September 15, 2025 • 44 mins
Robert and Garrison discuss the memes, disinformation, and conflicting theories surrounding the political orientation of the Charlie Kirk assassin. Groyper? Antifa? Or just Reddit?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, welcome back to it could happen here, a
podcast about it happening here, it in this case being
an incredibly political shooting.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Truth fluid? Certainly truth fluid?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, that's that's a better way to phrase it.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
I have a growing headache that I think grows larger
by these.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Second Yeah, just will not will not cease.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
I guess you should first discuss how the shooter has
been identified and arrested. Yes, we are recording this Friday
evening for context.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
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
(01:15):
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.
(01:37):
What was that Friday Garrison.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
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.
(02:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Grunt style T shirt wearing father right.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
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
(03:04):
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
(03:25):
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.
(03:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, no, there's a Pepe version.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:44):
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
(05:04):
some levity from this whole scene, listening to the sheriff,
oh God, giving the press conference, read the things he
carved onto these bullets.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We should just include some of those clips here.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We'll put it in here.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
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
(05:42):
second unfired casing read oh bellichow bellachow, bellachow chow chow,
and a third unfired casing.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
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
(06:46):
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.
(07:08):
The christ Church shooter and this kid both found the
need to put memes onto the weapons they were using.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But this is where it's all coalescing around, and.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
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
(07:56):
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
(08:16):
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
(08:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
A fucking hell Divers mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yes again very gamer online kid.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
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
(09:14):
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
(09:37):
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
(09:59):
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
(10:19):
the arrows.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That's the down arrows.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
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,
(10:44):
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
(11:05):
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.
(11:28):
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
(11:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
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.
Speaker 7 (12:09):
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
(12:29):
is a nick Fuentes piled groper, and either of those
could be true, but neither could be true.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
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,
(13:05):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Absolutely, if it's too good to be true or it
feels too convenient, you should introspect greatly.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, Robert and Garrison will be right back, but first,
here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
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
(14:17):
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.
(14:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So that has been.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
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
(15:14):
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
(15:34):
Charlie Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, not
the shooter.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And likewise, one of the things I'm seeing spread a
lot is a claimed voter registration for Robinson.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
A Tyler Robinson in Utah.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. Again, there's a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
A lot of Tyler Robinsons in Utah.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
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
(16:11):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Political outlook absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
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,
(17:39):
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
(18:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
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
(18:40):
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
(19:01):
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
(19:22):
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,
(19:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
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
(20:13):
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
(20:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
No, it could be, but they're not inherently.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Is this homophobia or a twenty year old right It.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
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
(21:47):
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
(22:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
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
(23:00):
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
(23:21):
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.
(23:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Point, and as satisfying as it is to just collapse
this guy down to Antifa or Graper.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's very likely it could just be a third.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
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
(24:47):
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.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
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
(25:41):
lot of reasons.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
But he put out a video.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I watched the entire Nick Fuentes stream last night.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh good, thank god.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
He was acting a little bizarre, talking very philosophical, almost
as if he was like doing ketamine beforehand.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Like he was talking.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
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
(26:18):
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
(26:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
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
(27:12):
texted and been texting over the last seventy two hours. God,
that would be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
He said.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
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
(27:40):
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
(28:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, yeah, No. It was a very odd stream.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
I tuned into nickquint As every once in a while
just to keep track of what he was doing, like
a healthy person.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It's my job.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I know, I woke up at four am to stock
a murderer's family on Facebook. Garrison.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
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
(29:08):
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.
(29:30):
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
(29:53):
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
(30:16):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
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
(31:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Would be certainly not trans right to give.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
He Trump creates permission, some of his followers might appreciate permissions.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
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
(32:27):
care about terrorism and like why people get radicalized to
do things and how and understanding these phenomenons.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Like actually understanding how our country is unfolding.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
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,
(32:58):
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?
Speaker 6 (33:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (33:17):
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,
(33:38):
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
(34:00):
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,
(34:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, but it's it's it's it's the way, it's the
way things work.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
I'm so tired, Roberts.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Yeah, I mean, which twenty two year old gamer mail doesn't.
And that's the thing, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
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
(35:59):
to be like a train sniper or something like that,
and it's like.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
This looks like a professional hit to me, Robert, or no,
a MASAD agent either.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Or yeah, like no, literally, all we knew is that
it was somebody who was able to like competent with
a firearm.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
That's all you could say.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And probably it was not a semi automatic because people
in stressful situations, if they can usually keep shooting, right.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
They would have hired more than one shot.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Like average twenty two year old Utonian. Yeah, you've.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Positive normal Utah kid, that's what this guy looks like
so far.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
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
(37:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
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
(37:35):
right we're seeing.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
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
(37:57):
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.
(38:19):
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
(38:41):
that Trump does not care about Arliekark that much. And
it's been a few days, so yeah, he's gonna move on.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I can see that. I can see the utility in that.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
My utility is, I would say, at the very least
equal to that.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
That's having an accurate understanding.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I want to know what happened to the world to.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
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
(39:45):
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
(40:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
A vaguely right wing board gamer right or just a
right wing board.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
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.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
How you react to whatever the next assassination is going
to be, because this is an increasing trend in American politics.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
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
(41:20):
may be, you know, we don't know what this guy yet.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
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.
(41:45):
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
(42:07):
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
(42:28):
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
(42:49):
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
(43:13):
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
(43:34):
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
(43:57):
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
(44:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Unquote. That's pretty much all we know so far. Now
go touch some grass.
