← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. Up next, I've got an interview with my guy, Ryan Broderick, who's probably the best person out there, or at least my favorite covering kind of Internet culture and the intersection with politics. And so I want to interview him about the Internet culture that the Charlie Kirk assassin was ensconced in, as. As reflected in the carvings that he did on the bullets that ended up, at least one of them ended up killing Charlie Kirk. And I think it's really important and valuable conversation for a lot of reasons. But since that conversation, we have had some more breaking news on what the motive might have been, based on this report from authorities and the release of some text messages between the shooter and his trans roommate. Among the texts, he writes, while why did I do it? I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. So it's important to just say, clearly there was some ideological motivation here, clearly related to Kirk's speech. I mean, he says it as clear as day in the text to his roommate. There have been some people that have tried to claim that that wasn't the case. Um, but I don't know how much more evidence you need than that. In addition to that, he also talks about the meme culture that we get into in this interview, and he talks about how the engravings that he does on the bullets, he says the fucking messages are mostly a big meme. So if I see notices bulge UWU on Fox News misspelled, I might have a stroke. So it also was a troll. And it also demonstrates that he was kind of influenced and steeped in this online meme culture. So I think this next conversation where Ryan kind of educates us about that world, and we go over some thoughts. If you're a parent and you think you might have a son that is potentially heading down a radicalization pipeline. And we talked about kind of the broader culture of young men and where things are going and how there were some other shooters, other recent mass shooters who have used similar meme cultures and were maybe involved in a different subculture that Ryan lays out. Like, for all those reasons, this is a super, super important interview, and I hope you stick around for it. I just wanted to say we did get into some speculation about this shooter that is a little out of date now that we have the actual text messages between him and his roommate. So with that, stick around for my man Ryan Broderick. Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here, and I'm excited to bring on Ryan Broderick he's the author of the Garbage Day newsletter and he's got a podcast called Panic World, and they both cover Internet culture. And he wrote a great, great newsletter about what we kind of know about the shooter and the Charlie Kirk assassination and the markings are on the bullets and these kind of Internet subcultures they live in. And over the weekend I was watching all of these gray beard pundits on TV argue about, like, whose rhetoric was the most inciting to violence, when the shooters probably never heard of any of them. And I was like, I need to get somebody on that actually knows the world that he was steeped in. And I appreciate you coming on to do it. Right.
- [03:30]
B
Thanks for having me. Yeah. Happy to try to explain what's going on. Sort of the best we can, I guess.
- [03:35]
A
Yeah, we're still learning. This stuff is still developing. And so we'll talk a little about, about the shooter, but I kind of want to broaden it out as well. Let's start with just, I guess what we know in this case. And you know, there are these markings on the, on the bullets initially, you know, there is some, some reporting or whatever that this is. There were transgender markings. That seems to be wrong. Maybe not thousand percent wrong, which we'll get into, but like mostly wrong. And then there were some lefty reports that, like, that the bullets had some other stuff on it that they were wrong. Explain like what, what we the. To the best of our knowledge, like what we think this guy was getting at with all the various screeds.
- [04:15]
B
Sure, yeah. Let's go bullet by bullet, because they are, they are weirdly dense, I suppose. So the bullet that reportedly struck and killed Charlie Kirk had written on it, notices bulge uwu. What's this? You know, some variation of that, which is a, like, it's a cringe post. It's like a thing that has been passing around the Internet forever. It dates back to like furry role play. But it, it doesn't mean that Robinson was a furry. He's 20 years old. He's only known an Internet where. This post has been just part of viral ephemera. The other bullets, the unfired casings, they.
- [04:49]
A
Can we just talk about this one? Because this is the one thing that I'm just curious what you thought, because I saw a bunch of chatter about this. Well, hey, I made a joke on, on Twitter that we should explain about how people. If you don't know what UWU is, you really shouldn't be talking about what this guy's. What this guy's world is. So explain to people what, so explain to people what UWU is first.
- [05:06]
B
So UWU is like how you would pronounce, how you would show in text, like, a furry face. Like, the W is supposed to be like a cat or a dog mouth, and then the eyes are like, if they're horny. Basically. It's a, you would see it with, like, the word, like, glomping. I don't know if you know what glomping is, but it's, it's a whole part of, like, furry text patterns that, you know, would get screenshot by places like Reddit and 4chan and just pass around and.
- [05:36]
A
Yeah, like a cute, a cute slurry. It's kind of like how the gays would send that emoticon with the big eyes. I call that the bottom emoji. It's kind of like.
