We can agree that the right wing is trying to use Kirk’s death as casus belli to start a civil war against us. We are in a dangerous position right now.
But at the same time we can also choose to NOT spread misinformation like this. No, we don’t know right now what political leaning the killer has. If anything, if the evidences released by the investigation can be trusted, he is more likely to be left leaning.
Yes, the right spreads misinformation all the time to further their goals. But I think we can do better.
What evidence? So far, none of it says he is a left winger. Everything we do know points to a MAGA family and village of similar idiots with violent tendencies and a gun-loving way of life.
First of all, you completely missed the main point of my comment. If you think there’s no evidence then you shouldn’t be claiming one way or the other either, yet this post is presenting him as definitively right wing.
Secondly, I didn’t say he is a left winger. I said (based on my judgement) the evidence shows he probably, maybe leans left.
And answering your “what evidence” question, his text message to his roommate is released by the investigation. There are also statement from his mother stating he is “getting more and more left” (obviously, grains of salt). And there are leaked (released?) Discord messages from the killer.
If you never heard any of these, then you probably are in an echo chamber.
I didn’t miss it. I ignored it the same way you so vociferously try to pull this rightwinger away from his rightwing history.
Oh, so a bad faith argument
No. I chose to ignore apologist language. Seems quite unpopular with those using words to annoy instead of communicate.
Which is, indeed, a bad faith argument.
Also, answering their comments is not ignoring.
Ok.
Huh? That wasn’t what I was doing at all, you just pulled that accusation out of your ass. You asked me “what evidence”, so I answered, I guess that was the wrong thing to do.
So you actively ignore evidence that might be inconvenient to your opinions?
Ok.
Multiple people who were interviewed said he was getting into leftist politics, he called Charlie Kirk a “fascist”. He had a MTF trans girlfriend. These are not typical MAGA traits. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99g1e0z2ero
Multiple people know him as from a rightwing family, he was photographed in MAGA gear, and plenty of MAGA are secretly gay.
None of what you’ve said is even minutely comparable to the abundance of evidence that says he’s a rightwing abused child from a MAGA family.
The article has screenshots.
Yes, and the voter registration is for a Tyler Robinson, not a Tyler James Robinson.
The Snopes fact check has a screenshot of the registration of Tyler James Robinson.
Fair enough.
Does that make the shooter a leftist?
cis guy dating a trans woman is not “gay”. he may himself identify as queer or bisexual but we don’t have to misgender his girlfriend out of a desire to play up his purported right wingedness.
Sorry, my ignorance of LGBTQ does not dilute my point.
However, in my ignorance, I touched on something you didn’t try to refute and I appreciate it: Republicans are quite often in the closet while publicly raging against the thing they secretly embrace.
thats for sure a thing. with regards to the shooter i recommend reading ken klippenstein’s piece on him, it does not sound like theres enough evidence to firmly consider him a conservative or a groyper or an anarchist yet. he’s weirdly apolitical (aside from executing a bigot for as-yet-vague reasons) and several definitive assertions have been made and later retracted by large media outlets, often citing sources that recanted or hearsay that proved false.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-leaked-messages-from-charlie
Thanks for the article. I’ll read it now.
EDIT: I’d already read this one. It’s probably more factual than anything mainstream media has done and that’s including those from either side of the political spectrum.
These days they’re all bowing to Trump anyways so who knows what to trust.
According to you, homosexuality is only about gender, not sex. This isn’t right and there is no consensus as far as I know. I would personally say a cis guy dating a trans woman is gay
gender and sex are not the same, for the 100th time
You’re the one inventing misgendering here
doesnt really sound like you’re an authority on the topic. the term “gay” applied to someone who identifies as a man means that they are attracted to men, whereas trans women are- and this is true- Women.
assigned gender at birth is irrelevant, regardless of your personal opinion
Attraction isn’t really exclusively based on sex, though. It’s about a whole range of factors, including how someone presents their personality and their physical traits. Many trans women have a lot of traits people find attractive in women generally, so being attracted to a trans woman is consistent with heterosexual attraction.
