The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The investigation is ongoing and beyond that we decline to comment.”
What leftwing groups or even prominent individuals in the US with any actual following advocate for political assassinations and direct violence against rightwing people they don’t like? Where are all the lefties supposedly making calls to violence and terrorism?
The media and even a lot of people here will flip a shit about someone like Hasan Piker being so radical and yet if he even remotely said something like “maybe we should just start shooting rightwing media figures” an overwhelmingly massive chunk of Hasan’s audience would tell him to fuck off and cause an uproar because that clashes with the basic foundational ideologies of leftwing movements in the US, they are about obtaining a state of freedom for all, the idea of targeted violence has little salience to a US leftist as we are well aware that 1. senseless violence doesn’t change anything, it will not lead to freedom for all, it just accelerates the bad things. 2. the ruling class in the US will jump at any chance to radically villainize the left, the bulk of the country will blindly follow along in this, thus random senseless acts of violence aren’t just bad because they are evil they actually existentially threaten leftwing movements in the US as a whole, leftists in the US are WELL aware of this…
The difference between the left vs the center and rightwing of the US is that the left actually builds coalitions on shared values, most leftists in the US these days are strongly influenced by figures like Bernie Sanders who has been mainly focused on broad social programs to improve people’s quality of life like healthcare and for fighting wealth inequality. How the hell would advocating for shooting someone like Charlie Kirk make affordable healthcare more likely in the US? How would it help get the public focused on Citizen’s United and getting money out of politics? Leftists in the US are about ideas and policies, this isn’t just an aesthetic, if you enter US leftist circles and start advocating for targeted violence as retribution, preemptive violence or really for anything for any reason at all the leftists around you are going to turn on you for being a hateful bastard trying to distract from the actual issues at hand.
If there is one thing that ties virtually all leftists in the US together it is that we fucking LOVE to argue about things… so much so that sometimes we can never agree on stuff because we want to argue the little details on and on forever. It is not lost on us that the very first thing that happens when you commit violence against others is that they stop listening to the wisdom of your arguments and ideas.
If he had actually gotten connected with any decent left wing group - instead of just being stuck mostly alone in Utah to stew with his (totally understandable) anger at the things Kirk was saying - that group probably would have told him something like “bro, chill, shooting people is only going to make shit worse for everybody we care about, now wash these dishes instead so we can open the soup kitchen on time tonight, we got hungry neighbors”
The guy had a left hand. If that’s not enough evidence, I don’t know what you need.
/s
“Yet”
The investigation will continue until we have completed the manufacturing process.
Or until they beat the confession into the suspect, whichever happens first.
While the real suspect lives a new life. 👀
If you believe that sort of thing that is
“Yet” appears to be editorialized. The actual quote doesn’t use that word
It says “thus far” which is synonymous
Not quite.
Yet implies they expect to.
Thus far is more neutral, erring towards not expecting to find anything.
“Thus far” means “up to this point in time”.
It is neutral about anything in the future, yes, because it is avoiding making any commentary on it. But it is NOT “erring towards not expecting to find anything”
It is explicitly not predicting any outcome positive or negative. No expectation of any kind.
It states what the communicator believes are the facts to date with ZERO speculation about the future
It implies the trend is likely to continue. That the searched areas and the unsearched areas are nominally the same.
E.g. An inspector saying they have found 20 problems, this far, while 50% finished implies they expect to find 40ish overall.
Finding zero problems thus far implies you are not expecting to find many/any, if the trend continues.
No it doesn’t. It’s a summary to a point in time.
If the inspector has found 20 problems then he’s found twenty problems. The reader may extrapolate that more will be found, but the statement makes no such implication
I’m sure they are looking for some sense of organization, a group that they can define and eliminate. That’s not going to happen. Read “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.” This is a leaderless movement where the rhetoric of some inspires others to violence without there being any material connection between the two. It’ll increase and it won’t stop so long as the conditions continue and so long as these don’t morph into an organization with leadership.
It’s not just that he wasn’t actually “organized” with a left wing group, it’s that even as they go fishing they can’t even find credible evidence of significant leftist influence at all.
He wasn’t organized with anyone, and the only whiff of influence they seem to have found was playing with right wing shit post fodder. They haven’t indicating finding any sort of “militant” influence at all.
It seems that he just kind of broke on his own, with his gun friendly upbringing escalating that to a supremely high profile assassination out of nowhere.
