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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   39690 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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This is too dank to believe, and I don't believe it, but it is what my Twitter feed wants me to believe, and I'm sharing it on that basis.

The combination of the messages on the cartridges is best explained by Robinson being deep into gamer culture

  • The sequence of arrows is a reference to Helldivers 2
  • "Ciao Bella" can be a number of things, but one of them is a HoI4 meme.
  • "If you read this you are gay" is general chan culture
  • "Notices, bulges what's this" is an online furry culture meme which has also spread into general chan culture

Where does this end up? If Robinson was deep into HoI4 online culture, his browser history will be full of both Wehraboo and Antifa material. And if he got into the chans or the other online cesspools where large number of gamers hang out, then they are going to find all the bad stuff. So the people who want to believe that he was a leftist will find enough evidence to believe that, the people who want to believe he was a groyper will find enough evidence to believe that, and the people (like me) who want to believe that he was just a Thomas Crooks-style very online loser who shot a politician because in the current year it is more memetically badass than shooting up a school will find enough evidence to believe that. So the assassination will become a super-scissor. And, to add insult to injury, a wholesome hobby that I and many other Motteposters enjoy a lot (namely Paradox grand strategy gaming) will become tied in the mind of normies to political violence.

"Ciao Bella" can be a number of things, but one of them is a HoI4 meme.

"Bella Ciao" is an italian antifascist song.

And is obscure in the English-speaking world outside two contexts:

  • The organised political movement known as Antifa, who use it as an anthem
  • The HoI4 fandom, because it is used as theme music in the game

Given the other messages, I think the HoI4 interpretation is probably the correct one.

I have a book of left-wing political songs published by the British Liberal Democrats, and have actually been to events where liberals spent 45 minutes drunkenly singing anti-fascist songs. Bella Ciao isn't in there - we sang Bandiera Rossa for the Italians. I don't think someone who came out of general English-speaking left-wing culture would choose it as a pithy anti-fascist message to write on a cartridge.

How do you explain “catch this fascist” and that he apparently was living (maybe romantically) with a mtf trans person who provided discord info?

If he was in fact dating a tranny, then the "the killer was radicalised by transactivists" theory is probably correct.

Assuming it wasn't transactivists, the whole reason why this is a dankest timeline scenario is that if Robinson was, in fact, radicalised in the online computer wargaming community, then his motives have essentially nothing to do with mainstream politics, but nobody is going to believe this because of the obvious political associations of the wargamer memes he wrote on the bullet casings. The point is that the explanation for "catch this fascist" would only be comprehensible for someone familiar with the memes of the relevant online community.

I don't know very much about the culture of online wargaming, but the tabletop wargaming culture has a number of features which means that I can imagine a very online version of it being a risk factor for radicalisation.

  • Neurotypical people are under-represented
  • People who think political violence is cool are over-represented
  • People who imagine themselves as badass warriors despite having the physique of the typical tabletop wargamer are over-represented
  • There is minimal stigma against ideas that the rest of the world sees as linked to unsavoury politics because someone has to play Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Confederacy etc.

But it wasn’t a random person being killed — it was a person a number of people labeled a fascist. So we are to believe he was using catch phrases that map to his target (per target’s enemies) but that was happenstance and instead he just was crazy?

As thejdizzler and ArjinFerman have pointed out, it was used prominently in the extremely popular Netflix show "Money Heist", so it's no longer that obscure. Though there it was an anthem of the thieves, who weren't particularly political (they robbed from the state and gave to themselves).

Though there it was an anthem of the thieves, who weren't particularly political

However, the history of the song is explicitly explained in the show, so it's not hard to imagine how a binge-watching leftie would get the idea to re-adopt it.

I'm not familiar with hol4 but wikipedia says it's strategy game set during World War 2. Bella Ciao is an antifascist World War 2 song, is it being used in a neutral non-antifascist context in hol4?

I'm not seeing it in the OST so maybe it is a song in an expansion or a menu song not included in OST.

If it's in the game it was most definitely included with the historical meaning in mind. Paradox knows its audience and many appreciate a lesser known song that flatters the aspirational History Buff in them. I'm not sure if that's neutral, but Hoi4 players do cover the spectrum. It is is a game where one can LARP as Hitler or Stalin if they want. User created alt-history mods by political history nerds, usually ideologues of some flavor, are popular. Kaiserreich was the big one back in the day.

I play a lot of HoI4 and have never heard of this song. Considering another of his messages was explicitly antifascist what do you think is the logical association here? This sophistry needs to stop. His family has stated his political leanings. This is not a mystery anymore

It’s also in money heist, which is a fairly popular, albeit Spanish, show on Netflix.

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