Unless you live entirely off-grid, or never read the news, you will doubtless have heard about the assassination of Conservative pundit Charlie Kirk. His shooting shocked many around the world, but it didn't surprise me at all. As a MAP, I've seen the extent to which people can be demonized, and how their voices can be drowned out entirely, with both the right and the left more or less equally to blame. When a person feels they have no voice, what are they to do? Many will suffer in silence, perhaps become a recluse. Others will grow bitter, possibly lashing out from time to time. For a very small number of people, the response can be altogether more violent.

In this article, I will discuss political violence in light of the effective collapse of peaceful political participation. I will look at it from both a MAP and non-MAP perspective. It's important to remember that this is a nihilistic philosophical discussion, and I don't want readers actually going out and engaging in political violence. If you feel you may be unable to distinguish between theoretical discussion and a call to action, please do not proceed with this article.

The meaninglessness of 'free speech' in 2025

Hunter Kozak, the last person to debate Charlie Kirk, is the dead man's political polar opposite. Kozak is a staunch supporter of BLM, LGBT+ rights, and Ukraine, a far cry from Kirk's white nationalist Christian conservatism. However, the two men did share a cherished value: the absolutism of free speech. Kirk said the most disgusting things about certain groups, and his words may have radicalized young people on the right, but he never outright called for violence. To Kozak, who was distraught over the shooting of Kirk, this is a crucial distinction.

The unfortunate reality is that universal free speech is meaningless for the majority of people, and even unavailable to some. For mainstream views - and that now includes support of racial equality and all letters of the alphabet excluding 'P' - one may freely scribble away on social media to an audience of zombified Gen Z'ers, burned out millennials, and lead-poisoned grandpas. But unless you're famous, nobody cares about what you have to say; your voice will be diluted and drowned out against the deafening noise. And then for MAPs like myself, social media sites will allow people to slander you endlessly to their heart's desire, even to advocate outright violence, but censor you should you even dare to issue the slightest defense. A good example of this is the Bluesky MAP controversy. In November 2024, in the midst of a cultural and political war that painted the left-wing social network as a haven for 'pedophiles', Bluesky mass-deleted accounts of anyone identifying as a MAP. It is vital to note these were not accounts posting criminalized images of minors or inciting criminalized behavior; merely identifying as a person with a MAP sexuality was sufficient. A hypothetical comment suggesting that MAPs shouldn't be raped and tortured to death would likely have led to a ban. At the same time, posts advocating graphic violence against MAPs were allowed to remain, including those stating that MAPs are not human and should be murdered. Of course, Bluesky is a private company, and they don't have to allow any content they don't like. Nonetheless, when every platform in existence bans MAPs' rights to defend themselves publicly, the result is the same as if the state itself had banned their speech. In practice, MAPs have no right to speak. Peaceful debate is not possible.

Even those less disenfranchized, and out there participating in old-fashioned face-to-face debates, are not really able to express themselves as effectively as the public are led to believe. When Kozak showed up to debate Kirk, it was far from a level playing field. Kirk's open debates were a lie; carefully choreographed, all questions were screened and participants were not allowed to pick up the microphone. This gave Kirk total control over the debate. He had the ability to shut people off when he wanted, allowing him to dodge retorts, make false statements, and shift the narrative as he liked. For his debate partners, they would be politically mute after the event, unable to fact check Kirk publicly. On the other hand, Kirk could easily share his thoughts with millions after the debate, utilizing footage of the 'open discussion' to propagandarize at will.

