Also media, welcome back to it could happen here, a podcast about it happening here, it in this case being an incredibly political shooting.
And the thing that's happening. Garrison and I wading through a river of disinformation and fever dreams to try and pull out some degree of truth and what is a very truth light environment right now? Garrison, how are you doing?
Truth fluid? Certainly truth fluid?
Yeah, that's that's a better way to phrase it.
I have a growing headache that I think grows larger by these.
Second Yeah, just will not will not cease.
I guess you should first discuss how the shooter has been identified and arrested. Yes, we are recording this Friday evening for context.
Yes, early evening. There will be more information on the shooter and on the shooting by the time you listen
to this. We may include an update at the end, but we will be talking about stuff that is timeless, as in things that we know are false or true at the moment, and just generally our ethics on when do we feel confident saying a shooting or other kind of attack was left wing or right wing or something else, like, when do we feel confident in making those judgments and why, because those are really relevant topics and a lot of people just kind of go with what seems right based
on the flow of info their hearing, which is how disinformation spreads. So the last time we would have talked about this would be the ed episode that came out. What was that Friday Garrison.
Yeah, Thursday night, Friday morning, and basically right after we covered that, early in the morning on Friday, President Trump was doing a media appearance on Fox News and he was the person who announced that they had a suspect in custody.
They were pretty sure was it. Obviously, since the FBI had given the wrong accuse the wrong person at least twice of doing this, people weren't sure if that meant anything. But it did come out very soon after that that a young man had essentially confessed to his father, who negotiated him turning himself into the authorities. This young man is Tyler Robinson. He was born and raised in Utah. I think, as far as we know, I woke up in the middle of the night right as his name
came out. I don't know why. It was weird, and so I just immediately started looking at the social media for his family, because I was able to find his mom and his dad's Facebook.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
So I can tell you, and this is something you'll find in the reporting. He came from a pretty normal Utah family, politically conservative. That's based on articles I've seen, we interviewing people who know the family, and just based on publicly available information.
Grunt style T shirt wearing father right.
He dressed as Donald Trump. It's seemingly in a positive fashion for Halloween one year. His family were pretty a very normal Utah family. I found posts where they took pictures in camping with their RVs, going out hunting. He was hunting from a young age, access to firearms from a young age, including like assault style weapons from a young age, again very common for Utah. And yeah, his family hunted and fished, and he seems to have been
a very normal kid in that regard. Kind of the thing that I found when I was doing my first dive into this that I thought was worthwhile, and the one thing that I really pulled out of that to share with people was in twenty eighteen, he dressed as a meme for Halloween and the specific meme was this meme that is not inherently political, but is one that this group of far right people who follow a guy named Nick Fuint has called the gropers like, which doesn't
mean that he was signaling to that, because again, like all of this stuff, it's not just the gropers who like this squatting slav guy meme. That's what he dressed as. If you've seen this meme of like the squatting Slavic guy in a tracksuit with a cigarette and a beer, he dressed like that for Halloween. There's a groper version of that squatting slav guy.
Well, no, there's a Pepe version.
You're right, you're right, I need to be precise. There's a Pepe version and it is a meme that you can find shared in groper spaces, which again does not mean it's a groper meme. And I've seen that mistakenly and really tried to push back on this does not mean he definitely was, but it doesn't mean that he was a very online kid and he traveled in spaces where he would have had access and would have been aware of grouper's and that would have been one chunk
of the online fever. Swamps that he would have been connected to and he would have had access to. We don't yet know at the time we're recording this what he believed or what his motivation was. The rething I thought was relevant to publish of this is that, like, okay, we are dealing with an extremely online weirdo, right. And immediately after that it came out exactly what was carved
onto the bullets that he had shot. And this was relevant in part because yesterday, the first day of news that we had about the bullets, the immediate claim that was leaked to Stephen Crowder through a source of his in the ATF, was that trans symbols had been carved onto the bullets. That was not accurate. If you want some levity from this whole scene, listening to the sheriff, oh God, giving the press conference, read the things he carved onto these bullets.
We should just include some of those clips here.
We'll put it in here.
Inscriptions on a fired casing read notices, bulge's capital, wo, what's this question mark? Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read hey, fascist, exclamation point, catch, exclamation point, up arrow symbol, right arrow and symbol, and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing read oh bellichow bellachow, bellachow chow chow, and a third unfired casing.
