Hey folks. I can’t keep up with this thread, so maybe someone can help me out?
Over in RWNJ land, they’re still calling him a leftist.
But in this thread I see comments to the effect that he was a right wing Mormon who maybe was upset about the Epstein betrayal, and someone else said the governor of Utah was disappointed by what he turned out to be?
What do we KNOW about his beliefs and motives at this point?
He really did. The “typical Trump supporter” look is so predictable and redundant that it has its own meme.
What we know is that the engravings on the shell casings are typical of an extreme right-wing online meme community commonly called “Groypers”.
They’ve had beef with Charlie Kirk going back for years now, ostensibly over conservative messaging and strategy, with them saying Kirk wasn’t conservative enough, or that Kirk was directly undermining Donald Trump by calling for the Epstein files to be released (Groypers understand that the Epstein files will damage Trump because he’s in them, while Kirk was too stupid to get this).
Though as typical with right-wing factional beefs, it’s probably more about Kirk growing too famous, gaining too much influence and attention. They are all grifters and their primary purpose is to keep their platform influential and funded, so they tear each other down to keep any one of them from gaining outsized influence. Sort of like if you pull a crab out of the bucket by letting it grab a stick with its claw, other crabs will try to piggyback the escape by grabbing onto the first crab, but usually the combined weight will snap the load-bearing claw and they all fall back in the bucket.
This will sound crazy to someone not familiar with the right-wing influencer ecosystem, but Kirk had a realistic (though not overwhelmingly likely) chance of being Trump’s successor after he’s out of the picture (not my assessment, it’s an idea that had traction on that side of the political spectrum). So the crabs-in-a-bucket theory fits very well with the idea of one extremist faction trying to prevent another extremist faction from gaining outsized dominance or funding.
Nancy Mace introducing a resolution to have Charlie Kirk lie in state at the U.S. Capitol is a great sign of respect, but is not enough.
Whether or not he was a Catholic, the Pope should be petitioned to establish sainthood for him. There should be a Charlie Kirk History Month, a national holiday, highways and points of interest named for him (instead of J.F.K., imagine flying in to Charlie Kirk International Airport. And of course statuary on par with the Lincoln Memorial.
And of course schoolchildren required to sing the Charlie Kirk song each morning before classes.
No honor is too large for this great American patriot.
Nothing definitive, as far as I know. He hasn’t made any statements or written any manifestos. The closest thing to his words that we have are messages written on the bullets.
But he comes from a right leaning, Trump supporting family, and there are pictures of him online shooting guns and (on Halloween) dressing up in a Trump costume and, later, a right wing meme.
And the bullet messaging is consistent with right wing rhetoric. Notably, that same type of messaging matches a group (called Goypers) who were openly hostile towards Charlie Kirk for not being a true Christian Nationalist.
(It may be shocking now, given the hagiography, but Kirk was being heavily criticized by right wing factions just prior to his death)
As I understand it, some of the right wing criticism was because Kirk was downplaying the importance of Epstein. He was saying that we should take the word of the government that there is nothing there, angering many who have been clamoring for its release.
I’m still not able to find anything strongly linking the shell engravings to groypers. RW internet memes, absolutely, and the Venn diagram there is pretty strong, but it’s not like Groypers own Helldiver memes. The guy was 22 and was surrounded by conservatives.
Of course, there’s an outside chance that everything is misdirection. Which is one step away from calling this a false flag attempt by the left to start the Civil War that the right is convinced the left have no chance of winning, so naturally that’s what they’re going to end up thinking regardless of the facts.
The reality is that the only thing you can assume after these recent high-profile assassinations (or attempt, in the case of Trump) is that regardless of your beliefs, you don’t want to be associated with these people. Their motives are going to be 95% mental health issue. Trump’s would-be assassin was a conservative but had no real political or personal motivation, he was just a kid with severe mental health issues who shouldn’t have had access to a gun. Luigi Mangione had a surface-level motive but his actual beliefs were all over the place, he was just kinda crazy. And now this kid, he may have (most likely) been influenced by groups like the Groypers but you don’t throw your life away because you think Charlie “face too small” Kirk was being soft on Epstein. You do that because you’re mentally ill.
