The race to define what the brutal murder of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk last week means and why it happened has led a lot of people to say a lot of things. Some of those things, like blaming the sci-fi shooter Halo for fomenting class warfare, or suggesting the alleged shooter was radicalized by the “meme-ification” of the internet, look increasingly like absurd, knee-jerk, and ill-informed reactions, as a recent report about the actual contents of one of the gaming Discord servers the suspect was active on suggests none of that.
On Monday, The Washington Post reported that alleged gunman Tyler Robinson had admitted to the crime in a Discord message to friends last week. Yesterday, independent reporter Ken Klippenstein shared actual screenshots of messages allegedly posted on the server, alongside an interview with some of its other members. According to his report, the Discord hangout was far from the hotbed of political radicalization some politicians and pundits have claimed it would be.
According to Klippenstein, there were only a couple of mentions of either President Donald Trump or former President Joe Biden in the chat logs, and those were apolitical mentions of recent news events. “Cat memes, weather updates, home improvement and the odd Garfield reference populate Robinson’s posts,” Klippenstein writes.
“Obviously he’s okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” an apparent childhood friend of Robinson’s told Klippenstein. “To all of us he just seemed like a simple guy who liked playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic, and Helldivers 2, loved to fish and loved to camp…it really did seem like that’s all he was about.”
This lack of an easily applicable, ready-made narrative about Kirk’s alleged murderer that would paint him has a politically aggrieved radical comes as those leading the national conversation, like FBI Director Kash Patel, rush to ascribe motives. “[Gaming] can desensitize to the point where that person involved in these games looks at other people…and they’re not even human beings, they’re simply avatars,” former FBI profiler Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole told Fox News this week.
According to charging documents filed by Utah County prosecutors on Tuesday, Robinson told his roommate in text messages that he allegedly killed Kirk because “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” The prosecution’s evidence suggests Robinson may have targeted Kirk specifically over transphobic comments he made in the past. But it also didn’t allude to any political radicalization fomented by online platforms like Discord and Reddit. That hasn’t stopped at least one high-profile politician from calling on the executives of those companies to testify before Congress about “the radicalization of online forum users.”
“The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced on Wednesday. “To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes.”
The hearing is set to take place on October 8, 2025 and is the first time Discord in particular will have been called on to testify. Members of Tiktok, X, and Meta were grilled last year about online child safety concerns. A spokesperson for Discord has previously said there was “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord.”
