One thing I didn't foresee was that in a right-wing ecosystem that can NEVER take responsibility for its own flaws... As they fracture & fold in on their own rivalries & grapple with their own violent base - they won't be able to process it either. They'll blame the left. Because they have to. 🧵
They will blame the left, because they always do
Take for example the attack on professors & teachers, as a possible influence on Tyler Robinson. He engraved MEMES into his bullets! There is no person under 40 who would take that as a sign that he was radicalized by Gender & Women's Studies 101. In a UT technical college! That's 4-chan! 🧵
If this was someone radicalised & turned into a raging left wing ideologue as we're meant to believe, you might imagine he would've made more effort into laying out his justifications for killing someone than engraving internet memes & references to Helldivers 2 onto bullet casings.
I have been thinking that all day. Shooters use symbols to communicate with the people who they identify with. The people who do understand it, didn't need to have it explained to them. Most of us still don't understand it. Therefore he wasn't communicating with us.
But what strikes me as even more interesting is that SMs, 4chan, & the alt-right ecosystem have been radicalizing young men for 15+ yrs. MSM only ever began truly questioning WHY did THIS young man snap?... because the victim was someone important. It never mattered before then. 🧵
For those of us who have been screaming that shooters are 99% white teenage boys radicalized by the internet - for 20 years... it's like - where is this September 2025 revelation coming from? To the Christians & conservatives, it never mattered UNTIL Charlie Kirk was victimized by it. 🧵
Maybe it matters to understand where my generation is coming from, maybe it’s more important to just keep informing us of this new world. Speaking only for myself, I grew up on a different world and when I explain that world to my young co-workers, they are amazed and bewildered.
I’m bewildered by the fact that I seem to be the first adult in their lives who has ever bothered to describe a world that exists now only in movies and tv shows. Point is, many boomers can run a computer but it’s not our first “language”. My kids were born and raised in the digital age;
The internet and how all this works, the wonks, computer nerds, groypers, 4chan and all the rest you refer to above, is their first language. There are myriad other reasons, perhaps for later. Prescription: take our hand, as a few others of several generations on Bluesky do, and educate us.
Tell us the news like Cronkite, straight. Paint a story like Morrow during the blitz. It might help. I gravitate towards your type of informative writing and repulsed by the shocked hand wringing posts. We all know it’s fucked up, so what are we going to do about it? Tell me something I don’t know!
Are you able to see the two videos at the end of this link? I couldn't upload them to Bluesky because they're too long. But they're both very straightforward explainers of the alt-right. If you can't see them, let me know and I'll share the Tik Tok links. www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/n0sct...
Reviewed both. I like actionable and sewing discord is good. Further thoughts later...thank you. Discovered your link to your other works on your site and perused. Also for later...Cheers!
Here's another straightforward video: youtu.be/Wcw02sEslog?...
P.S. This is a fantastic breakdown of Meme "Black Pill Accelerationism." This completely explains why Groypers hated Kirk and what kind of fatalistic edgelord world Tyler might have been wrapped up in. Especially the relevance of the memes. Incredibly succinct wrap-up of the perpetually online.
Really informative breakdown. Ty
Must see, thank you very much !
Called the McCarthyism! You see the difference between Cancel Culture and McCarythism was that Cancel Culture came across spontaneous speech & then ruined their lives. While McCarythism was actually investigating, seeking out, witch hunting communism systematically. Innocent people weren't safe.
Turn off the media, cause "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
So the USA was always like this . Same as it ever was
Joe McCarthy`s personal attorney (Roy Cohn) was also a young Resident Rump`s lawyer AND mentor too.
thanks
FASCINATING… now where’s the plug?!
I’m glad I read/watch folks who track the alt-right. When this happened I suspected an internal feud. But, when I try to explain this alt-right culture to my husband, friends, family etc they can’t process it. To them the “fascist” meme was straightforward from their understanding. The guy is lefty.
Which is an incorrect interpretation. The only person who seemed to get it was my 70 yo dad. He’s always been good at adapting to new info. But you’re right, we are in a tough spot as a society. Bc if people can’t understand the problem then how do we fix it? And if the right blames only the left,
At some point people need to draw upon what they know to be right and not right, and not what they are told to think. I believe that most people know how to do this but have been manipulated to believe that bad alternatives deserve consideration. As a boomer, I am crystal clear about what I see.
That's a good point. The MSM & even many politicians entertain these ridiculous explanations. For example: he said fascist BUT, at every single protest from the left, people have announced non-violent protests. Non-violence is our mantra. So how could we have radicalized him to commit violence?