Read if you read this, you are gay. LMAO. Just absolutely outstanding stuff. I mean, hearing a law enforcement officer say that is beautiful. It reminds me of having to explain bitcoin to all of the elderly detectives in West LA when I got a death threat against me. But this is like extremely online gamer nonsense.
Okay, right, yeah, average white male over the online gamer at this point, that's what it looks like. It could have developed in a far right direction, could be developed in a far left direction, could be an ironic centrist, it could be any number of things. There's no single clear indication.
It could be someone who doesn't map easily onto any of these traditional political compasses, Like we don't know at this point. And what's kind of important that and the reason what I thought was really important to get out to people is that there will always be terrorist attacks from It's never even if you want it to just be right wingers, It's never just right wingers hy do domestic terrorism. That's never been the case, and it never
will be the case. And one of the things that we're seeing and we will increasingly see, is that even while there will be varying political motivations behind different attacks, the language that people who are carrying out attacks like this use is all kind of coming to a point together. Right. They all have more in common with the way they mesasage. The christ Church shooter and this kid both found the need to put memes onto the weapons they were using.
Inscribe the Internet exactly onto tools of killing, mechanisms of death, right, literally inscribing the Internet onto tools of death. That is a thing both of them did. Yeah, maybe for wildly different reasons. Maybe this guy was coming from a left wing perspective, right, We just don't know.
But this is where it's all coalescing around, and.
I think that is really important to note, right, the way that that happens. Now, again, we wanted to talk about the thing that we can definitely say is disinformation. And one of the first counters to the whole transgender symbols carved onto bullets that came out was people putting up pictures of there's a Turkish manufacturer called Tehran and they make bullets and their logo on the back of
a bullet. If you're not a gun person, every bullet has the logo of the manufacturer, name of the caliber stamped onto the back, right, I mean, just for basic safety reasons, right or nearly every bullet twenty two is
a little too small. But like if you've got like a round a nine millimeter or around a five to five to six or around a thirty at six, which was the caliber he used, apparently on the back of it you'll see the name of the manufacturer and then the caliber stamped in there, right, and so on the back of Turan bullets is stamped tr in And so people started posting online this must be why they thought
what they thought was transgender. That like, they saw a Turan bullet and assumed it was trans And we know that wasn't the case because this was a thirty at six and Taran does not make thirty out six ammunition. We also know this was the case because they have now come out and said what was written on the bullets and what was mistaken for transgender air roads and the thing that was mistaken for transgender arrows was a reference to the video game Hell Divers.
A fucking hell Divers mean.
Yes again very gamer online kid.
Side note, it's not completely clear which bullet casing was attributed to transgender ideology. It could be an interpretation of the arrows, or it could be the notices bulge oh woe casing and on that note, notices bulge oh Woe is not a groper meme. It's a meme making fun of furry sex role playing, which pre dates the existence of gropers by years, and as a meme has since been reclaimed by furries and trans shit posters online or trans only fans creators, or just trans people in general
on the Internet, many of which are also furries. But now we have various types of opposing or overlapping groups of people who use this meme online. It's not a right wing meme just making fun of furries. It is also a meme used by people on the left and furries on the left, and probably furries on the right to and non furries. It's just a general Internet meme.
It's a Reddit tear joke. Now. I will say the Helldiver's meme also gives us kind of are not a clear look, but a look at a possible political motivation. Now it could be ironic in use, It could be just referential in use, but the full hell Diver's referenced bullet reads hey fascist catch, followed by the hell Diver's dpad input for the five hundred kilogram bomb, which is the arrows.
That's the down arrows.
I think up arrow side arrow down down down arrow, which some ATS agent or someone initially thought could have been a reference to the transgender symbol or the three arrows symbol, coupled with the hey fascist section of that reference. The hell Diver's video game does used fascist as a term, but this also could be a more general political reference, either ironic or sincere. By referring to Charlie Kirk as a fascist, we do not know the actual intentionality behind
the reference yet. One thing that's possibly tied to twenty fascism is that another bullet reads bella Chow, bella chow chow chow, misspelling bella chow, which is a popular anti fascist anthem, though the song has more recently also been used by Grouper's and fans of Hearts of Iron four. A diverse political budge, one could say, we have talked about bella Chow on the show before. In fact, we've
used bella Chow on multiple Cool Zone media shows. It was originally an Italian anti fascist song that has since been adopted by anarchists and anti fascists all around the globe. I've heard Bellachow get played on loudspeakers countless times at anti fascist events on the West Coast as well as anarchist events on the East Coast. Though the song has since gained a whole other life through pop culture popularization,
with EDM and like dubstep style remixes going viral. Most normies probably first heard it on the Netflix show Money Heist and has been adopted into gamer culture via its use in Far Cry six and Hearts of Iron four.
