Of course the Kirk suspect is a far-leftist

Why was Charlie Kirk murdered? After the horrifying killing of the right-wing activist last week, the focus of American law enforcement and the world’s media has turned to the political leanings and potential motive of his alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson. The 22-year-old former college student is facing the death penalty after being charged with aggravated murder on Tuesday.

Given Kirk was a Christian conservative and leading MAGA figure, tipped by some as a future President, Occam’s razor would suggest that his murderer would most likely turn out to be on the far left. Indeed, every bit of evidence that emerged has pointed in this direction.

First, there were the engravings found on bullet casings recovered by investigators, over whose meaning there has been furious speculation. 

“[H]ey fascist! CATCH,” read the first, along with a reference to a command for dropping a bomb in the 2024 videogame Helldivers 2.

“O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!,” ran a second, the lyrics of a 20th Century Italian anti-fascist song, which has been “probably the most important rallying song to antifa militants for decades,” according to journalist and antifa researcher Andy Ngo.

Then there was a “furry” meme, an internet subculture revolving around sexualized images of cartoon animals, which has a “significant LGBTQ+ presence” according to gay news site Pink News.

The final one read: “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao” – puerile internet humor, but suggesting the assassination was carried out with a view to later notoriety.

The obvious conclusion from these messages, alongside the fact that Robinson lived with a transgender partner, was that Robinson, like other antifa-style activists, believed Kirk represented some form of “fascism,” probably in part due to his outspoken stances against transgender ideology.

For many leftist partisans, however, this eminently plausible hypothesis, which later revelations have only lent further credence to, was uncomfortable and indeed, embarrassing. After all, many on the left often decry the alleged “violence” and “hate” of the right, and indeed label anyone opposed to the medical mutilation of “gender-affirming care” as “fascists,” just as Robinson appears to have done. So there soon emerged an extensive effort to rewrite the narrative and suggest that Robinson was in fact, somehow, part of the online far-right.

The principal claim was that, based on an extremely tenuous reading of the bullet casings, Robinson was in fact not a leftist, but a “groyper.” This is an internet subculture loosely led by the influential American nationalist Nick Fuentes, which is generally seen as far-right or alt-right (though often steeped in internet irony). Fuentes has previously criticized Kirk for being too moderate, and the claim was that as a result Robinson had killed him as part of an internecine right-wing feud.

Yet evidence for this wild hypothesis is so weak it scarcely bears repeating. One activist academic claimed to the LA Times that the anti-fascist anthem Bella ciao has in fact been “co-opted” by the groypers, based on the fact that a remix of the song appears in a single groyper Spotify playlist. As for the other bullet casing, others claim that the video game Helldivers 2 is allegedly “popular with the far right community” – while pointedly ignoring the words “hey fascist! CATCH” that precede it on the shell casings. For his part, Fuentes has said that his followers are being “framed” for Kirk’s killing, “based on literally zero evidence.”

Another claim spun out of proportion has been the fact that Robinson “comes from a family of Trump supporters,” which the US leftist blog the Daily Beast used to imply one shouldn’t “point fingers at the left” over the assassination. This is laughably thin gruel. Are political beliefs suddenly 100% heritable now? And why in any case would a Trump supporter assassinate one of Trump’s closest allies? In fact, on Sunday, Utah governor Spencer Cox told reporters the suspect had a “leftist ideology,” following his rather underreported comments to that effect to the Wall Street Journal the previous day. Charging Robinson on Tuesday, Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said that Robinson’s mother had told police that “over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political, and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”

The narrative of Robinson being a right-winger has always been deeply dubious, but that hasn’t stopped it being amplified by various media outlets. Bizarrely, even the Daily Telegraph, an old stalwart of the British right, now reports that Robinson “spoke the language of the far-right,” focusing on a 2018 picture of Robinson in tracksuits doing a “Slav squat,” which it very tenuously links with “groyper” memes.

Back in the real world, the picture that is emerging of Robinson is that, in keeping with standard far-left ideological tropes about right-wingers, he seems to have believed that Kirk was a “hateful” individual. Soon after Kirk’s death, a family member told the FBI that Robinson, who had grown increasingly political in recent years, had accused Kirk of “spreading hate” during a recent family dinner. Robinson is believed to have been in a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, and Axios reports that authorities believe this could help explain a motive for Kirk’s killing: that Robinson felt that the conservative was spreading so-called transphobic hate. According to FBI director Kash Patel, when questioned over his motives, Robinson told law enforcement: “Some hatred cannot be negotiated with.”

It is often the political right which is accused of being credulous, prone to confirmation bias, living in echo chambers, and of spreading so-called misinformation. But in the wake this appalling tragedy, left-wing organs and social media figures have done just that. The Kirk groyper hoax is as alarming as it is shameful. It seems there is no low to which leftist partisans will not stoop to avoid admitting that the US left has a problem with political violence.