This means that liking trans women doesn’t automatically mean you’re attracted to men, so calling it gay is an oversimplification of how attraction works.
You could argue that in a strictly biological sense it is homosexual, but that ignores a whole range of social factors, which isn’t really how the term “gay” is colloquially used.
This means that liking trans women doesn’t automatically mean you’re attracted to men, so calling it gay is an oversimplification of how attraction works.
I get it. Calling it hetero would seem like an oversimplification as well though. We need more words!
Attraction isn’t really exclusively based on sex, though
I get it, but making it solely based on gender isn’t a good idea as well I believe. Doesn’t seem specific enough. Also, trans women and trans men don’t necessarily change physically, right? They can still look like their birth gender, that’s what’s throwing me off I believe.
After a bit of research, it seems like it aims towards being based on gender and not sex, hmm. I might be wrong on this one?
I believe I might think it’s about sex because I wouldn’t be interested in a non cisgender person, but that might only be me? I had the feeling that most heterosexual people would not be interested in trans people
“I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
Robinson’s mother explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro–gay and trans–rights oriented. She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders. This resulted in several discussions with family members, especially between Robinson and his father, who had very different political views.
You people are fucking dipshits.
Right. MAGA never go for self-preservation against rightwing retaliation.
Put the pieces together. Aside from what I already said:
-Estranged from right wing family
-Dating a transwoman
-Struggled with gender identity
-Complaining about hatred
None of these things are characteristic of the right.
Balance that against an entire life of rightwing indoctrination. That’s a rightwing kid with mental issues.
I will not concede this bullshit talking point that “the left” did this when we all have eyes.
Balance that against an entire life of rightwing indoctrination.
You are describing probably 80% of liberals. Political opinion is not genetic.
Killing someone for “spreading hate” is not a right wing phenomenon.
Lol. That’s a hell of a stretch. You’re welcome to keep pushing this line while I roll my eyes and ignore it.
Specifically what evidence released by the investigation do you feel characterizes the alleged killer as left-leaning? I have not seen any such evidence.
Everyone spreads misinformation to further their goals. It’s just not so obvious when it’s your side doing it. Confirmation bias
It’s not just the political right
It’s interesting that tens of millions of people know the truth of him being a radical far-left homicidal maniac, but the few thousand people here continue to circlejerk over lies. I really expected better from lemmy. Oh well, it is what it is.
Can you be specific about what you mean by “radical far left”? Obviously we all agree that he’s a homicidal maniac, because he assassinated a person in public, but I don’t wanna just jump on the downvote bandwagon without hearing you out. What makes him a decent person?
The only evidence of this I’ve seen is that his roommate might have been trans, and we all know being in the same room as a trans person makes you a radical left maniac.
So many of these Charlie Kirk AI generated TikTok videos popping up everywhere have to shoehorn some amount of “We hate Greta Thunberg” into them. I’m beginning to suspect these people aren’t actually sad that Kirk is dead. They’re sad that Greta Thunberg is doing something infinitely more dangerous and more inspiring, yet she managed to outlive him.
What you’re describing is clearly foreign propaganda.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
Love it!
Funny thing I was thinking on the drive to camp:
We had 3 TV stations, 3 sources of the nightly news. (Nightly news for national and world news, local paper for local news.)
The talking heads always said the same things. Sounds like state propaganda, doesn’t it? But the reality was that none of them wanted to show even a whiff of bias. The #1 metric of who one watched for their news was trust. Like Cronkite or Rather? Who do you trust? Bias was verboten, propaganda. LOL, after Watergate, journalists hunted politicians for sport.
Al Jazeera America started with the promise to report “just the facts ma’am”. Now I don’t know shit about their worldwide operations, I only saw the American version, and I was horrified. I realized I was so brainwashed on news-as-entertainment that reading their version was like watching grass grow. Hadn’t seen news reported as straight facts in so long I was bored shitless.
