The alternative to “mentally ill” would be someone like John Wilkes Booth, who was part of an organized conspiracy, had an escape plan, and a clear political motive.
The right would have loved for this have been the case here. It was not.
See most post above. I don’t know a whole lot of the history here, but it seems Von Stauffenberg analyzed the risk/reward and was willing to make a logical, personal sacrifice for the betterment of humanity. So not irrational.
Charlie Kirk was no Hitler, and sacrificing your life to kill him is hard to rationalize.
I endorse this reply.
Kirk didn’t have the power and authority that Hitler had in that scenario. It’s an entirely different situation.
Yeah I may have misstated the dynamics on that, as I’m not super deep in the weeds on extremist beefs. Taking another look it appears that the Groypers were actually angry at Kirk for the opposite reason, that he backed off the Epstein story in July 2025. So the recency and anger does point to the Groypers, though I goofed on the exact reasoning.
Though I still think it’s really more about the eternal right-wing inter-factional warring over influence, access, and audience. Kirk in particular was growing his access and influence to Trump himself, which would’ve sidelined Nick Fuentes’ radical movement, which I think made the Groypers start seeing more reasons to hate Kirk.
Yes, because the benefit of killing him is outweighed by the cost of losing out access to society because you are now a murderer.
Even if the target was Trump, von Stauffenberg had the resources and a plan to follow up after the assassination. That elevates him above Booth in terms of rationality, probably. But Booth was far more successful in achieving his goals; we’re still dealing with the fallout of the Johnson presidency 150 years later.
Some rando killing Trump would also most likely be irrational as the likely outcome is a Vance presidency that changes nothing about the fascist trajectory of our country.
I’d say that even if the killing was politically motivated, ie he was a either Uber far right or far left and killed Kirk because of political reasons, he’s still probably dealing with some kind of mental illness.
Fuentes is distancing himself from any violence right now. I’m sure he’s very concerned for his own safety.
You don’t see the difference between a resistance plot to assassinate the leader of the regime ruling their country, and some random kid acting alone to blow the head off a pundit?
And that was my original point.
I think he’s got some level of mental illness going on, but I also think “why Charlie Kirk?” is going to be answered by his ideology.
That’s only if you put your own self-interest ahead of your ideology and your own definition of the good of whatever group you see yourself as part of. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that people who kill for a cause are inherently irrational, if only because the vast majority of killings throughout history were for that reason.
In other words, killing Kirk because he’s a space alien would be irrational. Killing him because he’s your enemy? Not necessarily irrational.
And Shapiro just cancelled a book tour. He would be a logical target if someone wanted to copycat.
Well yeah. Though Fuentes probably wasn’t a fan of Kirk, he almost definitely didn’t want to be in the middle of what’s shaping up to be a gang war between extremist factions. Fuentes was never a soldier, always a grifter, and he’d much prefer the grifting to fighting.
Von Stauffenberg had an escape plan. He was not in the room when the bomb exploded. Unfortunately, someone had moved it, and the assassination attempt was unsuccessful.
You don’t see that von Stauffenberg was a reductio ad absurdum?
For sure, I agree, but what makes it irrational is that neither the Groypers nor the Far Left (the two ideological camps that were presented as possibly motivated for a “rational” assassination) are engaged in that kind of war with Kirk or his followers.
This is an ideological battle, not open warfare. In that context, sacrificing yourself to take out Kirk is the height of idiocy.
If a Civil War II broke out and Kirk was leading a brigade from Arizona to California, assassinating him would make sense. Even if he was back in the Neo-Confederate Heartland raising troops and coordinating logistics, it may very well make sense. But that’s not the world we live in; and having such a poor grasp of the reality of the situation that you act in such an inappropriate way is the irrational part.
Ok, cool, so you also agree that it was an irrelevant and pointless example.
Sacrificing a pawn to take out a bishop is rational, even if you’re the pawn.
Yeah, but I think to @Babale ‘s point, it’s the mentally deranged adherents who elevate this to a shooting war.
During the last speaking tour, they asked difficult questions.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/editorials/the-groyper-rebellion/
Please, continue to try to support the argument that the evidence that Kirk’s assassin was mentally ill is that he assassinated Kirk.