them to the actual activists achieving things conservatives are ideologically opposed to.
It works both to attempt to establish conservative culture control (which conservatives struggle with) and waters down the opposition's political ideologues with the inequitable comparison.
Then when people who aren't as educated or are misinformed see the comparisons, it reinforces the idea that the ACTUAL political activists were grifters like Kirk.
Its the frustrating part of trying to break this misinformation echo chamber, because ostensibly left leaning people are forced to argue from the inaccurate framing that the right wingers present.
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u/ItsAHogsLife Sep 02 '26
Because itâs revisionist history. The right is trying to turn him into a martyr for white nationalism. Are you not impressed?
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u/Amthomas101 Sep 04 '26
I think this is primarily it. After he died and the right was celebrating him so publicly it occurred to me that the right has no Martin Luther King Jr type of figure. Someone who really represented the best of what their perspective had to offer and was assassinated as a result. Mind you, I donât think Charlie Kirk is that AT ALL, but I think conservatives want the world to view him that way.
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u/RobertDownseyJr Sep 04 '26
lets just get one thing straight, Kirk was not the LeBron of debaters.
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u/OttoHemi Sep 02 '26
What struck me the most was the huge amount of searches and Wiki page visits after he was shot. Because most people had no idea who the heck he was.
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u/Chipotle-Dancin_manG Sep 02 '26
The right loves men who go after unexperienced kids.
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u/crusoe Sep 04 '26
Just a reminder that the elderly cofounder of TPUSA didn't think COVID was a big deal. And he died of COVID.
Kirk was not a trained debater and he got walked by those who were. Which is why he stuck to college students.
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u/Dirtgrain Sep 04 '26
Yes, unprepared college students who walked by. Any time he faced prepared, capable students, his BS fell apart.
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u/No-Onion8029 Sep 02 '26
Debate has rules. His schtick was more like advertising. I'll give him credit for being quick (except when it really counted), but he was a professional bullshit artist.
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u/bee_justa Sep 02 '26
Charlie Kirk was no LeBron James.
Just sayin...
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u/Fun_Masterpiece9464 Sep 02 '26
He puts on a show and gets âboardsâ haha Iâd compare him more to a⊠Enes Kanter..?
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u/Message_10 Sep 02 '26
Yeah, searched for this comment. This is more like a reasonably competent D3 athlete, who had a looooooooooot of funding, competing against unprepared D3 athletes, and then having "final cut" of the game afterwards. Any time that he had to debate people who knew how to debate / knew how his style of debate was a sham, he got his ass handed to him. Watch the debates from--Cambridge? Eton?--it's delightful.
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u/SortSvart Sep 02 '26
Itâs more like a D3 athlete competing against high school or gym randoms. Charlie Kirk wasnât even that good at debates and the college freshman he often debated werenât even informed or active in politics. Thatâs why he so desperately avoided debating other political content creators on the left.
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u/Remarkable_Wish_5106 Sep 02 '26
Kirk lost a lot of those debates with those unprepared 18-year-olds. Kirk had the louder microphone and talked over people at a rapid speed, that's all he really did.
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u/Vert_der_Ferk25 Sep 02 '26
Yep. And within hours of these college events happening, tons of short-form clips are pushed out through TPUSA's official channels and amplified by right-wing aggregator accounts to flood feeds before the full stream can even be processed by audiences.
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u/Tiptoes666 Sep 02 '26
Yeah except instead of LeBron itâs some asshole who doesnât understand the rules
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u/Difficult_Algae_4806 Sep 02 '26
Why do you assume that you are supposed to be? If you just want to share your opinion of something or someone, just say that.
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u/Vert_der_Ferk25 Sep 02 '26
I live in a very conservative state, and the most conservative county in that state. It's probably just the water that I'm swimming in.
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u/Massive_Analysis8345 Sep 04 '26
He lost more debates than he won, and it was against amateurs. He just spoke fast and cut people off.