- [05:44]
B
Exactly, yeah.
- [05:45]
A
This is like a cute, furry kind of version of that. And so this is my question about, like, if there's maybe some transgender, like, the notices bulge, like, furry emoticon, like, that could be actually related to somebody, like, seeing a furry or a woman and, like, noticing that they have a penis. Right.
- [06:06]
B
I mean, you could use it that way. It doesn't, it doesn't have any connection. Like, the original context doesn't have any connection. It's, it's just like you're, you're having cyber sex, and it's just like, it's a really embarrassing like, like, example of cyber sex. Basically. It, There are a lot of trans people in the furry community, but it, it's not really like a, it doesn't point.
- [06:30]
A
So I guess maybe we'll do this at the end. But, like, if you feel like it ties the other bullets. But, like, what could possibly, like, a cyber sex carving have to do with Charlie Kirk?
- [06:39]
B
Do we think it's supposed to be funny? All of it is just a troll. I, I, that's how I sort of see it. The other bullets are a little more specific, but all of them taken together make me think that this was literally to make fun of this very conversation we're having right now.
- [06:55]
A
Yeah, great. Well, I'm just, I know that I'm being cheugy. I'm trying as hard as I can to not be Bryant Gumbold in the famous 1994 Today show clip, where he's like, what is the Internet? But it's like, the only. Unfortunately, this is the world we've been given.
- [07:09]
B
I know. I totally. I'm with you. And there is, like, it's worth discussing But I mean, if you want, I can get into the other three because I think it'll be a better picture. Yeah. So the other three unfired bullets. One of them is a reference to the video game Helldivers, which, like, you play as like a space fascist, and it triggers the most powerful attack in the game. The second bullet is a reference to Bella Chow, an Italian anti fascist folk song that's like sort of popular right now. And then the third one is literally just trolling any sort of law enforcement agent that might be looking at this because it reads, if you're reading this, you're gay. Lmao. So if you take all of them together.
- [07:46]
A
Somebody else said the Bella Chow thing also might be in. In the video games or one of the video games used in the different video game.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah, it's used in the video game Far Cry 6, but it's not like super prominent. But it could be that this kid's just like a gamer and like he's making references to it. But I don't know. If you look at all four bullets that law enforcement has released, like, it makes me think that he's. He's making fun of anyone trying to figure out a motive by looking at the bullets.
- [08:11]
A
Yeah. And it's iron like that. It's steeped in irony.
- [08:14]
B
Yes.
- [08:14]
A
Like, that's essentially it. Which is maybe something that the Gen Xers can, can like, attach to. Right. It's just like this is just an updated version of kind of irony culture mocking, you know, kind of mocking the mainstream, you know, culture. And like, in a lot of times, it's something that I, as a, as a sarcastic youth can relate to. It's kind of like hiding behind, like, having to take. Like there's a risk that goes to taking something seriously. Right. Taking the world seriously. And like, a lot of this is like a lot of the culture these guys are in is just kind of mocking that. Really.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah, it's the way young people, I think, have always spoken. But like, right now it's very, very popular online to just drench everything you're saying in four or five layers of irony so that nobody knows what you mean.
- [09:00]
A
And so, like, I guess, you know, what you wonder is now as you kind of broaden it out and I don't know, I don't think there's really anything use and any use in having you did like a Law and Order SVU analysis of like, what you think this person's, the specific person's ideology is, but, like, it's important to Kind of think about like the various online cultures. Like we us old, like we can understand. Like I understand the Michael J. Fox briefcase Republican that's going extinct. Right. Like, you know, I understand the Mag Gut, the tpusa, like Red Hat, you know, kind of whatever anti immigrant culture warrior Republican type archetype. I know. Hasan piker listening archetype. I know kind of a strivey left Pete Buttigieg fan archetype. These are the archetypes. We all know this world is not really attached to any of that. It is sort of overlapping maybe in various ways. So you hear a lot about black pilling, which is more of like this nihilistic about all that. Yeah, yeah. But so is that different? Like to me, like black pilling and accelerationism. Some people are listening to this, have already tuned out. I'm like, unfortunately we have to fucking care about this stuff.
- [10:09]
B
Yeah.
- [10:09]
A
So like, that's just where we are. Like, like is like to, to use words that are not Internet culture words. Like one is, I'm nihilist. Like, you know, and I just, I just can't believe or care about any of this stuff.
- [10:21]
B
Sure.