I have some experience. Edited my high school paper, not like that’s a big deal, but I had some solid journalistic training. Same in college. I can point to bias in any given article you care to show me. Not Al Jazeera, nada, no bias.
Predictably, they gave up within a year.
Not Al Jazeera, nada, no bias.
Can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
I thought it was a trans antifa Marxist! /s
It’s starting to look like it was.
Missed a detail: any criticism of the scumbag is now considered “celebration” or “justification”. We hated him before he died, but now we cannot say that. Because of the Fuhrer at all.
Dont rewrite history while its still happening, mate. Saying you dont like him because X reasons is not the issue being brought up. Its the people cheering for his death, celebrating murder and worse calling for more of it. I didnt like the cunt, but I never wanted him to fucking die. But a lot of people on this very platform are drinking and cheering. And thats ghoulish behaviour. Its not about Kirk at that point, its about the people saying it.
If you looked at Reddit, you would see that any criticism of Kirk is largely being equated to celebration or at least supporting it.
Even if you ignored that, people are getting fired in droves for saying mild things, and the fascists are trying to force people nationwide to either keep quiet or participate in memorials. Just yesterday Oklahoma tried to force their school children into a minute of silence for the monster.
And even if you ignored that, just posting Kirk’s quotes are making a lot of people angry.
And even if you ignored that, there’s a huge attack overall on the left’s free speech in general. The Nazis are declaring war on us from the administration, saying they will dismantle the left. And declare leftists terrorist groups.
None of this is okay. Open your eyes.
Maybe it should be about the factors that led to a person murdering another person and not the bystander reactions to a notable event that happened.
So, youre now going with the “she deserved to be raped. What did she think was going to happen going up to his hotel room at 3 in the morning?”???
Bullshit
Anyone that’s read about the lead-up to WW2 or, well, any historical instance of fascism gaining political control over a country knows that they’re going to keep pushing. They’re going to keep targeting the left. They’re going to ram through executive orders to oppress the left. They’re going to get the SC to make decisions against the left. They’re going to label nebulous entities like ANTIFA (when’s the last time you saw an ANTIFA gathering) as terrorist organizations. They’re going to end up openly calling for genocide. It’s going to happen.
So I implore everyone to arm themselves and form networks with likeminded people. You do not want to start doing this after it’s too late. If you need motivation, start reading up on 1930s Germany (the similarities are undeniable) and follow up with a list of WW2 atrocities. There’s definitely a WIKI page for it.
they love antifa because they can point at anything they don’t like and scream antifa, and now law enforcement will fall on it.
fucking fascists.
The left loves Antifa because they can use it as cover for illegal behavior. It’s convenient that you continue to claim Antifa doesn’t exist, yet you all coordinate with each other in breaking the law. Hard to coordinate with something that doesn’t exist.
do you have a single shred of evidence?
where do they go to sign up, antifa.org?
Hard to coordinate with something that doesn’t exist.
indeed; but you’ve figured it all out apparently, so drop the wisdom. how is ‘the left’ coordinating via ‘antifa’ to break the law?
also, what’s wrong with anti fascism? everyone should be anti fascism, unless you’re a goose stepping fascist cocksucker.
Antifa is a loosely organized group of like minded individuals. There is no official membership, it’s an ideology welcome to any who share this world view. They develop tactics to intimidate and silence their opponents and help each other cover illegal and immoral behavior. This can be hitting people in the head with bike locks, throwing cups full of cement, lighting buildings on fire, and other destructive behavior. They wear black bloc and cover their faces so as not to be easily identifiable. They claim to be the good guys “fighting Nazis”, but really they’re a bunch of thuggish larpers with social behavior conditions and a lack of morals. I have hours and hours of video footage of Antifa individuals perpetrating violent and destructive acts against those they disagree with. They lean heavily into the untrue sentiment that they aren’t an organization as it allows them to side step any kind of legal accountability. In reality they operate sort of like sleeper cells in different regions protesting, rioting, stoking the flames to silence their political opponents. They’re scum.
