Edwardsson: ”Demoniseringen öppnar dörren för våld”

Charlie Kirk was shot dead at one of his own debate rallies Who was Charlie Kirk He was one of the new Republican Party's young stars He was a dropout university student who started a conservative grass-roots movement for college students and younger people He named it "Turning Point" and thought it was needed The right wing in the US had been betting for too long on trying Yes people had more or less given up and were trying to win over young voters Younger people tend to be more radical He had a huge success with Turning Point in the US He became a part of Trump's inner circle very early on He became an advisor among other things when Trump returned last year about who would sit in the cabinet and hold various ministerial positions Even though he was not a politician himself he was very influential in shaping public opinion What people see on social media from Charlie Kirk is mainly his debates but what was his role in the Trump administration What connections does he have to the stomach movement He not only met Trump and other leading media personalities and figures but also had discussions During the transition period this past summer when Trump was forming his second cabinet he apparently had been one of the key advisors on who should hold various positions He was not as stated a party official He had no ministerial position He had no official role within the party American politics is much more vague in its contours than Swedish There you have to be a member and belong to a committee In the US the parties are much more open organizations We have the core party but then there is an entire planetary system of various organizations and networks that revolve around the two parties more or less closely Turning Point in the USA became one of the largest planets in the magazine system It represented millions of younger people Trump did very well Unexpectedly good Especially among younger men last year I think it has been an over 40 percent swing between the elections of 20 and 22 as to whom younger men voted for So over 40 percent more younger men voted for Trump in 24 than they did in 20 In political terms it's a seismic shift When you capture younger generations people start voting in some way from a young age The Democrats have long taken youth votes for granted just as they have taken Black votes for granted and Latino and other groups as well He had a breadth and depth that I think we haven't seen in American politics in 100 years or maybe even more than that Abraham Lincoln was apparently also a very broad self-taught well-read and curious person I just can't recall another prominent personality who has been so smart so intellectual and so open in their view of the world Even though he had sharp edges he was very religious very conservative but he was always ready to discuss with his opponents But when a person like that ends up in the spotlight it makes things much much worse than if it had been an ordinary priest who was known for just saying silly things People have long been talking about Charlie Kirk as a potential future Republican presidential candidate This hatred he has been called many different things online and has created a lot of controversy but how has this led to what we saw Clearly because he was so broad and deep so well-read and rhetorically brilliant he has obviously gotten under the skin of many He hasn't lost many of these debates if you can say that He could talk about politics with just about anyone It's clear that if you're a political animal and you have an opponent who is almost like a slippery soap that you can't hold on to and prove that he has ever been wrong it's clear that people with less patience and sympathy for their opponents It's like that someone just hasn't accepted that Charlie Kirk could answer on the spot when it came to his belief for example that the concept of marriage only applied to men and women It's roughly what we know when this is played out The thing to say is that transgender people have been very overrepresented in mass shootings in the US in the last year so it's not unlikely No there have been five or six different incidents on the roof now and it has turned out that all of them were related to this area at least Whether they were transgender themselves I wouldn't dare to swear The mechanism here is that it's a subculture that has formed and has received enormous attention and support from politicians culture personalities and film stars The media has highlighted them as the new civil rights movement and all that stuff Oh it's clear that for people back then who didn't really respect others' opinions They must also be present within this group and when you meet a really strong opponent who can talk about customer complaints Eventually there will be a number that is picked and apparently that's what happened last year Whether this will be even more in a row now remains to be seen but it does seem to be leaning that way right now at least After this murder there has been a lot of hate on the internet from both sides Many on the left have written lists of who should be murdered next Many on the right have declared war What does this murder mean for the USA That's exactly the key issue here Which forces so to speak manage to grasp this moment in history If we are making a historical analogy today is September 11 2001 Imagine if George W Bush had taken a different path after the terrorist attacks of September 11th He had started using very harsh language towards Muslims in general and had referred to the invasions of Afghanistan and later Iraq as crusades and nonsense At that point history had probably already done even worse than it was already doing He showed up at that point in the assignment having tried to pour oil on the troubled waters He said it was only a militant minority He extended open hands to the Muslim world to say we are not your enemy and so on They do not respect the democratic society its rules or even the democratic society itself After all you can't treat people the way you treat a populist party you disagree with If