Posted by Geekette 6 hours ago
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
From who? And where are they getting their information?
It bears mentioning that you're presently participating in a political conversation on social media.
Seems like all of these shooters get a lot of encouragement and support on discord.
I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd. It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder. False flags really aren't that common, in general. This is the same kind of conspiratorial thinking behind Alex Jones' "crisis actors".
Also, your comment was off-topic to the sub-thread. People were discussing whether Kirk would be seen as a martyr. The ideology of the shooter has quite little to do with that.
> (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
Commentary like this is inherently obnoxious, and tends towards self-fulfilling prophecy.
Especially if you look at the data. The political right is more likely to do violence:
* https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rar...
* https://archive.is/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/...
The assassination attempts (whether successful or failed) on prominent political figures in this country have almost all been carried out by people with personal reasons to want to kill them, not politically motivated killers killing people they don't agree with.
This is like thinking Christian-on-Christian violence over religion is implausible and claiming someone suggesting it’s in-fact plausible is being “disingenuous”—surely it can only be someone from a different faith entirely.
Is the likelihood lower or higher if it already happened (at least) once last year?
Is it lower or higher if you’re aware of the hostile dynamics between TPU and at least one popular very much violence-encouraging even-farther-right influencer? Nb this group has opposed Trump for being too timidly white supremacist. Would that shift your guess at the odds?
Safe bet if you’ve been paying attention to this stuff for a few decades was about equal odds right or left winger, and maybe somewhat higher right, if the target’s a right winger (almost certainly the attacker is, if relevantly affiliated, right-affiliated if the target’s a Democrat or otherwise left) or else (in either case of political affiliation of the target) there’s fair odds of apolitical notoriety-seeking or straight up lunacy without a strong political motivation.
[edit] nb I’m not saying 100% that the guy won’t turn out to be coming from the left, but I think if you’re playing the odds on something like this and go “must be a leftist” you’ve misread the situation in this country.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
Groypers.
How does that square with the issue that he texted his trans significant other to go pick up his rifle which he could not do as feds found the rifle first. [1] The feds are interviewing the trans partner as we speak. To be clear I am not anti-trans, rather just confused how he could also be a Groyper. Maybe this is possible, just a new concept to me.
[1] - https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-t...
From the article you posted:
> According to public records, Lance Twiggs, 22, resided at the same address where Robinson lived. A relative of Twiggs confirmed to The Post Saturday that “yes, they were roommates.”
> The family member, who asked not to be identified, said Twiggs was the “black sheep” of their St. George, Utah, family, but declined to speculate on a romantic relationship between the two men.
> She said she didn’t know her relative’s politics or whether Twiggs was transitioning to become a woman, but added that it wouldn’t surprise her.
So basically the source is "it was revealed to me in a dream". For all we know they were just roommates.
It's possible. I keep hearing terms used interchangably on different YT channels and all of that could be people just projecting their preferred narratives so I guess we will have to wait for the Discord and cell phone text message transcripts assuming those ever drop. They so rarely do. Either way at least we know the roommate was involved to some extent. The Discord transcripts may be the most telling of the relationship.
Israel is about the only thing Charlie and Nick disagree on now.
As far as their disagreements over doctrine of-late, I’m not sure. Their messages do/did differ in where they drew the line, though.
I’ve seen Loomer’s turning on Kirk (over his “turning” on Trump re: the Epstein files) cited as part of this, with Nick’s crowd being on Loomer’s side, but given Nick’s history with Trump that I know of I’d find that surprising, but I’ve not closely followed Fuentes so I’ve got some reading to do there.
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
(bullet engravings, his partner, his father's testimony)
There is a claim circulating that Robinson had a transgender/transitioning (MtF) roommate/partner. A simple web search will easily find multiple sources for this claim, but most of them aren't exactly what you'd consider authoritative or journalistic.
Many sources similarly assert that Robinson's father "recognized" him in photos and "encouraged him to turn himself in" (see e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/tyler-rob...). However, I don't know anything specific about his "testimony".
Could turn out to be true, but considering the hilariously wrong stuff that was being published even by mainstream sources in the 24 hours after (the initially extremely-wrong reports about the engravings, for instance) I’d not yet treat this as meaningful at all. I’ve not seen anything above tabloid-level pushing it yet.