Proud boys, 3%s and Groypers more your speed?
when I think about thuggish larpers, that’s who comes to mind. violent and destructive acts - like j6?
if there’s an organization, please, out it, be my guest. do you think you’re the first sharp mind that’s tried to crack this nut?
that maybe, it’s not a giant machination, that simply there are many, many people violently upset with everything from BLM to outright fascism in the streets with ICE?
hrmm…
no, scum paraded through the streets screaming jews will not replace us.
that’s scum. fascist scum.
Here’s the difference, I can unequivocally state that I don’t in any way condone nor support violence from any individual on the right. I’m curious if you can do the same on the left. I routinely see it excused and justified.
I can unequivocally state that I don’t in any way condone nor support violence from any individual on the right.
you must be a rare bear then, sparky, because that entire side froths at the mouth for violence at damn near every turn they get. the overwhelming majority of violence comes from people on the right.
https://time.com/7317383/political-violence-america-trump-crackdown-right/
I don’t see people on the left condoning violence against anyone except ICE, and that’s because of the fascist actions ICE is taking in cities across the country.
Imperial Japan is the only country in modern history to become a Fascist Theocracy. Under Project 2025, the USA is following a similar path. I always pointed to Germany, Italy and Spain, but they did not beat the Japanese in the fucked up realm of fascism.
Could you elaborate?
Arte, French media, produced a documentary about the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria. Basically WW II started in 1931 led by a rather unknown Imperial Army officer named Kanji Ishiwara. The Tokyo Trials failed to send the asswipe to a prison or hang him and he croaked peacefully in 1949.
Antifa is such a strange concept to me because doesn’t it stand for Anti-fascist? So making Antifa your enemy means you are fascist
Correct. And it’s not strange.
There are some republicans out there who think fascists are bad but also believe Antifa is some radical terrorist group. Even if it exists, that would be a good thing
The number of similarities between modern America and 1930s Germany is shocking.
I believe the assassination of Kirk is highly analogous to the killing of Horst Wessel. Both Wessel and Kirk were far right nationalists who were killed and subsequently hailed as martyrs by their fascist movements.
Hitler brought up Wessel in all of his early speeches. The Nazis wrote songs and bullt statues of Wessel. And today we can already hear the songs about Kirk. Congressmen are passing around a bill to erect a statue of Kirk in the Capitol.
If we continue to follow this timeline closely, we are about 2 years away from our own Reichstag fire moment.
To be fair, 1930s got most of their ideas from the US. The country has always been sick in the bones.
So this time around, is that 2 weeks?
That’s an interesting subject, I sometimes wonder “is our fascism progressing faster than the Nazis?”, but I haven’t really come up with a good answer.
I’ll stick with my “2 years” prediction though. I think a Reichstag fire moment is most likely when political tension is high, and political tension naturally peaks in the lead up to a presidential election.
Think that’s a fair assessment. On the one hand we are more connected than ever and sentiment travels fast and echo chambers let dangerous extremist thought fester. On the other hand, Germans were experiencing just a much worse actual living situation.
This is the most fucking American liberal comment thread. Just casually wondering if it will be years or months until the fascists consolidate power and start exterminating people. Gee, how awful that will be. Sure is a shame nobody can do anything about it.
Do we know about the political views of the suspect? I know he supports guns but that does not make you automatically right wing
From what I’ve pieced together, it’s a guy from a MAGA family that was recently radicalized, possibly in college towards left-wingism (possibly via exposure and humanization of trans room mate?). There’s not that much evidence to suggest he was a far-righter himself (the groyper claims are literally just “yeah the engravings are a dogwhistle trust me bro” but many libs here are buying it), and now it’s just turning into a war of push from both sides being like “no it’s not OUR guy it’s YOUR guy!”.
In other words, it’s impossible to tell for certain due to how deliberately muddied the waters are by everyone.
