The Killing of Charlie Kirk & the Online Alt-Right

Looking Under the Hood of the Internet

Content warning: Some of the hyperlinks in this piece may send you to articles describing disturbing events and ideologies. They are shared for educational purposes only.

The shocking public killing of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last week set off a supernova-sized reaction online and in media of all varieties. Within minutes of the trigger being pulled, public leaders on the right were spurting out violent condemnations of the left, going so far as to call Democrats “terrorists” or threatening civil war—despite not yet knowing the identity or motives of the perpetrator. For those unfamiliar with Kirk, the vitriol of these messages may have seemed disproportionate, especially when similar events (e.g. the assassination of Minnesota politician Melissa Hortman and her husband) were met with dismissive jokes and inauthentic condolences from the White House.

To make sense of the magnitude of this uproar, one must understand Kirk’s beloved, pivotal position in the milieu of ultra-conservative media. He was responsible for recruiting thousands of young people—particularly young men—into the conservative movement, thereby enabling the second election of Donald Trump. He had a massive social media audience of millions, in addition to a successful podcast, on which he often collaborated with other conservative personalities like Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon. In 2012, Kirk founded a right-wing non-profit, Turning Point USA, which quickly became a dominant conservative organization aimed at young people, establishing over 800 college chapters. Due to his loyalty and sway, Kirk became close to Trump and the MAGA inner circle, with Trump headlining Turning Point's annual AmericaFest in 2024.

Kirk made a career of touring college campuses and engaging in bad-faith debates against ill prepared students on inflammatory topics, striving to elicit emotional responses. It is notable that when Kirk went to debate the best and brightest at Cambridge (facing off students well-trained in the art of debate, as opposed to an assortment of disgruntled teens), he got demolished. But Kirk was a master at his craft in the USA, and took advantage of the reality that social media algorithms favor controversial content that makes the viewer experience rage or a sense of moral superiority. Kirk weaponized social media and the political ecosystem to his benefit and to enlarge his wallet.

Despite these apparent markers of success, Ezra Klein was wildly incorrect when he proposed that Kirk engaged in politics “the right way.” No. Kirk used the guise of open debate to propagate White Christian Nationalism, the belief that God intended America to be ruled exclusively by straight white Christian men—and that our laws, policies, and customs must reflect as much. He viewed multiculturalism, feminism, and secularism as problems to be rectified. Kirk is on record saying, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.” He called a transgender woman “an abomination to God,” and tweeted, “It's not a Great Replacement Theory, it's a Great Replacement Reality. Just this year, 3.6 million foreigners will invade America. …You are being replaced, by design.” He regularly issued bigoted, hate-fueled statements. To suggest that he was simply a controversial or “moderate” conservative out doing politics “the right way” is not merely absurd; it’s reckless. Nevertheless, his murder was abhorrent. He should still be alive today.

The alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, turned himself in to authorities last Thursday. While we still don’t know much about him or his rationale, it is being speculated that he may have been deeply embedded into alt-right online culture. This is far more plausible than the hypothesis floated on Saturday by Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R): that Robinson had been “indoctrinated into leftist ideology.”

When I read what was engraved into the unfired cartridges found with Robinson’s weapon, I immediately identified the internet slang and memes. Four messages were presented:

• Notices bulges OwO what’s this?

• Hey fascist! Catch! [Beside the depiction of five arrow symbols: one up, one right, and three down]

• Oh Bella ciao Bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao

• If you read this, you are gay lmao

The first is a copypasta (text repeatedly shared online) parodying the furry community (a subculture interested in sexualized anthropomorphic animals). The second is a phrase and button combination used in the video game Helldivers 2 that calls in an airstrike. The third is a reference to the anti-fascist, anti-Nazi Italian folk song, “Bella Ciao.” The final engraving exemplifies a typical troll joke.

For someone unfamiliar with the tactics and communication styles of the online alt-right, these messages may appear as a jumble of nonsense (or even leftist messaging, especially the second and third engravings). However, the alt-right does not communicate through straightforward, earnest speech. Rather, it “weaponizes irony to attract and radicalize potential supporters, challenge progressive ideologies and institutions, redpill normies, and create a toxic counterpublic.” They communicate through terse, coded, and generally offensive phrases meant to signal group recognition. Nothing is said in earnest–in fact, any expression of earnestness is roundly mocked. Every true meaning is hidden under double or triple layers of irony only accessible to the in-group. As Julia Rose DeCook argues, “trolling itself has become a kind of political aesthetic and identity.” Indeed, it’s not unreasonable to question if these users carry any political ideology beyond mockery, irony, and bitter cynicism.