Now they can certainly find leftists celebrating Kirk’s death a bit tastelessly much and they are mad as hell about that all on its own but the actual killing seems to be nihilist violent extremism. They have a good reason to be concerned that obviously tensions are tight enough to have these things pop off. Bernie Sanders certainly seems to understand that and put forward an inclusive message about victims on both sides and for at least some unifying response from both sides.
However the biggest blowhards on the right seen to be doubling down and escalating rhetoric, which is the last thing the situation needs.
Exactly. It’s not an organized group. It’s just people that still have their moral compass intact.
I wouldn’t assume the Kirk shooter has anything particularly “intact”. He seemed to enjoy the right wing meme stuff more and treated the killing more like a shit post that any ideological stand.
As a target, Charlie Kirk was actually a pretty terrible choice. He has no real power, and even in terms of influence I’d say he was a bit removed from any directly influential circle. He said vile stuff but say least he did actually let others get a fair share of his stage in his engagements. May have just been for the heightened engagement for content, but either way at least he let things play out in ways that the left could enjoy him getting owned by good points to his face, instead of settling for “reaction videos”.
I’m not talking about him, I don’t see any reason to consider him a member of antifa or the “left” at all. I’ve even read that a subset of groypers have a fetish for femboys. Hell, his Steam username was DonaldTrump according to Kotaku. No progressive I know would want to associate with that scumbag, even ironically.
None of these shooters are left wing though. It’s not like the only thing the administration is wrong about is their level of organisation. The premise that there is a left-wing extremism problem is completely false. They’re trying to pin all this violence on completely the wrong people so that they can ramp up their persecution of trans people and anti-fascists.
We’d kno wIf he was remotely left of center he’d have gotten the Luigi / Hannibal Lecter treatment
‘yet’
But somehow trans people are the terrorists. The Heritage Foundation even cited Tyler Robinson as evidence of “trans shooters”
I know that the apparently had a trans woman mate but was he personally himself trans, I hadn’t heard that. Was it just more made up nonsense.
it’s the trans lady’s fault, somehow.
They’ll fabricate something.
forensically
Utah is on the left side of the Country, he must be left!
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No, left
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Utah gov about to have another press conference, ‘he was so deep into the leftosphere that we haven’t even been able to uncover his presence yet. Mark my words, we are working hard to find the connection.’
“As yet, the Ultimate Evil remains largely unmanifest, and its powers and exact intentions are still a bit obscure since it lurks just outside the range of even the most sensitive, long-range detectors which we feel gives conclusive evidence as to The Ultimate Evil’s nefarious intent.” - Spathi
Reality doesn’t matter.
No. The right has decided and they’re banded together on this, at least among the people in my circles I still talk to.
“I’m all out of grace for the left.”
“You fascist, hate filled leftists have crossed the line this time. We’re done.”
“We’re past dialogue with you people.”
Catch the running theme? It’s likely what the pundits are pushing as the narrative, I’ve been too busy and too tired to listen in this week, so I don’t know.
And neither do they. But someone on the perception management team over there seems ready to give marching orders.
So yeah, as you say, it likely doesn’t matter.
Why not look at the other wing group? Ah too much evidence
Pretty sure he wasn’t shot with a 30-06. And I’m pretty sure those text messages we were shown also weren’t real.
Why y’all lyin to us?
If he was a lefty they would have been rubbing our faces in it day 1, not doctoring social media messages.
That is a load bearing “yet!”
I think the only reason there hasn’t yet been a full-blown pogrom against the LGBTQ community is that the shooter they apprehended was a far-right groyper and not the far-left antifa terrorist they assumed would target someone like Kirk.
But with the sheer number of people on the left openly celebrating Kirk’s death, I don’t think they’ll really need evidence to start going after the left.
Pretending to be sad about the spearhead of the Nazi youth is just pathetic. Even if everyone pretended it would not stop them, it is just a matter of if you go down swinging or not.
I heard that he might be one at first, but newest news say exactly what the article said: no groyper, no leftist.
Which makes sense because it both sounded weird to me that a leftist would write “whoever reads this is gay lol” or that a right-winger would write “Bella chiao” or “take that, fascist”.
This is a great example of how BOTH sides live in bot-fed echo chambers - just as much misinformation was flowing in the progressive online communities (including here) and it didn’t help our credibility.
We really need to get in the habit of sourcing things before we breathlessly repeat them on social media. It’s not hard to verify something.
I think one of them said catch fascist or something like that. Which is kind of funny. But if you can read this you are gay. I think he was just messing with everybody at this point.