MAGA was screaming that it was a radical leftist without ANY evidence… They are just looking for an excuse to justify using force against political opponents
He went to UVU one semester and then left and went to trade school as an electrical apprentice. I highly doubt he got radicalized at college in Utah. He was already radicalized by his parents and family in the MAGA / Mormon spheres. It takes longer than a semester to deconstruct cult level beliefs like that. There is very little to any evidence that his roommate is trans. It is all hearsay picked up from places like 4-chan then spread to right-wing rags then spread to right wing politicans. A big loooong game of telephone. It isn’t even clear he lived there at the time of the shooting. The Daily Mail said he lives with his family in a $600,000 six-bedroom home.
The reason the trans - fan fic is getting spread by right-wingers is that the federal authorities are using it to get jurisdiction from the state since that could make it classify as a hate crime. Even if the roommate is trans that doesn’t mean they aren’t a right-wing trans person. Trans people can have shitty views just like any other group of people.
It doesn’t help that the FBI and news outlets are releasing different info to different news audiences to muddy the waters. Just the meta-data of this being the 3rd trans related storyline being pushed does not inspire confidence in it’s veracity. The first TRN one was debunked and retracted, but then they claim the engravings point to trans- ideology when that isn’t really apparent. Then they come up with another one. Sorry, not buying right-wingers making shit up to blame it on trans people.
Hold on… A hate crime? Jesus fucking Christ. Being a fascist asshole is 100% a choice. And their entire existence is a fucking hate crime.
The Trump regime doesn’t want a local jury of Mormon peers, they want to execute him federally and have control of the trial so that inconvenient information doesn’t come out.
There’s equal evidence for the groyper claim as there is for the trans roommate claim, which is to say nothing but hearsay being pushed out by the Governor of Utah.
If this kid had been “radicalized towards left-wingism” in any way, the media would be all over it and we wouldn’t be hearing the end of it.
Ding ding ding ding.
When you hear that he’s “not cooperating” today, that means the regime can’t convince him to tell everyone he’s really a liberal.
From what I’ve heard, he was from a right wing family but there are conflicting reports on whether he himself was right wing
Probably a libertarian. Non party affiliated has been growing as people arent into fascist Republicans vs fiscal conservative policy and they dont want to be a Democrat in those states.
I know we have this, you are one party of the other thing but i think the “others” is gonna get bigger as a group and already has.
This is what i read as well. While not likely, it is totally possible he is not right wing
He was apparently dating a transgender person. That doesn’t necessarily make him left wing, but it means that in regards to transgender people, he probably didn’t fully agree with the right wing
Not all right wingers are against trans people. I‘d be surprised if ecen 50% are
His family and city was, but it pretty likely seems he was not. Hard to be a republican if you’re living with (and allegedly dating) a trans.
It was only for one semester. And you’d be surprised how many white supremacists have had relationships with non-whites.
Yeah, but most don’t live with one.
He also seemed to want others to be helped and didn’t register as a Republican voter, or actually vote (though he was registered to do so).
I think “we’re” going to end up with a lot of egg on our faces the more they investigate. I believe his parents have already told the authorities that “he’s been getting more into left wing ideology in the recent years” so I’m pretty sure its just a matter of time before it’s “proven.”
The only thing people have to go off of now is some tenuous connection to Nick Fuentes that doesn’t seem too solid.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. At face value alone the alleged “Hey Fascist, Catch!” text on the casing is not something a right winger would say about their own ideological cousin, and if true as well, the shooter may have dated a trans individual. The preponderance of the circumstantial evidence we’ve been told (albeit with the caveat that we can’t trust news orgs that are kissing the ring) would seem to point towards the shooter aligning with left-leaning traits.
Edit: you downvoters need to check your cancel votes at the door. Just because there’s a possibility you might dislike the reality of the situation not turning out how you’d like.
It’s definitely frustrating to see people absolutely refuse to accept that it might not be what they want it to be, meanwhile they’ll point to the right and laugh when they do it.
