[hnuser123456]

The quote cited in TFA claims that the murderer was "one of them". Now, why would someone take out a prominent spokesperson for their own party? They wouldn't, because that's not something that people do to other people they agree with. But somehow, people interpret that remark to make sense? The remark only makes sense if "one of them" refers to the fact the shooter was a white male, and the reader believes all white males are on the same side, and the enemy, and that the incident serves as entertainment. So, yes, I find that remark extremely problematic, and representative of increasingly tribal and divisive "us vs. them" mentality that is gridlocking the country. Not to mention, the comment is itself using the event for political "told-you-so"-ism, while criticizing others for doing exactly that, so it's utterly hypocritical. We can and must set a higher standard for our talking heads. If you want to be a popular figure without burning bridges, maybe don't be so brazenly racist and sexist to the point of publicly celebrating murder because it was "one of them", thinking that proves anything other than that the speaker is a sociopath?

[fhdkweig]

The "one of them" was a reference to the speculation that the killer would turn out to be a blue hair "tranny". https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-loyalist-spreads-w...

There was also the theory that it was a black person, hence all the death threats to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=death+threats+hbcu

So, yes, there was quite a bit of "see, it wasn't one of ours, it was one of yours" after the guy was caught. Especially when the images of the shooter's mother started surfacing indicating he was raised that way. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tyler+robinson+mother+gun . Charlie Kirk's mother at the memorial service specifically blamed college for radicalizing him, saying that good mother's wouldn't send their kids to college. (I don't have that clip.)

In general, my philosophy is to not speculate publicly when the shooter was going to get caught and identified quickly anyway.

[clw8]

The governor of Utah used similar language:

“For 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn't be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country… Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for… But it did happen here, and it was one of us.”

[hnuser123456]

I took issue with that statement too. He's the governor. He must be aware that out of the millions of citizens of his own state, some commit crime. I think he went too far in trying to affirm people who believe their entire state is free of violence.

[justin66]

> Now, why would someone take out a prominent spokesperson for their own party?

That's a question that actually has some easy examples if you'd care to study parties like Sinn Fein or Fatah or the CCCP or... you get the point. American politics has largely been free of this sort of in-fighting (and other kinds of political violence), but a political movement's leaders or followers can be targeted because they're deemed not sufficiently radical or too radical or what have you, or they've fallen out of favor, or they've done something the membership cannot accept, or whatever.

Or, you know: maybe the person doing the "taking out" is just insane.

> They wouldn't, because that's not something that people do to other people they agree with.

Because that's just what a political party always is. A group of calm, rational people who are in total agreement on principles, goals and tactics and are entirely content with their place in the power structure. Ahem.

[muddi900]

It's not even that recent. This is the plot to Julius Ceaser

[fifilura]

Mahatma Gandhi.

[slg]

>Now, why would someone take out a prominent spokesperson for their own party? They wouldn't, because that's not something that people do to other people they agree with.

This is why I think the American government is doomed in its current construction. First past the post voting has conditioned people like you to believe that everything is binary. You describe a world with only two parties that can have no dissention in those parties and no possible disagreements among their members. Isn't it obvious how flawed that mindset is?

This country desperately needs more than two options to every issue, but our system is inadvertently designed to ensure that doesn't happen.

[qcnguy]

The US isn't designed to ensure a two party system. FPTP can allow many parties. The UK is an example of that.

America has two parties because both parties are very internally open. Democrats have given up on that in the last few primaries but that's still very new, and Republicans are still open. You can enter as an outsider and take over the parties. That's how the Republicans ended up with Trump.

If the two parties were less internally democratic you'd see the same situation in the UK where there are two dominant parties and a bunch of smaller parties that occasionally end up in coalition but mostly act to push the main parties around by threatening to take too many votes.

[jfengel]

The UK has two major parties, the Tories and Labour. Nobody else has come anywhere near a majority for decades. All of the other parties exist in orbit around one or the other.

[qcnguy]

The Tories were in a coalition not long ago and if an election were held tomorrow Reform would win a landslide victory. The SNP has dominated Scotland for years.

[slg]

I'll admit I was being somewhat simplistic blaming exclusively first past the post voting. The real problem is the combination of FPTP and our presidential system. That is what makes the US converge to a two party system, not the open primaries you mention.

The UK having a parliamentary system counteracts this due to when the coalition building step happens. In a parliamentary system, the government is formed via coalition building in the parliament after an election. However, the US being a presidential system means that post-election coalition building would be too late to impact the chief executive, the coalition must be built before the election. This combined with FPTP is what yields our two party system.

