Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme

This morning a suspect was taken into custody in connection with the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. The alleged shooter’s name is Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah. Footage of a person of interest matching Robinson’s description was circulated this week by law enforcement, who were offering a $100,000 reward for more information.

Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but is not affiliated with any party. (There is another Tyler Robinson registered as a Republican in Utah that many users are sharing the voter records of currently.) Law enforcement told reporters this morning that they used Discord messages along with the security camera footage to ID him. Discord is disputing this.

We still don’t have a clear motive, but we do have a slightly clearer picture of what inspired the attack. As we wrote yesterday, the shooting was obviously staged to maximize impact on social media. And according to the FBI, the attacker’s bullet casings had meme references inscribed on them.

The use of memes in political mass violence started in earnest in 2019, when a man filmed himself attacking a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Just before he started, he told viewers, “Subscribe to PewDiePie.” Months later, in Halle, Germany, an attacker livestreamed the shooting of a synagogue on Twitch. In 2022, an 18-year-old white nationalist livestreamed a shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Investigators later discovered that he was planning it openly on 4chan and Discord, calling it a “real life effort shitpost.” And in the last year, Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson with bullets that read, “deny”, “defend”, “depose.” Days later, a 15-year-old posed for a photo flashing the right-wing “ok” hand symbol before allegedly carrying out a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. And just last month, Robin Westman allegedly carried out a shooting in Minneapolis with bullets that had a range of messages from all around the political spectrum, including “I’m the woker baby why so queerious”, “skibidi” and the simplified line version of the Loss.JPG meme.

According to law enforcement, the messages on the bullet casings believed to have belonged to Robinson were equally politically confusing. The bullet that struck and killed Kirk had "Notices bulge OwO whats this?" written on its casing. A reference to a longtime internet joke that originally comes from text-based furry roleplay. It is not proof, however, that Robinson was a furry. The meme has long since become part of the extremely online canon.

The unfired bullet casings had other phrases written on them, including, "Hey fascist! Catch! ⬆️, ➡️, ⬇️⬇️⬇️,” "O bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,” and “If you read this you are gay lmao." The first message is a reference to the satirically fascist video game Helldivers 2, the arrow combination triggering the most powerful bomb attack in the game. The second message is a reference to an Italian antifascist folk song, which has gotten renewed interest online and offline after its use in Netflix’s Money Heist. “Bella Ciao” is also used in the video game Far Cry 6. The third is just boilerplate edgelord speak, given extra layers of irony by the much more online jokes on the other casings.

The terminally online nature of the messages does somewhat explain the conflicting reports released yesterday. Conservative influencer Steven Crowder published a screenshot of an email “from an officer at the ATF,” which claimed that the bullet casings were engraved with “transgender and antifascist ideology.” This was then corroborated by The Wall Street Journal, though they eventually walked back their story about it. The New York Times reported that that hadn’t been actually confirmed by law enforcement. Crowder is now claiming that his team is being subpoenaed by the ATF over the leak.

The leak and the eventual reveal of what was on the bullet casings is important, if only for illustrating exactly how unprepared for this current moment both law enforcement and the mainstream media are. Two law enforcement sources told CNN they initially believed the Helldivers reference was “a connection to the transgender community.” And making the initial picture of who Robinson is and what he believes even more complicated are photos from his mother’s Facebook page, which are currently being shared on social media as the internet hunts for clues as to why he allegedly carried out the attack.

In 2017, Robinson appears to have dressed up in a costume of President Donald Trump, with the Trump’s face painted green. A possible reference to the Pepe the Frog edit of Trump that the president first shared in 2015. And in 2018, Robinson appears to have dressed up as a “squatting slav” Pepe meme. As easy as it is to point to these costumes as proof that Robinson was a far-right extremist radicalized online by 4chan posts, it’s just as likely that he was a teenage boy dressing up as memes he saw online. This kind of content is basically the water young people swim in now.

It’s also possible Robinson genuinely believes in antifascist principles. But his alleged use of random internet brainrot is notable. Many extremism researchers this morning are wondering if Robinson is a self-identified “groyper,” or follower of far-right streamer Nick Fuentes. As we wrote yesterday, Fuentes has spent years attacking Kirk online. Groypers believed that Kirk was a sellout and blocking a much more extreme version of Trumpism from taking root. For years, Groypers have been carrying out what they call “Groyper Wars,” attending Kirk’s events and trying to disrupt them. For what it’s worth, 4chan users think Robinson was a Groyper.

But the conflicting tone of the bullet casings’ inscriptions may also point to a connection with the Com network and the 764 terror cell offshoot. We’ve covered these groups several times on Panic World. They primarily exist inside of Discord and Telegram group chats. They recruit vulnerable young people around the internet, including inside of multiplayer games like Minecraft and Roblox. They encourage their members to commit horrible crimes with the promise of internet clout, intentionally using conflicting political messages to obscure any larger motive besides inspiring other members of the group to do the same. A month after a school shooter made an “OK” hand sign post, mentioned above, another teenager in Nashville made the exact same joke before allegedly shooting classmates at their high school. ProPublica found they crossed paths several times in these online communities, and the Nashville shooter was making a deliberate reference to his fellow community member. Which is what is so existentially terrifying about our current political moment.

We have let school shootings in America persist long enough that we have created a culture where kids grow up seeing them as a path towards fame and glory. Another consequence of how thoroughly the internet has flattened pop culture, politics, and real life violence. All of it now is just another meme you can participate in to go viral. Made even more confusing by a new nihilistic accelerationist movement that delights in muddying the waters for older people who still adhere to a traditional political spectrum. Many young extremists now believe in a much simpler binary: Order and chaos. And if you are spending any time at all trying to derive meaning from violent acts like this then you are, by definition, their enemy.