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u/Individual-Sell-7022 Sep 02 '26
Not only that but the doxxing of professors because Kirk thought they were "left wing.". They always talk about the marketplace of ideas when simultaneously trying to destroy alternate points of view. Conservatives are just the butthead bullies in any 80s movie đđđ
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u/FunOwn4422 Sep 02 '26
as someone who doesn't agree with any of Charlie kirks stances or political affiliations, a positive thing that i think gets often overlooked is his platform. When you strip it down to its core, when you push your biases to the side and objectively look at the core of what he was doing, he created a platform were people from opposing belief systems have the opportunity to sit across from each other and have dialog.
This is a core fundamental to any cohesive society is the world. this is how you maintain peace and civility in any democracy. whether you agree with the things he said or not this is just a universal truth and i think creating a platform specifically targeted to bring people who disagree with you and give them the opportunity to use your platform and speak freely is something to be admired.
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u/Fun_Roll306 Sep 04 '26
Love that OP just proved heâs here to karma farm posting anti republican content on Reddit and then losing the like battle with any person with a reasonable view.
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u/drdadbodpanda Sep 04 '26
Donât compare Kirk to LeBron. His social media team clip farming made him look better than he was.
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u/Ok-Stomach-3739 Sep 04 '26
He was a social media personality at best. What heâs doing now is much better if you ask me! :)
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u/justhereforampadvice Sep 04 '26
He wasnât even good at debating, he was just good at being loud. And saying âprove me wrongâ without giving the opponent enough time to speak to actually do so
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u/Embarrassed-Wafer667 Sep 05 '26
He was a racist with a camera and a social media acct .
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u/Thistles-Path Sep 02 '26
No, LeBron was more than competent at his profession. Kirk was not. He used gish gallop to flood the argument with irrelevant topics to make it impossible for any person to address all his points. It was akin to playing chess with a pigeon. Whether you're a professional or a toddler, he's still just going to knock all the pieces over, shit on the board, and prance around like he won.Â
Kirk was scum.Â
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u/Madmike_ph Sep 02 '26
Itâs telling that he went to universities and instead of debating political science professors, he debated random freshmen.
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u/Carpenter-Confident Sep 02 '26
He failed in college and blamed it on woke and made that grudge his entire personality.
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u/Anxious-Plan4482 Sep 02 '26
Regardless, killing someone on either side for speaking their beliefs is kind of fucked up.
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u/brybrymma Sep 02 '26
For some reason this is seen as a controversial opinion to have. I didnât agree with all of Charlie Kirkâs viewpoints but Iâm not gonna celebrate his assassination he didnât deserve that.
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u/WyomingWeirdo Sep 02 '26
Weird that a rightwing Mormon gun nut from Utah did it, then. Counting or not counting rightwing on rightwing violence?
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u/Due_Translator8947 Sep 02 '26
Kirk had a number of âgotchaâ points and would funnel every conversation towards that. Itâs pseudo intellectual. The crazy part is there are a lot of intellectual conservatives who have books etc. that you can find. Disagree or not they are intelligent and present ideas. One issue is the GOP is not âconservativeâ anymore anyway.
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u/CivEnd Sep 02 '26
He helped mainstream white supremacy, which is the foundation of america. He gave them the confidence to be white, which is historically one of the stupidest, weakest, most pussy takes in American history.
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u/mariwil74 Sep 02 '26
I wasnât impressed by him. He was a racist, misogynist POS who got off on baiting people. I didnât celebrate his death eitherâno one should die like thatâbut Iâm certainly not sad that heâs gone and I wonât pretend otherwise.
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u/PotentialStrong9013 Sep 02 '26
He's just some racist bigot who got shot. The people who are impressed by him aren't people worth knowing.
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u/Hypolag Sep 02 '26
He wasn't a professional debater, bro was NEVER gonna challenge someone like Matt Dillahunty.
He'd get DESTROYED in an actual debate with someone who understands and recognizes logical fallacies.
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u/Seated_Heats Sep 02 '26
He debated woefully unprepared and untrained college kids. When faced with defeat heâd rely on âwell the bible says x, and you canât argue with the bible.â He turned down trained debate opponents like Dean Withers because it would be bad for his brand, Turning Point.