Again, could be an anti fascist reference, could be video game shit, could be graper shit. There's just not enough to say at this point.
Or it could be a centrist, a political hodgepodge of that has resulted in this nihilistic outburst of violence similar to some of these like TCC school shootings. Yeah, we don't know, but there's currently a lot of people on the right who thinks it's an antifa super soldier leftist, a lot of people on the left who think this is a nick Fuentes piled groper, and either of those could be true, but neither could be true.
It could be a much weirder third option. We don't have direct evidence to support a full reading of either of those things yet.
And this is when I have seen people get kind of heated about being corrected on, particularly the bullet thing. And I think the reason why is that it seems it seems like such a smoking gotcha. Of course they'd be this stupid you really want it to be true. And it's when you feel like that about a case like this, about an attack like this, that like, oh,
I really want this to be true. It would be really satisfying if this was the thing that had happened, that you need to be most hesitant to embrace that, right. I think that's that's what I'd say.
Absolutely, if it's too good to be true or it feels too convenient, you should introspect greatly.
Yeah, Robert and Garrison will be right back, but first, here's some ads and we're back.
There's been other things that is kind of influencing this political uncertainty. A reporter for the Young Turks only the most reparatable news outlet has claimed on Twitter on Friday afternoon.
Quote.
According to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler robbinsid hey Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn't conservative enough. Robinson reportedly admired Nick Fuentes g O piers are now scrubbing ex posts about Dems faster than doj Orasi's Trump's name from in Epstein files unquote. Yeah, this claim from
David Schuster the report of the Young Turks unsubstantiated. Yes, but it's being spread as as exact fact, and it seems like this claim is most likely misquoting and editorializing from a statement a family member gave to police, which has been described by the governor as a family member and the shooter discussing Charlie Kirk's upcoming visit to UVU campus. They talked about why they didn't like him and viewpoints
he held. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate unquote.
So that has been.
Altered and shifted and interpreted in a lot of different ways to say that the shooter stated Kirk was full of hate in spreading hate, even though that's not what this interview segment necessarily means. Just that quote unquote, they meaning the family member and the shooter didn't like Kirk. And that's really all you can extrapolate from that piece
of this police statement. But it's been spreading, editorialized to me in a wild collection of different things, Yeah, including by people on the right who are interpreting this statement as evidence that the shooter has said that Kirk was spreading hate, even though that's not actually clear from this interview either. No, it says that the family member stated Charlie Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, not the shooter.
And likewise, one of the things I'm seeing spread a lot is a claimed voter registration for Robinson.
A Tyler Robinson in Utah.
Yeah. Again, there's a lot of them.
A lot of Tyler Robinsons in Utah.
The one that is spreading the most has a voter registration date of one to one two thousand and one, which he just simply couldn't have. Now that said, people pointed out that Utah's voter registration is bad, and this does seem like a placeholder that someone put in. But also the county's not right because he didn't live in Lehigh, Utah and that's where this is listed for. I'm not saying this guy definitely wasn't. He may have been a registered Republican, but it looks like we don't have the
information to say that yet. Likewise, there's an article that was published recently in The Guardian where they talked to someone who was a friend of his in high school who said that he was like the only leftist in a family of Republicans and was angry about it.
The exact quote was that Robinson was quote pretty left on everything, the only member of his family that was really leftist ye. The rest of his family was very hard Republican yep. And that Robinson would quote always just be renting and arguing about them.
And it does look CNN is saying that they have found Tyler Robinson's actual voter registration data, and CNN says he's registered as unaffiliated with a political party and is listed as an active, which means he has not voted in either of the two last general elections. So again, there's just nothing, nothing clear we.
Can say, right, Yeah, it's hard to take both this young Turks reporter and a high school friend from four years ago not great sources for someone's current.
