Ok, I've had a look at various explanations of these bullet casings. DHs first reaction was 4chan and that this will likely lead to a bunch of arrests of people who were on the same discord as him. There's some speculation that he was on an antifascist discord. I think that's probably what will happen but beyond that I think it's all a bit of a mess.
In terms of his politics this seems to be a point of some contention with a lot of attempts to disown him and blame 'the other side'.
There's a theory that he was a Groyper. A Groyper is a product of 4chan - they are what was the alt-right. More far right than the conservative right and have had a particular beef with Kirk and Turning Point for not being extreme enough. There's a photo of him doing the 'squatting slave meme' and much speculation about this and whether it's a form or the Pepe Meme or not. However he did call Kirk a fascist though bizarrely this apparently is something a Groyper might do. (Remember the Russians call Ukrainians fascist).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers
This would fit with his background of being a conservative and coming from a family who were into guns. But this doesn't tally with family accounts of becoming more political lately and criticised Kirk for spreading hate. Nor does it tally with his supposed membership of the Democratic Socialists of America (far left group) which photos suggest.
Then there's another take.
The reference Bella Ciao is supposed to be an antifascist reference and that he was far left. Which does fit with family accounts and the above political leanings.
Then there's a third, and although more difficult explanation. That he was a gamer who was brainwashed by violence and didn't have particularly set politics and instead was deeply embedded into online culture and detached from a particular position. Instead he had in effect rejected all religious and felt that life had no meaning. A form of hopeless rather than more of a coherent ideological belief. This actually perhaps more sense than the previous too.
A confused kid reading all kinds of extreme internet bollocks and not really understanding much of it fully thus picking up a range of different 'funny' shit (which isn't funny). 4chan isn't necessarily right or left wing - it's this weird mix of extremist, chaotic, simply troll crap for the lols which doesn't necessarily make much sense. It's more bothered about shit posting and winding up people than being organised and having an overarching political view. It's deeply misogynistic, extreme and offensive and that really the only points.
Notably both me and DH were going wtf at the press conference earlier about how amateur and ill thought out his assassination plan was. The word I used was that he sounded like a complete n00b. ("N00b" is an alternative, derogatory spelling of the slang term "newbie" or "noob," which refers to someone inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity, especially online.) Its grossly naive, but probably seems very clever to him. It just makes no sense though in terms of how he planned it. It just seems like someone 'playing' at gaming in the real world and seeing if he could get away with it. Almost for fun and no other really deep reasoning. It has this feeling that he could no longer tell the real world from the online world and the fantasy in his head was that he could get away with it.
So option perhaps actually makes the most sense to me, but if that's the case then the world is going to have some fun trying to remotely understand Kirk's murder as far from having great significant political meaning, it's really a utterly meaningless waste of life and pretty anarchistic in practice. I'm not sure the world could cope with this explanation if it's the closest to reality.
Here a summary of this last theory in a bit more depth.
Leila AT LeilaClaire
I don’t want to be the first person to point this out, but to gamers “Bella Ciao” was not a song sung by “anti-fascists” but a collectible and the background music in a main quest in Far Cry 6, which is probably REAL relevant given his other gaming references
Zaid Jilani AT ZaidJilani
This is going to expose me as a gamer but both the arrows and the fascist reference they mention for the shooters ammo are direct references to the video game Helldivers 2 and are common memes.
Meaning extremely online gamer type, less so political manifesto.
I assume some FBI boomer saw these and doesn’t play video games and thought to himself oh that must be a transgender, antifa thing and that’s how we got the WSJ story
This is why the FBI and WSJ should employ more gamers.
Helldivers 2 is basically a satire like starship troopers it’s all tongue in cheek.
I’m not saying he doesn’t have any political ideology but if I had to guess the fact he scrawled internet memes on his stuff puts him more into the online nihilist camp and any politics is secondary.
And I think this studio is gonna have to put out a statement within 24 hours
Our first Video Game Extremist
No, I don't think video games make people violent. Disturbed people probably spend a lot of time indoors doing lonely activities though and so it became a cultural means for him to express his violence.
I genuinely don't know, but I get the sense that I'm not convinced this is as simplistic and black and white as people would like it to be or that it appeared on the initial surface. I'm open minded about where this heads now.
The only conclusion I draw is that he was mixed up with online communities that are fucked in the head and that's about as far as I get.