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u/Frequilibrium Sep 02 '26
Kirk was a terrible debater. In the extremely rare times he would debate actual debaters, he got emotional and resorted to ad hominem attacks and gish gallop. He had talking points and nothing more. In my opinion he was a pretty stupid guy. Giving right wingers the hope that their view of the world is correct, and their arguments have merit is how we got into this huge mess. It wasnât just his racism and misogyny that were dangerous, it was his platform that gave right wingers confidence to think they are correct.
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u/Old_Hope2487 Sep 02 '26
CK wasnât some paragon of critical thought using debate as a tool to educate on issues and broaden overall understanding.
He was simply a silver tongued tool of garbage rw/conservative movements and think tanks, manufacturing consent for hate and fear.
I wouldnât say there was 0 educational value to his schtick. It was less than zero. A negative effect on the intellect of a nation. That was his job.
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u/Seismic9Wedgie Sep 03 '26
Charlie was good at using the âGish Gallopâ technique, thatâs all. Not a LeBron caliber debater in any capacity.
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u/njgolfer10 Sep 02 '26
He was (like so many of these) just an echo chamber amplifier. If they ever have to have a real unstated debate they would look like fools to anyone that isnât already conditioned to accept their nonsense premises without question.
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u/TinhatTemplar Sep 02 '26
You aren't supposed to be impressed by him. You can choose to have whatever opinion you want to. Personally I thought he was pretty disingenuous and engaged in terrible "debate" tactics that would not fly in any formal setting. I also think he liked to throw out conservative talking points at high speed in a manner that can more aptly be described as throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. If you went into seeing him with a bias you would hear some of the hits and they would stick to you and you'd walk away thinking he "owned the libs". Mostly its just more caustic bullshit that doesn't really make anyone better and just makes people hate each other when they really should be building a new politics rejecting this 2 party albatross and working on our economic best interests.
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u/chrysanthemum_beer Sep 02 '26
A lot of the dumb religious people take his talk on faith as a âthatâs thatâ and nothing to his other crap. A lot of people who actually take Charlie Kirk serious are all also virtue signaling
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u/Comprehensive-Tea-75 Sep 02 '26
It's never that complicated with the maga base. They liked what he said and they think nothing more of it. Even if he was posting clips of himself taking down newbie debaters or students that didn't know how to talk. That level of dishonesty doesn't phase them because he says the words that they like hearing.
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u/Primary_Hurry_2822 Sep 02 '26
I watched some of his long-form content to see what the fuss is about. It's mostly bad faith debate tactics on his part, and trying to trip up his opponents or pivot to rapid-fire "gotcha" type questions, instead of actually engaging with the topic. That's a dead giveaway that someone knows they have been bested and need to regain control of the debate.
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u/MalcolmBekei Sep 02 '26
Before he got shot, I had probably seen his clips twice, and he seemed like another grifter looking for edgy content he could monetize like dozens of others do.
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u/DavidinMandeville Sep 02 '26
Correct. These college appearances were basically content-creation opportunities for Kirk. Not impressed.
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u/Middle-Armadillo-660 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Youâre not. He was nothing more than a bad faith E-tier celebrity demagogue.
Nobody on the right really cared about him either. His assassination was brutal and awful, and the right just got super psyched about having an opportunity to peacock about morality and demagogue some more. No more, no less.
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u/CaramelGuilty8647 Sep 02 '26
I never heard of Kirk until he was killed, but I would have loved to have seen him debate Pete Buttigieg or James Talerico.
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u/Potential-Local7262 Sep 02 '26
I'm generally not impressed by most "debaters" who go to college campuses and aren't really engaging in honest debates but seem like they're out there to embarrass kids with under-cooked brains. Some I do respect in their tone and approachability, but most that go viral are there to make themselves look good.Â
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u/forestinity2 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Some may be impressed that Charlie Kirk spoke out with questions about Israeli actions even though that looked likely to pose a significant loss of income for Turning Point USA., especially as he was that organization's founder and chief executive.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz on October 11, 2023: A leaked text messages from Kirk's WhatsApp group showed him complaining that pro-Israel doners were pressuring him and that he felt pushed to "leave the pro-Israel cause."
