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suzzer99 5 days ago

Nick Fuentes built his entire empire on hating Charlie Kirk, and his fans (groypers) are insane. Laura Loomer just came out and attacked Kirk a couple days ago. It's entirely possible he was fragged from the right.

tyleo 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’ve thought this as well. There is a lot of disagreement within political parties. Given the polarization, I’d wager this is more true today.

You may be stuck with extreme people you disagree with despite leaning one way or another. You just want to dabble in politics but supporters of the parties can be rabid. It can be even harder to get a word out within the echo chamber.

suzzer99 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well it's sure looking like he's a groyper.

thrance 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

phendrenad2 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

bluecheese452 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Which prominent left wing figures have condoned this? Arguably the two most popular left wing politicians have put out statements condemning this.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Honey, we have a democracy, which means that the average Bluesky user votes, not just "prominent" figures.

bluecheese452 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Forgive me for not getting worked up by a random comment from tublerima456 on bluesky.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

bluecheese452 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah I don’t care about haxxor789 on hackernews either. Could be an llm, a foreign agent or a teenage troll. The more divisive the event the less I trust the online comments.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes but in the aggregate, you can make inferences about public sentiment. I guess I've just resolved to be more tuned-in to what's going on in the world. I do admit, it's not for everyone...

ImPostingOnHN 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I saw the comments everywhere from right-wingers, saying all left-wingers should be rounded up and imprisoned or killed. Are those the comments you're talking about?

It's really not great of all those right-wingers to advocate for violence against those they disagree with.

Of course, both you and I probably saw carefully curated outrage feeds, rather than actual data. I'm sure the actual data shows those openly advocating for violence are the minority across the board.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Are you seriously "both sidesing" this? Or wait, you're "neither siding" this, saying that it's all an artifact of the algorithm. Well, okay. I don't know what to say to that!

ImPostingOnHN 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well yeah, I assume that every consumer of social media knows that the major ones actively curate posts that make you angry, because they've calculated that you will stay on the site longer if you're outraged than if you're happy, and more time on the site makes them more money selling you as the product.

That's to say nothing of the discovery years ago that malicious actors, foreign nation states in particular, engage in influence operations on the sites with bots. Some do this to swing opinion to their side, others have bots inflammatorily posting on both sides of an issue just to foment unrest among the populace.

My comment above was to illustrate this: that what you see on the site isn't what everybody is posting on the site. Likewise for me. We both look at the same algorithmically-run site and are served with 2 totally different experiences, and I guess now you can see why.

In short, no matter what social media company you patronize, it likely does not have your best interests in mind, and definitely is not a statistically representative sample of people.

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You've dodged the question twice now - which prominent left-wing politicians are applauding this?

I've seen all kinds of reactions, but the only one I've seen from political officials is condemnation. On both sides of the aisle, regardless of what the x.com peanut gallery insists on.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not dodging the question, I refuse to accept that your question is relevant to the discussion just because you think it'll make your point for you (the wrong point, but hey, you'll take any win you can get when you don't have a logical way to attack an argument I suppose)

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

"I'm not dodging the question" usually is followed up by an answer. Do you have examples?

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

You make unreasonable demands and (I assume) use the lack of acquiescence as victory? I might have to try that sometime.

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent [-]

You made claims and never backed them up. You'll have to excuse me for wanting to know more.

phendrenad2 3 days ago | parent [-]

I guess you need to re-read the things I said, again, and then maybe again on top of that. Because I never claimed what you think I claimed!

4 days ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
dttze 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If we are going to use rando twitters to define groups of people, the right are white nationalists and support the mass murder of civilians. They vote too!

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Uh-huh, that's how SCIENCE works, you take a statistical sampling. If you think it's just "rando twitters" then you're just blind.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> So, every poster on the internet is a real and authentic person saying real and authentic things? Cmon, try harder. > Sample garbage and you get garbage results.

Are you saying that it's mostly AI? What are you saying exactly?

dttze 4 days ago | parent [-]

AI, trolls, political groups, intelligence agencies, foreign adversaries, etc.

