What We Know Versus What We Were Told
And how unprofessionally and irresponsibly those in charge of the Kirk murder investigation have been acting
They may have got the guy who killed Charlie Kirk—after detaining two different suspects, announcing they had them in custody, then letting them go. Brilliant. Here’s the guy in charge of the FBI and its investigation, in case you needed a bit of a chuckle this morning.Authorities first released images of the suspected killer, captured from video footage on campus. He appeared to be a young white man, and he was sporting an image of a U.S. stamp that bore a U.S. flag and an eagle. You know, typical lib stuff.
Photo from Utah Public Safety
Per the New York Times, Donald Trump told Fox & Friends last night that they had a suspect in custody, and that it was the “person we’re looking for,” but the FBI has not confirmed his account yet.
News reports have since identified the suspect as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year old white man. Online sleuths quickly discovered that Robinson apparently was raised as a Mormon and has spent a life steeped in gun culture. This is unverified, so we should be cautious. But there are now several images from his mother’s social media that appear to corroborate this. We will find out much more in the coming hours.
Today, I want to talk about the disinformation we were bombarded with.
The Wall Street Journal did everyone a disservice by publishing yesterday that the authorities had found markings on ammunition inside a gun found in the woods nearby, which they assumed was left by the murderer, and that the markings on it expressed “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.”
Come again?
In my piece yesterday, I also expressed strong skepticism yesterday over this narrative, which felt too on the nose and convenient. Not long after this, the New York Times reported that the initial assessment should be viewed with caution, with one official noting that the “report had not been verified by A.T.F. analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.”
That’s a big “misread or misinterpreted.” So I dug a little into this, with some help from Rebecca Solnit, who had messaged me about it.
Conservative political commentator Steven Crowder, known for his racist and homophobic “comedy,” claimed that his team had received an email from an officer at the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) that included a screenshot of an internal ATF message. He was apparently trying to push the “anti-fascist, trans killer” narrative.
I don’t know if this summary is authentic, but it appears to be so. Looking closely at the image, there is an entry that says, “All cartridges have engraved wording on them expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” That matches what the WSJ had reported.
What on Earth?
CNN reported later on this assessment, confirming that the caution by a senior law enforcement official expressed to the NYT was probably wise: “Two law enforcement sources told CNN that agents quickly ran an initial search on one of the markings, including a series of arrows, which analysts initially interpreted to be a connection to the transgender community.”
Interpreted the arrows to mean what again? I saw this and immediately thought, “These are the same geniuses who saw crown and soccer tattoos on immigrants and assumed they were Tren de Aragua gang members, then had them sent to CECOT.”
The idea that keystone field agents from the ATF (F stands for ‘Firearms,’ let’s not forget) would see ammunition cartridges with arrow markings on them and immediately go, “Trans community!” is an indictment of the rot that has overtaken the minds of so many.
The Wall Street Journal later amended its reporting to note that the initial “bulletin may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition.”
But the damage had been done.
UPDATE: Since publication of this piece, the markings on the casings have become public information. They are not, however, associated with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” as originally and irresponsibly reported by the Wall Street Journal. Rather, they appear to be taken from video games or consist of “copypasta” trolling, including the phrases, “Notices bulges, OWO whats this” and “If you read this you are gay lmao.”
The arrows cited by authorities, identified as up arrow, right arrow, three down arrow, are generally associated with the video game Helldivers.
A song “Bella Ciao” referenced another ammo casing which was originally associated with anti-Nazi partisans, which got the right excited that this meant Robinson was antifa. But as I suggested yesterday, it was plausible that the killer was actually a member of the Groypers, an extremist group of white nationalists whose leader is Nick Fuentes, who had a long standing beef with Kirk. That song recently has been used by the Groypers to mock liberals. It is also, by no small coincidence, the music for a mod for Hellsdivers (and also background music to a quest in the video game Far Cry 6). Further, the song apparently is listed on a Groyper Wars (America First) playlist. It feels relevant to note that the Groyper Wars were begun by Fuentes specifically to attack Charlie Kirk and frame him as a fake, “anti-white” conservative.
A picture of Robinson posted by his mother shows him in a Groyper costume for Halloween in 2018, though the Groyper frog and “Skinny Pepe” may not have been the same meme at that time.
In short, everything we have seen so far—and it is admittedly early—supports the idea that Robinson was a member of a far-right anti-Kirk group, and not an anti-fascist, trans leftist. But that didn’t stop the disinformation machine of the right.
As The Daily Beast reported, Donald Trump Jr. jumped immediately on this anti-trans bandwagon in a Thursday appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. “I can’t name, including probably like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans movement.” He added, “It feels like they’ve done every mass shooting in America for the last few years, but we’re not allowed to talk about it.”
Notorious transphobe Rep. Nancy Mace also attacked the entire trans community using a slur, all based on the unfounded assessment of a “transgender” bullet.
But based on a study of 4,147 mass shootings since 2018, PolitiFact found that only seven were perpetrated by transgender people, meaning a rate of 0.17 percent, far below their estimated percentage within the population of 1-2 percent.
Everyone just needs to calm down from the trans panic and focus on the suspect now in custody, who does not appear to be the liberal, trans anti-fascist that MAGA claimed he was.
Jay Kuo’s post today….It will be interesting to see how they spin.So
unsettling to see how the trans community has been demonized.😔
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