For example, imagine the US has an even 50/50 split between Democrats and Republicans. Now imagine the tension in the Democratic Party boils over and the party splits into Liberals and Progressives. Maybe some Republicans were really centrists, so they peel off to the center-left Liberal party. That might leave us with a breakdown of 45% Republicans, 35% Liberals, and 20% Progressives. This almost guarantees the president will be a Republican. Despite attracting a majority of voters, the Progressives and Liberals costs themselves a chance at winning by splitting. They would have a natural incentive to merge their parties again before the next presidential election. But if this was a parliamentary system, the Liberals and Progressives would now make up 55% of the parliament and they could successfully form a government together and choose a PM without having to actually merge parties.

The reason I blamed this entirely on FPTP in my original comment is because something like ranked choice voting is a much more reasonable change that the US could adopt. Shifting from a presidential system to a parliamentary system is an unlikely enough change that I didn't think it was worth mentioning.

[hnuser123456]

Oh trust me, I saw the CGPgrey video about the issues with first past the post pretty soon after it was uploaded 14 years ago, I know that it doesn't have to be two parties who have to convert all opinions into binary and pick a side. If there's ever an initiative to change that to ranked voting, I'll gladly vote for that proposal. People will have to do a lot more critical thinking if they can't just keep pointing to the same bogeyman over and over.

[slg]

It is funny that you skipped over my criticism of you to agree with my criticism of the US government as if I didn't make a clear connection between those two. If you "know that it doesn't have to be two parties who have to convert all opinions into binary and pick a side", why did your original comment reduce this issue down to a binary? Can you admit that it is possible for someone to disagree with Kirk from the right?

[hnuser123456]

Yes, but the casings were engraved with things like "catch, fascist", so it's pretty clear the shooter fell into leftist propaganda, which is a thing because currently, we are forced to pick from 1 of 2 parties. Perhaps he thought he would be seen like Luigi but instead he's just a weirdo.

[LastTrain]

It is not at all clear at this moment in time that the shooter had any consistent or coherent political leanings. Do you think growing up in a conservative house he might have been exposed to more "rightist propaganda", as you would put it? He certainly grew up in gun culture, which I would guess had more to do with the sick thing he did to Kirk than having a trans roommate did.

[the_gastropod]

"Hey, fascist, catch" with the arrows is a reference to an attack in the video game Helldivers 2.

He also inscribed a bullet with "If you read this, you are gay lmao."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/us/politics/tyler-robinso...

[ThrowMeAway1618]

>Yes, but the casings were engraved with things like "catch, fascist", so it's pretty clear the shooter fell into leftist propaganda

Umm, not necessarily. Apparently, the engravings are used by right wing trolls[0][1][2], many of them who absolutely despised Charlie Kirk.

As such, let's not jump to any conclusions unless and until we have factual information.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-a-groyper...

[1] https://mastodon.world/@jeffowski/115199287909601561

[2] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/639/464/1e4

[throwaway-11-1]

is this post sarcasm? I can't even tell anymore

[somenameforme]

There was a lot of fake news following the shooting trying to suggest that the shooter was MAGA and decided to kill Charlie Kirk because he 'wasn't MAGA enough.' In particular a photoshopped image of him wearing a MAGA shirt was shared millions of times on social media [1], along with suggestions he was a "groyper" which is apparently some fringe right wing group. You can see the substantial impact of this by looking at Google trends on the term. [2]

This fake news was wide spread and even leaked into Hacker News through at least dozens of comments. [3] People are still implicitly trying to promote this misinformation by flagging any comment that mentions it, and spinning Kimmel stating, "with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them" to mean anything other than what it does.

[1] - https://xcancel.com/CollinRugg/status/1966575444435890341

[2] - https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=groyper&...

[3] - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[croon]

I have never seen that photo, and the one supporting source for the claim that fake news was spread is someone who apparently runs this[1]?

I was not familiar with the term before either, but afaict it was based on the the shell casing engravings, halloween costumes etc, which I don't believe have been refuted [2]?

Not that this matters to the topic at hand as that isn't a claim Kimmel made either way, nor does it play into how tragic any murder is.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/trending-politics/

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/17/how-charli...

[somenameforme]

The source that pushed the fake picture is this [1] account with some 5 million followers that regularly posts disinformation and agitprop. That is also the same account that claimed he was a 'groyper'. Go check its stream and you can find endless more absurd claims.

People then simply unquestioningly repeated the claims, cited the same disinformation, and away we go - social media style. For instance here [2] it showed up in an Anandtech discussion, and I already linked to the claims making their way onto hacker news in dozens of posts as well. To say nothing of the cess pools that are Reddit, X, Facebook, etc.