I am unaware of any mistakes of fact as to the actual text of the engravings published by any mainstream source at any point.
"Not getting the reference" is not the same thing as making an "extremely-wrong report".
The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
> The meaning and implications of these engravings is the subject of intense debate, and not at all an objective matter at the moment.
I agree. We can take away some things (like “very online” and some suggestions of certain connections to spheres or activities, like the Helldivers 2 reference) but there’s little more than rather mixed suggestions that could go multiple ways, as far as political affiliation and motivation that we can read from them, so far.
Not the FBI, and the story is much more complex than that: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-bullets-...
I similarly delayed accepting Charlie Kirk had actually died because the only source I could find was President Trump (and news sources reporting Charlie Kirk's death that, ultimately, seemed to be using President Trump as a source).
Since President Trump is an extremely-well-documented liar, this was not a reliable source. It can be hard to figure out the source for news like this, since news outlets are not in the habit of doing well-disciplined source citation or summarizing sources to make it easy to identify them (in contrast to, say, a research publication).
(I did believe it, but only because I’d watched the close-view video and regarded survival as all but impossible… without that I’d have “grain of salt”ed it, too)
You can read anything you want into those if you want to. To me they reek weeb culture (as opposed to furry like everyone else jumps to - there are overlaps but they are distinct), 4chan trolling and lemmy more than anything. We can not know the intentions behind those engravings and they say nothing about which, if any, affiliation the shooter had. Could be a Luigi wannabe, could be a false flag to induce civil war.
"Unafilliated" seems like the most plausible assumption right now. Everyone pushing theories about shooter affiliation right now either has their own political agenda behind it and are doing so incincerly or are useful idiots serving the aforementioned.
However from what did seem credible I think this still looks left-wing motivated
There are lots of options left. The big one would be to vote and to help others vote. In 2024, only 42% of young people cast a ballot.
I just googled and found at least three pro Palestine protests today. One is in NYC.
So... seems like nothing was banned, and this is why you were downvoted.
I think formulating your claims better could have avoided the downvotes, and allowed others to understand what you mean exactly.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
The people who tried to change his mind were blind to the trap he set up. No logic would ever change his message.
Of course, he shouldn't have died because of this, but that's another issue.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
I respect your lack of desire to engage on the topic and will not ask it of you, but FWIW: if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)... You are not.
People are in these media bubbles where they’re amped up all the time. Each side does a lot of name calling.
Each group boils it down to us vs them.
“”” “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur shortly after Kirk was shot at a Utah university Wednesday “””
It wasn’t her hearing he got shot in the neck and going “lol maybe it was celebratory gunfire and bad luck?”
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
He was not pro-free speech. It is not hard to see what he actually believed. Maybe it is right now with all of the news happening.
Yes; it's for freely expressing the idea that the people on the list have expressed harmful ideas with their own freedom of speech.
Or, in at least one case (Eric Clanton), that they have committed serious physical violence for ideological reasons.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
Well that clears things up...
Sure, and all those trolls online are "just asking questions."
So where is the line? What commentary on his death is acceptable and won’t get a person sacked or sanctioned from a government job?
* government officials (as you say), members of federal agencies, civil servants etc.
* journalists
* healthcare workers and emergency services personnel
* educators
There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.
All of these are places where a mindset that glorifies or justifies political violence and death seems like it would be an impediment to actually doing the job properly, which is the only thing that would make me accept "cancel culture". Others may be morally unjustified in "crossing the line", but should not lose their jobs for it.
For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone. The "stochastic terrorism" argument is especially insidious: it attempts to launder "speech" into "violence" (and thus justify "an eye for an eye" etc.) by hand-waving at some vague notion of, basically, extremely non-imminent incitement. The idea is that convincing a wide audience of people to have a more negative impression of a group stochastically increases the number of members of that group that will die to violence. But none of the dots are ever actually connected in this argument; and taken seriously and applied even-handedly, it would make basically any form of political discourse impossible.
Initially, I thought Matthew Dowd's comments (I had very little exposure to them) didn't fall into that category — that they were simply made in incredibly bad taste. But I looked up some more of the transcript and, yeah, I can't excuse that. Certainly he wasn't as aggressive about it as, say, some Bluesky users. But part of it does fundamentally boil down to making the "fuck around and find out" argument, and "finding out" is just not supposed to involve being shot and killed.
