The suspect accused of fatally shooting the conservative activist Charlie Kirk left ammunition recorded with a reference to fascism and the dark memes and video games of the Internet, authorities said on Friday.
The Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, said the inscriptions were found in at least four shells linked to Tyler Robinson, 22, who was arrested early Friday in relation to the murder. An engraving reading, “Hi Fascist!
The authorities said the rounds were found with a bolt action rifle model 98 Mauser, equipped with a range, that the researchers recovered in a wooded area on the edge of the Campus of the University of Utah Valley. The weapon was wrapped in a dark color towel.
In addition to the engraving reference fascists, Cox also referred to engravings containing darker references.
In the housing fired, for example, a message said: “Avicios, Bulgas, Owo, what is this?”
Scripture seems to be a reference to a meme about the hairy subculture online and the online roles game, said Jamie Cohen, an assistant media studies professor in Queens College who investigates Memes. The meme has been largely used as a mockery and trolling method, although its relevance for Kirk or the shooting is not clear.
The experts urged the precaution to interpret the engravings, citing a long history of shooters using misleading or ironic messages, often mixing internet politics and culture so that they challenge easy categorization.
Cohen said he believes that messages in most recovered rounds were deliberately left by a person who is “extremely online.”
The suspect may have specifically used terms that are difficult to decipher “remain in the underground current of the Internet,” he said.
“This type of meme is specifically designed to ensure that the news cannot report it because it comes from an extremely online approach,” he said.
Bond Benton, a professor at Montclair State University who studies social networks, brand, popular culture and online hate groups, said memes are incoherent for most people, but are adopted by those in niche online spaces.
“This type of messaging could be a kind of wink to those people because notoriety, being the most commented in that space, is very, very valuable for members who are from these communities,” he said.
Lindsay Hahn, associate professor at the University of Buffalo who investigates the ideological extremism and the ways in which perpetrators of violence justify their actions, said the suspect was probably looking for fame.
His messages, he said, do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology. “But what they do,” he said, “is that the shooter wanted to convey a message and, therefore, is spoken online.”
“It seems that these messages, at least, were selected because I knew they were going to be spoken,” Hahn added.
At the press conference on Friday morning, when a journalist asked him what the messages meant, Cox said: “I will leave you to interpret what those engravings mean.”
The governor said that the one who refers to the fascists “speaks for himself.”
That particular housing did not refer also registered with additional symbols: an upward arrow, a right arrow and three arrows down. The order of directional arrow symbols is a code used in the success of Helldivers 2 video game to call a pump in the player’s position.
The video game challenges players to work together as an elite team of soldiers to save the earth pushing back invasing hordes of spatial insects, cyborgs and robots. Last year, he revitalized a long -term debate about fascism and satire.
Cox said another message said: “Oh, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao.” Cohen said this can be a reference to the lyrics in a somewhat controversial Italian song that is an anti -fascist nature.
A fourth housing appeared simply to make fun of researchers. “If you read this, you are Gay Lmao,” he said, using an abbreviation well known for “laughing from me to …”.
It is not clear what political perspectives held Robinson from other publicly available materials. In 2021, Robinson registered to vote without affiliation to the party. The photos published by Robinson’s mother on Facebook show him dresses with a Halloween costume in 2017 riding Trump’s shoulders.
Robinson binds to a long list of suspicious shots of the last decade that have referred to memes, online subcultures and video games in their writings. Some have been explicit in their ideological messages, while others have dedicated themselves to online trolling, using sarcasm and deliberately confusing references that hinder the interpretation of their ideologies.
The texts of many shooters who have been radicalized online are highly referential to each other.
The person who killed 51 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, left writings that mixed political ideologies with memes and jokes that attribute their radicalization to children’s video games. Another part of the writings accredited Candace Owens with his radicalization, which has been widely interpreted as satire. The gunman in a buffalo of 2022, New York, in mass, the mixed racist memes with racist ideology, such as the “great replacement theory”, and also the plagiarized materials of other writings of mass shooters, making the line between their views and the views of other blurred.
In August, the suspect of a shooting at the Catholic School of Minneapolis left a video that refers to a Hodgepod of political messages and memes, from “Liberate the files!” For the Skibidi toilet, that does not seem to represent a coherent ideology.
“Often, this extremely online costume is destined to be double,” Cohen said. “It is specifically destined to someone like me who immerses himself in what he would call the culture of memes and declare something to get more press. Therefore, it could be another bait and change for researchers who are falling into the same trap that they are designing for a greater viral exposure.”
Similarly, the practice of writing about ammunition and weapons has also become an issue among shooters.
The authorities say that the person accused of firing and killing a CEO of medical care in Manhattan seemed to have left an explicit reference, “deny”, “defend” and “depose”, to a 2010 book that was critic of the health insurance industry in the ammunition used to kill the CEO of United Group.
Robinson was arrested Thursday night, said FBI director Kash Patel. Cox said that one of the suspect’s relatives communicated with a family friend on Thursday night, who later contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s office with information that Robinson had confessed or implied that he had carried out the shooting.
The researchers interviewed a member of the suspect’s family, who said he had become more political in recent years, according to COX. The person said Robinson told them recently that Kirk would come to UVU and that the couple argued how Kirk didn’t like and the views he had.
Robinson has not yet been accused. It is expected to be accused of aggravated murder, discharge from a firearm that causes serious bodily injuries and obstruction of justice, according to a sworn statement of probable cause.
