Moments into a Friday morning news conference announcing the apprehension of a suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing, the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, began to read aloud the phrases reportedly engraved on the assassin’s bullet casings:
“Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”
“Hey fascist! Catch!”
“Oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao.”
“If you read this you are gay lmao.”
These cryptic words were read tentatively by Mr. Cox, who seemed to have little idea of their meaning and provided no further context. The governor also relayed how the suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22, communicated his actions to friends on the Discord group chat platform. One relative, Mr. Cox said, described Mr. Robinson as “full of hate.”
The only thing that can be said conclusively about Mr. Robinson, at this moment, is that he was a chronically online, white American male.
The internet’s political communities and the open-source sleuths currently scrambling to place Mr. Robinson into a coherent ideological camp certainly won’t be content with any of this. Nor will they be satisfied with the other likelihood awaiting us: that Mr. Robinson, the son of a seemingly content Mormon family, probably possesses a mishmash of ideological stances. Some held dearly. Others not so much. They also will not be satisfied that this horrific, society-changing act of violence was most likely committed both as an ironic gesture and as a pure political statement.
If your head is spinning from the internet’s attempts to read into Mr. Robinson’s alleged choices and political identity, that’s understandable. We’ve fully stepped into a different historical moment: the age of brain-poisoning meme politics.
Despite mounting evidence that the toxic energies of the internet have begun to spill over into our real lives, there has been a reluctance to take the things happening online very seriously. The revolting death spectacle that took place at Utah Valley University is a new kind of political event.
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