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Should Conservatives Have Turned Kyle Kashuv Into Our Own David Hogg?
Over at Vox, Jane Coaston has a thoughtful and in-depth profile of Parkland student and survivor Kyle Kashuv. Kashuv is likely familiar to Ricochet readers and podcast listeners; we featured him recently on a podcast discussing his experiences and beliefs following the shooting that took the lives of seventeen classmates and left Kashuv himself hiding in a utility closet for two hours.
Kashuv is a thoughtful and highly intelligent teenager, and has made a sincere effort to become familiar with the issues he is discussing. But the question with Kashuv, as with his counterparts on the left, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, is why we are listening in the first place. Being the teenage survivor of a mass shooting does not grant one automatic authority or knowledge about guns; that is true of supporters of the Second Amendment and opponents.
What makes Kashuv valuable is his ability to be a counterpunch to his liberal classmates, who have used their fame since the shooting to start a nationwide gun control movement. Kashuv is articulate and has taken pains to speak to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. He is clearly behaving in a more even-handed and calm manner than his liberal classmates, who have endeared themselves to the left by calling the NRA and the politicians who support the advocacy group murderers.
In her piece, Coaston correctly pinpoints a point of extreme hypocrisy on our side:
Immediately after the shootings, many on the right decried the teen activists from Parkland, with Fox News’s Todd Starnes calling them “propaganda pawns [used] to peddle a fake news narrative.” But now it seems they have decided that if they can’t beat teenagers lobbying to stop school shootings, they needed to get their own teen.
Disturbingly, our media and our society at large has decided the best way to deal with an event like Parkland is treat children who have experienced extreme trauma to Gladiator treatment. The gun control Left have elevated the profiles of students, putting them at microphones at rallies and on covers of magazines, and the Right has done the same with Kashuv, putting him on our pages, and yes, on our podcasts too. We’ve pitted these children against each other; neglecting to consider how nationwide media exposure would hinder their personal healing after the trauma they experienced.
The conservative movement’s decision to elevate Kashuv is much like its decision to nominate and then elect Donald Trump. The Left decided to make the expert voices on school shootings its teenage victims; and immediately banned any critique of their rhetoric. How can anyone criticize a child who has just been through trauma? Precisely why the gun control Left decided to make these children their spokesmen. In response, the conservative movement have decided to latch onto the only person who could possibly fact-check and criticize Hogg and Gonzalez; a fellow teen survivor of the massacre. If the Left was going to play dirty, so too would the Right, giving them a taste of their own medicine. While Trump and Kashuv employ different rhetoric, the fact remains Kashuv is the only spokesman for supporters of the Second Amendment with whom the Left cannot argue, as per their rules about Hogg and Gonzalez.
The elevation of Trump and Kashuv is a troubling sign for our political rhetoric: the Right feels the need to have a defensive lineman in the form of a bully or the child survivor of a massacre, respectively. That is not without justification; the Left has given plenty of reasons for the Right to feel as though they are being ganged up on in the public square.
If we want our politics to be better — and we should — both sides need to recognize the reasons for and ramifications of the decision both sides made turning these child survivors into their own personal Gladiators, battling each other in the media since the moment they survived a mass shooting in the halls of their own school.
Published in Guns
They started it!
To answer your question: No.
I rolled my eyes when I saw that they were having him on. Conservative kids should be vocal in their schools, organize counter-protests, or advocate for some counter-balance to all this liberal nonsense, but that should be the end of it.
If what we say about Hogg is correct (and it is), regarding the ignorance of youth (etc…), then it is true even when youth happens to affirm the correct views.
As for the substance of your post, I couldn’t agree more!
Come again?
First, let me complain to those in the “movement” that making these decisions without notifying the rest of us as to the time and place of the meeting is just rude.