Separately, according to The New York Times, a donor (reportedly philanthropist Thomas Shillman) told Kirk he was withdrawing a $2 million pledge to Turning Point USA because of the organization's relationship with Tucker Carlson, whom many viewed as increasingly anti-Israel.
Yet, Kirk still publicly asked the following questions in the weeks before his death:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMFwGfORfWr/?igsi=MXVpdGc2YTlobmpwZQ==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQRmjKLDLyP/?igsi=MXJ4Zm1ubHY1YzltNw==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOc8slmDlC7/?igsi=a2NyYmFieXBoYzNp
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u/Jksta Sep 04 '26
Because the right cares more about owning the left than any policy that could actually help improve their lives.
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u/kitchencrawl Sep 04 '26
In the end , Charlie Kirk got on a lot of people's nerves.....and shirts and shoes and sidewalks.
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u/12darkmatter12 Sep 04 '26
He was a shitty person and annoying as fuck before he was assassinated.
His organizations literally bussed people to the insurrection on 01/06/2021. He was a propagandist through and through.Â
He is not a martyr no matter how hard they tried. He was a piece of shit. Look at how his wife has acted after everything that has happened as well.Â
Fuck kirk.Â
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u/ReditVoyeur Sep 04 '26
This might be the worst LeBron slander I have ever heard. Regardless of if you like Charlie Kirk or not, no one should be arguing that he is the LeBron of anything. He is at best Draymond, but even that is a stretch.
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u/TheBookie_55 Sep 04 '26
I was disgusted by the BS he espoused. Taking women back to the 18th century, WTF???
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u/joesaysso Sep 04 '26
Isn't this like LeBron James going to a campus and setting up cameras while he played pickup games against kids who, at best, were on the college team but more likely dabbled in basketball, but were no match for the expert?
No, it's actually nothing like that. LeBron is actually good at his chosen craft. Kirk wasn't good and crumbled whenever somebody approached his somewhat prepared for the debate.Â
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u/Old_Adhesiveness7508 Sep 04 '26
Be impressed by the immense size of the c*nt he was. It takes grit to get to that level.
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u/Calm_Courage Sep 04 '26
He was basically the Jake Paul of debating. And like Jake Paul, his career was ended the second he actually had to put his own well-being on the line.
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u/Aitoroketto Sep 04 '26
Idk I'm always impressed when a grown man out talks teenagers, many of which who are out of their homes for the first time in their lives.
Watch the examples of him when he talks to other people, young people, who train or merely have taken a debate course and watch how he gets roasted.
I never got why people were impressed. If you are an adult watching and you don't think you can get dunk on a 17 year old, something is wrong with you especially when you add in plants, screened questions, and editing.
People should watch videos on like people who pretend they are mediums when do large public shows. They guess for a couple hours and cut everything but the 5 minutes they guessed kind of right (likely a plant) and you never see the rest where they bomb and the audience is mocking them.
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u/Own_Relief_1740 Sep 04 '26
I enjoyed watching the Cambridge college kids dunk on Charlie. They were LeBron and he was a toddler.
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u/jetcatback Sep 04 '26
Sometimes people on the left will say he was like a good faith debater there to talk about ideas and I just disagree.
He did do some debates against people on âhis levelâ and they were awful, like when he went to Oxford he looked very bad at times.
I donât think he deserved to be killed but I just saw him as an internet media personality with strong ties to the Republican Party and essentially working for them, trying to persuade younger folk to vote for the right.
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u/willbrown72 Sep 04 '26
His primary contribution to the conservative movement isnât his debate abilities, itâs TPUSA. Itâs a large organization with incredible influence in our youth, and itâs likely part of the reason gen Z and Alpha youth tend to be more conservative than their millennial contemporaries. The fact liberals donât really have a functional, popular equivalent hurts us in the long term, and weâd be wise to flesh out our youth outreach more
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u/FLiP_J_GARiLLA Sep 04 '26
Never even heard of him until he kicked the bucket and still don't know or give a shit who he was
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u/DoctorAAM Sep 04 '26
I get what you are doing but to compare him to LeBron James would be like saying he was one of the greatest in what he did which really he wasn't. A true professional would have destroyed him. So this is like a guy that washed out of the NBA then went to the YMCA and started taping the pickup games and only selected the good parts to post. Just another grifter that found an audience to grift.
