Tyler Robinson. Photo / Utah Governor's Office
Squatting low in a black tracksuit and with a flat cap pulled over his eyes, Tyler Robinson looks at first glance like any other teenager.
But to the niche and often dark corners of the internet where Robinson appears to have spent much of his time, the suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing is performing a so-called slouched “Slav squat”.
The pose and the clothes he is wearing in the photo, shared proudly by his mother, form the basis of an internet meme that has long been associated with the far-right.
Donald Trump was quick to blame the “lunatic left” in the wake of the assassination of Kirk on a university campus, and police are yet to name a motive for the alleged killer.
Robinson also inscribed bullets with anti-fascist messages. He was thought to have been in a relationship with his flatmate, who was transgender.
The “Slav squat” meme comes from a variation of the Pepe the Frog image, a pudgy cartoon toad that has become a calling card for young men on the hard edge of America’s right.
It has been adopted by the “Groypers” – an extreme online faction led by right-winger Nick Fuentes that takes joy in trolling and mocking mainstream conservatives, including Kirk, although the Pepe meme is often shared in other contexts and used widely in internet culture.
The “Groyper Army” style themselves as white Christian nationalists and have targeted other conservative groups and individuals whose agenda they believe to be too moderate and too inclusive.
Fuentes has repeatedly attacked black conservatives, saying they were hired because of diversity quotas or referred to them using the racist term “Uncle Toms”.
Kirk, with his slick Turning Point empire and close ties to Trump, had long been a rival.
During the 2019 “Groyper Wars”, they publicly trolled Kirk at his events and challenged him on immigration and his support of Israel in an effort to frame him as a fake “anti-white” conservative, at Fuentes’ instruction.
“They’re very much interested in a more authoritarian type of government. They want to create an ethno-nationalist state that is for the benefit of white people. And so, this group is really the heir to the alt-right,” said Joan Donovan, assistant professor of journalism at Boston University.
Further potential links to Groypers can be found in the inscriptions scrawled into his ammunition.
The bullet that struck and killed Kirk had “Notices bulge OwO whats this?” written on its casing – an internet joke that originates from “furry role play” but is used ironically and mockingly, often by those on the extreme right.
Others are less clearly linked. One engraving read “Hey Fascists, Catch!” – next to an up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol and three down arrow symbols.
The combination of arrows is the same used by players in the satirically fascist video game Helldivers 2 to trigger the most powerful bomb attack in the game.
One casing, however, was also scrawled with lyrics referencing the World War II Italian anti-fascist song Bella Ciao, which has gained renewed interest online since it was made popular in Netflix’s Money Heist – but that also found its way to Groypers’ playlists on Spotify.
In other pictures posted online by Robinson and his friends, he is seen to dress up as the US President for Hallowe’en, with Trump’s face painted green – a possible reference to the Pepe the frog edit that Trump shared in 2015.
None of the above forms incontrovertible evidence of Robinson’s political leanings.
His family says he was not interested in politics until recently, suggesting he may have either hidden his leanings or become radicalised.
Attention has focused on Robinson and the Groypers as the latest stage of a battle between America’s extremes to blame one another for inspiring Kirk’s killing.
Spencer Cox, Utah’s Republican Governor, said on Monday that while it was too early to establish a motive for the killing of Kirk, Robinson had a “clearly leftist ideology”.
“That information comes from the people around him, his family members and friends,” he said.
It is possible that references to internet culture on bullet casings may have been misconstrued. Indeed, some FBI agents drew early conclusions that the messages hinted at a “transgender ideology”, but this was later walked back.
Details of an alleged romantic relationship with a transgender roommate have led to more speculation that Robinson may have taken issue with Kirk’s campaigning against trans rights.
Robinson’s digital footprint, at the very least, suggests that he understood and spoke the language used by the alt-right at some stage. Whether he espoused the references intentionally remains unclear.
Fuentes has moved to distance himself from Robinson and his apparent links to the Groyper Army.
“My followers and I are currently being framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk by the mainstream media based on literally zero evidence,” he said.
In a separate video, he told supporters: “To all of my followers, if you take up arms, I disavow you”.
He added: “I disown you in the strongest possible terms”.
“Memes are the sort of currency of Generation Z. They’re the thing. It’s the subcultures that they’re most interested in,” Donovan, author of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, said.
“Ultimately, we’ve seen in several of the latest mass killings, particularly since Christchurch, that memes are playing a large role in the talkback from the murderer.”
The Christchurch mosque terrorist in 2019 mentioned a YouTube personality to viewers of his livestream just before the attack.
In 2022, an 18-year-old white nationalist livestreamed a shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Detectives later discovered he had planned his attack on 4Chan and Discord.
In 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly shot Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, with bullets that read: “deny”, “defend”, “depose”.
There is speculation the engravings were inspired by the 2010 book by Jay M Feinman: Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It. When contacted by the Sun, Feinman refused to comment on the bullet markings.
Last month, Robin Westman opened fire on a group of primary schoolchildren in a church in Minneapolis with weapons that had messages from across the political spectrum.
While there is no agreement yet on what politics inspired Robinson, the answers may be hiding in plain sight in the obscure corners of the internet that draw in disenfranchised young men all across America and the world.
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