Like driving past a car accident it’s fascinating and horrible in equal measure. But it’s worth watching for several reasons.
Check it out: Charlie Kirk vs 25 Woke Students
Ok, so I definitely got baited by the title. My curiosity was taken and once I was drawn in, I couldn’t look away. And 12m views in 12 days suggest I'm not the only one!
I wonder how much of the above you were able to watch before you had to stop? I thought it was horrible and enchanting at the same time. I was appalled and infuriated, downhearted and perplexed and yet, I kept watching. Why?
I didn’t watch it all, but most of it. I skipped the topics that were too linked to American politics - although I remain mystified and depressed by the seemingly happy association with Trump that many conservative Christians seem ok with.
Here’s five quick observations:
- Revolution is in the air
These ‘discussions’ (a loose term for what actually took place) reveal a growing fault line in our communication and demonstrate how it is that language itself is the first arena where a revolution shows itself. Since all language is socially constructed (as student Parker reminds us) when a social group decides to shift the meaning of words it becomes incredibly destabilising for common people.
In one of the back-and-forths about trans it became apparent that it’s this that’s really going on and what’s causing the dissonance. A growing and influential sector of society has changed the definition of words and is now both mystified and appalled when traditionalists refuse to accept their new codification.
If Matt Walsh and others want to say ‘a woman is an adult human female with XX chromosomes’ and another person says ‘a woman is whatever a society decides it is’ then they’re no longer able to keep talking.
“Ok” the speaker’s should have said “we’re using our words differently. We’re therefore no longer able to keep talking.”
At this point deconstructionism moves into territory that’s more like sinking sand than solid ground. Revolution is in the air. That’s what’s really being proposed here - a revolution.
The students posit that their vision of the world is fairer, more humane, and more truthful, whereas Charlie believes his to be. Who’s to say who’s right?
If the people want revolution, should they just be handed it? Once a vision of a desired future is foisted upon enough people it becomes inevitable that something will eventually catalyse it so that gets it’s moment in the sun to see if it’ll survive doesn’t? Can it really be stopped?
2. Smart young people are being thoroughly edu-nated
These young people are smart and strong minded, but they’ve also been deliberately conditioned to think the things they do. The difference seems to be that whereas traditional ideas and terms appear to reveal themselves clearly, these new terms and ideas must be taught to be understood.
Take the abortion discussion. The technical arguments employed by the young people may be true but they’re also incredibly contingent. The ethics espoused by the students are a privilege of educated and affluent societies that are culturally niche. Most cultures and most peoples in history couldn’t have held to the ideas that these young people do but due to the changes in our prevailing ideas around sex, freedom and personhood we think they’re more universal than they are.
Maybe it is the case that, since our cultural ideas can’t go ‘back into the box’, we ought to just accept where the logic of the world is going. Which may be fine so long as you’re not the babies being killed.
And what does it say about a people or nation that can’t even begin to entertain the idea that we ought to have less sex outside of safeguarded relationships?
3. The strength of feeling in the young
These young people can’t bear to stand the ideas the conservative speaker is sharing, they’re furious at him and what he’s saying.
He’s pretty smug and at times insufferable, but the strength of feeling is huge. But I suppose it must be if you genuinely felt that individuals you think ought to have freedom and power are having those things stolen from them. For them it can’t, and mustn’t, be an academic and cold discussion - change must occur and fast! People who are wrong are dangerous and must be brought to justice!
Having said that I do lay the blame at Charlie Kirk’s feet. He’s an adult who seems to take pleasure in deliberately provoking and triggering thoughtful young people for the sake of entertainment. If he cared about young people or the issues being discussed he’d switch off the camera and talk a lot less.
4. The disdain for old, christianly inspired ideas
Christianity is squarely equated with restrictive, oppressive and cruel morality by progressive minded young people. More, the very idea of a transcendent personal being or realm is despised by these young people and derided as being sentimental, stupid and deserving of mockery. It seems to me that the monopoly on morality of Christianity in American culture and the hypocrisy of several high profile Christians are the cause of this revolution. Large institutions will always contain pockets of corruption that will ultimately provoke people to try to bring them down.
5. Arguing with someone only pushes them further away
From what I could see, no one ended the conversation thinking any better of their opponents. No one grew in sympathy for the other’s ideas either and in fact in many cases the discussion only served to increase the animosity the students felt for Charlie and conservatives in general.
All of which casts light on the real reason for the video and the problem these sorts of things are causing
True listening and consideration of a point of view with which you are at odds and even feel uncomfortable with requires patience, relationship, silence and humility. In a confrontational tête-à-tête like this nothing is happening that’s building toward any level of reconciliation and respect. The talking over of one another, the personal swipes, the belittling of one another and the deliberate misrepresenting of viewpoints reveals that demolition and humiliation is the intended goal here, not education and growth.
In my opinion it was a verbal display of masochistic showmanship that strikes me as being egotistical, self-serving and ultimately destructive to the healing of the rift widening in society. That rift isn’t helped by videos like this, videos that seek not to understand but to destroy. If anything these videos are making things a whole lot worse.
Whilst watching it even afterwards I felt animated, angry even. I left thinking less of conservatives and alarmed by progressives, worried for the future. Not only do videos like this hook people in, they appeal to the same itch in my soul that gossip seems to scratch but they also make me on the lookout for a fight of my own.
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Whenever I watched a film as a child that had fight sequences in it I would afterwards find ways to re-enact them. I’d fight my brother or attack cushions and I’d leap around the house letting out as much energy as I can. Videos like this are a mental equivalent which is perhaps why people make them, and why we feel drawn to watch them.
The people who make them do so because they want to be heroes defeating bad guys like the ones they watched on TV as children. They want a low stakes game where no one actually dies but where there’s still plenty of glory on offer. The trouble is these are serious issues we’re facing as a civilisation and videos like this only serve to wind us all up a bit more. That’s all fine of course, until somebody somewhere goes and does something that escalates things - and then it’s not.
But what did you make of it? I'd love to know...