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u/Mikeremix2 Sep 04 '26
If you have half a brain cell you wonât be impressed period because he didnât do anything impressive while alive and definitely nothing worth being celebrated and/or discussed now that heâs dead. He was a piece of shit propagandist, more of them need to follow his footsteps
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u/WendellITStamps Sep 04 '26
College was hard so he dropped out and dad bought him a media career.
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u/Dave22152 Sep 04 '26
He wasnât in the debating league with LeBron James. He was more like a college varsity player going one on one with junior high school kids then proclaiming on YouTube that heâs the next LeBron.
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u/Ethanop1a Sep 04 '26
paid professional debater
He went to a college campus
Isn't there a whole debate going on right now that college players aren't professionals and declaring yourself pro makes you ineligible for college.
Along that grain, I'd say he isn't a professional since his whole game was at colleges.
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u/ironfoot22 Sep 04 '26
Not like LeBron James though. Just like a pretty good college level player going around dunking on regular students at staged events who donât really play basketball in an organized/formal sense or practice. Film for several hours and get a few clips of someone who has refined their technique crushing amateurs.
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u/Pristine-Truck-4580 Sep 04 '26
You're right that he purposely went against amateurs to farm clicks, but in no way is that dingus the LeBron of debates or the right.
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u/CMyak Sep 04 '26
Comparing him to LeBron dunking on a bunch of high school basketball players is a good point lol
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u/boohissfrown Sep 04 '26
Imagine a Division 1 college baseball pitcher inviting a bunch of middle school kids to try to get a basehit off him. Now, the pitcher isn't that great, but when you're putting them up against middle schoolers they're going to look like a hall of famer.
That's basically what Charlie Kirk's thing was but with debate. The forumla is this:
-Research all the leftist talking points for just about every issue that will come up.
-Train your host (charlie) on all the talking points to counter that, alongside techniques like gish-galloping, redirection, reframing, strawman, etc.
-Head to colleges and invite untrained debaters to take a shot at winning a public argument.
They will not win, or win very rarely. Not because their information is bad or that they're wrong, it's just that there are debate tools that, unless you're trainied on, you're not going to be able to counter.
For instance if you do, jiu jitsu and have been at it for a few months. You might know a few holds that will win you a fight, but it isn't because you're necessarily a great fighter, it's just that your opponent doens't know the counter.
Anyone viewing this spectacle thinks 'wow charlie owned them they must be correct' and that's how he grows his audience.
It's very formulaic and predictable, and very, very curated.
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u/AdIllustrious5811 Sep 04 '26
Short answer: no. long answer fuuuuckkkkkkkkk nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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u/Broad-Celebration- Sep 04 '26
He spoke to children on commonly debated topics.
I don't think anybody is saying you must be impressed by him.
It's what Steven Crowder did, it's what Ben Shapiro did. It's nothing novel.
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u/OccasionMU Sep 04 '26
This whole question is bullshit. Comparing his to LeBron James is disingenuous from the start. Youâve set artificial comparisons.
Itâs more like the high school varsity basketball player (starter but not the star) playing a pickup game against a freshman philosophy major, then posting the awkward cross over because it burned the kid with two left feet.
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u/YamFree3503 Sep 04 '26
Regardless of what you think about Charlie Kirk and his views, I at least thought it was somewhat refreshing to see a politicalâŠ..person engage the younger crowd. I donât think dunking on amateurs was his goal, but a means to an end. I think his goal was to engage the young conservative crowd and gain their support and turn that into a business to make money.
LeBron is kind of a bad example because he doesnât need the money and Charlie Kirk isnât the LeBron James of political debates. So letâs take someone who maybe played a couple years in the NBA but couldnât make a career out of it. If they could make millions of dollars dunking on college kids on YouTube, I think they would. The goal isnât to dunk on them for the glory of dunking on them. Theyâre just trying to make money.
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u/wy100101 Sep 04 '26
The only people who are impressed by him are people obsessed with the far right cult of personality. He was a figure head for culture wars and identity politics. For people whose whole identity is about "owning the libs" he was a hero.
