A conservative martyr, but not conservative enough

The story of Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues. A suspect is in custody. I’ll get to him soon. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy announced the capture on Fox & Friends. That seems to be his favorite show. But why not a police official at a press conference making that announcement?

Trump expressed his excitement not for the justice of catching the person who allegedly murdered his friend, but he was instead animated by how the news would help Fox’s ratings. Trump has often expressed more interest in television ratings than in basic human decency.

Willis also reported that Kirk’s legacy is already being whitewashed. One example of many:

Rachel Bade, Politico’s Capitol bureau chief, wrote, “Agree with him or not, Charlie Kirk was a force of nature who embraced open debate and engaging with those who disagreed with him.”

Little is said about what he said that was so disagreeable. Willis fills in some of that and concluded:

Kirk’s killing was wrong. It was an outgrowth of the pro-gun culture that he himself helped foster. But he wasn’t a good person, and the news media and others should not erase what the man stood for throughout his time in the public eye.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported:

Lawmakers from both parties spoke out against political violence in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing. But while Democrats zeroed in on the country’s lax gun laws, President Donald Trump and many of his allies on the right wasted no time in blaming the “radical left.” Minutes after Kirk, a close Trump ally, was shot and killed while speaking at a Utah college campus on Wednesday, the far-right corners of the internet exploded. Influencers, extremist communities—and even onetime co-president Elon Musk—flooded social media with calls for revenge. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones, the school-shooting conspiracy theorist, declared on Infowars, setting the tone for the night.

Jones was far from the only voice. One was Musk who posted, “The Left is the party of murder.” That reminds me of the saying that an accusation by a Republican is actually a confession. Willis reported that many conservatives, including the White House, are comparing Kirk’s death to the 9/11 attack. Kirk was killed on the 24th anniversary of that awful day. Willis concluded:

Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed on 9/11. They were parents, children, siblings, and friends. They weren’t hatemongers, and they aren’t the same as Kirk at all.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked to the press. She said:

There is no understanding, as we know publicly, of who this individual is, what their motivations were, where they came from. Whether it's a member of Congress, whether it is the president of the United States—to assume and assert and cast blame when the FBI has failed to even apprehend the assailant is absolutely an irresponsible action. People can finger point all they want. Look at the record. Look at the actions of what we are doing. I don't think a single person who has dedicated their entire career to preventing gun safety legislation from getting passed in this House has any right to blame anybody else but themselves for what is happening.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Leave it to President Donald Trump’s administration to turn the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk into a way to attack immigrants and suppress the free speech of people that Trumpers don’t like. It’s a two-fer of terrible. The State Department didn’t waste a moment in letting everyone know how blatantly it was going to weaponize Kirk’s death. Less than 24 hours after the shooting, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on X that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country” and directed consular officials to “undertake appropriate action.” ... This all boils down to ostensible right-wing free speech champions demanding that the government actively suppress speech they don’t like, on pain of deportation. Put another way, it’s an assertion that the First Amendment literally does not protect mildly negative speech about Charlie Kirk. … No one was ever going to stop the right from turning Kirk into a conservative martyr. But it’s downright infuriating that the government wants to use its power to demand that we all do the same.

I doubt foreigners are the ones glorifying violence. Emily Singer of Kos reported that far right house Republicans sent a letter Speaker Mike Johnson calling for a select committee to investigate the “radical left.” They are placing blame and harassing opponents “the best way they know how—the formation of a useless select committee that will waste taxpayer resources and not accomplish anything.” Yeah, they’ve done this sort of thing many times before. Samuels reported on a poll that shows what people believe about political violence, then compared that to studies of such violence. First the poll: Of all US adults, a third say left-wing violence is more of a problem, a third say the same of right-wing violence, and the final third are not sure. Breaking the data down by party, 62% of Democrats say right-wing violence is a bigger problem and 66% of Republicans say left-wing violence is a bigger problem. Contrast that with a 2021 study in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society that looked at ideologically motivated killings from 1990-2020 and found 84.4% were the actions of far-right extremists. Studies that include more recent data are just as lopsided. Why such a big difference between perception and reality? One reason is how incidents are presented. “Violence against right-wing figures is often assumed to originate from the left, but that’s not always the case.” Samuels cautions that right-wing violence isn’t just in the past. It is an active and large threat. From the way the right talks there will be more attacks. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon on Kos showing a man in a suit in front of the Capitol. He says, “It’s imperative that we tone down our rhetoric during this dangerously polarized political environment.” Beside his words: “Translation: you have to curb your First Amendment rights so we can have unfettered Second Amendment rights.” Kos of Kos wrote that a Wall Street Journal article, since rewritten, said there was evidence of “expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology.” Updates had more caution, but MAGA social media “blasted out the tale of a transgender antifa assassin to millions.” It was a push to support calls for censorship and violence. Many of the quotes above amplified that. But the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, now in custody upends their narrative. He’s white and gun-loving. Evidence points to someone who spent a lot of time online and spent a lot of time in “toxic gamer and meme culture.” One result is the nasty guy is back to talking about his ballroom. And the rest of of the conservative universe...

