Charlie Kirk shooting suspect referenced fascism and memes on bullets, officials say

The suspect accused of shooting the conservative activist Charlie Kirk left engraved ammunition with a reference to fascism and the memes and video games of the obscure Internet, officials announced on Friday.

UTAH governor Spencer Cox said registration had been found on at least four shell envelopes linked to Tyler Robinson, 22, who was arrested early on Friday as part of the murder. An engraving said: “Fascist hey! Catch! ↑ → ↓ Nel York “, an apparent reference, at least in part, to a video game.

The authorities said that the rounds had been found with a bolt in Boulon in Boulon Mauser Model 98, equipped with a range, which the investigators recovered in a wooded area at the forefront of the University of Utah Valley campus. The gun was wrapped in a dark colored towel.

In addition to the fascists of referencing of engraving, Cox also referred to the engravings which contained more obscure references.

On the pulled box, for example, a message said: “Notices, Bulges, Owo, what is it?”

Writing seems to be a reference to a meme on the online fur subculture and online role-playing, said Jamie Cohen, assistant professor of media studies at Queens College who does research on the same. The same has been widely used as a method of mockery and lagging behind, although its relevance for Kirk or the shot is not clear.

Experts have urged prudence to interpret engravings, citing a long history of shooters using misleading or ironic messages, often mixing Internet policy and culture in a way that defies easy categorization.

Cohen said he thought that messages on most of the recovered rounds had been deliberately vague by a “extremely online” person.

The suspect may have specifically used terms that are difficult to decipher “to stay under the internet,” he said.

“This type of meme is designed specifically to ensure that news cannot report it because it comes from an extremely online approach,” he said.

Bond Benton, professor of the State University of Montclair who studies social media, brand image, popular culture and online hatred groups, said the same has proven to be inconsistent for most people, but are adopted by those of niche online spaces.

“This kind of messaging could be a nod of these people because notoriety, being the most discussed in this space, is really, really precious for the members of these communities,” he said.

Lindsay Hahn, an associate professor university in Buffalo who is researching ideological extremism and the ways in which the authors of violence justify their actions, said the suspect probably sought glory.

Her messages, she said, do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology. “But what they do indicates,” she said, “is that the shooter wanted to get a message across and therefore be speaking online.”

“It seems that these messages, at least, were selected because they knew they were going to speak,” added Hahn.

During the Friday morning press conference when asked by a journalist what the messages meant, Cox said: “I leave that to interpret what these engravings mean.”

The governor said that that referring to the fascists “speaks of himself”.

This particular non -cracked box was also written with additional symbols – an upward arrow, a right arrow and three arrows at the bottom. The order of directional arrow symbols is a code used in the successful video game Helldivers 2 to invoke a bomb on the player’s position.

The video game challenges the players to work together as an elite team of soldiers to save the earth by pushing hordes of space bugs, cyborgs and robots. Last year, he invigorated a long -standing debate on fascism and satire.

Cox said another message said: “Oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao.” Cohen said it could be a reference to the words in a somewhat controversial Italian song that is anti-fascist nature.

A fourth case seemed simply to make fun of the investigators. “If you read this, you are gay lmao”, he reads, using a well-known abbreviation for “laughing my a- off”.

It is not clear what political prospects Robinson have held other documents accessible to the public. In 2021, Robinson registered to vote without affiliation of the party. The photos published by Robinson’s mother on Facebook show him dressed in Halloween costume in 2017 on Trump’s shoulders.

Robinson joins a long list of last decade shooting suspects who have referred to memes, online subcultures and video games in their writings. Some have been explicit in their ideological messaging, while others have engaged in online practice of lagging behind, using sarcasm and deliberately confusing the references that make their ideologies difficult to interpret.

The texts of many shooters who have been radicalized online are very referential to each other.

The person who killed 51 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, left writings that have mixed political ideologies with memes and jokes attributing their radicalization to children’s video games. Another part of the writings attributed its radicalization to Candace Owens, which was largely interpreted as a satire. The shooter in a buffalo in 2022, New York, drawing mixed racist memes with racist ideology, such as the “large replacement theory”, and also plagiarized materials of other writings of mass shooters, which makes the line between his views and the views of other blurred.

In August, the suspect in a shooting of the Catholic school of Minneapolis left a video referring to a meli-melo of political messages and memes, to “free the files!” At the skibidi toilets, which do not seem to represent a coherent ideology.

“Often, this extremely online costume is supposed to be double,” said Cohen. “This specifically means for someone like me to dive into what they would call the culture of memes and declare them something so that they get more press. He could therefore be another bait and change for researchers who fall into the same trap that they design for a more viral exhibition. ”

Likewise, the practice of writing on ammunition and weapons has also become a theme among the shooters.

The officials claim that the accused person of shooting and killing a CEO of health care in Manhattan seemed to have left an explicit reference – “deny”, “defend” and “depose” – to a book of 2010 which was critical of the health insurance industry on the ammunition used to kill the CEO of Unitedhealth Group.

Robinson was arrested on Thursday evening, said FBI director Kash Patel. COX said that one of the suspect’s family members contacted a family friend on Thursday evening, who then contacted the Washington County Sheriff office with information that Robinson had admitted or implied that he had made the shooting.

Investigators interviewed a member of the suspect’s family, who said he had become more political in recent years, according to Cox. The person said Robinson had recently told them that Kirk came to UVU and that the couple discussed how they did not like Kirk and the views he had.

Robinson has not yet been charged. He should be accused of aggravated murder, criminal release of a firearm causing serious bodily injuries and an obstruction of justice, according to a probable affidavit.