Guest voice: Chris Thomas

As probably the most terminally-online, sane person I know, I’m going to explain the whole Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson bullet engravings to y’all so you can share it with your parents and whatnot.

The bullet casings (not bullets) the FBI recovered had four messages scrawled on them

1. “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”
2. “Hey fascist! Catch!”

3. “Oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao”
4. “If you read this, you are gay lmao”

#1 is a phrase that appears in online comics making fun of people who like to engage in role-play cybersex/sexting in which they pretend to be anthropomorphic animals. If that doesn’t make sense to you that’s ok; there’s an almost infinitely deep well of variety in human sexuality and an even deeper well of ways people can make themselves feel better about themselves by making fun of it. This message is just a taunt suggesting that Kirk is sexually deviant and weird.

#2 is a reference to a video game called “Helldivers.” The arrow sequence is how a player calls in an airstrike in-game. The characters in Helldivers are fascists but they don’t really *know* that they’re fascists and so they say things like “for democracy” a lot. The shooter is echoing this phrase because it sounds both powerful and righteous; there’s a decent chance the irony is lost on him entirely.

#3 is an old Italian anti-fascist song. At first glance you might reasonably think this signals that Robinson is in with anti-fa but the song is also popular in the “Groyper” movement. What’s a Groyper, you ask? It’s a right-wing movement around Nick Fuentes which hates HATES Charlie Kirk and thinks he’s too liberal. Really.

#4 is just a homophobic meme from 4chan, an internet message board. There’s no complexity here, just internet trolls doing what they do.

These messages fit together to tell us who the shooter is. He’s a Groyper — a follower of Nick Fuentes who’s gone so far down the weird, internet culture rabbit hole that he’s basically speaking a different language. The Groyper movement loves to use imagery and phrases that originate on the left (like the italian song) and make them their own to sew confusion. From the way the Wall Street Journal uncritically reported on the bullets as containing “transgender” messages, it seems to have worked.

But, especially taken together, the messages paint a clear picture of the shooter. He’s a far right, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, white supremacist. He’s a member of a movement that has had an axe to grind with Charlie Kirk for some time. And he’s about the furthest you can be from antifa, progressive, LGBTQ, leftist, or Democratic without actually invading Poland.

Hope this helps.

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Posted by Kathy E Gill