Of course, there has always been an uneven playing field in the arena of political expression. If anything, the internet has actually given regular people a greater ability to express themselves than ever before. This unfortunately does not translate to greater effective free speech, even for those who are not censored to an extreme like MAPs. Sites such as Facebook and Instagram - which people are forced to use to access information on local events, jobs, and other essentials - require accounts for the most basic of features. Their inescapable algorithms then push people into echo chambers, even if a person would rather see a diverse range of content. The users of these echo chambers are heavily biased in one way or another, even antagonistic toward those who remain neutral and balanced. Users eventually end up communicating only with people who already share their views, taking on increasingly extreme positions in order to 'belong'. For those who challenge the extreme views of social media communities - whether they be on Facebook, on Reddit, or wherever - a ban can be expected. Actual debates, or even polite discussions, are never had. So while the internet did offer an excellent opportunity for open debate and discussion, the tech monsters who rule it have rendered it thoroughly useless for this purpose. Instead, its echo chambers have made people more extreme and fractured.

The death of free speech in the UK

All of the problems above apply equally to the UK. But as the world has focused on the Trump administration's offline misdeeds, they have mostly ignored the UK's aggressive attacks on peaceful protestors.

In June, a major non-violent protest group called Palestine Action broke into a major British airbase, damaging two military aircraft that were used to support Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people. The response from the British government was shocking. Despite assurances from Tony Blair's Labour government that their anti-terror legal framework would never be used against non-violent protestors, the current Labour government proscribed Palestine Action a terrorist organization, putting them on a legal footing equivalent to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This was possible because the UK's anti-terror laws, like many pushed through parliament, are intentionally vague, adding to the toolkit of an oppressive nation that hides behind the charm of royal pomp and afternoon tea. The response from the British public was surprisingly vigorous, and the crackdown an enormous embarrassment. Thousands of people protested peacefully, holding placards expressing support of Palestine Action and opposition to genocide. One such protest in September led to more than 800 arrests, many of them grandmas. Other people have been threatened by police over merely expressing support for Palestine, not Palestine Action.

Not content to wipe out the scourge of placard-wielding pensioners, the UK has been hard at work arresting social media users over trivially annoying or offensive messages. People have been carted off to the cop shop merely for retweeting misleading content, and even for making comments critical of a school in a WhatsApp messenger group. Video footage shows one man being arrested for what he described as an 'anti-Hamas' meme; in reality the meme was a little nastier than that, and the man is obviously a massive asshole, but acting like a 13 year old edgelord should not be a crime.

"When the talking stops..."

The inability to have healthy debates, and to be listened to, has historically resulted in violence. No matter how many extreme terror laws western governments may pass, and no matter how civilized a society may claim to be, this reality will never be overcome.

As explained above, Charlie Kirk claimed to champion free speech, but his sparring partners were never on an equal footing. And on the other side of the Atlantic, the UK's Labour Party promised the public that terror laws would never be used against peaceful protestors, yet a Labour government is now using those laws against grandmas. The state of online speech isn't any better, whether it's social media networks forcing people into echo chambers and banning them for nothing more than stating their sexual orientation, or supposedly 'liberal' governments arresting people for posting edgy memes or criticizing their daughter's school.

So what is left when the ability to have healthy discussions dies, and the push toward fractured communities intensifies ever more? For most people, the results will not be too extreme. They will be angrier, perhaps more of a dick at work, or less friendly with their neighbors. But there will be some people who react more viscerally; those who have suffered great trauma, who are mentally unstable, or who simply have problems with impulse control.

Of course, there are very real consequences to more extreme reactions; such consequences are ostensibly the purpose of the anti-terror laws currently being weaponized against placard-holders. However, as the line between terrorist and peaceful protestor is rendered unclear by the government, crossing that line feels like much less of a leap. As illogical as it may be, there are definitely people who will ascribe the notion of 'in for a penny' to their chosen response.