Political outlook absolutely not.
And contradictory, so it's really really unclear. Also, this is just one friend. You would want more than one source to substantiate this claim, and perhaps by Sunday night, when this airs, there will will be more information. Quick update on this. Literally minutes after Robert and I recorded, the Guardian retracted those quotes from the shooter's alleged high school classmate,
which described the shooter as a leftist. The source contacted the Guardian again and said that they could not accurately remember the details of their relationship in high school, So the Guardian has pulled those quotes. But certainly right now, the way people have latched on two narratives to satisfy the current emotion little turmoil that people are in because of the hyper reality around this shooting and the possible consequences it could mean for the fate of this whole country.
I understand why people are quick to really hook their version of reality onto these claims. Yes, but currently there is no clear version of reality.
Yeah, and I just want to caution people if you care about knowing reality yourself, And there's two different questions here, right, what is useful, what is valuable? What like protects people and then what gets us closer to the truth. Right.
Part of why as soon as I found that photo of him dressed as a meme for Halloween and recognize the implications of it, I put it up there is because I thought it was relevant that it said something about his background, but also it got discussion, and just people bringing up how complicated this guy's background is did a positive thing, which is a got discussion away from absolutely baseless allegations that this was a transgender terrorist attack. And also its all the kind of shit that had
been spreading on the right right, and that was valuable. However, I've been really careful about not saying this guy is a groyper, even though that sure would be convenient, because again, at the time we're recording this, there's just not that evidence. Every new fact that comes out about this guy right now is wavering in this gray area where, you know, like I one of the other things, when I posted correcting the voter registration card, somebody posted like, okay, but
he donated a Trump's campaign No, he did not. A different guy with his name donated to Donald Trump, the Tyler Robinson, who is currently in custody for shooting. Charlie Kirk has no record of federal election donations, per CNN. Right, these are very convincing when you see them just sort of sliding across your news feed, and if you're not checking up on every new thing you see, it feels like, obviously,
this guy's a right winger. Obviously he's a groper. I've seen so many pieces of evidence when you actually haven't seen any evidence at all, and.
Even those two things can get completed. Right, Saying he's a groper is different than saying he do a right winger. Right Like a groper is a very specific branch alt right slash far right community slash ideology revolving around the America First streamer Nick Fuentes and a collection of memes associated with this movement, which have historically beef with Charlie Kirk for not being sufficiently to the right as some
more openly white premacist neo Nazis have been. This beef between Fuentes and Kirk was largely dissolved after Kirk started adopting more and more far right believes and adopted the Great Replacement theory, which settled down the quote unquote groper war which many people are assuming that this shooting is a part of with some groper Nick Fuentez fan killing Charlie Kirk, possibly as a legitimate part of the quote unquote groper war, but also maybe just as like an
ironic mimetic act. So when you say groper, that should refer to a very specific thing, not necessarily just this guy used right wing memes or these memes aren't even right wing, but like.
No, it could be, but they're not inherently.
This man could be, but they're not inherently nor are they really the main use of this saying Haha, if you read this, you are gay, right, could just be an average overly online male right or on the internet. A lot of people talk like that. A lot of gay people talk like that. A lot of fascists people talk about that.
Is this homophobia or a twenty year old right It.
Could be either or Yeah, and we don't need to just jump to one specific thing to build a singular narrative when a fluid situation is still rapidly unfolding.
Yeah, not if again, you want to feel like and you want to really be better than the other side, who don't give a shit about the truth, who just care about what's convenient and how many people they can get to believe a convenient fact. Right, If you don't want to be that kind of person, if you think that's bad, and I do, and you do, and we all do here at cool Zone, then you do kind of it to yourself to care about stuff like this,
even if it's less convenient. By the way, if you're not an investigator, you don't have to be delving into all this. It's enough to just know the fact that I saw something that looked like evidence this guy donated to a campaign. Do I know that that's him? Do I absolutely know that's him? Because it's possible multiple people have the same name and some of them may have
made a donation or not. Right, don't just pass your eyes over stuff like this and be like, all right, I've done all I need to do, but do purchase from these advertisers and we're back.