we don't stop them we don't imprison them when they do things we don't like then it's us who end up with the violence and the chaos and so on They destroy society A free society must be ready to defend itself draw lines and actually keep them After all you can't keep saying we must understand why they are retaliating forever They are just so frustrated It is possible that a Swede who is really tired of the high-tax society is also frustrated but he does not turn to violence He does not destroy property or things like that Even a democratic society must have absolute limits They should be as extensive as possible but cannot be limitless This clearly illuminates party politics After all this applies to most Western countries including the USA and Sweden People are quite well-controlled when it comes to the far right If anything even slightly resembles fascism or nazism or something like that militarism then it's clear-cut The police beat them down and give them long prison sentences But it seems there's no real limit on the left It all adds up to something Yes but we still have to understand You can look at it this way A friend of mine asked me more or less to say this when he found out I would be on TV They asked Anders Behring Breivik how many teenagers there were because he thought they were odd That they threatened Norway and the Norwegian and so on The reactions to it were exceptionally good There was no understanding for him It exists in some way One does not understand that a boundary must be drawn on that side as well If it is for ideological or other reasons it must be in some way But something is missing there There is a safety barrier on the left side that is still very clear on the right There is a huge demonization of political opponents today We see it here in Sweden and it is much worse in the US where polarization is extreme We have seen two assination attempts on Donald Trump Things calmed down a bit after that Can one hope for something after this Someone who has more sense in public statements This is what we have to hope for Perhaps it was bad enough to say This is a person who was known for being kind Open-minded at the very least Even if people had opinions that many supported I truly have never heard anyone say anything bad about Charlie Kirk as a person Maybe it could help a little to say "good grief it did go too far after all " What must happen now is for people to calm down regarding this demonization Trump is now president whether you like it or not These people must now start calming down and stop calling him Hitler Otherwise such somewhat unstable people would end up snatching some of them If one could go back in time and shoot Hitler everyone would probably agree that would be a good idea They call someone a Hitler or even worse then you open the door to say that maybe it's right to shoot him too We don't want another Hitler so to speak There's a mechanism here that I think is so clear that people don't really think about it It sounds good from a center-left perspective and calls an opponent a fascist a Nazi Hitler and all that comes with it The person who really wants to be part of the solution to this problem and this applies to both sides both sides need to calm down by at least 5 degrees He has said that an opponent has communist views but he has never said that he or she is like Stalin or worse than Stalin Both sides need to sharpen up but one side needs to do so even more than the other But then you have to wonder If someone seems to be way out to the right maybe it's because she herself is way out to the left Then they stood here and it was a large space but it was not half as large a space as it is today Trump is not more extreme in any way than Ronald Reagan was in political views He has a different rhetoric How do you make people realize that The only thing I can say is that people in the middle have a big pedagogical bias I am a middle-of-the-road person but you are much further from me than the person you call a right-wing extremist is You don't have to do it in a free society but at the very least tone down the rhetoric take a deep breath and say yes we may not agree with the MAGA movement's policies but that's just people who have different opinions than us It's not that Trump is the devil and everyone around him are little devils If you really believe that someone is evil then it's okay to take it back We must return to some form of stable center in the sense that we must respect that other people can have different opinions without them being evil You can say you're wrong but you're not mean for it If we just get there I think 95% of the problem is that How do you back up in a movie like this It's easier to set than to get used to It was exactly what Charlie Kirk did that invited debates and allowed everyone to speak That's probably why so many had such big problems with him He placed himself outside the given playing field so to speak Extremists on both the right and the left are generally disliked Hitler never participated in any debates Lenin never participated in any debates with bourgeois opponents A democracy must welcome and talk to each other as far to the left and as far to the right as it stands Even if we never agree in the end we can say we agree to disagree and then shake hands and go out for a beer How many left-wing politicians would be willing to go out and have a drink after a debate in the Riksdag Very few I'd guess It has become so full of emotions You are angry and whatever it was Of course you don't want to associate with angry people We must somehow moderate ourselves We are all in some way responsible I am completely convinced of that This cannot continue for it will then continue in this manner In the end it will be democracy that suffers When debates can no longer take place When opponents can't even be in the same room or for that matter the same building because they end up physically attacking each other A democracy can't work if the core of democracy is discussion and peaceful votes not fighting and violence Thanks to all the students and people who have watched this video