- [10:21]
A
Like it. And then the other is sort of like anarchists, like chaos agent. Like I want there to be chaos. Right. Like, and maybe those overlap at times, but I don't know. What. How do you.
- [10:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like a horseshoe theory at play here. I mean, I would, I, I've gotten pushback from my own audience by calling this nihilistic. And I understand the argument, which is like, you can't really call yourself a nihilist if you're going to carry out like an act of political violence. Like you care about something enough to do it. So I get that. So the term I've been using is accelerationist. And if you read a lot of these different young spree shooters, young extremists, you know what they're wr about, what they're, they're talking about online. They want to cause chaos and, and, and, and hurt people to speed up what they see as the downfall of society, the downfall of America, because they don't like it. Like, they, they think it's cringe or it's not helping them or it's broken already. And so it's a, it's a real like, I'm gonna destroy my toys temper tantrum mindset. And yeah, black peeling would be a really good Internety way to describe it. Like they don't care about anything, but they care about that.
- [11:24]
A
Well, like, what are some other things that this, like, overlaps with. If you're like, looking at like, trends online, like porn, you know what I mean? Like, other, like gaming porn, like, what are some other things that are in that space?
- [11:36]
B
I think it's like, it's, it's absolutely, you know, on offshoot of what we saw with like, incel ideology in the 2010s. This idea. In fact, it's almost sort of like the next step. It's, it's like if, if you're so angry at the world and not getting laid that you're going to hurt people and then that doesn't work, then like, you're gonna go, like, even further. So it's, it's, it's a total rejection of any kind of help, any kind of structure, any kind of ideology, which in itself is an ideology. And then you get all kinds of weird meta conversations about it. But it, it's very linked to incel stuff. It's very linked to far right politics. The groiper movement, which you mentioned earlier, like, they, they dabble in this a bit. There's also like a whole, like, branch of like, weird AI guys that are accelerationists and use AI to cause the downfall of society. It's a real widespread phenomena we're seeing right now.
- [12:34]
A
Let's dig in on just that groiper thing really quick that we've both mentioned. So my colleague Will Summer follows this stuff a lot more in kind of far right world than in some of the non political corners of Internet culture that you monitor. He has been kind of pushing back on the idea. Like there have been some on the left who I think have wanted. It would feel good to be like, this is an inner right war. And like, this guy was a griper and he didn't like that Charlie Kirk was pro Israel and like, it was really something like that. And Summer is like, well, again, we don't really know because he hasn't spoken yet and there's no manifesto. But, like, based on the information we have, like, maybe there's some overlap between like incel black pill culture and then the kind of groiper culture. But the gripers have like an actual ideology, you know, say what you say what you. You mean about. What was the Lebowski line? I say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism. At least it's an ethos. Like, at least the Groipers at least have an ethos. Right?
- [13:33]
B
Yeah, I agree with Will. I haven't seen a lot of hard evidence that this was connected to the Griper movement. Obviously there are like. The reason people are saying that is because Nick Fuentes, the live streamer, was sending his followers to disrupt Charlie Kirk events. Specifically that. That was a thing that has been happening for several years. And there's a lot of infight groipers. As you said, they do have an ideology. They are largely Christo fascist, you know, trad cath kind of conservatives who want a like totally isolationist America, a bring, you know, based on white nationalism. They. It's very specific and they don't like what they see as mainstream Republicans because they want a more extreme version. And I don't think one of them would be using a bullet that has Bella Chow written on it. Even ironically. I. It doesn't. It doesn't have any of the calling cards of the griper movement. We also like. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a griper like political violence incident. I haven't. I not like this. So I would be sur. I would be surprised. The. The. If you're looking.
- [14:39]
A
People used to ask me this about going to TPOSA events and going to Grover stuff like, are you worried? Are you scared? And I was like, in other ways this is now we're getting into kind of armchair psychology. But like the types of people that are drawn to like going to political events have like a sociability about them that is different from kind of the loners that do this sort of thing 100%.
- [15:00]
B
The thing that I sort of have gravitated towards. If we wanted to just be a little speculative, just a little bit. I've been reporting on what's called the Comm network and the 764teracel offshoot.
- [15:11]
A
Oh, please tell people about this.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, so this to me is like ringing a lot of bills. And once again, I don't want to be super speculative, but I think it's worth noting the Comm Network, even if.
- [15:20]
A
This guy is not part of this group, we've seen some of this. And so it's good for people to know.