One other aspect that people's reaction to the shooting is demonstrating, and we've seen this with other major events, major political events, violent political events the past few years, is how this shows a new fracturing of reality. Because what eventually gets proven about the shooter will probably be insignificant to the narratives that people have already latched onto and have baked
into reality so far. And this conceptual splitting of reality is going to fall squarely along some partisan in political lines. Right conservatives will have a conception of the shooting which differs heavily from the conception of the shooting held by people on the left. Many people on the left are going to believe that this shooter was a groper forever, no matter what comes out in the next few weeks to months, they will have in their version of reality
the idea that this guy was a groper. Similarly, people on the right are going to believe, to the fullest and truest except of their hearts, that this guy was Antifa. The actual reality is going to matter very little compared to these two beliefs. And the killing of Charlie Kirk has mimetic potential for several large, discrete and overlapping online groups. Many different online communities or groups could have encouraged or
influenced this killing. Anti fascists certainly could have Leftists, the groper right could have the four Chan right could have terror Graham could have all different and possible overlapping communities in cell culture. Yeah, irony, poisoned centrists, j RAG nihilists, accelerationists.
A normal garden variety Trumpist Republican who got angry over Epstein stuff could have done this. There's no evidence of that, I'm not saying, but I'm just saying, like there we literally like it could be so many things at this.
Point, and as satisfying as it is to just collapse this guy down to Antifa or Graper.
It's very likely it could just be a third.
Weirder option, be the weirder option, right, especially if you look at the nihilist trend of violence that we've covered on this show, from TCC with ties to other extremist groups, the multiple school shootings that have used nostalgia and online references and references to previous shootings. This could also line
up with that framework. As Robert said, the inscription of memes onto tools of death is a commonality across many of these gruesome acts of violence, from christ Church to the Minneapolis school shooting just a month ago to this assassination in September.
Yeah.
Now, I think it is worth talking about how Gropers and how Nick Fuintes himself has responded to this because that is telling right totally, whether or not this guy is a growper. A lot of gropers have publicly speculated that he is their.
Guy, or people on four Chan have speculated that he is a graper, not your average four Chan user necessarily he's a groper. I think this distinction is also important. That is valid, yes, but yeah, you have seen a lot of people on the right suspected this guy could be a groper. Certainly, some gropers have themselves as well as four Chan users. And Nick Fuentes does seem a little bit nervous, but he could be nervous for a lot of reasons.
But he put out a video.
I watched the entire Nick Fuentes stream last night.
Oh good, thank god.
He was acting a little bizarre, talking very philosophical, almost as if he was like doing ketamine beforehand.
Like he was talking.
About how the structure of society and like a spiritual structure as well, will influence society to cause events to happen which kind of stress test and demonstrate the direction of society going. And he basically talked about the assassination as one of these events of society unfolding itself to determine what path is going to get taken. Our thing is going to get more violent and more divisive, or will this event alter reality's course in a more positive direction.
It was very interesting. He was talking about how he feels some responsibility for the arc that this country has gone on, how he's made a lot of mistakes when he's younger. You could interpret this as trying to pick up new supporters and try to fill in the Charlie Kirk sized hole in the American right, but it's unclear. He was talking quite emotionally about what the past few years of his life have been and.
Again making that comment that I want all of my fans to stand down, etc. It's noteworthy of where Fwind has his head is right, Yeah, and of the media environment he must exist in terms of, like personally what comes to him. And I'm very curious if I could, if I could somehow know everything Nick Fuintes has been texted and been texting over the last seventy two hours. God, that would be fascinating.
He said.
The people on the left were telling him it's his responsibility to try to turn things down, and he was kind of upset about that. Yeah, and during the stream, Fuentes was not discussing the shooter as if the shooter was a groper, or even suspecting the shooter was a groper. Nick telling his audience or whoever listening, to put down your arms and not jump to quick emotional violence was in reference to retaliatory violence against the Left for their
killing of Charlie Kirk. That was the way Twentes was talking about the shooting through the course of this hour long stream. It did not seem to me that he was trying to cover his bases in case the shooter was a groper. That wasn't how he was discussing. He certainly laid a lot of blame on the Left, and he seemed very scared about the direction of the country. Someone showed up with a weapon to his house less than a year ago, and I think some of his
fear is absolutely genuine. It's not just trying to cover his ass in case this guy turns out to be a groper.
No, he's in danger because of the things he did. He invited the danger into his life by being Nick quint As. But he is in danger.
