Cornuck wrote: ↑Fri Sep 12, 2025 8:46 pm
Time will tell, I think there's too much misinformation going around right now.
I agree that there’s too much misinformation and incomplete information, and also agree with ML that there are some things we may never know.
There are things which seem known with near 100% certainty. Kirk was shot with a rifle from distance, at a public event. Kirk is a public figure, known for being a key figure on the American right, and known for doing the kind of event he was killed at.
From this, there is a beyond-a-reasonable doubt level confidence that the killing was premeditated.
What was the motivation? We cannot infer it from these facts alone. The most reasonable inference is political violence from someone (or a cabal) who opposed Kirk. But this does not exclude other motivations, like “mattering” and “being noticed” which seem to be the motivation of some mass casualty perpetrators. And of course, motives can be mixed.
While Kirk is know for being on the American right and a fair inference is that a political motivation would be from the left, the political spectrum (especially among the radical) isn’t linear. There are conditions where a flanking political belief (further to the so-called right) would be motivated to what appears to be terroristic violence. I wouldn’t exclude this possibility, but it does not appear anywhere near as likely as violence coming from the radicalized left. There are many reasons for this, but the two I’ll briefly mention here are (1) the high level of threats, swatting, doxing, obstruction, sometimes rioting that have been used by radicalized leftists against right of center speakers and (2) a growing, even dominant belief among millennial and younger leftists that words are violence and therefore justify violent responses. Still, that’s all in inference world—it creates presumptions, but not presumptions that can’t be overriden by evidence.
And so what is the evidence? That’s what’s being gathered. The most solid evidence of motivation comes, I think, from the messages on the bullet casings. A manifesto adhering to twitters old character limits….. these tell us it is a copycat tactic from Mangione—suggesting the shooter studied Mangione (which doesn’t mean he shared his motivations). There were four casings, two of which strongly suggest whoever made the messages considered themself an antifascist. Kirk was absurdly accused of being a fascist only among the radicalized kool-aid drinking left. Antifa itself — or I should say the antifa movement since it is not centralized — believes that it is righteous to commit violence against those they believe are fascists. And fascists include Andy Ngo, because he wrote about them.
The other two casings include a furry/lola meme and “if you read this your gay lmfao”, things that are more ambiguous in terms of what they are trying to express. They are neither inconsistent with nor highly suggestive of an anti fascist motivation.
And how do we know these casings were the shooters? Law enforcement’s assertion it is the gun, a description of where it was found, and video of the guy coming off the roof and heading into the area where the gun was located. We can all imagine scenarios where this assertion would not be true — I’m not going there, just saying that if there is further evidence came to light that undermined this story, we’d have to consider it.
Next, we can’t exclude entirely the possibility that this assassination was orchestrated by a hostile foreign power. I don’t think it’s likely, but it *does* have the effect that hostile powers wishing to further disrupt American political stability would seek. And *if* it were orchestrated, of course you’d use bread crumbs to suggest a plausible, internal political opposition. That’s maximizes instability — it’s from the cia’s, usaid, state department playbook; so why wouldn’t foreign powers deploy the same? And of course if it were orchestrated by a hostile foreign government, one could always use recruited domestic radicals. It’s what the soviets did recruit assets. And on a small non violent scale, that’s what the bots do.
And of course that playbook could also be used by anarchic “right” wingers—I don’t know enough about Nick Fuentes to know if this is what he is. But if one were a neo-nazi who wanted an end to liberal society (preceded by a period of chaos), you can do worse than killing a mainstream maga guy and appear like your are antifa. It probably wouldn’t be the most effective target to bring about anarchy, but you might not be strategically competent…..
Evidence of intent might also be gleaned by associates, but this is grain of salt stuff, especially before a 360 evaluation that connects it and confirms it with other things (like social media activity, emails, etc). Not all interviewees are of equal knowledge or reliability.
The very worst evidence I’ve seen on this are conclusions drawn from family political beliefs, religious affiliation, and suggestions about beliefs once held. Political beliefs are about .5 correlation with family, which means (if my maths right) that if you have a society that is evenly split down the middle, the likelihood they offspring will be on the parents side (assuming they are aligned) is about 75%. Saying a person raised by republicans can’t be anything else is to think every Major League Baseball game will be a no hitter. Add to this I believe this understanding of correlation about children’s political beliefs accounts across all adult ages, and we know people who are 22 are more like to try out and experiment with differs positions before (generally settling). Which brings me to my next point — what someone believed at 19 isn’t necessarily what they believe at 22. This is the age of transformation, (and often radicalization), and recent converts are often the most fervent believers, and the most likely to wish to overtly demonstrate their fealty to their new beliefs. We all know this to be true—accordingly, if the shooter was the head of his high school Republican club, it would be very weak evidence as to his motivation. You have to get more recent information.
Mormons, while largely Republican, are not all Republicans. Children who grew up Mormon aren’t necessarily Mormons by age 22. Those who reject something as fundamental as their religious upbringing — which is VERY common at 22, even though it is sometimes temporary — simultaneously reject other fundamental beliefs (or at least become open to reexamining them).
I agree with the comment that most people are going to interpret the evidence to match up with their beliefs. That’s what people do. They reason backwards; filtering information to justify their intuition rather than letting the evidence lead to the conclusion. But the fact they do so doesn’t mean that one thing isn’t true (whether or not it is knowable), and it doesn’t mean each belief is equally plausible.
From what I’ve seen, the most likely story is that the shooter is a radicalized antifa-like leftists. You know the type. They are all over internet. Their posts won’t look all that different than those cheering on the assassination.
But here’s the thing. What I think is most plausible is absolutely open to revision based on better evidence. And there should be some here, especially more words he’s written and things he’s consumed. We should eventually see a social media/internet history with this guy, which will probably be revealing. If he is the one who put the messages on the casings, it would be highly unusual for him to both speak in memes and not participate in them. There’s the furry meme. And there’s the two most explicitly anti fascist casings — one using the arrows that most likely relate to gaming OR a 1930s German anti fascist movement. And the other one is the Italian anti-nazi song (or is it anti-fascist?). You don’t know about that stuff without being into technology, interested in pre-ww2 history, or associating with antifa which claims to be of a lineage with those resistance groups.
We will see.