- [15:24]
B
Yeah, they've been connected to at least three different mass shootings this year. And they are accelerationists. They sort of believe in gamifying, you know, mass violence. They network on discord and Telegram and they, they create like a structure where you carry out violent attacks to impress the other members. And then they use, you know, all kinds of ways of like, you know, forcing them or pressuring each other to do this. And they love to confuse law enforcement with political ideologies. The shooter in Minneapolis, I believe, had, you know, things written on the Bullets like I'm the woker baby, why so queerious? And a bunch of other memey stuff on it. And that lines up more with what we've seen with the Bullets. Now that said, does that group have an ideology accelerationism in the sense of just like, just pure, you know, just messing with people, hurting people?
- [16:21]
A
Yeah, that's horseshoe. Right? Like some of them are like kind of Nazi ish. And some of them are whatever.
- [16:27]
B
They have connections to larger, more well established, like neo Nazi groups. Yeah, but it's, it's, it's, think of it more of like a, I don't know, like you ever see them, you ever see the show the Leftovers?
- [16:39]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [16:40]
B
You know, like how the teenagers and leftovers are like weird nihilists that play like choking games in the basement because like nothing means anything. That's how I kind of think of these kids. Like they see themselves as like the end of history and they're just like waiting for the world to end and they want to like push it along.
- [16:53]
A
I have a follow up to that, but I'm going to save it for the last question because I have two, I lied earlier when I said I don't want to be Bryant Gumball. I have two like basic Today show like questions that I think we should at least address. One is one of the bullets said, hey, fascist, catch. So if I'm like a Fox News watching person that has stumbled on this video, I'm going, these guys are like trying to define some like, you know, gray ideology when it's just like it's on the bullet. Like the guy said he was a fascist leftist. Like Democrats call, you know, maga fascists. Like it's not as complicated as you guys think. What would you say to that?
- [17:36]
B
It's hard to answer. I mean, in the game that it's referencing, you play as fascist and the players know that. And there's all kinds of weird discourse about like whether they should be or shouldn't be embracing that. And there's all kinds of stuff that you can get into if you want to go further there. But I don't know if I wanted to cause as much political chaos as possible in America, that's what I would put on a bullet. Like, it's, it's, I, I, it's not the, it's not the hard evidence that I would sort of point to, to be like, this kid is an anti fascist or something. It's possible, but it's, it's too jokey. It feels too jokey.
- [18:19]
A
Yeah. To have that and then have the next thing be like the buttons you press or whatever. To do the. Yeah.
- [18:24]
B
I'm so old that I, I thought the buttons at first were the Konami code, but it wouldn't fit on a bullet, I guess.
- [18:31]
A
All right, Bryant Gumbo, question number two. We've got. I, I had a dm. I was, I was twee DM from a friend who's a mom. And the mom's like, how do I, like, how would I figure out? You know what I mean? Like, sometimes this is like pretty hard to, to, to decipher, right? Like between what is a kid that's just like, that just like, likes video games like, versus like getting sucked into kind of this nihilist, whatever, accelerationist type culture. Like are there sign. Are they calling cards or they're, you know, whatever, like the things to look for.
- [19:08]
B
I always compare it to like hooliganism. Like, if you think of video games as a sport, like there are people who will go to a soccer match and, you know, have a nice time, and then there are people who are like hardcore neo Nazi ultras that will burn down, you know, a mosque if their team loses. That is what we're talking about here within the world of video games. And what makes it, like, more complicated is that most video games now have some version of the game where you can just talk to strangers and so extremists know that they can get into those places and they, and radicalize young people. So if you are, you know, I've had the same message from readers, like, if you're a concerned parent and you're trying to figure out like, if your kid's being radicalized by the Internet or whatever. The easiest, easiest thing is just like, keep track of how they talk about women, because it always starts with that or like minority groups or whatever. I think it gets harder when you're talking about the middle of the country where, you know, Tyler Robinson's family, they've told the media that they're all Trump supporters. So if you're starting from that, I think it's a lot harder to tell the difference between like a well meaning Trump supporter and someone who's completely brain rotted by Internet content.
- [20:08]
A
Yeah. I don't know, maybe if they're younger kids, it's probably, I mean, like this guy's 22, so whatever. But like, I guess my thought would be for younger kids to your point is like, maybe not having headphones when they listen to the str. When they talk to strangers on the Internet, Maybe you should. Like, if your kid is 10 and playing this game and talking to strangers, maybe you should listen to what the strangers are saying to them. I don't go further. Advice. I don't want to go full Eric Adams here where I'm looking for a gun under the pillow, but, you know, I have a 7 year old, so I'm just, I'm thinking about the young kids.
