One of the questions we have about the young man who shot Charlie Kirk is, "Was he left or right?" This may be the answer to that mystery.
--Kim
You've probably heard by now that they've taken into custody the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk. He's a 22-year-old white male from Utah, whose parents were Republicans, his mom was a social worker, his dad worked for the sheriff's department, he was a Christian who was brought up shooting guns and who got a scholarship to college.
But he's being sold to the public as a leftist because they found a bullet casing that said "catch this fascist."
But wait a minute. Not so fast.
Here's another theory -
What if Robinson isn't some confused leftist who lost his mind, but instead he's exactly what he appears to be on paper: a product of far-right internet culture who's been playing a game that most people don't understand.
The bullet casings tell a different story than what's being reported. Sure, one said "hey fascist catch" - which sounds pretty anti-fascist on the surface.
But the others?
"Notices bulges OWO what's this?" and "Oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao" and "If you are reading this you are gay, lmaoooo."
If you don't spend time in the darker corners of the internet, this looks like random nonsense. But if you know what you're looking at, it's a calling card.
The "OWO" phrase started in furry roleplay communities but became standard trolling material - the kind of thing edgy internet kids use to shock normies. The "you are gay" inscription is basic juvenile trolling.
But "Bella Ciao" - that's where it gets interesting.
"Bella Ciao" is an Italian anti-fascist resistance anthem from World War II. It's been adopted by leftist movements worldwide as a symbol of resistance. Sounds pretty leftist, right? Except there's a problem.
Groypers - the far-right internet movement led by Nick Fuentes - have been appropriating leftist symbols for years. It's called "hiding your power level," and it's designed to do exactly what's happening right now: confuse people about your actual beliefs.
These groups don't just steal leftist imagery for fun. They do it strategically. They take progressive symbols and use them ironically while maintaining their actual extremist views. It's memetic warfare - create enough cognitive confusion that nobody can pin down what you really believe.
The beauty of this strategy is that it works on both ends.
When something goes wrong, right-wing media can point to the anti-fascist symbols and say "see, he's actually a leftist." Meanwhile, the actual extremists get to wink and nod at each other because they know the symbols were never sincere.
Robinson fits the profile perfectly. Republican family, sheriff's department connections, raised with guns, Christian background - this isn't the resume of some antifa radical. This is exactly what you'd expect from someone radicalized in Groyper spaces during the pandemic years when these movements surged.
The combination of genuine political symbols with internet trolling creates exactly the kind of interpretive nightmare that benefits extremist movements. Older investigators who don't understand meme culture might take the mixed messages at face value and completely miss what's actually happening.
But here's what really gives it away - Groypers don't just hate the left.
They hate mainstream conservatives too.
To them, figures like Charlie Kirk represent "fake fascism" - conservatives who aren't extreme enough. The phrase "hey facist catch" makes perfect sense in that context. It's not anti-fascist resistance - it's far-right gatekeeping.
This might not be about some confused kid who got mixed up in competing ideologies. It may be about sophisticated online movements that have spent years perfecting techniques to obscure their actual beliefs. They've gotten so good at it that they can commit acts of violence and still get their enemies blamed for it.
The narrative battle that's playing out right now - leftist terrorist versus confused loner versus right-wing extremist - is exactly what these groups want. The more confusion, the better. The more people argue about what the symbols mean, the more they achieve their goal of making their actual ideology invisible.
What if when Robinson wrote "hey facist catch" on a bullet casing, but he wasn't targeting fascism? What if he was expressing it?
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