My thoughts as a MAP

While free speech is dying for the majority, it is virtually non-existent for MAPs. Social media platforms will ban a MAP for doing nothing but exist, while comments calling for murder on the basis of their feelings are deemed acceptable. Punching elderly MAPs in the face, attacking MAPs with hammers, and hunting MAPs with crossbows? That kind of content is extremely popular. When the Irish police did arrest someone for attacking a MAP with a crossbow, they criticized the attacker only on the grounds that such behavior impedes ongoing cases and risks hurting innocent people; in other words, if someone is a MAP, their brutally violent assault and dehumanization is very much deserved. Perhaps that's why it has just happened again in England. Rather than being violent rapists, most of the victims of these violent attacks had done nothing but flirt with a hairy dude cosplaying as a minor. As far as anyone knew, they didn't have any actual victims. And yet violence toward them is fine, implicitly endorsed by social media platforms and even the government. What message does that send about the use of violence? Apparently, it's all good if the victim belongs to a stigmatized minority.

The reality is that most people enjoy bullying and torturing MAPs, and not to protect children, but out of hatred or for pleasure. The concept of 'harm' is something used to justify their blood sport; thus, AI images generated entirely by a computer are 'harmful', the thoughts in one's head are 'harmful', even merely existing is 'harmful'. Much of the MAP hysteria has come from the US and the UK, countries ruled by the descendants of men who lynched 'n------s' and cut off the arms of colonial subjects. They're no better now than they ever were; their pathetic excuses are simply remodeled for the 21st century. And when MAPs are imprisoned for crimes that have not actually harmed a child in the real sense of the word - merely offended people who aren't willing to accept that they are intolerant pieces of shit - this too is a kind of violence, one which is absolutely rampant. The fact that the sentences are endorsed by kangaroo courts means nothing when the laws are fundamentally unjust.

Following attacks on a Jewish synagogue in the UK earlier this week, the Bishop of Manchester stated that people shouldn't allow aggressive rhetoric to "get ahead of [their] humanity". Unfortunately, this assumes that everyone is afforded such humanity, and MAPs simply are not. MAPs are state-sanctioned non-humans to be hunted with crossbows. Against this incredibly bleak backdrop, they could be forgiven for asking whether they have any moral obligation to follow 'human' laws and standards of behavior in general. To make matters worse, accessing safe and affordable mental health support is virtually impossible; therapists are likely to report MAPs to police or social workers, sometimes even if a crime hasn't been disclosed.

Western countries have a long history of torturing their subjects to the brink, and then hysterically falling to their knees, crying "how could this happen?!" when the oppressed group retaliates. We saw it with the 9/11 attacks, a result of years of vile behavior by America in the middle east. We saw it also with the 7/7 attacks in the UK, following Britain's brutal and unlawful invasion of Iraq. Now, I'm not going to argue that these attacks were justified or in any way helpful, but they were predictable. My most controversial essay, The Push, argued that MAPs too are increasingly being pushed toward socially harmful outcomes, including violence. Since then, we've witnessed an attempted mass murder by the young MAP Nicholas Prosper, and the shooting of two police officers by a man being served a warrant for sexual activity with an underage girl. It will inevitably keep happening until the bullying of MAPs ceases, which is quite a pity because the vast majority of MAPs just want to be left alone to live peaceful lives. Indeed, Mu's survey of the MAP community in 2024 revealed that far from being sadistic predators, most MAPs are incredibly kind and gentle toward children, arguably less 'predatorial' than your average adult-attracted man.

Conclusion

Political violence isn't a good thing, nor is it effective in the modern era. The Kirk shooting triggered a backlash against the groups that were labeled responsible, and even to those merely adjacent. While I don't want people to take up arms, I do want people to be honest with themselves about the social reality. We don't live in an enlightened Disney-like world of social harmony, love, and peace. Free speech is being eviscerated, dehumanization is well and truly alive, and the actual causes of extremism are ignored in favor of crocodile tears and endless finger-pointing. And for some people, like the MAP community that I represent, peaceful participation remains a distant fantasy. The world is a horrible and corrosive mess, rotting and festering before our very eyes, and the people who could fix it care only about their fucking algorithms, their upcoming elections, or any other iteration of money and power. The worst part? It shows signs only of deteriorating further.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the stark reality to which so many seem blind. I offer no solution, no call to action, not even the faintest glimmer of hope.