- [20:35]
B
No, I, I would go further. Like if your kid's like under 15, like, I mean, even that's a little young. They probably shouldn't just be talking to whoever they want on live service video games. I don't know. I, I grew up in a world where like the computer didn't move into my bedroom until like, probably like college age. Like I had the desktop, I'm the desktop generation. And like I saw bad stuff on the Internet, but at least like there were people around. I don't know.
- [20:59]
A
That's good advice. All right, good. I just, you know, I was, I was like, I don't want to be too helicopter parent to hear. I think that's reasonable. I think that's appropriate advice. All right, last thing. How fucked are we? I just, I'm listening to your, to that, you know, comment about like, just how deep, you know, like the advanced incel culture and it has me pretty decently despairing.
- [21:23]
B
Yeah, we're fucked. We. I'm less. I mean, obviously I'm concerned about like, you know, copycats and spree shooters and all the rest of that, but we've lived with that for 20 years. At this point, I'm, I'm very, very worried about how the Trump administration will continue to respond to this, like, personal freedoms being taken away. I'm also worried about just like what this powder keg will inspire among other people. You know, like we are getting dangerously close to like some sort of purge style situation. And that really concerns me. America does not handle mass panic very well and we love to panic and we are in the midst of a very serious one right now. So I'm, I'm really concerned about that. And then, I don't know, it's, I, I think it's funny. I've done a lot of interviews about this this week and like, no one ever brings up the guns. And like, I guess we're all just tired of talking about it.
- [22:14]
A
But I, I brought up the guns on the podcast. I just, you know, that's just not your role. No, I hear you. And I think that like, what it is, I just meant like, you know, that's not the expertise I was bringing on for. But I hear you. And, and to me I just look at, I brought up the guns in the context of like you mentioned that family that he's steeped in this MAGA culture. And for me it's just like I, I don't, this is something people don't say because you immediately go to like, what are gun laws and background checks? And I, I don't know. And I feel like we need to start to have more of a conversation about like what is appropriate for what you do with guns. Like in, in the public square. Like the idea that you have an 11 year old like doing a smiley picture with a fucking massive semi, like is just crazy to me. You know, like the analogy I made to it was like, I don't, I'm not in gun culture. I live in New Orleans. We have a drinking culture. And so my child will probably drink before 21, which some people might judge, right. And maybe I will have a drink with her at some point before 21, probably. So during Mardi Gras, I'm not going to take a picture of her at age 12, right? Like doing shots, doing a margarita. Yeah, yeah, doing a keg stand. Like, like, and if I did my friends in New Orleans, the other parents would be like, bro, like what the are you doing? Like, like, like they would shame. But I feel like in gun world like, like that is now like celebrated. I don't know how to roll that back, but I think that's a huge issue with this kid, right? Like if this kid grew up where I grew up in suburban Denver, never touched a gun, you know, could they have, could have been able to do that? Like I couldn't have done it. So you know what I mean?
- [23:46]
B
I will spin this back to sort of my realm which is that like, right, terrorism is a, is a media project. I keep banging on about this, but like terrorists think about the media, they think about how the news, like they used to think about how the newspaper or the TV would, would deal with what they've done. Osama bin Laden was very interested in how like television would transmit images of 9 11. We are now in a world where the Internet is the dominant media platform. So if you're right now saying like the Internet caused this kid to go after Charlie Kirk, it's like that this attack would have happened with different window dressing 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and did. In fact, we've had instances like this before. The Internet just sort of creates the environment in which terrorism operates. So now, instead of thinking about how what you would do if I blew up a building, would. Would news channels cover the footage? Now you're thinking, well, I'm a targeted influencer, because he's got a sea of smartphones pointed at him already. And that's, I think, how you should be thinking about this, how your. Your listeners are. Audience should be thinking about this, which is like, the Internet creates the structure, the superstructure for this. It doesn't necessarily mean that this kid, like, absorbed evil ideas from the Internet and then found a gun and took. You know, these things have always happened. It's just the Internet now plays a much larger role and sort of understanding that is tough. And I think it's really tough for law enforcement and really tough for mainstream media to kind of wrap their heads around.
- [25:13]
A
All right, man, this has been really good, so come on back. Unfortunately, I'm worried that we'll have reason to talk again.
- [25:18]
B
I think so.
- [25:19]
A
I appreciate it. Everybody go check out his newsletter. Garbage day. It's great. And we'll be talking to you soon, man.
- [25:24]
B
Thank you so much.