Prosecutors in Utah appear to be preparing to argue that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last week because he disagreed with Kirk's anti-trans rhetoric.
In their charging document, authorities cite text messages that Robinson allegedly exchanged with "his lover/roommate," a person they describe as "a biological male who was transitioning genders." The document also includes another text in which Robinson allegedly explains that he killed Kirk because he had "had enough of his hatred."
The presumed motive has added fire to a rash of speculation by high-reach conservatives, who have suggested that this motive equated to a political ideology. The same day Kirk was killed, President Trump claimed the shooter was a "radical leftist." Others have suggested that the suspect may have been "groomed" by a "trans terror cell" and that he was perhaps working with larger groups, including "antifa." So far, these claims have not been supported by publicly released evidence.
In fact, little is still known about Robinson's politics. According to the charging document, his mother told investigators that he had become more "pro-gay and trans-rights oriented" within the last year. It also includes a text message, allegedly written by Robinson, that said "since trump got into office [my dad] has been pretty diehard maga." But Robinson is not registered with a political party in Utah. There is no evidence of his positions on other issues of importance to the left, such as immigration or labor.
The dearth of information about Robinson's political views has suggested to some researchers of online culture and shootings that there may not, in fact, be much more to Robinson's alleged violence than a single-issue grievance. They say that one particular piece of information shared in the charging document lends support to this theory.
"Remember how I was engraving bullets?," Robinson allegedly wrote. "The f***in messages are mostly a big meme, if I see 'notices bulge uwu' on fox new I might have a stroke…"
For researchers who examine how online culture manifests in the real world, this evidence strongly reinforces their analysis that Kirk's alleged shooter was obsessed with what some call the "performance of violence." They say that the use of online memes that are inscrutable to a general public likely was intended not to signal any political tendencies. Rather, these were meaningless in-group jokes primarily circulated among young, extremely online gamers; and, they are emulative of other acts of violence that have succeeded in stirring up discourse.
"If this guy had any clear intention, any clear operational goal, the fact that you, me and a ton of other people are sitting around and going, what does this dumb stuff [that] this 22-year old, online-poisoned, goober wrote on a bullet casing have to say about his politics?" said Elliot Chandler, a counter-extremism researcher. "Hey, mission accomplished, man. Like, hey — he got us."
The FBI is still investigating the engravings
Almost as soon as Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shared what the shell casing engravings said at an FBI press conference last week, many were quick to assign meaning. Cox himself, referring to the message on one unspent round that read "Hey Fascist! Catch!," followed by a series of arrows, said "I think that speaks for itself." Right-wing social media accounts also claimed that the shell casings bore "antifa, lgbtq, and leftist messaging," with some particularly highlighting one that featured the refrain from a popular Italian, antifascist song called "Bella Ciao."
On Tuesday, during a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the FBI, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, repeated these claims while questioning FBI director Kash Patel.
"The bullet casings had on them both Antifa and LGBT wording on them," Cruz said. "Do you have any indication of the source of those engravings and what inspired them?"
Patel responded that the agency is still "developing" what the source may be.
"The gut reaction is to assume that, oh, if he's etching 'Bella Ciao' on a shell casing, he must be anti-fascist, he must sort of have these anti-fascist tendencies," said Michael Senters, a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech's ASPECT program, who focuses on the translation of online culture into real world politics. "But with so many things online, he could have come across Bella Ciao in any number of other instances."
Senters says that the song has been featured in a number of gaming-related contexts, including the video game Far Cry 6, the soundtrack for the game Hearts of Iron IV and a version has even appeared on a Spotify playlist for a far-right group that has, in the past, had tension with Kirk. But Senters and other researchers say they have seen no evidence, so far, tying Robinson to that group.
Similarly, Senters and others say the casing engraved with "Hey Fascist! Catch!" and arrows, is rooted in video game culture, and not indicative of any political or ideological background. The arrows, Chandler said, refer to a code sequence that players of the game Helldivers 2 can use to call down a 500-kg bomb. He said that code sequence has, itself, become a meme.
"The reason it's kind of a popular meme in the Helldivers 2 community is it is very, very easy to accidentally kill your friends in that game, and it's one of the real funny ways to do it," Chandler said. "Like, 'Oh, no, I got hit and I dropped the little beacon that I was supposed to throw. And now there's a half ton bomb dropping on us. Sorry, guys.'"
Chandler said that the earlier part of that shell casing's engraving, "Hey Fascist! Catch!" is a meme within the Helldivers 2 community talking about shooting robots. He said his assessment is that this, paired with the arrow sequence meme, render any possible political angle to the message "inconclusive."