Suddenly, it’s all compassion. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ,” tweeted Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. It’s fascinating how quickly the hate machine turned into a forgiveness machine. In one way, we may have avoided giving them the boogeyman they so desperately wanted, and in doing so, we may have staved off further death and violence. It’s still early, though. Who knows what the spin could be in a week. But in the end, we still want fewer guns in the world and fewer victims of gun violence. And they get to carry on as if nothing happened, creating a martyr out of someone who encouraged this Wild West world that we’re stuck living in—and that ultimately claimed him, too.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin started with a report from Politico, summarized as: FBI director Kash Patel is, with this shooting, shown to be in way over his head. And commentators on the right are noticing. A tweet from Zaid Jilani:

This is going to expose me as a gamer but both the arrows and the fascist reference they mention for the shooters ammo are direct references to the video game Helldivers 2 and are common memes.

A tweet from Leila Claire:

I don’t want to be the first person to point this out, but to gamers “Bella Ciao” was not a song sung by “anti-fascists” but a collectible and the background music in a main quest in Far Cry 6, which is probably REAL relevant given his other gaming references.

A tweet from Zachary Carter:

I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.

Alex Nowrasteh, in his own blog has a table of political motivated terrorism since 2020. Out of 81 incidents, 21% were from Islamism, 22% from the left, and 54% from the right. Yesterday I had mentioned Kirk debated opponents and suggested he had a big advantage and used the resulting video for ridicule. I may not have been entirely correct. Brian Rosenwald, in his own Substack, mentioned that Kirk was admired for his willingness to debate opponents. That little bit implies the debates may not have been as sinister as I assumed. At the top of the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sophie Labelle. The text is long, so I’ll summarize. It explains Groypers as a far right group led by Nick Fuentes. Their “Groyper wars” target the left, but also mainstream conservatives. Kirk was a target because he was “a fake conservative” – he accepted debate with Jewish and gay people. Groypers routinely tried to force him in debate to take extreme positions. Groypers use progressive symbols to confuse people, which is how “Bella Ciao” is a theme song. The reference to Helldivers 2 is code for total annihilation. The last panel:

Tyler Robinson is a soldier in the Groyper wars who has fallen so deep into internet culture that most people can’t even recognize it.

A meme posed by exlrrp shows several far right voices declaring Civil war. It then includes a tweet from Alex Cole of ACNewsitics, “Not a single ‘This is Civil War’ post all day? What happened, MAGA?” Under that is:

Civil War cancelled. It was a gun loving White Conservative man from a Christian Conservative family from the ultra Conservative State, Utah. Not a tran, foreigner or left, but one of their own. F--- the Right for their sick false accusations.

Another meme posted by exlrrp, though it doesn’t say who or what is being quoted.

Major breaking: “According to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler Robinson hated Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn’t conservative enough. (Robinson reportedly admired far-far-right Nick Fuentes). Republicans are now scrubbing X posts about Democrats faster than the DOJ erased Trump’s name from the Epstein files!”

A meme posted by exlrrp has the words, “Tyler Robinson’s mom, Amber Jones Robinson, quickly erased photos from her Facebook.” The photos show many family members, including Amber, with guns. A meme posted by ACNewsitics includes a quote from Joey Mannarino, “Tyler was radicalized at college because colleges are liberal indoctrination centers.” Below that are the words, “MAGAs realize that they can’t blame trans people, gays, Black people, immigrants, or Democrats for one of their own. So they blame college!” A meme posted by exlrrp includes the tweet by Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the right’s firebrands, that I quoted above. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.” Mickey Lenin responded, “The whiplash from the tone shift after discovering he’s one of theirs is amazing to watch.” A cartoon by the Naked Pastor is captioned “Some baggage can’t come with you.” It shows the gates of heaven. Signs say “All Welcome” and “No weapons allowed.” A man wearing several weapons walks away. A tweet by CNN includes before and after photos and a link to an article. The text says:

Satellite images reveal wide destruction in Gaza City as Israel steps up assault. In the weeks since Israel announced plans to take over Gaza City, its military has destroyed or damaged over 1,800 buildings in and around the city.