Welcome back to False Flag. The killing of Charlie Kirk last week has continued to reverberate throughout our nation’s politics. Today’s newsletter explores the fallout—and how it’s surprisingly come to divide the right. I also dive into the theory that the alleged assassin was a “groyper” and explain why that doesn’t add up. Thanks, as always, for reading and for being part of our Bulwark+ community. –Will Charlie Kirk Conspiracy Theories Roil MAGA MediaPlus: The ‘groyper’ theories, explained.
Right-wing media demands the “real” truth about Kirk’s deathON THE SURFACE, the MAGA movement appears to be united after the murder of prominent activist and conservative media figure Charlie Kirk. They’re getting people fired from their jobs for social media posts that made light of, or even celebrated, Kirk’s death. They’re cruising the streets to demand random businesses lower their flags in his honor. And they’re plotting how to attack the institutions of the left, with Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowing Monday to pursue a “vast domestic terror movement” targeting liberal foes. Yet beneath that façade of unity, that appetite of anger, and that thirst for retribution, cracks are emerging as the always-paranoid right is pulled apart by conspiracy theories about Kirk’s murder and a sense that the Trump administration isn’t telling the truth about it. After the arrest of suspect Tyler Robinson was announced on Friday, prominent right-wing media figures began to complain that the Trump administration couldn’t be telling the public the real story, noting that Robinson was a young white man from a Mormon family with no immediately clear political affiliations that could have inspired the shooting. Prominent right-wing podcaster Michael Savage was one of the first MAGA figures to accuse the government of spinning the real truth of the assassination, claiming it was impossible for the killer to disassemble his gun and escape as quickly as the government had claimed. “Something is wrong with this whole fucking picture!” Savage said in an episode of his show over the weekend. Trump adviser-turned-podcaster Steve Bannon has been one of the most prominent critics of the White House and FBI narrative of the shooting. On Monday, Bannon complained that the “timeline [of the assassination] makes no sense.” He warned that the Trump administration needed to seize control of the case’s narrative from Utah law enforcement by holding daily press conferences in Washington. Without that, Bannon added, the murder would spawn conspiracy theories akin to the John F. Kennedy assassination—a “Grassy Knoll 2.0” as he put it. “It seems like we’re spoonfed a narrative, and this audience is not going to take it,” Bannon said. Bannon even suggested an investigation of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who has served as a sort of responsible counterweight to Trump administration demands for revenge after Kirk’s killing. Bannon demanded answers Monday as to why Cox was given a “speaking role” at a press conference about the assassination, seemingly sidelining FBI Director Kash Patel in that capacity. “Cox should be investigated,” Bannon said. Confusion and uncertainty are the features of the immediate aftermath of nearly every major shooting—a phenomenon that has only accelerated in the internet age. That has certainly been no different here. Patel’s initial tweet that a suspect was in custody proved wrong, though he said Monday on Fox News that he had no regrets about the post. Early reports suggested that trans symbols were found on cartridges, leading to rampant speculation that the shooter was trans, but while Robinson reportedly lives with (and may be dating) someone who is transitioning, he is not believed to be transgender himself. Cox has said that the suspect has lefty views, but the digital breadcrumbs we’ve seen so far do not offer many insights. And Patel’s statement in a Fox appearance Monday that Robinson had written a note about the shooting, only for it to be mysteriously “destroyed,” raised even more questions. Those are just a few of the elements fueling MAGA world’s paranoia. But much of the conspiracy-theorizing has focused on something else entirely, one of the most sensitive faultlines in the movement: Trump’s support for Israel. InfoWars host Harrison Smith gained a lot of attention this weekend for “reporting” that Kirk, a longtime supporter of Israel, supposedly feared for his life after making a few comments critical of Israel. The implication being that the Israeli government was somehow involved in the shooting.