Charlie Kirk assassin was living with trans roommate

[ThatZanyFatball]

May have been lovers, and sounds like he knew ahead of time that it was going to happen.

Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson lived with transgender partner: source

Definitely, but I think to some extent the boyfriend is being portrayed as some totally innocent, poor shocked lover who is appalled at this shocking turn of events - someone akin to his poor mother, finding out in the worst possible way that someone you loved turned out to be a killer...

If you were already hanging out carving bullets I can see how you might be shocked that he actually went through with it, but you're in a bit of a different starting position I think.

MAGA world will absolutely not have this. They just won't be able to accept that Kirk appears to have been killed for LOLs and for Robinson to wow his mates on Discord. This will be just too arbitrary for them, in addition to being of little political value.

I think his parents certainly thought he was capable of it for some reason. (Fuck knows why he was given a gun in those circumstances)

Well, I wouldn't assume that a strongly GC person would murder a transwoman, but if so you could equally say they were starting from a different position than most people.

There's some talk about what was on his discord from a friend who was apparently in a chat with him.

It makes only a couple of references to politics and isn't political and seems to suggest the killer wasn't really that political at all in the past.

And yes his own 'text confession' isn't exactly a manifesto is it? He was thinking more about how memes would go down on Fox!!!

This is less political than people want to believe however you cut it.

This is (eventually) going to be a very weird trial, unless he is persuaded to plead guilty (and potentially avoid death penalty/swerve making a public tit of himself).

He definitely seems to be demonstrating how impulse control and forward thinking are the parts of the brain that take the longest to reach maturity.

Not that that’s an excuse for murder (but it might be a reason to raise the age of gun ownership).

I disagree. It doesn't have to be complex to be political. From the text exchange:

Robinson: Why did I do it?

Roommate: Yeah

Robinson: I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.

His motive was in support of LGBT rights, effectively. Kirk was opposed to gay marriage and trans and had considerable influence over the younger USA generation.

? Killed for lols?

Even if you take this text message exchange at face value it's all about how he can't live with CK's "hatred", the bullet messages may have been memes but the killing itself wasn't...

But then, it wasn’t his gun, it was his grandfather’s.

Well I suppose there's political and there's political.

There's an old time American socialist called Barry Sheppard - I think he's still alive, though he must be pretty ancient - who wrote a memoir of his activism in the 60s. As he tells it, he was working late at the party office one night in November 1963, putting the paper to bed, when the news came over the radio that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

Barry swears the first words out of his mouth were "I hope it wasn't that gun nut in New Orleans who tried to join the party." Guess what...

Oswald having been a communist seems to have been almost completely memory holed, though he was a very eccentric sort of communist, and when he tried to defect to the Soviet Union it didn't take them much time to realise he was a bit of a weirdo and quickly wash their hands of him.

In this day and age, especially with gamers, it's probably a fool's errand trying to find a formal group with a consistent ideology. But if he was in American leftist or trans online communities, even as a lurker, there's constant violent rhetoric and assassination talk in those places. Some of those online communities are very big. It only takes one person to take the talk seriously.

It was his grandfather’s old gun and had been gifted to him.

It's starting the noo.

JUDGE: Thank you for being here, Mr Robinson.

Lolol. Like he had a choice.

The judge, announcing the next hearing

Judge: Mr Robinson, I invite you to join us

Utahns are famously polite, but that's going the extra mile.

I mentioned this earlier, but I'll elaborate a bit more. My own concern is not whether the Kirk shooter was on the right or the left, it's that there is an historical nexus between people expressing counter-culture, anti-social attitudes and behaviors and leftist politics. The following is a quote from Irving How's (editor) Beyond the New Left, 1970.

Dohn (Bernadine, member of the Weathermen and former interorginsation secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society) characterizes violent, militant response in the streets as “armed struggle” against imperialism... “We're about being a fighting force alongside the blacks, but a lot of us are still honkies and we’re still scared of fighting. We have to get into armed struggle.”

