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[–] 7 points 9 hours ago (8 children)

I don't think that much thought was put into anything that Kirk said. He was a mouthpiece for elderly reactionary fools with grandchildren who no longer talk to them. He said what got attention from his audience so he could make money. He probably believed in all of it, but his content was driven by clicks and money, not some long term conservative plan.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 hours ago

    My phrasing was too ambiguous. Kirk was just a hateful dweeb, but he clearly wasn't simply speaking his own opinions, he received marching orders on various topics, and I was trying to ask if the factions bankrolling him had these intentions.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 hours ago

    Opposing public education has definitely been a long-term conservative plan, at least since the Civil Rights Act. I don't think there was much going on between Charlie's ears (probably why they aimed for the neck), but I also don't think it's a coincidence that his brand of talking points got amplified.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 hours ago* (5 children)

    I don't think he appealed too much to the elderly.

    He appealed to young groypers who listen to people like Sam Hyde, and fall for crypto and tiktok "be a man grindset" online courses that only teach you how to make your own scam course. Or how to lose all your money "drop shipping" or "making automated content"

    The youth is always the target for new pysops, much like the generations before who grew up with the alt right pipeline on YouTube.

    There needs to he a space that appeals to the disinfranchises youth that seems edgy and funny and are leftist focused. Someone like Stavros halkias would be a good example.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago* (3 children)

    I don't think he appealed too much to the elderly.

    Yes he did, or at least people older than his nominal audience. Most of his career was just slopaganda for boomer conservatives and he wasn't great at persuading young people, even if he was a champion of Young Republican types.

    He appealed to young groypers

    Groypers routinely made coordinated efforts to disrupt his events for not being fascist enough. Groypers only liked him after he got a bullet in the neck and people like Feuntes tried to turn him into a martyr of their campaign against "the organized Jewry" or whatever they call it now.

    You're homogenizing different groups, which undermines your ability to analyze what they are doing and therefore how to oppose them.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (2 children)

    This is anecdotal but before he died I didnt know anyone one over the age of 55 who even heard of him. It wasn't until after he died and they pushed his death as some kind of 9/11 event that all the boomers started practically praying to ai generated images of him.

    Before that I only ever heard about him from college dudes who say overtly racist shit in video games, and then they hated them after he died. Sure I homongized them as one group but really they're the same and only vary slightly in opinion on one issue. But I understand what you mean, and I'm really good/bad at generalizing things into nice clean groups for laziness.

    I'm also one of those "well achtuaally" idiots and got fixated on predeath what he was working on and towards. I used the word appealed as in past tense, and I don't think I really made my point fully clear. They really really want to push turning point USA into every school system including k-12 for some reason and to me thats primarily appealing to the youth audience. They make kids write essays on 9/11 and 9/10, as if they are on the same level as a "national tragedy" and didnt really think about post death, and how he suddenly became a household name for everyone in a retirement home. Or all the million of ai generated posts about him being in heaven for protecting free speech against the evil communist or whatever.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    Before that I only ever heard about him from college dudes who say overtly racist shit in video games,

    I'm counting these as mainly Young Republican and adjacent types, people who usually were already conservative and he served as slopaganda to pander to them, because I guess the deeper point isn't about politics but the fact that he was never and still is not a good recruitment tool (see kirkification). He was, at the very most, at least for most of his career, only useful at emboldening existing reactionaries and fostering a media ecosystem for more reactionary grifters like him to thrive in.

    I'm also one of those "well achtuaally" idiots

    Me too, which is why I'm having this conversation, though I guess you inferred that.

    They really really want to push turning point USA into every school system including k-12 for some reason and to me thats primarily appealing to the youth audience.

    This is a good place for the distinction I pointed out, which is that they do want to use him for turning young people to the right (his whole image was primarily about him supposedly being great at that) but they are going through these kinds of institutional mechanisms because the people that actually like him in this scenario aren't the kids but the old reactionaries setting this curriculum. I think such an approach will inevitably turn some kids to the right, but the ridiculousness of it (a trait you rightly point out) and Kirk's basic lack of appeal will probably make it overall a D.A.R.E. situation. Again, see kirkification.

    I wonder how this "education" agenda will work with the existing PraegerU one that had already gotten much further along. I guess they will probably just fuse, since Erika, etc. have been firmly on the PU/DW side of the media divide.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago*

    Prager U, and tpusa are really pushing into the ai education space, and make a breaking point that way.

    I think Prager U teaches revisionist history about slavery, uses ai generated cartoons for kids and etc.

    Turning point USA is doing the worksheets as mentioned, and is doing lots of clubs in high schools.

    Its all tied into this weird push for school credits for pivate schools and gobbling up that money. Parents think public schools are too woke because Joe rogan and the news networks say kids have litter boxes in the bathrooms for furries, and trans in sports, blaah blaah blaah

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