Despite What Right-Wing Media Wants You to Believe, Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Shooter Is a Cis White Man

Following the death of notorious racist and queerphobe Charlie Kirk, the media has jumped at the chance to tie the killing to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender people. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported early on that the ammunition used by the shooter was engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” which later proved to be false. The New York Times reported that this claim came from a “preliminary and unverified report circulated inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives” and that a senior law enforcement official who had direct knowledge about the investigation advised caution, warning that the report had not been verified.

The Human Rights Campaign later posted on social media platform BlueSky demanding a retraction from the Wall Street Journal, saying that, “Promoting false information that ties our LGBTQ+ community to the Utah shooting is reckless, irresponsible, and puts trans people especially in danger.” While WSJ did print a retraction, they have yet to print an apology for their reckless reporting that put the trans community at risk. 

Instead, the alleged shooter, once captured, turned out to be 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, a white, cis male and not a transgender person as the right-wing media originally wanted us to believe. Al-Jazeera identified Robinson as the son of two registered Republicans and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church.

Al-Jazeera also reported what was actually written on the bullet casings, which was taken from meme culture. A spent shell casing read “Notices, bulges OWO what’s this?” while some of the unspent casings read “Hey fascist! Catch! Up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols,” “Oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, Ciao,” and “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO.”

The bullet casing engravings have led some people online to label Robinson as part of the “groyper” movement, although no authorities have confirmed this. Newsweek explains that the groyper movement started in 2019 as a far-right movement revolving around alt-right personality Nick Fuentes, who became a household name last year for posting “Your body, my choice” on social media. Newsweek describes the groyper movement as a schism in the far-right, as Fuentes and his followers felt that people like Kirk watered down the message of Donald Trump.

On Saturday, right-wing outlets like Fox News and the New York Post reported that Robinson had a transgender partner whom he lived with who is now cooperating with the FBI, with Fox News citing unnamed “senior-level FBI officials” as their source. The transgender partner has not been named, but there’s been some speculation that these right-wing sources are referring to Lance Twiggs, a 22-year-old who lived with Robinson. However, as The Hindustan Times points out, there has been no official statement from law enforcement about a so-called transgender partner, and none of Twiggs’ family members who have been contacted by the media have confirmed that Twiggs is transitioning.

It seems likely that, when the dust settles, no link to the transgender community will be found. But conservatives really seem to want to blame it on someone transgender or, at the very least, someone who is not a cis het white man. According to The Times of India, Utah governor Spencer Cox made a controversial statement saying, “For 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn’t be one of us—that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country … Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for …  But it did happen here, and it was one of us.”

This is a prime example of saying the quiet part out loud, demonstrating that the right wants desperately to pin this on anyone but a cis, white American. But that’s exactly who Tyler Robinson is: a cis, white man who, by all accounts, comes from a conservative family. While there will be a lot to figure out in the weeks to come, it seems that the race to pin this on the transgender community is little more than scapegoating.

Photo courtesy of social media