I’m just trying not to let what I want to be true make me believe 100% that it couldn’t be anything else. It’s kinda like the Epstein distraction “meme” that’s getting a bit frustrating… Every single thing that happens is suddenly branded a distraction from Epstein, completely ignoring more realistic reasoning for what is being done… Like Venezuela, we’re going to war with Venezuela not to cover for Epstein, but for one of a few reasons: as Carlin said “we’re an oil company with a military.” or to allow deportations to continue using the foreign enemies distinction that he was denied earlier as “we aren’t at war with the cartel” … Well now we are, or will be.
Don’t forget the arrows after the quote, though
It’s a reference to Helldivers 2, and a sufficiently brainrotted individual might very well just put internet references on there. Which he did. And it’s not like right wingers haven’t been misusing political terms for ages. Remember the term “feminazi”?
The shooter seems to have been involved in some deep internet culture and communities. You can’t just treat it like standard opinions, but under that internet lens, which is far less straightforward and filled with codewords. From an outside perspective a lot of that might seem straight up nonsensical when put together. My point is is simply that it’s inconclusive
Not that it matters much anyhow, as republicans will pin it on the left and trans people no matter what. They’re gearing up for a genocide and will use any excuse available
This kid was different. He is not one of us! /S
What was fucking hilarious was the governor got on to reassure all Utahns that he was not like his parents, community, or state when he clearly is.
Your musings don’t matter he has already been branded by the liars as a leftist and your just here to sweep up after them like a good lackey.
Why the hell would I want to “sweet up” after them? I even used the term “we’re” to distinguish the fact that I’m not a right winger. I’m simply trying to stick to the only facts we have, I’m not letting what I want to be real get in the way of what reality seems to be.
I’m one of the last people who wants this to be a left wing guy, but I also won’t plug my ears and choose to believe something that might not be true based on some loose connections.
Where did you see he was turning left? Given his background with groupers, he’s got Internet brain rot and is trying to play lefty while doing what he did for the reasons stated are hardcore radical right.
Pause. Where did you see he had a background with groypers? Not speculation, but hard evidence. Not memes, but actual proof.
This is the problem today, speculation is treated as fact. Everyone pretends they have things figured out when they don’t know shit and are basing their beliefs off of unvetted internet posts.
In an article I read they stated that his parents were supposedly saying he started turning to the left in recent years. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but it would at least partially explain his not voting for Republicans and registration as independent.
What background has been proven that he has a history with groypers? The only thing I’ve seen are the bullet engravings, but unfortunately he managed to pick every single meme that could go either way… They all have a history of starting one way and being used in another, even the helldiver’s reference could be a fascist misunderstanding the point of helldiver’s, or a left winger understanding and using it as anti-fascist.
The article I saw said he was getting more “political“ recently, not explicitly more left-wing…
I wish I had it saved since I’m at work and can’t do a good enough search, but yeah the quick search I’m doing now is only pulling up “more political.” Could have been that the article was wrong and has since been corrected.
If you didn’t vote in '22 or '24, and had the ability, you’re not a progressive or liberal, full stop.
Yeah and if he had been getting more lefty they would have said that, not the intentionally vague “more political”.
Consider the source. Hard-core Righties consider anyone who isn’t as right wing as them to be Liberals. They could check every box in Conservative Bingo, but if they have the slightest concern about deporting people without due process, they are as Liberal as a San Francisco Homo.
You can’t let MAGAs choose the labels.
LOL.
Boomers complaining people are “turning left” cause their kid asked if Jesus really meant it when he said to feed the poor and treat others with human decency.
Yeah, it’s probably the fact that he went to college for a semester. To them that means he was indoctrinated into leftism.
Sweep up is a reference to cleaning up.
It doesn’t matter what you think or even I think. They already branded him as leftist. They are already attacking innocent people with political violence like the terrorists they are.
The reality is he was raised conservative in a conservative religion, in a conservative family, in a conservative town, and in a conservative state. He is one of them. They know this, I know this, but you seem confused.
They have a name for this and it is useful idiot.
