FTA:

Trump and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called Nihilist Violent Extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war.

"It's been so terrible and seeing it from an inside perspective is so frustrating," a friend of Robinson's since middle school told me. The childhood friend, who asked not to be named for fear of threats, provided me with the above non-public photo of Robinson on a camping trip (a favorite activity of his) to corroborate their relationship.

"I think the main thing that's caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part," the friend told me. "That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics which is why it's so frustrating."

The picture that emerges bears little resemblance to the media version. Robinson, I am told, though quiet, was a well-liked person with a supportive family. The friend group who he interacted with on Discord, far from some kind of militia camp or Antifa bunker it's been portrayed as, represented a range of different political views but mostly talked video games.

It's almost as if the entire theme of that expansion is... anti-fascist. Like Helldivers. Up Right Down Down Down.
#3 | Posted by sitzkrieg

Food for thought:

"The gut reaction is to assume that, oh, if he's etching 'Bella Ciao' on a shell casing, he must be anti-fascist, he must sort of have these anti-fascist tendencies," said Michael Senters, a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech's ASPECT program, who focuses on the translation of online culture into real world politics. "But with so many things online, he could have come across Bella Ciao in any number of other instances."

Senters says that the song has been featured in a number of gaming-related contexts, including the video game Far Cry 6, the soundtrack for the game Hearts of Iron IV and a version has even appeared on a Spotify playlist for a far-right group that has, in the past, had tension with Kirk. But Senters and other researchers say they have seen no evidence, so far, tying Robinson to that group.

Similarly, Senters and others say the casing engraved with "Hey Fascist! Catch!" and arrows, is rooted in video game culture, and not indicative of any political or ideological background. The arrows, Chandler said, refer to a code sequence that players of the game Helldivers 2 can use to call down a 500-kg bomb. He said that code sequence has, itself, become a meme.

"The reason it's kind of a popular meme in the Helldivers 2 community is it is very, very easy to accidentally kill your friends in that game, and it's one of the real funny ways to do it," Chandler said. "Like, 'Oh, no, I got hit and I dropped the little beacon that I was supposed to throw. And now there's a half ton bomb dropping on us. Sorry, guys.'"

Chandler said that the earlier part of that shell casing's engraving, "Hey Fascist! Catch!" is a meme within the Helldivers 2 community talking about shooting robots. He said his assessment is that this, paired with the arrow sequence meme, render any possible political angle to the message "inconclusive."

Gal,
ck out the link in this RLR post:
drudge.com
it's hilarious
#7 | Posted by Corky

It is! Thanks for the heads up.