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u/Culturalabnormality Sep 04 '26
He was extremely influential in empowering Trump and Trumpism from the beginning of the movement. To the extent you think the movement is a cancer, you should think heâs cancerous; to the extent you are comfortable with Trumpism, you should appreciate that he was one of Trumpâs very strongest soldiers.Â
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u/The_whimsical1 Sep 04 '26
Kirk was a stupid grifter who captured the zeitgeist of certain stupid Americans. It's a tragedy that he was killed, but let's not forget that he said that the second amendment will cost the lives of some, and that this was worth it to him.
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u/Guilty-Cow4325 Sep 04 '26
No, and if you hear anybody call him this generation's MLK, you are legally and morally obligated to slap them.
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u/Diddleyourfiddle Sep 04 '26
You shouldn't be impressed. He was a propagandist that spread hate and divisiveness amongst his own countrymen for personal profit.
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u/RegulationPissrat Sep 04 '26
He was a grade A asshole and anyone telling you different wasn't watching his content.Â
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u/Corporate-Scum Sep 04 '26
He was a mouthpiece for white supremacy and oppressive ideology. He feigned advocacy for the common man while encouraging them to believe things that ultimately held them back. Dude is no hero. He died as tragically as his poor choices.
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u/GustavesGhost Sep 04 '26
Honestly he wasnât even that great of a debater. I donât think you should be impressed by him at all. He wasnât very adaptable and generally just steered every conversation toward the same tired talking points over and over again.
However his media team only posted unedited, full length conversations, so that part isnât true. The clips you see are from other people on the internet trying to make a quick buck by cutting up bits of what his organization posted. Same thing happens to every podcast and Internet personality.
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u/Hefty_Type6772 Sep 04 '26
I by no means like him and he was a right wing apologist at best. But the rights argument is that he didnât shy away from the hard topics but instead engaged in dialogue. The issue with this sentiment is that the âhard questionâ was usually bigoted and his dialogue was with the youth which made his opinions seems like they carried a lot of weight.
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u/inkl9ng Sep 04 '26
you don't have to be impressed, but he did something that not many other people even attempt, let alone be successful at. people tend to respect things that aren't done frequently, so he has fans. other people who also do things that not many other people do successfully also have fans. you aren't "supposed" to be impressed by any of them, but they all will have a group of people who are impressed by them specifically
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u/martinhenry1871 Sep 04 '26
Comparing him to LeBron is way too much credit. If he was able to dunk on people educated people heâd do it but he couldnât. He found people to pick on and even then Iâd argue he didnât do it very well. But yeah also just a state propagandist in every sense.
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u/Thac1234 Sep 04 '26
Iâm not trying to insult anyone by saying this but all Kirk did was argue with children
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u/bigshady880 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
the irony is we werenât even impressed with him at the time. he was just another talking head and was never particularly special in the space he was in.
honestly i feel bad that he died mainly cause he never seemed important enough to assassinate in the first place. it honestly elevated him to a level he never deserved from anything he actually did. itâs ironic people bring up the fact we only know who George Floyd is cause of the way he died, while Charlie kirk was a⊠somewhat big name, at least relatively speaking, people overrate how notable/influential of a figure he actually was.
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u/seansj12345 Sep 04 '26
Of course his legacy is sad. Why do you think so many people felt ok with publicly celebrating his assassination? He literally built his career on being a dick, and he rarely even made a good point while doing so.
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u/PBC_Kenzinger Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Just wanted to say the idea that Saint Charlie was a free speech proponent is a crock. TPUSA posted an online watchlist of professors accused of distributing âleftist propaganda,â many of whom were harassed and received death threats. And in honor of his example, a handful of Kirk fans tried to dox people and get them fired for criticizing Kirk online, including the Vice President.
These people are only for free speech when it comes to defending their often bigoted viewpoints. When you criticize Israel, Kirk or his weird widow, they try to dox you and get you fired.
Hypocrisy is the brand.
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u/Particular_Ticket_20 Sep 04 '26
You don't have to.
Very few people did.