Speaker 8 (44:38):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media, welcome back to it could happen here, a
podcast about it happening here, it in this case being
an incredibly political shooting.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Truth fluid? Certainly truth fluid?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, that's that's a better way to phrase it.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
I have a growing headache that I think grows larger
by these.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Second Yeah, just will not will not cease.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
I guess you should first discuss how the shooter has
been identified and arrested. Yes, we are recording this Friday
evening for context.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
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
(01:15):
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.
(01:37):
What was that Friday Garrison.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
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.
(02:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Grunt style T shirt wearing father right.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
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
(03:04):
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
(03:25):
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.
(03:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, no, there's a Pepe version.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:44):
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
(05:04):
some levity from this whole scene, listening to the sheriff,
oh God, giving the press conference, read the things he
carved onto these bullets.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We should just include some of those clips here.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We'll put it in here.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
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
(05:42):
second unfired casing read oh bellichow bellachow, bellachow chow chow,
and a third unfired casing.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
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
(06:46):
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.
(07:08):
The christ Church shooter and this kid both found the
need to put memes onto the weapons they were using.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But this is where it's all coalescing around, and.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
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
(07:56):
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
(08:16):
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
(08:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
A fucking hell Divers mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yes again very gamer online kid.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
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
(09:14):
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
(09:37):
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
(09:59):
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
(10:19):
the arrows.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That's the down arrows.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
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,
(10:44):
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
(11:05):
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.
(11:28):
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
(11:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
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.
Speaker 7 (12:09):
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
(12:29):
is a nick Fuentes piled groper, and either of those
could be true, but neither could be true.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
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,
(13:05):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Absolutely, if it's too good to be true or it
feels too convenient, you should introspect greatly.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, Robert and Garrison will be right back, but first,
here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
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
(14:17):
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.
(14:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So that has been.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
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
(15:14):
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
(15:34):
Charlie Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, not
the shooter.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And likewise, one of the things I'm seeing spread a
lot is a claimed voter registration for Robinson.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
A Tyler Robinson in Utah.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. Again, there's a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
A lot of Tyler Robinsons in Utah.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
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
(16:11):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Political outlook absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
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,
(17:39):
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
(18:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
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
(18:40):
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
(19:01):
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
(19:22):
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,
(19:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
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
(20:13):
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
(20:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
No, it could be, but they're not inherently.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Is this homophobia or a twenty year old right It.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
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
(21:47):
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
(22:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
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
(23:00):
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
(23:21):
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.
(23:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Point, and as satisfying as it is to just collapse
this guy down to Antifa or Graper.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's very likely it could just be a third.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
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
(24:47):
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.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
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
(25:41):
lot of reasons.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
But he put out a video.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I watched the entire Nick Fuentes stream last night.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh good, thank god.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
He was acting a little bizarre, talking very philosophical, almost
as if he was like doing ketamine beforehand.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Like he was talking.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
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
(26:18):
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
(26:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
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
(27:12):
texted and been texting over the last seventy two hours. God,
that would be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
He said.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
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
(27:40):
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
(28:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, yeah, No. It was a very odd stream.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
I tuned into nickquint As every once in a while
just to keep track of what he was doing, like
a healthy person.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It's my job.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I know, I woke up at four am to stock
a murderer's family on Facebook. Garrison.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
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
(29:08):
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.
(29:30):
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
(29:53):
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
(30:16):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
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
(31:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Would be certainly not trans right to give.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
He Trump creates permission, some of his followers might appreciate permissions.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
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
(32:27):
care about terrorism and like why people get radicalized to
do things and how and understanding these phenomenons.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Like actually understanding how our country is unfolding.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
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,
(32:58):
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?
Speaker 6 (33:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (33:17):
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,
(33:38):
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
(34:00):
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,
(34:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, but it's it's it's it's the way, it's the
way things work.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
I'm so tired, Roberts.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Yeah, I mean, which twenty two year old gamer mail doesn't.
And that's the thing, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
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
(35:59):
to be like a train sniper or something like that,
and it's like.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
This looks like a professional hit to me, Robert, or no,
a MASAD agent either.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Or yeah, like no, literally, all we knew is that
it was somebody who was able to like competent with
a firearm.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
That's all you could say.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And probably it was not a semi automatic because people
in stressful situations, if they can usually keep shooting, right.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
They would have hired more than one shot.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Like average twenty two year old Utonian. Yeah, you've.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Positive normal Utah kid, that's what this guy looks like
so far.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
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
(37:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
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
(37:35):
right we're seeing.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
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
(37:57):
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.
(38:19):
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
(38:41):
that Trump does not care about Arliekark that much. And
it's been a few days, so yeah, he's gonna move on.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I can see that. I can see the utility in that.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
My utility is, I would say, at the very least
equal to that.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
That's having an accurate understanding.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I want to know what happened to the world to.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
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
(39:45):
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
(40:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
A vaguely right wing board gamer right or just a
right wing board.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
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.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
How you react to whatever the next assassination is going
to be, because this is an increasing trend in American politics.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
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
(41:20):
may be, you know, we don't know what this guy yet.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
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.
(41:45):
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
(42:07):
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
(42:28):
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
(42:49):
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
(43:13):
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
(43:34):
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
(43:57):
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
(44:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Unquote. That's pretty much all we know so far. Now
go touch some grass.
Speaker 8 (44:38):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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