“Honkies are going to be afraid of us,” Dohrn insisted. She went on to tell the war council about Charlie Manson, accused leader of the gang which allegedly murdered the movie star and several others on their Beverly Hills estate. Manson has been portrayed in the media as a Satanic, magnetic personality who held near-hypnotic sway over several women whom he lent out to friends as favors and brought along for the murder scene. The press also mentioned Manson’s supposed fear of blacks— he reportedly moved into rural California to escape the violence of a race war.

“Dig it, first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” said Bernardine Dohrn.

Dohrn wasn't the product of online culture, and she wasn't an isolated male. She was a highly intelligent participant in her own youthful radicalization. Likewise, Manson was neither left nor right, much less a selfless champion for racial equality. In hind sight, knowing now the facts of the Manson case, which was rapidly developing at the time, Dohrn's comments seem so unhinged as to be made-up defamation.

I think it's important to note this is not an inevitable product of leftism (that's a contentious statement that some disagree with but I firmly believe) But it is a long standing historical danger. Others have mentioned it on this thread and I don't think it should be dismissed. The New Left totally collapsed in the early 70s. In fact Howe's writings were one of the reasons - exposing its essential nihilism. The left can and did reject New Left style radicalism. Dohrn herself went on to have a highly successful law career and later became a law professor. Her husband, Bill Ayers, likewise a New Left radical, was a professor and mentor to Obama who incidentally was allergic to anything that had a whiff of New Left rhetoric.

But to escape the danger, violent rhetoric and ideation and extravagant language must be forcefully and continually rejected. That's not happening (IMO) on the left, it's being ignored, minimized and on occasion even justified.

I'd add that it's wrong to identify this as solely and uniquely an American phenomena: it's international in the same way the New Left was (counter culture, youth oriented); and also that the right has a problem with violence too, arguably an even greater one, though the dynamic is different than on the left.

I know. I caught that. What a nice man.

And there's poor, lawyerless 'indigent' Tyler, all on his tod, sporting what looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle apparel.

@GallantKumquat There are other historical examples too – 1890s Russia is another horrific example, with nihilism let loose to cause a ton of violence and killing all for no particular reason. I can see a lot of parallels between that time and this.

You have to assume he won't be wearing his jim jams when they get to the actual trial.

It seemed like a lot of repetition, but in Utah you need a charge of aggravated murder for the death penalty to be available, so I suppose it's necessary to mention all the aggravating factors right at the start.

NB Irving Howe was criticizing the New Left from a leftist perspective. In fact he was one of the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, which was itself created to distance socialist politics from the New Left.

Just reading the latest updates. His mum said he was increasingly 'leaning towards the left' and had become more 'pro gay'. So it's potentially as much about gay politics as trans politics. Although I doubt we'll see that in thread titles.

It’s an anti suicide outfit, Brian Kohberger (Idaho 4 murderer) was often seen dressed in one of them.

https://prisonguide.co.uk/what-is-a-turtle-suit-in-jail/

They do look rather Ninja Turtle-y.

Under trans ideology rules he’s dating a woman, therefore he is straight or bi, maybe a ‘chaser’ or ‘trans amorous’ but definitely not gay*.

I realise that in the real world that makes no sense.

*unless he secretly identifies as a woman, in which case he’s a transbian.

But you can be pro gay as a heterosexual, no?

I mean, he isn't trans either.

Britain mostly escaped that, except if the violence was Northern Ireland connected which is very much its own thing. To the extent there was a New Left in Britain, it was moderated by the likes of Tony Cliff or Ted Grant wanting to get into the unions and appeal the the mass of the working class.

Looking at Germany though, the Red Army Faction probably never had as many as 100 real members at any time, and usually far fewer. The movie of The Baader Meinhof Complex gives a quite realistic portrait of a handful of people forming this purist ideological bubble where they were always winding each other up to greater radicalism.

The trouble was that Germany had an abundance of dopey sentimental lefties who weren't violent but who were prepared to provide cover for those who were.