In a now famous appearance, Jon Stewart appeared on the CNN show Crossfire with the expressed purpose of getting the show cancelled. Crossfire was a show based around debating politics and discussing the two presidential candidates for the 2004 election. He accused the show of ‘hurting America’ and told the two hosts, Paul Begala and a dreadfully young bowtie wearing Tucker Carlson that the show was bad. Begala’s defence is that Crossfire is a debate show to which Stewart tells him: “that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that’s like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition… Now, this is theatre. It’s obvious.”
In a shocking turn of events, Stewart was successful in his mission. The next year the show was cancelled with the President of CNN giving Stewart credit for influencing the decision as he stated, “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon’s overall premise.” However, the legacy of shows like Crossfire has hung over the head of political discourse ever since. While we live in a post-Crossfire world, we do not live in one that has truly moved past it.
A recent article written by Ezra Klein about deceased podcaster and debater Charlie Kirk claimed that Kirk did ‘politics the right way,’ in that he engaged in fair and civil debates with people of opposing viewpoints. Klein writes: “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.” Klein clearly has a respect for Kirk’s project as he calls Kirk ‘one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.’ However, as Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in a response piece, Klein refrains from quoting any of Kirk’s supposedly persuasive rhetoric.
Coates’ article is the inverse of Klein’s in that the words of Charlie Kirk are given a chance to stand on their own. Those paying attention to the media’s framing around Kirk’s death without having experienced the man’s viewpoints themselves would be shocked reading this article. They would discover that he had once claimed a Kamala Harris presidency had to be avoided since she wanted to ‘kidnap your child via the trans agency.’ Coates puts it plainly: ‘claims of Kirk’s “civility” are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks”’. Don’t be mistaken, Kirk’s bigotry was not limited to the LGBTQ+ community, but unfortunately we only have so much time. Point being, respecting Kirk as a political commentator feels absurd when his commentary includes far right conspiracies such as the Great Replacement theory but more than that, it misunderstands what Kirk contributed to political discourse.
Kirk’s favourite genre of opponent was that of the liberal college student. ‘Owning the libs’ on their own turf, Kirk’s mission was to dominate. He was pushing an agenda, creating viral clips where underprepared young people tried to debate him and whilst talking over them, making bad faith arguments and often relying on misinformation to back up his claims. Kirk did not believe in the validity of an opposing viewpoint. Instead, the point of these debates was to create another form of theatre under the illusion of ‘debate.’
Sally Rooney’s essay, “Even if you beat me,” reflects on her time as a competitive debater after having been the number one debater in Europe when she was twenty-two. When describing the experience of competitive debating she states: “Competitive debating takes argument’s essential features and reimagines them as a game. For the purposes of this game, the emotional or relational aspects of argument are superfluous, and at the end there are winners.” The game-like quality is what turned Rooney off debating. When Kirk debated, his table would always have the words ‘prove me wrong’ written on a sign in front of it. In other terms, ‘try and beat me.’ It creates a false basis that Kirk needed to be proven wrong, that a failure to beat him meant he was right. It is often the case that no one remembers what points were made, only who ‘won’ the debate. Kirk was using these viral clips of him ‘owning the libs’ to validate himself as a political speaker and in turn validate his viewpoints.
Ultimately, a disingenuousness has taken root in the practice of debating. The belief that debating is a battle of ideas and that the truest, most well supported and well-reasoned idea will win has been proven to be a fantasy. The function of debating is supposed to be sharing opposing viewpoints and reaching a common ground, except the word ‘opposition’ leads debaters to see their interlocutors as their enemies. My version of ‘truth’ will not compare to your version but rather my ‘truth’ will kill yours, bomb it out of existence with verbal artillery. When my truth kills your truth, it becomes the truth.
No, Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die. However, when we eulogise him, we cannot in good conscience say that he was an ‘effective practitioner of persuasion’ when his version of debating was misdirection and displays of force. He was a propagandist. After Carlson’s departure from CNN, he became most famous for his show Tucker Carlson Tonight. A former white supremacist once claimed that his white supremacist family watched the show twice because “they feel that he is making the white supremacist talking points better than they have, and they’re trying to get some tips.” Carlson spoke at Charlie Kirk’s memorial where he likened Kirk to Jesus telling the truth about people in power. Carlson’s politics were aligned with Kirk’s. The question becomes, if Carlson’s show can be understood as white supremacist propaganda, is the only difference between him and Charlie Kirk that someone who disagreed with Kirk happened to be standing across from him while he was speaking? Does that make it a debate?
