Gamer Radicalism

What we know and what we don’t: A lot of bad or unconfirmed information has been swirling about the ideology and personal life of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the person detained as a suspect in the assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk. Let’s try to see how much we actually know.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has said in a press conference that Robinson subscribed to “leftist ideology” and that he was living with, and in a relationship with, a transgender person. Cox described Robinson as a “very normal young man” who had been “radicalized” after dropping out of college and moving back to southern Utah, where he is from. Robinson’s alleged romantic partner has apparently cooperated with the authorities and provided private messages to them, and does not appear to have had any knowledge of the crime or any involvement.

Some, like The New York Post, have really run with these breadcrumbs:

Charlie Kirk assassination latest shooting committed by trans people and advocates https://t.co/4eonu2CcjS pic.twitter.com/OrESw1Fn0J

— New York Post (@nypost) September 13, 2025

While it’s possible that Robinson fits into some “murderous trans advocate” category, right now we have no manifesto and very little online posting to link him to anything like that (let alone this broader pattern that the Post is trying to claim); you need more before we can really determine motive.

Transcriptions found on bullet casings read “hey fascist! CATCH!” along with an up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols, and “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao”—a reference to an anti-fascist Italian leftist folk song that had a resurgence after being used in the video game Far Cry 6. The arrows at least appear to refer to a video game, Helldivers 2, and the controller moves you use to detonate a bomb. Other inscriptions: “Notices bulges OwO what’s this?” and “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao.” These all seem very online, and very gamery, and not even explicitly political, per se, other than calling his target a fascist.

Robinson was raised in a Republican, Mormon family, and his father turned him in after Robinson confessed to him (and after the father consulted with a trusted friend who is also a pastor). We don’t know very much about why he chose Kirk as his target, but there’s something very darkly sad and ironic about the fact that Kirk had positioned himself as a sort of therapist to the young and adrift, speaking charitably and thoughtfully to them during his “prove me wrong” segments.

Scenes from New York: Lefty boomers who left positions of power due to sex scandals involving members of their staff apparently feel like they need another shot at political office. No, I’m not referring to Andrew Cuomo, though this does all apply to him; I’m referring to Jim McGreevey, who is running for mayor of Jersey City.

• The New York Times gave leftist commentator/Twitch streamer Hasan Piker an op-ed on our growing problem with political violence and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whom he was supposed to debate later this month. It’s predictably bad. An excerpt: “Any answer about civic decline in America also has to include a discussion about the failure of our political and economic establishment to reconcile with social challenges that have touched every place and aspect of American life. Too many examples of the deadly gun violence we see today are, it seems to me, indicative of this decline. The social challenges include rising rents and homelessness, the destruction caused by climate change, titanic levels of inequality, and too many others to name here. Our capitalist way of life—always accumulating, never evening out—leaves more and more people to deal with these problems on their own.” But here’s, maybe, the worst part: Piker has been an archetypal radical, repeatedly calling for political violence on his streams, over and over again. Case in point:

This is who just wrote a piece in the NYT on political violence pic.twitter.com/QaktdeNH0g

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 14, 2025

• “The U.S. will go ahead with a ban on short-video app TikTok if China won’t drop demands for reducing tariffs and technological restrictions as part of a divestiture deal, a senior U.S. official with knowledge of negotiations said on Monday,” per Reuters. The deadline for a TikTok deal—a shutdown, unless it is sold to U.S. owners—is Wednesday.
• Fox News commentator Brian Kilmeade made on-air comments this past week, in relation to the murder of Irnya Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a deranged mentally ill man on public transit, that those who are homeless and mentally ill ought to be euthanized by “involuntary lethal injection.” Kilmeade then apologized for his remarks, saying he doesn’t actually believe in that.
• I’m not convinced we need to make lists of people who say bad things:

I’ve only just begun creating a spreadsheet of people who’ve said vile things about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. So far, teachers and professors are by far the most represented. pic.twitter.com/B2h9H0EmvQ

— lisakip (@lisakippy) September 13, 2025

• From Bloomberg: “What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy“
• “Around 1,000 [LGBT] pilgrims gathered Friday in the 17th century baroque church [Rome's Church of the Gesù] to play music, pray and reflect, while on Saturday they processed to St Peter’s Basilica, entering through the basilica’s Holy Door, which symbolizes forgiveness and reconciliation,” reports CNN. “The door is only opened in the Catholic Church’s jubilee years, falling every 25 years, including 2025.” The fact that the pilgrimage of gay Catholics was put in the official jubilee program is of some significance, providing an indication that Pope Leo might be following in his predecessor’s footsteps—not changing official church doctrine, per se, but rather the posture or messaging toward gay people.
• “The Trump administration plans to inject nearly $500 million into historically Black colleges and tribal universities, a windfall funded largely by cuts to programs elsewhere for minority students,” reports The New York Times. “The administration will also redirect money to other political priorities for President Trump, including an extra $137 million for American history and civics education and $60 million more for charter schools.” This amounts to a 13 percent increase in funding for charter schools.
• Agree:

people often post this stuff to imply that moral panics about the technologies of the past were quaint. But the past is full of reminders that we are on a long, slow march away from embodied experience, and that we’ve lost more of it than we can even remember https://t.co/anUgdPJXjn

— Lauren Wilford (@lauren_wilford) September 14, 2025

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