Making Sense Of Charlie Kirk’s Death And What Comes Next

We still don’t have a motive for why alleged Charlie Kirk shooter Tyler Robinson carried out last week’s attack. According to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Robinson is not cooperating with law enforcement. Which has led some to speculate that it might not be a matter of Robinson not cooperating as much as it is Director Kash Patel’s completely DOGE’d FBI not being able to handle a case with this much attention surrounding it.

“Because of how badly Kash Patel has been handling this investigation, the chaos, non stop attempts at framing trans people — a competent lawyer is going to say the case was mishandled,” YouTube channel The Serfs wrote on X. Based on how bumbling our federal government has become, nothing is out of the question anymore.

But a lack of cooperation hasn’t stopped Cox from dreaming up a motive, blaming the attack on a “deep dark internet Reddit culture and these other dark places of the internet.”

“You saw that on the casings I think,” he told Meet The Press. “I mean, I didn't have any idea what many of those inscriptions even meant. But they are certainly the memeification that is happening in our society today.” He should read Garbage Day! Happy to walk him through what’s happening here.

Fox News reporter Brooke Singman tried to fill the information vacuum over the weekend, reporting that Robinson “lived with his transgender partner.” Singman also reported that the individual was helping the FBI by providing texts and “other communications.” That second part has, obviously, gotten lost in the media storm over the last few days.

Singman’s reporting was corroborated by a few other outlets. Axios said the roommate was “aghast” after learning Robinson allegedly carried out the attack. And The New York Times viewed Discord messages belonging to Robinson, where he was joking about the FBI searching for his “doppelganger” after security camera footage was released to the public on Friday. Discord initially disputed Robinson had an account, but according to Times reporter Aric Toler, writing on X, he had multiple accounts.

Though Robinson’s trans roommate has been nothing but helpful during the investigation, right-wing tabloids like The New York Post and The Mail Online published her photo, knowing Trump supporters would connect the dots. And they did. Conservative influencer Matt Walsh spent the weekend shrieking about it, writing on X, “Transgenderism is a death cult. The largest, most well funded, and deranged death cult that this country has ever seen.” He’s also been promoting conspiracy theories that pro-trans and leftist organizations knew about the attack ahead of time. And right-wing digital publishers like Gateway Pundit have turned against the Trump-controlled FBI, claiming the bureau was trying to cover up a trans connection to the shooting.

But even if Robinson didn’t have a trans roommate — one who, again, is they primary reason the FBI has learned anything of value about Robinson’s personal life — the right-wing swarm around Kirk’s death would have eventually found some way to connect it to the “radical left.” The large-scale doxxing project, Expose Charlie’s Murderers, was taken offline thankfully, but has since renamed itself the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation.” Its organizers claim they have over 60,000 names of “confirmed identities.” Which are basically just people who were rude online about Kirk’s death.

On top of the never-ending stream of private citizens — and Pentagon staffers — being reportedly fired after being targeted by accounts like Libs Of TikTok, there have also been several journalists fired. Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC for the grave sin of saying on air that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” And Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah was fired this morning for a Bluesky post which shared a quote from Kirk where he said that “[black women] do not have brain processing power to be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot.” I can see why The Post would be uncomfortable about Attiah’s post. It’s a lot easier for the mainstream media to please conservatives and make Kirk look like a well-meaning political moderate if you don’t read anything he ever wrote or said. Which is what this is all about.

The American right wing finally gets to be the victims they’ve always seen themselves as. They know this is their one chance at the hundred-year reich their nazi followers have been salivating over for a decade.

They will blame trans people, antifascists, leftists, liberal college campuses, the mainstream media — anything other than guns and the polarized political environment they created to install Donald Trump as president. They will get you fired if you don’t fly your flag at half mast. They will arrest you. They will shut down your political organizations. They will deport you. They will revoke your passport. They will blame the video games you play. They will force you to log your ID to use the internet. They will monitor you and investigate you. And they will scream and cry and endlessly whine if you object. Their paramilitary groups will march through your streets. And they will add your name to their sprawling hit lists and hope one of their followers finds you. Like the social studies teacher working at Cimmaron-Memorial High School in Nevada who was targeted by a conservative influencer named Courtney Holland last week. A teenager was arrested the next day for bringing a gun to campus. They will remove every personal freedom they can. Because they were losing the game. They were deeply unpopular and, before Kirk’s death, desperate for a way to suck up all the oxygen and brute force their way into a permanent position of power. And now they’re going to do anything they can to make sure they never feel that helpless again.