Ok. Snark off. Exactly who is doing the elevating? Can we name names? We know who’s behind the gun grabbers. The Soros groups, Bloomberg’s Everytown, the presidents of the network news divisions, et. al.. So, exactly who is doing the elevating on the right? Ben Shapiro? The Yeti? The NRA? Do they have secret handshakes and decoder rings? Ok. Yeah. The snark came back. Because I guarantee you the people with the power to elevate Kashuv are not the same people who elected Donald Trump, since conservative media was almost universally aligned against him.
Bethany isn’t saying that “conservative media” elevated Kashuv, although a lot of it did. She said it’s “much like” the decision to nominate and elect Trump. “Conservative media” didn’t give Kashuv the Twitter following that he now has. That’s the result of a lot of people wanting exactly what Bethany said – a counterweight to Hogg and Gonzalez.
That said, I agree with Bethany that it’s hypocritical to say the left shouldn’t be pushing their teenage supporters front and center when we do the exact same thing. All the kids have the right to think what they want and say what they think, but we should treat them like every other kid and not force the spotlight onto them.
I agree teenage political muppets is probably not a good development for our national discourse, but here we are.
Afternoon Bethany,
We have seen a variation of this in the testimony of John Kerry concerning his fellow soldiers in the Vietnam War. He presented his fellow soldiers as brutal cold-blooded killers and his country as morally culpable in the war. Mr. Hogg says gun owners enabled the killing and the NRA and politicians who support NRA positions have blood on their hands. John Kerry’s positions became the “truth”. How do we prevent Mr. Hogg’s position from becoming the “truth”? The tough question politics poses, is, how is one, or a society to respond to being defamed and lied about? Can we imagine that we would allow our family to be defamed or slandered without fighting back, I doubt it, nor would we hesitate to fire back with strong emotional replies, and not some polite reply. To me when we allow our society to be defamed, or our fellow citizens to be slandered for political purposes and to respond by saying if I get in their face I will sink to their level is a type of passive response we would never have if our family (or something we really cared about) were slandered. In the political arena, passive, philosophical responses are not persuasive, however there seem to be many who would rather loose politically/culturally, than to be seen as impolite.
Why?
No, we dont need ‘our’ own version of David Hogg – and neither do ‘they’.
If the survivors of a infamous crime are to be interviewed on TV, I would much rather it be about the crime they survived, rather than the public policies around the crime.
I object to the premise of the question, but the short answer is “yes.” What is the role of alternative media, if not to amplify the voices of people like Kashuv? While it’s true that they should not use Kashuv, as the Left has used Hogg, to peddle unconscionable lies, or undermine fundamental rights; it’s equally true that alternative media sources should take the opportunity of someone like Kyle Kashuv to point out that young people don’t univocally support the post-Parkland gun-ban hysteria.
If some conservative outlets have gone too far, or taken advantage of Kashuv, we can criticize them. That doesn’t mean they should all ignore someone who wants to voice a different opinion than Hogg and Co.
For the same reason that we rightly disregard teenagers and college students who choose to protest on a wide array of issues they know little to nothing about. I’m happy to teach my (hopefully) conservative kids to stand up for themselves and to counterpunch if they feel like they’re schools are pushing hard in a direction they don’t agree with… but primarily, I’ll be teaching them that the primary lesson they need to learn is the one that gives them a deep understanding of just how little they know. School is to absorb and digest and to grow; you don’t walk into it a complete creature, and you don’t even emerge from it a complete creature. Humility is a virtue that conservatives would do well to keep at the forefront of our political philosophy.
Kashuv seems like a nice bright kid, regardless of his position on gun control, he is likable or at least not unlikable.
To the gun rights side’s huge advantage the gun grabbers have made the enormous blunder of choosing the obnoxious, surly, thoroughly unlikable David Hogg as the face of the movement.
Putting anybody up as a counter to Hogg will redound to the benefit of what ever side Hogg is not on.
The flagship podcast had him on a month ago, and this was Blue Yeti’s answer to why he was on.