Do not let the internet define reality for you.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Okay, where can I get reality? Maybe I can get it from the news media, who will just take a sampling of posts on the internet? Maybe I can get it from academia, who will do the same? Or can I cut out the middlemen?

dttze 3 days ago | parent [-]

Log off and go outside. Maybe talk to people in your community.

dttze 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So, every poster on the internet is a real and authentic person saying real and authentic things? Cmon, try harder.

Sample garbage and you get garbage results.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Obviously I'm not saying "every poster" is, I'm saying there's some statistical significance there.

_rm 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm literally reading them now in this HN comment section.

Surreal it is. Even if you were a twisted leftist who was totally happy with this, you'd think you'd keep quiet, or at least limited it to "he was mean but violence bad ok?" - but can't hold back their implicit support for the killing - almost peeved that we're bothered about his killing and not focusing on the mean things he said.

Like, the brazenness of it.

Even the dishonesty of your own comment - what prominent left wing figure would be so demented as to destroy their career by publicly supporting this, even if they do in fact support it.

The real mentality of the left are what we're seeing freely spewing out onto the internet now. They literally are as vile and twisted as all their strongest critics have said.

suzzer99 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Meanwhile, I'm endless compilations of people on the right calling for mass arrests of every Democrat, and worse. https://imgur.com/aF3yACR

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

suzzer99 4 days ago | parent [-]

No one prominent or with any influence on the left is celebrating this. Name names.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

I agree, nobody prominent is celebrating this. Just a lot of people who vote. I have to confess, I don't really understand the point of this discussion. Nobody reading this is going to start out agreeing with me and then see your post and go "oh, yeah, good point, I guess it's fine that lots of people are celebrating this, because they aren't prominent!" I guess this means I have nothing more to say.

Sabinus 4 days ago | parent [-]

The point for most people is while there is plenty of hateful rethoric from left comment sections on the internet, unlike the right, you won't find the same energy amongst the political leadership.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Someone can go from relative unknown to POTUS in just a few years. Candidates appear out of nowhere these days (probably because it's hard to find candidates who have a clean record). I look to the voting public as the driver of tone for political parties, not the leaders, who are fleeting.

bluecheese452 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If you are getting this worked up by anonymous comments on the internet it is time to touch grass. I promise you the sun will still rise in the morning no matter what some teenage edgelord posts.

phendrenad2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Do you think that "anonymous comments" are not backed by real humans? Do you think that the internet is a magical bubble with no relation to the real world? Touch all the grass you want, roll in it, eat that grass, mulch it up and drink it, I'll stick to understanding humans by what they SAY on the internet, thank you very much.

5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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miltonlost 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

phendrenad2 5 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

ioasuncvinvaer 5 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

TheFreim 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not impossible, but I find this to be very unlikely.

Nick Fuentes has repeatedly condemned political violence for years, he and his followers have also been trying to get Kirk to debate him, so killing is counter-productive from that perspective. Furthermore, the "attacks" by Laura Loomer that I've seen don't get anywhere near calling for violence.

ModernMech 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It's not impossible, but I find this to be very unlikely.

Now that it turned out to be a groyper, you'll have to recalibrate your priors. Turns out it's the people who buy the most guns who are the most violent.

TheFreim 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Now that it turned out to be a groyper, you'll have to recalibrate your priors.

It did not "turn out to be a groyper". There is zero substantial evidence for this claim, its a complete fabrication. Elle Reeve, a journalist at CNN who has followed the far-right since the infamous Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in 2017, said of those claiming that the shooter was a Groyper that, "It’s like they’re grasping at vapor."

ModernMech 3 days ago | parent [-]

Saying "there is zero substantial evidence" is cope at this point, they caught the guy. There was zero substantial evidence for it being a leftist/immigrant/woke/trans person. Now that they have the person, all evidence is pointing the other way: terminally online/incel/white/Mormon/rural/gamer/gun nut. Those people aren't leftists, they're groypers. So you have to update your estimate from "very unlikely" to "actually pretty likely".

TheFreim 2 days ago | parent [-]

> There was zero substantial evidence for it being a leftist/immigrant/woke/trans person.

