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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Fuentes has nowhere near the scope of name recognition and credentials that Kirk did

Kirk is a college dropout. I’m not sure what you mean here.

Obviously Kirk has broader reach, but it has nothing to do with Kirk’s superiority; he has reach for the same reason Miley Cyrus did: he’s backed by big money. Fuentes is not backed by any mainstream organization. In fact, quite the opposite: they’ve gone to great lengths to outright suppress him, and have still failed.

You don't have a good theory of mind for the current generation of left-wingers, who aren't the theory-reading pedants of the last century, but more often than not are driven by an impulsive and anti-intellectual tendency to essentialise their entire political opposition into one monolithic force of evil.

I mean, this guy had a Harvard-tier ACT score. He shouldn’t be completely retarded. Then again, he performed a high-profile assassination while chatting with his friends on Discord, so maybe +2 SD doesn’t even render one out of the “meat comes from the supermarket”-tier zone for Zoomers. Honestly, if this is the case, you’re correct, I really have no theory of mind for people that retarded, and my psychoanalysis is better reduced to “guess it was a chimp-out, skibidi.” I mean come on, how does someone not know to not take their cell phone with them on this little excursion? Snowden was 10 years ago, and even without that, you’d still have cell blocks and SIM tracking.

Why don't you address the less low-hanging fruit of my reply to your original statement, i.e. the obvious political content inscribed on the bullet casings?

Isn’t it just memes from a video game? I mean, yes, technically Helldivers 2 does have political content, but given the level of cognitive ability we’re dealing with here, I’m not going to do some Elden Ring-tier deep-dive into the game’s themes and symbolism to figure out what the shooter was trying to say. He’s just saying stupid zoomer nonsense.

  • -18

Isn’t it just memes from a video game?

No, as pointed out here.

https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/365897?context=8#context

I’m sorry but none of this strikes me as serious or meaningful except the fact that he specifically mentioned disliking Charlie Kirk to his family, which is in harmony with my thesis anyway.

Let me clarify what I mean by he doesn’t seem political: he doesn’t seem to have ever gone to any sort of political rally or activist event for any party, he hasn’t made any sort of public statements on social media accounts about this or that politician, etc. His voter registration is explicitly “No Party.” And perhaps most importantly, he didn’t leave a manifesto to tell us why he did what he did. Even Luigi half-assed a few paragraphs for us. Uncle Ted wrote us a proper epistle. I’m genuinely not trying to cover up for some pet left-wing beliefs of mine or something. I don’t live in Burgerstan, I honestly don’t care that much about your dumpster fire either way. I’m saying I think the shooter was basically non-political because I actually believe he was basically non-political. You’re free to disagree.

I simply do not see any evidence that he cared about politics at all beyond this one act. Which is why my analysis is what it is in my original post.

EDIT: for what it’s worth, the Dramatards have found evidence he was on LoveForLandlords (a popular rdrama psyop back in the day), which is an explicitly satirical subreddit of left-wing causes (mocking the working class and mocking LGBT)

  • -18

Let me clarify what I mean by he doesn’t seem political: he doesn’t seem to have ever gone to any sort of political rally or activist event for any party, he hasn’t made any sort of public statements on social media accounts about this or that politician, etc.

As far as I know we don't know any of his social media accounts besides his Steam account and a blank FurAffinity account. A lot of people with strong political views don't attend rallies or protests, and we could easily not know if he had. So this is meaningless in judging whether he cared about politics and we're once again left with the fact he assassinated a political figure, the two political inscriptions on the casings, and the statement from his family.

EDIT: for what it’s worth, the Dramatards have found evidence he was on LoveForLandlords (a popular rdrama psyop back in the day), which is an explicitly satirical subreddit of left-wing causes (mocking the working class and mocking LGBT)

No, that was his transgender romantic partner Lance Twiggs. While I do not browse LoveForLandlords I don't know of it "mocking LGBT" or even really mocking "workers", just commies who get mad about landlords online (and according to someone on rdrama it was taken over by the people being mocked at some point so maybe not even that). Twiggs also posted on /r/4tran and unsurprisingly seemed anti-Trump.

As far as I know we don't know any of his social media accounts besides his Steam account and a blank FurAffinity account.

That’s kind of my point. Where’s his Reddit account ranting about the evils of capitalism? Where’s his #girlsforkamala posts on Instagram?

The entire internet is scouring for this stuff, and we’re simply not finding anything. We’re finding less on his politics over his entire life than you’d find about mine in the past 3 hours of my posts.

I’m going to call that a non-political person, I’m sorry. The replies I’m getting just reek of wanting him to be Political so you can say he was radicalized by le evil leftists and start your Long March through their institutions. I don’t need to come here to get that analysis. It’s already all over Twitter. Just go play over there, that’s where your friends are.

  • -20

Just go play over there, that’s where your friends are.

Your asinine fanfiction is getting exactly the reception it deserves. Just flounce away in a huff already, I don't get the impression that anyone will care.

Please don't try to drive off the few counter-contrarians we have left here.

He's not a counter-contrarian, he's an rdrama troll (or at least has rdrama tells) who used to post here before (since he complains about how this place went downhill), though I don't have such encyclopedic knowledge to know which one he is.

Making shit up based on his headcanon and then rejecting all actual evidence to the contrary is...not high quality discourse.

Which is perhaps not ideal and not high quality, but even shoddy disagreement seems like a necessary component for the Motte to function as intended.