A young man being radicalized by alt-right communities online and subsequently being driven toward violence is no longer a phenomenon. Take the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting, where the perpetrator yelled “Subscribe to Pewdiepie” before opening fire and livestreaming his massacre. (Pewdiepie, a popular YouTuber at the time, was under heavy scrutiny for making light of Nazi iconography, and “Subscribe to Pewdiepie” turned into a meme.) Similarly, before killing 10 people in Buffalo, the 18-year-old killer wrote, “It’s time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort shitpost. I will carry out an attack on the replacers,” referencing the Great Replacement Theory alongside “shitposting”--upsetting content generated to get a reaction. Most recently, the Minneapolis Catholic school shooter was radicalized on 4chan and left a number of messages combining memes, racist dogwhistles, and veneration for other mass shooters, including "НЕНАВИСТЬ” (Russian for “hatred”), a nod to the 2018 Kerch Polytechnic College shooting and “6 million wasn’t enough,” evoking the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

These references (like the engraving on the cartridges of Kirk’s assassin) are not addressed towards the victim or the wider public. They are inside jokes confirming the shooter’s membership of the in-group, performed for amusement and affirmation. Unlike a traditional manifesto—which traditionally carries a strong political critique, a call for change, or a desire to be viewed and understood (as was the case with the Unibomber’s, whose demands for publication were granted by the Washington Post and New York Times)—the alt-right indicators present scant ideology other than hatred and bigotry disguised as dark humor. Their “real life efforts” are meant to impress the in-group and encourage others to follow suit.

Analyzing the engravings within the context of the alt-right online environment gives the messages new meaning. The second is not an anti-fascist warning, but an attempted jab at the legitimate anti-fascist sentiment found within a video game. The third, “Bello ciao,” was heavily featured as an anti-establishment song in shows like The Money Heist and co-opted by the far-right as a form of mockery, often heard in memeified remixes and on Spotify playlists attributed to the Groyper community.

Now, what is a ‘Groyper’? The average person’s relationship with the internet is healthy enough not to know. Mine, unfortunately, is not. “Groyper” describes a subculture of the alt-right that orbits key influencers, most notably Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, Holocaust-denying, nationalist livestreamer. He’s the guy who reiterated, “Your body, my choice” following Trump’s victory. Fuentes’ views are so heinous that he has been banned from X, YouTube, Twitch, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and other platforms. Despite this, he maintains roughly 200,000 followers across multiple platforms (including his own).

The Groyper ideology is repulsive. Found online, it recruits young members and is characterized by an opposition to any progressive ideology, and a subscription to the Great Replacement theory along with antisemitic conspiracy theories. Similar to other alt-right groups, Groypers communicate through visual memes. Specifically, they identify with the Groyper frog, “an explicitly racist-coded variation of the Pepe the Frog meme.”

Groypers view “mainstream conservatives” as too weak and in need of further shoving to the right. In 2019, Fuentes launched the “Groyper War” against Kirk and others. Fuentes’ followers would show up at events and sabotage the Q&A segments by posing absurd questions meant to embarrass the speakers and prove to the audience that they were hypocrites and not extreme enough. Every Turning Point event that Groypers attended was livestreamed by Fuentes, so his followers could watch as a community-building experience. Once again, the element of performing for the twisted amusement of the in-group watching online was prevalent. This campaign of psychological warfare became so frequent at Turning Point events that Fuentes and his followers were banned from attending.

We cannot prove the shooter’s ideology (if he has any at all) until further evidence is uncovered and analyzed. Regardless of what it is, it’s essential that we familiarize ourselves with these online hate groups and how they communicate. It can be easy to dismiss their memes and the bizarre criteria of it all, but they’re not a joke, and they’re not going anywhere. As we’ve seen recently—and too often—these online worlds have established a real life presence, whose actions (even if performative) have very real consequences. It’s also important to remember that these groups amount to a miniscule minority of the digital world. Their lives are consumed online, festering in hate while dedicating themselves to spreading their vile ethos. We need to understand their symbols, memes, and indicators so we’re able to identify them for what they are: propaganda from a dangerous, usually isolated, group. Only then will we be equipped to take the necessary steps to curb the growth of these toxic communities—an ambition that will require critical thinking, internet literacy, heightened perception of red flags, and empathy.

Lily Conway is the Program Associate at The Contrarian. She earned her MSc at the London School of Economics studying Human Rights and Politics with a focus in online extremism.