I understand what sweep up means… I was saying that’s not what I’d want to be doing and it isn’t what I was attempting to do.
As for useful idiot, you’re literally assuming you know what you claim to be true… Just like you said, what you think or what I think doesn’t matter. I’m not “helping” them by my comment suggesting that we might end up embarrassed if they do end up having actual proof he’s a “left winger.” I’m of the mind that this is unfortunately more likely than not to be the case.
It is okay, you got caught up in the propaganda of what was his political leanings left or right. I am just here to tell you that your doing exactly what they want you to do. Hence the useful idiot
I am assuming the truth. Just like OP said. He is a product of conservative culture regardless if he embraced or denied it.
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I am a big time left wing guy and I love guns. Of course I believe in gun control, but I do not believe in most gun bans.
Me too. I am left wing and shoot guns weekly. I live in switzerland and it is not a issue at all because there are strict regulations. You cannot aquire an automatic rifle without special permissions.
The problem is that some countries, like Canada, are hell bent on destroying shooting sports. No joke. The gun bans in canada over the past 5 years (there have been no changes in the licensing schemes, BTW, meaning it is not harder to get a gun than it was) is effectively turning almost all shooting sport variations untenable.
It is stupid and they need to stop that. The licensing scheme is fine enough, they don’t need to ban every semi-automatic rifle in existence or stop new handguns from being sold. The regulations on handguns in Canada were highly effective and they could have even legalized pocket pistols for collecting and casual sport shooting and it would not have made a difference.
This is one of the biggest problems with our current state of polarization: we’re quick to box people into a binary; either “red” or “blue,” “left” or “right.”
Real people rarely fit neatly into those categories. When you take the time to actually map out someone’s beliefs, experiences, and values, what you find almost never looks like a solid block of one color. Instead, it’s more like a mosaic: someone might lean conservative on economic issues, progressive on social ones, independent when it comes to foreign policy, and undecided on others.
Reducing all of that complexity down to a single partisan label is not only misleading, it also fuels division. It makes it harder to have real conversations, because instead of engaging with the full person (their reasoning, contradictions, and growth), we engage with a caricature. Recognizing that most people carry a mix of beliefs forces us to slow down, listen, and resist the urge to collapse identities into overly simple categories.
The challenge is that this feels counterintuitive, especially for people who haven’t examined why they hold the views they do. It’s easier, and often more comforting, to inherit an identity or adopt a team than it is to wrestle with contradictions and gray areas. But when we refuse that deeper work, we not only misunderstand others, we also misunderstand ourselves.
In other words, the messiness is the point. People are complicated, and when we acknowledge that, we create more space for dialogue, empathy, and genuine understanding; the very things that binary polarization squeezes out.
Edit:
If you’re interested in seeing how this plays out in practice, the New York Times put together a quiz a few years back that illustrates the point really well:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-parties.html
Very well said, this is how i think as well. Here in switzerland it is exactly the same even though we have 5 major parties to choose from. This is also why direct democracy in switzerland is so amazing. You choose people that represent the parliment in parties while you still can vote different in referendums than your chosen party does.
Is there a way to interact with this quiz that doesn’t involve me giving the NYT a dollar?
Well, that aged like fine milk.
It’s becoming clear people view reality as a “choose your own adventure” game.
Why wait for facts when you can speculate?
All that a German needs to know about this incident is two words:
Reichstag Fire
(EU pls send help 🥺👉👈)
People keep saying this but I’m seeing a different thing. The Kirk murder doesn’t seem to have the seriousness required to compare. Instead, the event has turned into an us-vs.-them litmus test. The fascists can’t use this to declare autocracy, but they’re using it to target enemies.
It’s a loyalty test, yes.
KILL
Pardon my ignorance but is this actually banned on some dumbass platform?
They now claim he was “left leaning”. It’s a war of propaganda.
What are your reasons for thinking he was on the Right?