Yeah, yeah, No. It was a very odd stream.
I tuned into nickquint As every once in a while just to keep track of what he was doing, like a healthy person.
It's my job.
I know, I woke up at four am to stock a murderer's family on Facebook. Garrison.
So it was in the first fifteen minutes of the stream where Nick discussed these more theoretical elements, how spiritual or societal forces kind of use people as puppets, not in a like fully end he see way, but as an evolutionary method of charting the path of society. Nick then wents to go on to discuss Charlie Kirk, how he's beefed with Charlie in the past, how they've disagreed on nearly everything, but goes on to say some nice things about Charlie for the first time, and then calls
for everyone to lay down their arms. Now is not the time to jump to quick action. We should reflect, et cetera, et cetera. But in those first fifteen minutes he talks about like what this shooting means for American culture.
And I've been watching some of his other recent streams where he's kind of been going after some of his fans for just being completely like brain dead, just repeating racist tropes with no real thought, just talking about Hitler in this memified way, and it feels like he's sort of reflecting on both what he's done with his life ever since he's been a teenager and the world that
he has helped bring into being. He talks about never having much of an actual sincere or participation in polic how it's always been so bombastic and mimetic, and it appears as if he's kind of stuck doing this bit forever, like he decided that this is what his life was going to be as a teenager, and now he's in his mid twenties, and from these other recent streams, it feels like he's kind of fed up with how his audience is just appearing completely mindless, very Larpee, endlessly repeating
Hitler references, reflection racism, and how he's trapped himself in this political game. And a quote he said is that this is not a game. This is life and death. And as we've just seen, like this is literally life
and death. This is not just online memes anymore. We can't treat politics as an online meme game anymore, because these real life characters are getting killed, they framed a lot of this in very spiritual warfare language, like they killed Charlie for being Christian, or talking about Jesus though stressing to his listeners like Jesus not actually pick up arms and fight. Yeah, and people should calm down and reflect because how the country handles this event will be
heavily deterministic. Yes, in what the country looks like going forward. That's and that's what he was expressing.
Right, Yeah, And I think that that's that's a really important point for people to get across that, like there's there's the immediate battle in front of us, right, which is why it's so tempting sometimes to take the easy Oh, that's this guy was one of theirs. That that means we don't have to keep thinking about it, or it means that we can kind of just like move forward
with this as another right wing attack. And there's a degree to which, you know, it's good just for the rights narrative machine to get upset by the fact that even if it turns out this guy at a left wing motivation, he's weirder and more confusing than they want him to be. And he's not you know, the transgender terrorists they were hoping he.
Would be certainly not trans right to give.
Them permission to do all the fucked up shit they wanted to do. You know, if they need permission, I mean, they seem to feel like they need an excuse.
He Trump creates permission, some of his followers might appreciate permissions.
I guess yeah. One thing that is undeniable is there was an extreme desire from a lot of these guys for this to be tied in with their ongoing attacks on trans people in the left. Totally right, And so I understand even the argument that, like anything that disrupts their narrative train there, even if it winds up not being accurate, there's a value in it. I do understand
that argument. But on a larger thing, if we just care about terrorism and like why people get radicalized to do things and how and understanding these phenomenons.
Like actually understanding how our country is unfolding.
Right, that influence all of our lives, right, And usually usually what happens is not a single guy getting shot for a specific reason, usually a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the grievances expressed getting shot. Right.
That's usually when somebody decides to pick up a gun and go into public because the inner they they got radicalized, usually a bunch of randomness and people die, which is again why it's just really important to try to understand the underlying dynamics, even in a specific case like this, and why I actually do care about the truth here, even though that that's not as convenient maybe as we'd like it to be. I don't know what else, What else do we want to talk about here?
No?
I mean, like, I think this event will be extremely important, yeh. Something that Fuen has talked about is how even if you've never met Kirk, whether you hate Kirk or whether you love Kirk, Kirk has been a parasocial force in probably everyone who's listening to this their lives for years,
and watching him bleed out gruesomely is massively effective. I think the reason why people are reacting to this so much more strongly than the murder of a state senator and her husband is that we did not have a personal relationship with that state senator, nor was there a
video of them gruesomely bleeding out. And people's emotions affect how they understand reality, and the Charlie Kirk murder has been emotionally affecting for a lot of people, both positively and negatively, and it was very graphic, and it's spread around Like watching someone who you know, whether personally or parasocially die on video through the medium in which they gained their fame, is going to be a very large, to use a really bad pun turning point for the USA.
