FILE PHOTO: Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder, puts on a MAGA hat during the AmericaFest 2024 conference sponsored by conservative group Turning Point in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. December 19, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo
Right-wing media outlets are full of MAGA Republicans who only talk to other MAGA Republicans and never venture outside the MAGA bubble.
But the late MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk is remembered for debating his critics — from liberals and conservatives to Never Trump conservatives — on college campuses. And he was fond of saying "Prove me wrong" and "debate me."
In an article published by Salon on September 17, researcher/author Katherine Kelaidis examines what she calls "debate-me bros" — and argues that they aren't really interested in having a true "conversation" or dialogue.
"In fact, hardly anyone on the right or the left is engaging in real civic dialogue, and it’s one of the reasons our democracy is now in crisis," writes Kelaidis, a researcher at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in the UK. "As Kirk's one-time mentor, former GOP Rep. Joe Walsh, wrote after his death, Kirk was a provocateur. Despite his invitations to 'debate me' and 'prove me wrong,' he was not interested in a conversation."
Kelaidis adds, "Kirk was instead the godfather of the 'debate-me' bros — purveyors of a prevalent internet-based entertainment format that, in an era nearly void of substantive debate, is too often passed off as such."
According to Kelaidis, the "prove-me-wrong blueprint" that Kirk was known for "first emerged on YouTube in the early 2010s.
"Debate-me bros are selling entertainment," Kelaidis argues. "They're not really interested in public policy. This means they only talk about emotionally-driven culture- war topics to juice their viewer numbers. Race, religion and the rights of LGBTQ people and women dominate the format. There is no Jubilee video, for example, on municipal transportation infrastructure or protecting public drinking water."
The researcher/author continues, "Such omissions are intentional. While those are essential topics of our common life, they aren't very entertaining — and they're certainly not emotionally triggering…. The debate-me bros are people who have been largely shut out of the places where actual highbrow debate and dialogue occur: traditional media, university classrooms, conferences and debating societies, and the elite dinner tables and parties that once-dominated intellectual life. They are also smart enough to know they are unlikely to be invited to join these spaces."
Katherine Kelaidis' full article for Salon is available at this link.