[1] - https://xcancel.com/YourAnonCentral

[2] - https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/charlie-kirk-shot-in-th...

[croon]

Again, I don't think that picture is relevant to the claim, and you ignored everything else from my comment.

> Halloween photos showing Robinson riding on the back of an inflatable Donald Trump or dressed as a gopnik offshoot of Pepe the frog, the now-anachronistic alt-right meme that evolved into the groyper mascot.

> Groypers had hassled Kirk at public appearances over the years for what they saw as his insufficiently radical conservatism. (Fuentes has forcefully denied any connection to the shooting and told his followers he would “disavow” and “disown” any who “take up arms.”)

> But as the internet quickly pointed out, “Bella Ciao” is both an anti-fascist anthem from post-WWII Italy and a remixed track on a groyper Spotify playlist.

This would be misinformation if it would turn out to be false, but it would not be misinformation based on whether or not the shooter is leaning this way or that way or no way.

[muddi900]

That is not misinformation.

If you have sufficient evidence to make reasonable conclusion, which is negated by newer evidence. It is not misinformation.

Misinformation would be if you know something is not true and you twist facts around and present speculation in a factual manner to imply that it is true.

[somenameforme]

Are you done editing your post?

The source for the killer being a groyper is solely the disinformation account. The things you've mentioned are postfacto efforts to try to support the disinformation, in rather nonsensical ways I'd add. A Spotify playlist from some random guy, to try to create some 5d chess argument - also known as mental gymnastics, and Robinson riding around on a demeaned looking Trump doll 8 years ago? [1] If that's the best people can dig up, you should realize you're obviously being lied to.

[1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15092455/Trump-cost...

[croon]

> The source for the killer being a groyper is solely the disinformation account

No, the source is the string of corroborating incidents.

Sure, the two examples you bring up could be innocuous by themselves, but together with a "gopnik offshoot of Pepe the frog", his upbringing, and the fact that there are clearly fractures within the otherwise very top-down right-wing movement?

You're very adamant to dismiss any pieces of evidence as inconsequential (not as incorrect, mind you), yet resistant to provide any counter-factuals?

[qcnguy]

Kimmel made that exact claim. Fake news has been spread by the left by way more people than him. The lying is so far off the charts that the left is having a massive collective break from reality. YouGov has found Democrats mostly believe that Kirk's killer was either right wing, or they aren't sure.

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52988-donald-trum...

Even The Atlantic has had to admit that this is stupid and they can't work out why anyone believes it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/charlie-ki...

> "The evidence that Robinson was a “Groyper”—a member of an online further-right-than-thou movement that had harassed Kirk and President Donald Trump—was paltry. Why did anyone believe that idea to begin with? Already it bore the marks of an incipient conspiracy theory, a soothing nugget of esoteric knowledge, suppressed for political purposes. Many of those suckered in were victims of their own motivated reasoning. It hurts to admit that a movement you like has produced a bad person, and it hurts even more to admit that bitter truth to a gloating member of a movement you hate."

They're soothing themselves. Nobody on the right is "gloating" over Kirk being killed. This really happened because leftists have deliberately tried to confuse everyone about the truth. On their safe space Bluesky they even admit to it:

https://substack.com/@mrandyngo/note/c-157561235

> "Anyway probably for the best if everyone asserts he's a Groyper whether he is or not. The narrative really does matter more than the truth in this case"

> "Lying to flood the news is good actually"

> "Spending the last week repeating that the killer was one of the right's own may have helped take the wind out of their sails. Regardless of whether that ends up being true it was rhetorically useful in the interim. Now you can pivot. Nobody is going to care what your last position was."

These tactics work. The internet has filled up with leftists who genuinely believe Kirk was killed for not being right wing enough, and anyone who tries to talk them back to reality gets answers like "I won't read any right wing sources". It's a self-created filter bubble of madness.

[croon]

> Kimmel made that exact claim.

Where? The rest of your post as connection to this topic hinges on this claim, yet it isn't supported.

[qcnguy]

He said, "The MAGA Gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it"

Which is repeating the lie that Robinson is right wing. 100% false. He deserved to be fired for saying this, because it is delusional misinformation.

[croon]

> He said, "The MAGA Gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it"

What he said is a critique on the "MAGA Gang"'s handling of the murder, in that they are less concerned with doing anything productive and more concerned with "scoring political points".

Whether or not "this kid" is one of them or not is inconsequential to the statement, and that sentence does not claim so.