And I think that's part of why everyone's so volatile around this issue, because I think everyone realizes how important this moment will be. Despite the deaths of Palestinian children vastly, vastly outnumber the deaths of one conservative commentator.
Yeah, and you know, like logically we could all say that that's wrong and fucked up, but like you just you know, that's how people work, right, how people work. We all know that's how people work. I'm not saying that's okay, I just you know.
No, but it's it's it's it's the way, it's the way things work.
Yeah, And I don't know, like because again we again still cannot say at this point that there was just a kanity Fair article came out that's kind of repeating some of the Groper stuff. But I looked in my post, is their source on that, So they don't have anything new on the Groper front.
So no, they're just thinking that the squatting Slavs meme is evidence, yeah, tied to the Pepe version of the meme, which is then linked to Groyper, which is a specific type of Pepe, not the skinny Pepe. H.
I'm so tired, Roberts.
I'm really tired. I don't know if this guy liked Nick Flintes. I will say he probably had an opinion about Nick Flintes. He was aware of them. The dude right, like he was that level of online for sure.
Yeah, I mean, which twenty two year old gamer mail doesn't. And that's the thing, right exactly.
Again, It's like I was talking about when before we knew who it was, when we just had the video, because I did accurately anticipate that it was someone who learned how to shoot through hunting with a bolt action rifle. That's just what the shot looked like to me when I saw it, Yeah, which wound up being accurate. And there were a lot of people who were like questioning that on the grounds of like, well, though this had to be like a train sniper or something like that, and it's like.
This looks like a professional hit to me, Robert, or no, a MASAD agent either.
Or yeah, like no, literally, all we knew is that it was somebody who was able to like competent with a firearm.
That's all you could say.
And probably it was not a semi automatic because people in stressful situations, if they can usually keep shooting, right.
They would have hired more than one shot.
And was like, yeah, yeah, that's all. That's all we could say, which narrowed it down to everyone in Utah. Like like that's when I try to emphasize this, that like what I can say from this is that anyone in Utah could have shot Charlie Kirk at that point, and sure enough it turned out being almost.
Like average twenty two year old Utonian. Yeah, you've.
Positive normal Utah kid, that's what this guy looks like so far.
Yeah, and yeah, there's a lot of like semi racist or semi misogynist gamers out there. They're not necessarily grapers, right, And we don't even know how racist this guy was. There's no indication one way or another. He certainly had an awareness of online culture, but everyone who makes a hell divers two reference is going to have a pretty large awareness of online culture, and that does not indicate what his quote unquote beliefs are, just an awareness and an existence within that culture.
Yep. Well, I can't think of anything else to say at the moment about this. It's unclear to me the degree to which this has shifted the national discourse on it. I have seen it looks like the way in which the conservatives are talking about this guy in the shooting, it looks like they have changed, at least some of them, because it's less clear at least the number of people right we're seeing.
The Groper counter narrative has introduced doubt, which will influence some conservatives understanding of the shooting. Others will keep hitting and that leftist antifa line. I have seen certain people claim that the Groper narrative is even changing the way Trump talks about the shooting because Trump is not referencing Charlie Kirk as much or is avoiding questions about how he feeling in regards to Kirk's death. Yeah, Trump has never cared about Charlie Kirk. Okay Vance certainly has. He's
like closer to like Dvance's orbit. But Donald Trump doesn't give a single fuck about Charlie Kirk. Absolutely not this little, this little puny man, Like, no, Trump does not care. It makes sense that one asked how Trump feels about about Charlie Kirk's as and and and if he's feeling okay, He's like, yeah, I feel fine. What I'm really excited
about is that we're constructing the new White House ball Rose. Yeah, Like that's not indication that Trump's been told that this guy's actually a rightist and now has to not talk about how the left is ruining the country. Now, it's that Trump does not care about Arliekark that much. And it's been a few days, so yeah, he's gonna move on.
Yeah, And that's you know, if you're wanting to game theory this out of the ethics of just muddying the waters to disrupt their momentum, well there's an argument to be made there.