It's a big con and the marks are the people who thrive on any deception that keeps them angry.
The alt-right had Bella Ciao on their Playlist for the Groyper Wars - an anti-Kirk anthem - and they're the ones who have grown up in militia fantasies and gun culture... But their guns and hyper masculine fantasies didn't radicalize him to commit violence - our "non-violent protests" did.
I only learned a few days that Kirk’s influence was sort of bifurcated. He was a sometimes antagonistic gadfly who sparred in public debates—and that’s where he got some negative attention. But he also spoke a lot to churchgoers about Christianity, which is how some of my relatives knew of him.
He exploited the biblical illiteracy that is common amongst many evangelicals and Christian-nationalists, affording himself a piety that would make a southern grandma smile.
This seems important to grasp since threats of violence (for any concocted reasons) might not just be about political retribution attacking the left. It also could be linked to Kirk’s religious fans feeling he was killed for his religious expression, giving grist to the “War on Christianity” fire.
That’s why they immediately shifted when they learned it was Tyler - a good Mormon family. Then they began saying: “If Tyler had only had the chance to talk to Kirk, they would have been able to work it out. Let’s pray for him."
I’m happy that many people do understand. I think I have lots of people around me who just don’t want to “deal” with this. They still think they can just get through this term, or it won’t happen to them. And I’m tired of screaming warnings. 😞😩😤
Reasonable people are shocked or dubious because their normality appears to have been broken. It hasn't. It is their as long they refuse to surrender it.
Gaslighting is brutal. This has been my creed for 7 months:
I am Gen X. My friends have been worried about their teenaged sons because they are targeted by this, and have been for awhile. I am familiar with Charlie and Nick and I know how Qanon started so it’s not that far of a leap honestly. But it does break my brain that this is where we are.
I’m not sure if you’re alerted of the entire thread, but I was responding to your comment as well. 👇 But another thing that makes sense the least about many of these explanations is that they don’t apply to Mormon Utah, where I lived for 5 years. Too many people don’t understand Mormons.
They tarnished “Bella Ciao”, I love the song.
I HATE them for this most of all. If they had only used the word fascist - fine. But to co-opt our song? Fuck them.
Mormons are a controlling cult that indoctrinates & monitors members. Utah has no separation of church & state because MOST officials are also Mormon & they create policy around the religion. Which is white supremacist, anti-trans, pro-natalist, pro-gun, & views women as baby makers.
Mormons have so much of their life controlled & monitored. Including that the church keeps records of their misdeeds, which are told to them by snooping neighbors who judge their families for their lifestyle. So when there’s a community of Mormons - they conform, bc they’re punished if they don’t.
Okay. Enter Tyler. Who grew up being indoctrinated in all the same beliefs as Kirk. Pro-guns, pro-Trump, pro-babies, anti-trans. And we’re led to believe that Tyler BROKE WITH HIS LDS INDOCTRINATION to become a radical leftist from a Reddit forum, & then killed Kirk— who has all the SAME views.
My question is simple: why didn’t Tyler kill his own parents? You see: in ordinary families, kids can break from their parents beliefs. Atheists leave Christian families. In Mormonism, this break severs your relationship to your family forever. To be excommunicated ostracizes you from EVERYBODY.
great thread, Milisa, thanks! I believe there's ample evidence to show that the corporate media which includes social media is a public health threat, like smoking, tuberculosis, COVID, etc. It's probably nearly as deadly if not worse. It should be treated as such and regulated, or shut down.
It kind of reminds me of a Hydra. You cut off one of its heads and many more grow in its place. It’s such a frustrating, dangerous cultural beast. And then there are the dangerous monopolies. Where about 6 people own the whole ecosystem. So you flip a channel & get the same propaganda machine.
Because we are actually not looking at the heads, we are looking at the tails. To strangle the metaphor. lol It's the oligarchs & broligarchs that use the media outlets to propagandize & push consumerism, division, fear to make them more and more money. Because they are sick puppies.
Their internal problems will only worsen to the detriment of us all. 😞
Boomer’s first brainrot
I can’t tell you how many times the internet broke my brain this year. But I persist, because… I’m 35 and I’m going to have to be dealing with this America for 35 more years. Unless I bail and move to the French Caribbean. Then I just have to deal with hurricanes.
Just FYI, hurricanes can be really really bad but I hear you.
I know. We had 3 last year. I live in Coastal Georgia. Only 2 hit our city. Debbie was a tropical storm but stayed hovering over us for days and caused weeks of flooding. Helene had 80mph winds when it passed us. Left quickly.