This is fundamental for me; see e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/svuBpoSduzhYjFPrA/elements-o... .
It's really difficult. How do you apply this to government worker? Some are actively involved in killing people, foe example the military, (some) police, the judiciary in some jurisdictions, politicians. In places with a judicial death sentence it's acceptable to decide that someone deserve to die.
> Dowd responded by saying about about Kirk: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
(via https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/comcast-execs-criticize-...)
To me, that's approximately as bad.
is it limited to people sharing a certain sentiment or common statement?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/people-are-calling-o...
No reaction occurred when Melissa Hortman was killed to people doing the same thing as people are doing now with Kirk.
Edit: make things a little bit clearer, AFAIK, no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
Who exactly made comments that attempted to justify or rationalize her death as a consequence of things she had said in the past?
And what does your article — which basically just establishes "Trump doesn't like Tim Walz and didn't consider Hortman's case as important" — have to do with that?
If you're referring to Senator Mike Lee's comment, I don't think it's anything of the sort. It comes across to me that Lee was speculating that the murderer was a "Marxist" (i.e., anyone he would consider more radical than Hortman). Political football, and offensive, sure. But not the same kind of thing. Besides which, can Senators be "fired"?
Well, gee, it sorta seems like that kind of behavior would be more prevalent when the person in question has actually said things in the past that support killing people.
Did Melissa Hortman say such things?
Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Because if she didn't say stuff like that, then it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
Charlie Kirk has said nothing of the sort, so none of this is relevant.
> Did she found an entire organization dedicated to promoting bigotry, hate, and the inherent superiority of a particular "race"?
Kirk's organization is not dedicated to anything of the sort.
> Did she make explicit statements that we should all be happy to accept some innocent deaths every year as a cost of unlimited access to firearms?
Kirk did not say anything about being happy about it; regardless this statement does not support killing people.
> it would be much, much less likely that anyone would even suggest that her words were in any way related to her death.
But anyway, this still doesn't matter. Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
"Great Replacement Theory" is an inherently racist ideology that ignores (in the context of the US) multiple centuries of history in favor of an idea that there's an "other" that is going to replace "real Americans." It is, perhaps, a stretch to claim that the organization he founded promoted bigotry, hate, or the superiority of a particular race... But it's not much of a stretch when the organization's founder and leader is making easily-verified racist statements such as this one.
> Suggesting that someone's words justified death is an absolute moral wrong no matter what those words were.
In general, I haven't seen people making the hard assertion online that his words justified his death and I would agree with you. But I have seen plenty of "I don't think Charlie Kirk should have died, but the philosophy Charlie Kirk espoused shouldn't care if Charlie Kirk died" and I don't think I can argue with that assessment of the legacy of his work.
And it’s also free speech to gloat about it. Is it legal to sack someone who is gleeful?
The consensus on Hacker News was that New Zealand made an error blocking and banning the video of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
What’s the right way to handle these scenarios? Kirk was a free speech advocate with strong views on gun violence, further complicating things.
Sorry, I’m not American so have little idea how it works.
I also did not agree against the legality of being fired for a social media post. It's been happening since social media first existed.
You also can't boycott an employee. I really don't know what point you are trying to make here.
The default employment rule is at-will, meaning someone can be fired for any reason not explicitly prohibited. Political affiliation is not a federally protected category.
Even then, in practice they can fire people for prohibited reasons, as long as it can't be proven that those reasons were used. Which in practice could be very difficult.
That’s different. ‘They’ don’t have the right to say those things, but Kirk maintained his right to say what he liked.
At least on X/Twitter.
From Wikipedia: On January 4, 2021 (the day before the Capitol attack), Kirk tweeted that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 “buses of patriots” to Washington, D.C. to “fight for this president.”
On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
Sounds plenty violent to me. I'd have to agree with those who say there are grounds for seeing Kirk as someone who frequently advocated for violence.
Was it clear 2 days before Jan 6 that it was going to be violent, or does this hinge on the "fight" wording?
>On March 21st 2024, he called for the whipping and using rubber bullets and lethal force on migrants at the southern border.
See: >except perhaps the government monopoly on force (e.g. to speak in favour of the death penalty).