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Bolsonaro Is Going To Jail

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in the country’s 2022 coup attempt. Click the video above and allow yourself to dream of a better future.

The Nepal’s Revolution Will Be TikTok’d

—by Adam Bumas

All those clickbaity titles aren’t lying. Gen Z really did overthrow the government of Nepal and elect a new leader via Discord.

The protests in Nepal started in August after a viral campaign centered on TikTok and Reddit meant to expose “nepo kids” led to serious accusations of corruption among Nepali government officials. In response, the government banned virtually all major social media applications early this month, with Facebook, YouTube, X, Discord and more being instantly rendered unavailable. The biggest exceptions were TikTok, which was unbanned last year, and Bitchat, a crypto messaging app that saw a flood of attention in the country.

The anti-corruption protests were already popular, but the ban turned them into a full-on revolution. Protestors set fire to the parliament in Kathmandu, clashes with security forces led to over 70 deaths, and the entire government was dissolved by the Prime Minister as he resigned last week, after trying and failing to calm things down by reversing the ban. Meanwhile, the organizers of the protests, who had coordinated via VPN in a Discord server called “Youth Against Corruption,” decided they had everything they needed for their own parliament. The server’s streaming channel was used to broadcast debates between several politicians allied with the protest movements, and Discord’s poll feature was used to vote on their choice for interim Prime Minister.

You have to appreciate the poetry here. The near-complete social media ban is an unprecedented move outside of countries like Turkmenistan and North Korea that have restricted all internet access for decades. The ban’s catastrophic failure only exacerbated the government’s problems, but it still showed that whatever geopolitical security they had wasn’t as powerful as people’s desire to remain connected. And if this is really the beginning of political systems becoming as online as everything else, Discord makes a lot of sense as the place it starts.

The English Far Right’s Big Weekend

Thousands of geared-up soccer hooligans marched through the center of London on Saturday, led by England’s premier thumb-shaped white nationalist Tommy Robinson. The crowd managed to hold off heading to the pub long enough to get a video call from Elon Musk, who told them, “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”

The “Unite the Kingdom” rally was by far the biggest far-right mobilization in the UK since the pandemic. The reported 100,000 attendees filled the streets with English flags and signs with Charlie Kirk’s face on it. Which is fascinating choice for a group who want to remove any and all foreign influence from the UK! I guess American right-wing politics don’t count.

There were plenty of counter-protesters, but they, apparently, didn’t satisfy far-right Brits’ desire for conflict. So, users spent the weekend raging over AI-generated videos on X of liberals instead.

MrBeast Got Punched Real Hard By Mike Tyson

MrBeast was at the big boxing match between Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez over the weekend when he let Mike Tyson punch him in the stomach. It did not go well! MrBeast keeled over and the light seemed to leave his eyes for just a second.

The Savannah Bananas Are Very Popular, Apparently

I am not a sports person. So I had not heard anything about the Savannah Bananas until YouTube alerted me to the fact that the band All American Rejects performed at one of their games earlier this summer. It’s a pretty fun performance.

I have since watched YouTube videos of several bands play Savannah Banana games, but, alas, had not come any closer to understanding what the Bananas were.

It turns out they are sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. It also turns out that they are very popular. Over the weekend, they sold out Yankee Stadium. As Semafor’s Ben Smith wrote on X, “This is the most confused I've ever been about US culture.” Agreed! Though, perhaps, more than the Globetrotters, the Savannah Bananas should be seen as the XFL of the 2020s, a way to reconfigure a sport around the demands of a new media environment.

Whatever the Savannah Bananas are, just don’t ask them how their nonprofit spends its money, apparently.

A Good Cooking Video

Some Stray Links

P.S. here’s shirtless dude.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***