I've did not claim it was someone who is trans, an immigrant, or woke, however all evidence currently available points to him being a leftist. Some people early on were lead to believe that the shooter was trans due to reports of "trans-ideology" being found on the casings, but that was a rash, pre-mature extrapolation. The relevant text can be attributed to a wider array of groups/online sub-cultures (notably, the text cannot be clearly attributed to the groypers).

There is, however, evidence that the shooter was on the far-left.

1. Terminology used by the radical-left-wing to slander Kirk found on the casings ("hey fascist! CATCH!"). No Groyper would ever use such a phrase, they don't think of Kirk as a fascist and themselves get accused of being fascists.

2. Reference to an anti-fascist song most often played by far-left figures, particularly those identifying themselves as "anti-fascist".

3. A high school friend described the killer as being left-leaning on issues and that he was the only member of his family who was a leftist. This is hearsay so I take it with a grain of salt, but its still important evidence which fits perfectly with the other points.

Furthermore, all of the "evidence" you put forward cannot be considered by any reasonable person to be evidence that someone is a Groyper.

1. Being online a lot isn't evidence that someone is a Groyper. Massive numbers of apolotical, right-leaning, and left-leaning people are "terminally online".

2. I am aware of no evidence at this point that the killer was an "incel" in the sense that the term is typically used.

3. Being white does not make someone a Groyper. Funnily enough, on the contrary, among the online far-right the groypers are often accused of being non-white due to their relative openness to other racial groups.

4. Being Mormon is not evidence of being a Groyper. On the contrary, Catholics are most represented among the groypers with only a few figures being Mormon.

5. Playing video games is not evidence that someone is a Groyper.

6. I am aware of no evidence at this point that the killer was a "gun nut". Furthermore, even if he was, this would not be evidence that he was a Groyper since guns are not one of the primary issues addressed by groypers and would only tangentially be related.

In summary, none of what you said is evidence of your claims. I am begging you, and others, to engage honestly about this instead of spreading false claims.

skyyler 2 days ago | parent [-]

>2. Reference to an anti-fascist song most often played by far-left figures, particularly those identifying themselves as "anti-fascist".

Bella Ciao is a groyper meme though. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ais7KJXx8Gyd0hsrbakKW

Bella Ciao added to groyper playlist over two years ago.

TheFreim 2 days ago | parent [-]

An individual remix of a song added to a playlist, which most people have never heard of, multiple years ago does not make it a "groyper meme".

Before the other day when this misinformation campaign began, nobody ever associated the song with groypers. Its always been associated with anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi groups, which contain a completely different set of beliefs. In recent history the only people to ever use the song for political purposes have been left-wing groups: Protestors against the AfD in Germany, communist priest Andrea Gallo, movement against Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, left-wing protests against Meloni in Italy.

Combining the lack of substantial evidence of association with groypers with the history of the song being used by left-wing movements, in addition to the evidence in my post above and elsewhere, its clear that this cannot be reasonably associated with groypers by any evidence-oriented person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_ciao

suzzer99 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Here's the shooter in a groyper halloween costume that his sister says is "from some meme": https://imgur.com/XeYByuq

"hey fascist! Catch! Up arrow, right arrow, three down arrow" is a video game reference from a video game called Helldivers 2 that groypers use all the time.

Every bullet casing had a different groyper meme on it. It's either a groyper or a really elaborate groyper false flag. Those are the only two options.

Acting like it's all a coincidence is just spreading disinfo. Thankfully the bots don't make it to HN very often, or this place would be a disaster.

skyyler 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

zahlman 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

suzzer99 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you were going to have an organized hit from some kind of unnamed leftist extremist group, I could think of a dozen more impactful targets than Kirk off the top of my head. So I don't know how much sense that theory makes either.

If it's a lone nut, that could come from anywhere.

zahlman 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I could think of a dozen more impactful targets than Kirk off the top of my head.

This is not the kind of thing I would go around admitting in public.

TheFreim 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

prisenco 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

| I find this to be very unlikely.

And yet, here we are.