I can see that. I can see the utility in that.
Yeah.
My utility is, I would say, at the very least equal to that.
Right.
That's having an accurate understanding.
I want to know what happened to the world to.
Predict future trends and like understand the trajectory of political violence in the United States. Yeah, and that's what my interest in stressing evidentiary standards for understanding the motivations behind this attack and the online communities and cultures that this attack has emerged from.
Right. And I would say, if you're looking in your own life, how can I tell which side of things I'm on? Just imagine everything was reversed in the case where, like you think, this is really clear evidence that this person was motivated by whoever you hate the most, and that whatever ideology you hate is why they did it. If it were the opposite and the same level of evidence was being used to accuse someone who was on your side of things, would you consider the evidence presented enough? Right?
And That's where what I'm looking at is, I have not seen enough evidence to buy into either side fully. Yet I can make a case in my head that he's a groper, and there's some pieces of evidence that fit with that. And I can make a case in my head that he's a guy who hates Charlie Kirk, and there's quotes from some interviews that would back that up, but neither of them is a solid At the moment that we're recording. This is a solid hypothesis to me or just.
A vaguely right wing board gamer right or just a right wing board.
Who has zoomer angst, and it manifested this way, as many other people have manifested their zoomer anks through an act of political violence. Yeah, like groper, a very specific term means a specific thing. It doesn't just mean a gen z conservative.
Yep, No, it does not. And I think that's where we're going to have to leave you for the day. We may have appenned an update to this, depending on what else is out. I do think that most of what we're talking about is pretty even though there will be more information at the time you listen to it, pretty timeless in terms of how you should think about shit like this.
How you react to whatever the next assassination is going to be, because this is an increasing trend in American politics.
Look, if you care and if you stance, if your principled stance with all the evidence is I don't care. All that matters is defeating the right. So all I care about is what's convenient in terms of disrupting their narratives. Then go on and live your life. But that's not the way. We we're gonna do things here. When we look at these tacks, we are going to try to figure out what happened, even if it's inconvenient, and it may be, you know, we don't know what this guy yet.
Touch some fucking grass before you touch grass. I'm recording one more update Sunday morning. Yesterday, right wing outlets and then axios and now even more mainstream outlet's started reporting that the shooter, Tyler Robinson, had a transgender roommate and that investigators believe the two had some sort of romantic relationship.
Some information from law enforcement officials about this investigation has been shown to be dubious at best, but it is true that the shooter had a roommate who does appear to be transgender. The roommate's TikTok can be traced to a Reddit account where they post about being trans and post on r slash trans r slash trans diy as well as r slash four tran, and also posts on
r slash green Text and r slash four Chan. Also active in a variety of video games subreddits, Magic the Gathering Memes subreddits, r slash Distressing Memes, r slash Reddit moment r slash Unpopular Opinion r slash Lord of the Rings Memes, r slash prehistoric Memes, r slash dank meme, r slash nothing Ever Happens. Also post on r slash BYRL, r slash Anarcho Capitalism r slash Jordan Peterson, as well
as the four Chan themed subreddits. I should also note that scrolling these subreddits is not necessarily indicative of someone's political orientation. I myself scroll many of these subreddits, as do actually a political friends of mine who check out these subreddits regularly just for shits and giggles. This is politics as meme subredits like Political Compass and TPUSA are popular political subreddits with explicitly comedic purpose, including making fun
of Charlie Kirk in a memified fashion. And I don't know if the roommate visited those two specific subredits, but I'm just using them as an example. Utah Governor Spencer Cox says that the roommate did not have any knowledge of Tyler Robinson's planned attack and has been incredibly cooperative throughout the course of the investigation. Sources have told Axios that investigators initially wanted information about the roommates' gender identity
to not be publicly reported. The right is certainly eager to make any sort of transgender connection to this shooting. The New York Post has referred to this shooting as another shooting by trans people and their advocates. The actual motivation of the shooter is still currently unknown. Governor Cox has described his ideology as leftist, while also noting quote,
there was a lot of gaming going on. Friends have confirmed that there was that deep dark internet Reddit culture and other dark places of the Internet where this person was going deep. You saw that on the casings. I didn't have any idea what those inscriptions meant, but they are certainly the memification that is happening in our society today.
Unquote. That's pretty much all we know so far. Now go touch some grass.
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