https://bylinetimes.com/2025/09/13/deadly-memes-tyler-robinsons-far-right-groyper-ties/
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Though there are few direct political statements online from this “shy, quiet kid”, there are more indications that Tyler Robinson might have been radicalised by far-right online movements rather than the far left.
An image posted by his mother, Amberson Robinson on Facebook around Halloween 2018 describes her son as “some guy from a meme” and shows Robinson squatting on some grass. The uniform is precise – Adidas-style track pants – and the pose is significant, a meme that became known as a low ‘Slav squat’.
By 2018, this ‘Gopnik’ aesthetic – the squat, the tracksuit – had fully converged with the ‘Pepe the Frog’ meme in the alt-right online sphere. The ‘Gopnik Pepe’ was common currency on 4chan and adjacent platforms, a symbol of a certain nihilistic, post-Soviet edge. It then evolved into many variants.
To understand the potential significance of Robinson’s 2018 costume, one must trace the complex genealogy of its symbols.
The journey begins with Pepe the Frog, an apolitical comic character co-opted by the alt-right around 2015-2016. By September 2016, the Anti-Defamation League had designated certain variants of Pepe a hate symbol. Its march into the mainstream was confirmed in 2017 when a Pepe emoji trended heavily during the Super Bowl.
This period of 2016-2018 saw the ‘Gopnik squat’ meme merge with Pepe, creating the ‘Gopnik Pepe’ – a symbol of defiant, low-life resistance that resonated deeply within the nihilistic communities of 4chan. This is the exact cultural moment Robinson’s Halloween costume inhabits.
By 2018-2019, this meme culture crystallised into a formal political project with the rise of Nick Fuentes. A new, chubbier frog variant called the ‘Groyper’ – a portmanteau of ‘frog’ and ‘grouper’ fish – became the namesake for Fuentes’s network of white nationalist, Christian nationalist activists. Their goal: to tug mainstream U.S. conservatism sharply to the far right.
This strategy erupted into public view in the autumn of 2019 during the ‘Groyper Wars’. Fuentes’s followers, organised online, systematically disrupted events hosted by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA), confronting speakers with loaded questions on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights designed to ‘expose’ them as insufficiently ‘America First’.
Incidents at Ohio State (October 29, 2019) and the heckling Donald Trump Jr. at a promotional event for his book Triggered at UCLA that November cemented the Groyper identity: a fusion of memes and coordinated real-world action aimed squarely at figures like Kirk, whom they branded as ‘Conservative Inc.’ sell-outs.
By 2020, Fuentes had turned this meme-driven network into a sustained media and political infrastructure under the ‘America First’ banner, complete with an annual conference (AFPAC) and a thriving livestream community.
Dan Evans
‘Bella Ciao’
Though the only evidence so far of Robinson’s allegiance to the Groyper movement is seven years old, and made murky by the deliberately coded and ironic nature of evolving memes, one bit of new evidence suggests the Halloween image might be important.
Police recovered a Mauser Model 98 rifle in a nearby wooded area soon after Charlie Kirk’s murder. Utah’s Governor, Spencer Cox, later confirmed that unfired casings carried bizarre inscriptions.
These included: “Hey fascist! Catch!” (a line from the Tarantino movie Inglorious Basterds) is featured along with arrows which reference the multiplayer video game Helldivers, and various imperatives with the word ‘fascist’ are memes in the Helldivers community, which is popular with the far right community.
The gun casing engravings included some other classic internet trolling motifs – “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO” “notices bulge OWO what’s this?” – and a single line: “Bella Ciao.”
“Bella Ciao” is a 20th-century Italian folk song that became the anthem of the anti-fascist Resistance during the Second World War. Its lyrics – “O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao! – are a mournful yet defiant farewell to a life of freedom, sung by a partisan who is fighting and expects to die for the cause of liberation from fascism. After the song gained global recognition from its feature in the Netflix series Money Heist, the Groyper movement co-opted it.
A HUGEL remix of “Bella Ciao” was included in a leaked ‘Groyper Wars playlist’ which provided the definitive soundtrack and curated set of signals for the movement.
The song is also featured in Hearts of Iron, another online war game popular on the far right. An X account named “AF Ciao Bella” — a direct fusion of Fuentes’s ‘America First’ brand and the meme — suggests these symbols were often integrated into the group’s identity.
By reportedly engraving this message on his unused shell casings, Tyler Robinson’s messages suggest he could well have been inspired by the Groyper movement or other far-right influences. But only a full investigation by the authorities will determine the suspected killer’s motivations.