Much clearer, say researchers, are the origins, and meaninglessness, of the inscriptions on the remaining two rounds. "If you Read This, You Are GAY Lmao," Chandler said, is a very old meme that has circulated on online image boards, including 4chan.
"It's a classic one. You know, it is in poor taste," he said "A lot of this kind of takes the role of locker room talk … it's kind of meant to offend, put people on their heels."
The last casing inscription, "NoTices Bulge OWO What's This?" refers to a meme that originated with a comic on Tumblr roughly a decade ago and quickly went viral because of its cringe factor, said Senters.
"That meme emerged as a way to make fun of or poke fun at the way that 'furries' interacted with each other through online roleplaying," Senters said, referring to a subculture of people who draw or sometimes dress as anthropomorphized animals. "That became such a widespread joke and widespread sort of slogan in subcultural spaces online, he could have bumped into that anywhere."
For those who study political and extremist violence, the substance of the messages on the bullet casings is far less revealing than the simple fact that the shooter made the inscriptions at all. They say this act, combined with information revealed through other news reports and contained within the charging document in Utah, indicate that the suspect was thinking deliberately about how he would ultimately be situated within the universe of mass shooters and high-profile killers in the U.S. Senters said it was particularly revealing to read about Discord chats that Robinson reportedly participated in after the killing, where he claimed his "doppelganger" had committed the shooting and that he'd "better also get rid of this manifesto."
"What he was doing here with this act was very performative," said Senters. "He was performing 'Internet culture' — and specifically mass shooting culture in general — with the etchings on the shell casings being memes, with the joking about having a manifesto. It's all very performative in that regard."
Continuing a tradition of "performative violence"
Kirk's assassination has left his wife, Erika Kirk, without a husband and their two daughters without a father. Video of Kirk being shot was filmed in real-time by attendees of the event where he was speaking and shared almost instantaneously across social media platforms. Countless people have seen the disturbing footage, even if they wished to avoid it. The violence, Senters said, was extreme and real.
At the same time, he and other researchers who study the intersection of online culture and real-world violence, say this act also falls into a disturbing and growing category of "performative violence." These acts, he said, typically feature evidence that the perpetrator has provided, such as writings, etchings on weapons and digital histories, intended to shape how they, and their violence, is discussed and remembered.
"I think he wanted to generate discourse and content through the act of committing a political assassination," said Senters. "And so in that regard, etching the memes onto the shells is a performative act because he understands that shooters have memes on their guns and on their ammo. So it's performative in that regard. He is seeing something and he is emulating it."
In fact, this desire to churn public discourse may have been the very reason that the shell casing engravings were little more than in-jokes for the extremely online, said Chandler.
"This person is basically saying, look upon my works and remember me for them. That is their goal. It is not necessarily the message itself," he said. "Now there is an audience for whom that message is for, and it is other people who might do these things. They're basically providing an instruction manual. But, critically, they're also providing an instruction manual for how to be remembered, how to be analyzed, how to be broken down."
Several researchers say that this act of violence has not been easy to contextualize against trends in extremist violence. Chandler said that the possibility that Robinson may have targeted Kirk because of the activist's anti-trans rhetoric would situate him among others who have been accused of high-profile acts of violence tied to a single, very personal, grievance.
He said these include Ryan Routh, a man accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump last year; and Luigi Mangione, who is charged with killing the CEO of United Healthcare in late 2024.
At the same time, the deliberate trail of public evidence that this suspect allegedly left behind, specifically with the bullet casings, also echoes a pattern increasingly seen among perpetrators of mass and school shootings. In those cases, the attackers appeared to be fluent in the cultural script that has developed in the U.S. around mass shootings, such the common choice of weaponry, messaging inscribed on firearms and through journals or other written materials, and digital presence. But in those cases, the attackers typically lacked any political or ideological motive, instead striving to be remembered among figures who had committed similar atrocities in the past.
Senters said he worries that the duration of discussion about Robinson, his potential political leanings and a motive, may have illustrated a more potent way for aspirants to this disturbing legacy.
"If you look at how long we've been talking about the Charlie Kirk shooting, there is perhaps a worrisome thought that can form that, oh, if someone is looking to sort of make their name in this online shooter space, then maybe a targeted political shooting is now a better way to do that than a mass shooting," he said, "because we've become so sort of like inculcated to the tragedy of mass shootings that [they take] up space and the mass discourse for a handful of days before we all move on to the next thing."
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