He was a niche personality with a relatively limited demographic before he was killed, and then the right wing tried to martyr him and blow him up into some kind of symbol. Before he was killed, he was only a known figure for perpetually online people and those with a big appetite for right wing media or their perpetually online opponents.
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u/twofourfourthree Sep 04 '26
He existed to make certain people feel better about themselves and that they were better than others.
He did this by actively trying to make life worse for certain people.
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u/Gmoneyyy999 Sep 05 '26
He wasnât a professional debater, he was a political grifter who used these âdebatesâ to spread propaganda. I think the Lebron comparison also falls flat because he wasnât particularly good at debating. His winning formula was talking over his opponents and getting the crowd riled up. He got completely cooked when he went to either Cambridge or Oxford (cant remember which).
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u/SavioursSamurai Sep 05 '26
The biggest issue with this comparison is that Charlie Kirk was no LeBron James of intellectual discourse and debate. Dude dropped out of his bachelor's degree
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u/Big-Ability3953 Sep 06 '26
He actually wasn't even that good of a debater. Obviously by going to college campuses to dunk on 18 year olds who just got a copy of the Communist Manifesto is easy, but he even got hit back sometimes by them.
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u/IneffableSam Sep 09 '26
Here is the un-bias answer to your question, he wasnât a paid debater, he actually paid to be at most places. He was the Founder of Turning Point USA which employed hundreds of people. Majority of his wealth stems from that while also private and public investing. When Charlie passed he had 35 vigils across 10 different countries. 6 Million people viewed his funeral and 100,000 people attended his service.
* I also understand reddit is liberal dominated
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u/Mark_Michigan Sep 02 '26
Charlie Kirk did what he did for many reasons. Nobody is expected to be impressed with what he did if they were not impressed. Just like many are not impressed by any given athlete, entertainer or businessman even as many others are.
It isn't at all clear what point OP is trying to make. If it is some round about way of endorsing his assassination then OP is sick and weird.
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u/rootofallstevil Sep 02 '26
Why does any challenge to this man always devolve into accusations of endorsing assassination?
I don't like Charlie Kirk â I want him dead
I think Kirk said some really mean stuff â I'm glad he was shot
Why has this man become a martyr for conservatism? â I agree with his assassination
His murder is a tragedy not because of who he was but because gun violence is a real issue in this country and we don't take it seriously enough.
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u/WyomingWeirdo Sep 02 '26
Charlie Kirk was just George Lincoln Rockwell in a less controversial uniform.
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u/roscatorosso Sep 02 '26
I'm not defending Charlie Kirk in anyway here, but just want to point out that your LeBron James metaphor playing pick up basketball against kids isn't the best way to describe what Charlie Kirk was doing. His goal wasn't to create viral videos of him dunking on amateur debaters. His goal was to influence a massive voting block (college students) that the "right" had mostly written off. And rather than give speeches or just become another talking head social media, Charlie's approach was unique in that he gave college kids all over the country a microphone to share their perspective and have an open dialogue with him.
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u/chickenlogic Sep 02 '26
Unless they brought up better arguments than him, which he edited out.
At least skateboarders post their eating shit videos.
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u/Vert_der_Ferk25 Sep 02 '26
His goal wasn't to create viral videos of him dunking on amateur debaters.
Then explain the viral videos. They took unscripted, extended conversations, stripped away the back-and-forth context, and deep-frying it into quick, bite-sized "wins" for immediate social media consumption.
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u/scalem0ss Sep 02 '26
The fact you are calling it open dialogue shows how ignorant you really are on the subject lmao
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u/Carpenter-Confident Sep 02 '26
Thatâs like saying LeBron held an open gym â one where any kid could come, but by the way please make sure you subscribe to his YouTube channel & buy his merch.
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u/SquallkLeon Sep 02 '26
The only thing wrong with your analogy is that Kirk wasn't equivalent to LeBron. Kirk was closer to, say, Enes Kanter Freedom. Yes, an NBA player, but no, not a great one.
Any NBA player will clean up against any random non athlete on a college campus. But put Kanter against an actual great player, and he'd be cooked. Much like Kirk against any actual good or great debater.
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u/Dehyak Sep 02 '26
You donât have to be impressed by anyone