We do?
I agree with Ryan, kids aren’t props. They need to grow up and gain some wisdom before they start telling the rest of us what to do.
This is just so ageist!
Yep
Briefly, no, it’s a bad idea to play the left’s game in this, for two reasons. First, it can harm the subject by putting him in this position. Even if he sought it out, we shouldn’t be doing that.
Second, it’s a form of emotional blackmail. I don’t like it when the left does it, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when the right does it. More to the point, the left is largely immune to blackmail of this sort. It’s fruitless.
Unfortunately, the left makes the rules. Either play by them or resign the game.
Actually no. The election of Trump demonstrates that you need not accept the premise.
They may set the rules, but by talking directly to the voters, on the issues they care about, you can overcome the slings and arrows of outrage that the media will launch.
You can best overcome the slings and arrows of outrage from the media by using the media to launch slings and arrows of your own. As young master Kashuv is doing.
or ignore the game. This is one that we don’t have to play.
Imagine a courtroom. If the prosecution puts Richard Simmons on the stand as an expert witness, that doesn’t mean I have to find my own eccentric 1980’s fitness guru to counter his points. I can ignore the clown and put on my case.
Not everything is a game, and not every game is a game that must be played.
You can ignore the clown. But if the jury doesn’t, you’re in trouble.
No. The decision to nominate and elect Trump was the result of a deliberate process – debates, primary votes, convention, general election. What part of that happened to Kashuv?
There are “decisions” and there are “developments.” One is controlled, one is not. She may not like Trump in the White House and she may not like the elevation of these children on the national stage. But the fact that one may dislike them with equal measure does not make them equivalent events.
Yeah the media had nothing to do with Trumps rise.
I’m not comfortable with this.
My son is learning about Timothy right now… The guy in the Bible who Paul writes 2 letters to. In one of those letters, he encourages Timothy – do not let others look down on you because of your youth! Instead, study to show yourself approved – a workman that needs not to be ashamed.
I have been open with my son about the shooting (he’s nine) and tonight we talked about Hogg and Timothy. It isn’t Hogg’s youth that is the problem! It is his ignorance! He is poorly educated on this subject! He is wrong on many facts. He has not studied, but opens his mouth anyway.
If Kashuv studies and becomes informed, knows his arguments and what he is arguing for, then he should be heard and he should not fear being tested.
Wisdom is not just for the old who have made mistakes and learned from them. It is also for the young who listen to the old and take the old’s lessons to heart.
It isn’t about their youth.
They may have supplied the medium but it was ultimately the message that won out. Still, it was part of the electoral process. Again, just because you hate “Y” and “X” equally does not make them equivalent. People voted for Donald Trump. They are not voting for Kyle Kashuv.
You and Mrs. Mandel misjudge the situation, by ignoring the differences between Hogg and Kashuv, and the media courtship of the two.
Hogg, and other students, were invited to make wildly inaccurate statements on the air, even accusing people of terrorism and blood-guilt. At least one of the media figures involved later admitted they had allowed anti-gun students to get away with such misrepresentations. They were also encouraged to lead a mass movement against the fundamental right to bear arms, and to attempt the destruction of a media figure, for a rather mild (if misguided) attack on Hogg’s character. The Left encouraged him to channel his feelings about the massacre of his classmates into blind rage against political opponents.
For what it’s worth, I think the adulation of Kyle Kashuv has been a bit much. But has alternative media used him to spew lies and slanders they know they can’t get away with? Did they use him for emotional blackmail, or to try and take away fundamental rights? Did they encourage him to blame the murders on unrelated scapegoats?
I remember thinking during the initial Hogg onslaught that one day his usefulness to the Left would be over, and when it was he would crash and crash hard. I don’t want that to happen to Kyle Kashuv — not for a momentary advantage in the media wars. Let the kid be a kid for a little while longer. Don’t ignore him, but don’t hype him into a bad place.