Shooter's motives: Proceed with caution

[pat_k]

I'm keeping an eye on what more Elle Reeve has to say as more solid info emerges.

We are dealing with a very young guy immersed in a culture that is far from straightforward.

Link to tweet

Vanity Fair: Groypers, Helldivers 2, Furries: What do the Messages Left by Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer Actually Mean?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-memes-meaning

No paywall:
https://archive.ph/L8tPp

AI Summary of Reeve

Elle Reeve's expertise lies in investigative journalism, particularly focusing on social issues, politics, and the connection between social media and white nationalism, as evidenced by her work on the documentary Right Now, her reporting on the 2017 Charlottesville rally and the January 6th Capitol attack, and her role as a correspondent for CNN. Her background includes working at prestigious publications like The New Republic and The Wire before joining Vice News and subsequently CNN, and she is also the author of the book Black Pill.

Key areas of expertise:

Right-wing extremism and white nationalism
Reeve is known for her in-depth coverage of these movements, including her work at the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally and the January 6th Capitol attack.

Social media's impact on extremism
Her expertise includes understanding how online platforms contribute to the rise of radical movements.

Documentary filmmaking
She produced the documentary Right Now, which explores the rise of the American alt-right.

Investigative reporting
Her career includes roles as a senior editor at The New Republic and politics editor at The Wire, highlighting her investigative journalism skills.

[ananda]

1. Groypers, Helldivers, and Furries.. oh my!

We need a big tornado now.

[dweller]

3. 😱

✌🏻

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

10. LMAO!

[WarGamer]

2. In other words... people are making up wild ass theories to push a certain persepctive on the incident.

[AZJonnie]

4. At a minimum, the presence of the song Bella Ciao on one of the murderers bullet casings

Can be demonstrably proven to be a song that at least some Groypers consider to be a favorite. Just because it's an anti-fascist song, historically, doesn't mean that the presence of it on the casings proves (or even suggests, really) the guy was "Antifa". BOTH sides call one another "fascists". Only one side is right, of course, but the fact remains that both sides hurl that invective at one another.

[hlthe2b]

5. Thank you for providing her background. I will follow her pieces...

[BootinUp]

6. Good advice. Nt

[Silent Type]

7. When it's over, think consensus will be that he's a "disaffected" young man, that some might call and incel. Politics

was not likely the motive in that it's unlikely a Klan sympathizer would shoot another. More likely, 15 minutes of fame/relevance.

[Ocelot II]

8. How about skipping the AI summary so people will read the actual article

instead of encouraging sloppy shortcuts that take away the burden of thinking?

[RockRaven]

9. I'm going to repost two of my comments from various threads yesterday:

In response to a "what if" hypothesis about the shooters motives:

Why do any of these shooters do it? Usually it is incoherent, and people point to a variety of things about their life as if that explains it.

Often even when they get taken alive like this guy (and it isn't just a rambling manifesto or collection of social media posts left behind) their explanations are a mess in terms of logic, coherence, or reality-basis.

I bet we get a cherry-picked explanation of motive from law enforcement, but that almost certainly won't be the real story in any meaningful way.

And in response to the question "how do we know he was a Groyper?"

We don't KNOW know. One of the problems with the terminally online, whether they be Groypers or accelerationists or leftists or doomers or none of the above, is that terminally online people use stuff both ironically and unironically, both online and irl. One picture or post isn't enough to know. A thorough examination of his online history would do it, but who has access to that now? The best raw info is in the hands of the least reliable sources (Repug controlled law enforcement).

Both law enforcement and the overwhelming majority of political/national security journalists are out of their depth in this case, at least to start with. This guy appears to have belonged to a subculture that TPTB are rather clueless about. They don't get the language/references and their in situ meanings, they don't understand how the communities intersect and relate, they don't understand the cultures.

Remember how ignorant and disgraceful the overwhelming majority of LEOs, politicians, and the media were about West, South, and Central Asians in the wake of 9/11? And that was a couple billion people!

[pat_k]

11. Great posts.

You are spot on!

The Vanity Fair article probably just skims the surface of the complexity. We don't know the extent to which he was an "insider" in the worlds described in that article, but one way or another, whatever world he was immersed in (or constructed in his own head), it was a strange land where communication is "coded" in layers. A world where the insiders (even if an insider of one) revel in how clueless the "outsiders" are who will "never get it" are.