¹ The idea that Israel or Jews were behind Kirk’s death got a big boost on Monday, when right-wing pundit—and Kirk friend—Candace Owens alleged on her show that Kirk had been threatened by wealthy donors over criticism of Israel, and that billionaire Bill Ackman specifically confronted him about it. Ackman denied arguing with Kirk, according to Owens, who is currently embroiled in a defamation suit involving the president of France and his wife, whom she has baselessly alleged is transgendered. The conspiracy aura around the Kirk shooting has been fueled by a few videos, including men in TPUSA shirts interrupting a witness who was describing the shooting to a journalist in an attempt to end the interview. As the men grapple with him to stop the interview, the witness cries, “Get off me!” Another much-scrutinized video shows someone, presumably a TPUSA employee, taking away a camera from the scene of Kirk’s death. While this likely happened because the video included footage that showed their boss getting gruesomely murdered, these acts are exactly the kind of things that can set off conspiracy theorists. And have. Then again, many of these people are prone to seeing Deep State actors behind every corner, including when it’s their allies running the investigations and the government itself. Alex Jones protégé Owen Shroyer, who recently quit Jones’s InfoWar to go independent, said backlash to the Justice Department’s closure of the Jeffrey Epstein case has meant more skepticism about the account of Kirk’s shooting. “Now it just feels like a coverup on top of a coverup on top of a coverup,” Shroyer said in a video on Monday. No proof Tyler Robinson is a groyperWITHIN HOURS OF THE NAME of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin being released on Friday, a consensus solidified among prominent progressive social media accounts: Tyler Robinson was a “groyper.” The idea that Robinson was a member of a group modeled after far-right followers of white nationalist podcaster and longtime Kirk antagonist Nick Fuentes had an irresistible irony: It allowed people fearful of the coming Trump administration retribution campaign to claim Kirk had actually been slain by someone further to his right. Even Fuentes himself seemed to believe it could be true, saying before Robinson’s arrest that he would disavow any supporters who use violence. But there is no actual evidence to support the groyper theory, or to suggest that Robinson has any affiliation with Fuentes or a related cause. Based on officials’ descriptions of the bullet casings and on his family’s social media posts, Robinson appears to be a young man who really liked memes and video games. But it takes more than that to be a groyper. Although “groyper” is a somewhat nebulous term, there are a few things you’d expect of someone who adopts that label. There’s usually some use of a meme of an obese toad who looks like a more self-satisfied Pepe the Frog (this thicc amphibian is the “Groyper” for which the label is named). Groypers are racist. And groypers watch content from Fuentes or someone else in the white-nationalist digital media world broadly known as “America First.” There’s no evidence yet that Robinson meets any of those criteria. But proponents of the groyper theory point to a Facebook post by Robinson’s mother that showed him squatting in a track suit on Halloween, writing that her son had dressed as “some guy from a meme.” That meme is the “Slavic squat” or “gopnik,” where the joke is that Slavic men stereotypically like to squat in Adidas tracksuits (this is chronically online stuff we’re dealing with here). As far as I can tell, someone on Bluesky paired that picture with an old, circa-2016 meme of Pepe the Frog in a similar track suit, also squatting, and the paired images began to circulate together as proof of a groyper connection. But the Slavic Squat/Gopnik meme is not necessarily a Pepe thing. There are countless examples of the squatting meme that don’t feature Pepe. In other words, there’s no proof that Robinson is basing his Halloween costume on the Pepe meme. Those who have been groyperpilled in the Robinson case also point to a previously obscure Spotify playlist entitled “Groyper Wars”—an apparent reference to the 2019 campaign to crash TPUSA campus events on Fuentes’s behalf. The playlist includes a remix of “Bella Ciao,” an Italian song linked to the Italian resistance that was used in a video game, Far Cry 6, a few years ago. Authorities said that those words were written on one of the bullet casings in Kirk’s shooting. There’s no reason to think Robinson—or just about anyone else—ever heard of this playlist before or associated “Bella Ciao” with groypers. Before the shooting, the Spotify account that made the playlist had fewer than ten followers on Spotify. I can’t find any proof the playlist was promoted by Fuentes or anyone in his orbit. The fifty-two other tracks on the supposedly incriminating playlist include such songs as MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and “Hip to Be Square” by Huey Lewis and the News—both bangers but not known as groyper anthems. 1 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a tribute to Kirk in which he framed him as committed to the state’s cause. |