The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The investigation is ongoing and beyond that we decline to comment.”
I’m sure they are looking for some sense of organization, a group that they can define and eliminate. That’s not going to happen. Read “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.” This is a leaderless movement where the rhetoric of some inspires others to violence without there being any material connection between the two. It’ll increase and it won’t stop so long as the conditions continue and so long as these don’t morph into an organization with leadership.
Exactly. It’s not an organized group. It’s just people that still have their moral compass intact.
I wouldn’t assume the Kirk shooter has anything particularly “intact”. He seemed to enjoy the right wing meme stuff more and treated the killing more like a shit post that any ideological stand.
As a target, Charlie Kirk was actually a pretty terrible choice. He has no real power, and even in terms of influence I’d say he was a bit removed from any directly influential circle. He said vile stuff but say least he did actually let others get a fair share of his stage in his engagements. May have just been for the heightened engagement for content, but either way at least he let things play out in ways that the left could enjoy him getting owned by good points to his face, instead of settling for “reaction videos”.
I’m not talking about him, I don’t see any reason to consider him a member of antifa or the “left” at all. I’ve even read that a subset of groypers have a fetish for femboys. Hell, his Steam username was DonaldTrump according to Kotaku. No progressive I know would want to associate with that scumbag, even ironically.
It’s not just that he wasn’t actually “organized” with a left wing group, it’s that even as they go fishing they can’t even find credible evidence of significant leftist influence at all.
He wasn’t organized with anyone, and the only whiff of influence they seem to have found was playing with right wing shit post fodder. They haven’t indicating finding any sort of “militant” influence at all.
It seems that he just kind of broke on his own, with his gun friendly upbringing escalating that to a supremely high profile assassination out of nowhere.
Now they can certainly find leftists celebrating Kirk’s death a bit tastelessly much and they are mad as hell about that all on its own but the actual killing seems to be nihilist violent extremism. They have a good reason to be concerned that obviously tensions are tight enough to have these things pop off. Bernie Sanders certainly seems to understand that and put forward an inclusive message about victims on both sides and for at least some unifying response from both sides.
However the biggest blowhards on the right seen to be doubling down and escalating rhetoric, which is the last thing the situation needs.
None of these shooters are left wing though. It’s not like the only thing the administration is wrong about is their level of organisation. The premise that there is a left-wing extremism problem is completely false. They’re trying to pin all this violence on completely the wrong people so that they can ramp up their persecution of trans people and anti-fascists.