That’s why I wrote that they’re “consistent with” that ideology.
I mean, if he had written things like “all lives matter” we’d have a pretty good clue that this was not right wing. But that’s not the case.
The writings are indeed ambiguous, but they don’t contradict a right wing perspective.
Oh, that’s undoubtedly true. Mental illness is why he killed Kirk. But why Kirk, specifically? I’m guessing that we can track that back to online discourse.
When I was a kid, I thought that ‘aggravated assault/murder’ was a less serious form of the crime, because the victim was being really really aggravating so it was kind of understandable.
Can’t think what brought that to my head right now.
Generally agree, but it’s like, Groypers use those memes because they’re in the late-teens early-20s conservative internet culture. They also probably wear a lot of grunt style clothes for the same reason. If the shooter here were caught in a grunt style shirt, we could rightly assume that he adopted conservative YA fashion because he’s a conservative YA, but I don’t think we can make the leap to Groypers or any other group specifically.
That said, I, a very liberal middle aged man, also find “if you’re reading this you’re gay” kinda funny. But I grew up in the 90s and some things never change.
Eta: in any case, it’s not like any of these groups issue ID cards to their members.
It’s not mental illness if it’s associated with being politically powerful; right wing fanatics are powerful, therefore they aren’t mentally ill. No matter how crazy they are.
There’s quite a few behaviors they would, objectively be considered mental illness, if they weren’t associated with people or groups that have power. “If you’re poor you’re crazy, if you’re rich you’re eccentric”.
As far as associating with such people goes, I’m reminded of an article I read some years ago about a neo-Nazi who converted to radical Islam and promptly killed his Nazi former friends. People who believe in killing anyone not of their in-group are dangerous even to their supposed friends and allies because you never know when they’ll change their minds about who is in the group and who is out of it.
In this case, the shooter apparently believed that differing in opinion on Epstein was enough to put Kirk into the “not of us” group and therefore a viable, even mandatory target.
This. I don’t agree with the governor of Utah on much politically, but he seems like a pretty decent guy. And he was clearly making a case of “don’t go after the other”.
Actually, he’s a Mormon, and the shooter is a Mormon, and i bet he is worried about retaliation. The Christian nationalists aren’t really supportive of other sects, ya know?
Actually, i think that was partly a rhetorical device. I think his real message was “don’t get worked up into retaliatory violence”. And he wanted to frame it in a way to sound good to white conservative Christians.
Erm, all lives matter was a right wing slogan?
Different people are different? I know leftists who are elated, and leftists who are scared, and…
And i have a conservative friend who had to mute an online discussion I’m in because the leftists were so happy Kirk was dead, and he (conservative friend) said to me, “i think she sounds like a psychopath.”
I think a lot of trans people are REALLY happy he’s dead, whether or not they are on board with political assassinations.
Absolutely true, but also not at all political. I miss the days when it was just a good ol’ cult. Charlie Manson didn’t need…
Oh wait, I forgot Maga is just one big cult now. Nevermind.
I see it being a water fountain. Only, you know, not spitting or peeing the water.
You’re right, of course! My mistake.
It’s nice to know that there is one thing the right and the liberals can agree on: we really need to do more to marginalize the mentally ill, by just assuming that every prominent shooting incident was carried out by someone who is mentally ill.
Well that’s certainly a take.
I posted this before the assassin was apprehended and identified.
It just seemed obvious to me, but then I follow this stuff pretty closely and was already aware of the schisms.
Of course, none of this is actually proven yet. He could still turn out to be a leftist rebel in a MAGA family. But if he isn’t, and I’m right above, then my point is that it shouldn’t be at all surprising.
If this guy was described as being a lefty by a right winger from Utah, that could simply mean that he wasn’t a registered Republican.
Drop him in Boston or Chicago an he might have been described as a righty.