My understanding is that everyone who has publicly spoken about him has indicated that while he was raised in a Republican family, he himself held strong Left views. His friends/classmates have indicated he had become very vocal about this and regularly got into arguments over it. He was in a relationship with a trans individual which is a decidedly Left behavior. More than that he murdered a Republican poster boy because of his ideology (as indicated by Tyler himself).
They were always going to blame it on the left. Facts don’t matter to rightists, only keeping control of their followers. All of Lemmy called it the moment the assassination happened.
His mom literally said that her son shifted left and got into arguments with his father about politics. How does it feel to be on the side of lies and disinformation?
I see your account is brand new. Whether you’re a Russian or Chinese operative, a MAGA propagandist, or just extremely gullible, the Fediverse is probably not the place for you.
I’m gullible because I am trusting his mother’s statement over your conspiracy theory? Lol ok.
Likely based on his texts with his transwoman roommate.
deleted by creator
It’s not funny that people believed he was a groyper. This was such an obvious thing that you need to talk to a psychiatrist about it.
Robinson’s mother told police that her son had “began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders,” the court document said.
And she said that over the past year or so, Robinson had become more political and had “started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented,” according to the documents.
Gotta unite the base that was fractured over the Epstein files
“Right wing” still isn’t specific enough, as that also includes democrats.
Just to be clear, he was obviously part of the same way of left wing thinking that holds the following opinions:
Which of those opinions do you take issue with?
I can’t speak to the shooter’s motivations (though meme forensics seems pretty silly) but the “at a Right wing state with a Right wing governor” etc bits seem pretty dumb.
It’d be like saying the guy who went after Pelosi was clearly a Leftie because it was in a Leftie state, with a Left song governor, in a Left wing city against a Left wing politician. Pretty nonsense points and make us look dumb.
It’s sort of relevant because when crazy stuff happens in a Democratic state, the right points fingers and they imply that chaos is happening because of governance.
Kind of feels like the right invents their own truth and constantly does mental gymnastics. Now we are doing it? The media talked about goypher for a day and everybody jumped on it.
How are “we” doing mental gymnastics here?
Thinking this guy is right wing just because his dad is and assuming he “ironically” wrote an anti fascist song lyric on the bullet.
The media mentioned goypher once and everyone jumped on the band wagon without asking any questions.
At least the CIA nipped this Luigi before it could grow.
Interesting. I hadn’t even considered that.
jumping on the band wagon without any questions… like the whole trans rhetoric on a bullet. the bullets engravings are memes and I doubt there was much thought put into them beyond being ‘for the lulz’ or some other edgelord bullshit as would be expected of a 4channer
That’s a bit my point, both sides are exhibiting the same energy at the moment. I thought Lemmy would be a bit more critical, especially since I figure it’s users are more resistant to rhetoric and manipulation.
At this point, I think even if the shooter came out and publicly declared his ideology, anybody that “guessed” wrong during the last week wouldn’t believe him.
Seems blatant to me, I’m surprised no one seems to be mentioning it.
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/groyper-charlie-kirk-nick-fuentes-tyler-robinson
Soon after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, some on the political left quickly spread a baseless theory that the conservative podcaster was killed by a follower of the ultra-right-wing group called Groypers.
Authorities told Axios they believe Robinson’s romantic relationship with his transgender roommate could be key to determining a motive for Kirk’s killing, and that Robinson believed that the conservative was spreading transphobic hate.
Robinson “wasn’t too fond of Trump or Charlie [Kirk],” a former coworker of his told CNN.
Reality check: As noted by Time Magazine, those who have covered Fuentes downplayed connections between Robinson and the movement.
I don’t think reality is welcome on Lemmy at this point.
Upvoted for citing reasonable source.
Personally, it doesn’t really matter much whether he was left or right since it’s very clear that right-wing extremist violence makes up the large majority of these incidents.
I wouldn’t say the Groyper is totally baseless, but “Robinson’s romantic relationship with his transgender roommate” is pretty telling.
Alex Jones got caught looking at trans porn, and he’s a right wing piece of shit.
Groypers, specifically, are no longer fond of Trump.
