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Notes -
What are the odds?
In the chaos of the Charlie Kirk shooting, a lot of people forgot about the weirdness of the multiple arrests. Immediately after the shooting, George Zinn reacted in a very unusual way. He insisted that he was the shooter and police arrested him, allowing the real shooter to get away.
Was he an accomplice? No, it doesn't look that way. There's no evidence that he knew the shooter ahead of time.
So that leads to the first, "what are the odds?" Online, we saw leftists explode into cheers of support for Kirk's killer and suggestions for the next victim. But we are told that this represents a small fraction of the left, only the most politically deranged. But a random person in the crowd didn't just cheer on Kirk's death, he was willing to risk arrest, possibly death (if you claim to have a gun during an active shooting, you can't really be surprised if you wind up shot.)
BBC says there were about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University when he was shot. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yev470d59o. At least 1 of those people were very clearly supportive of the assassination. 0.03% isn't that bad, I suppose. There were also several people on a balcony cheering (I saw this on video, I don't have any desire to find that video again for hopefully obvious reasons so if you don't trust me on this that's fine.)
So let's say .03% willing to take extreme lengths in support of political violence, .3% immediately visibly excited by political violence. As a percentage that's low. It's a really, low, comforting percentage. Except when you see it happen in real life. Then it's not so comforting.
Every time you go out in a large enough crowd, there is a high chance that at least one person is kind of crazy. The kind of person willing to take the fall for someone else's crime. This is not comforting at all.
Another set of odds
What brought this on was a press release Andy Ngo shared from the county sheriff's office. Not only was Zinn a political extremist, he was also in possession of Child Pornography (real children, ages 5-12.) He also distributed this material to others.
Now, you might think such a person would have a strong incentive to avoid being picked up by the police and have his phone searched, but Mr. Zinn did not seem to have much hesitation.
Apropos of nothing, I'd like to talk about a tangent that I picked up on in Patel's Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing today. He was directly asked by Senator Kennedy if there was the possibility that the shooter wasn't working alone. Patel said there were a number of individuals currently being investigated and interrogated by the Feds.
I'm pretty much caught up on the trans partner and their chat logs, but it seems like the FBI is doing a deeper dive into some of the other connections. Perhaps other users in the Discord channel of interest?
Does anyone else have anything on accomplices? Does the idea of the trans partner knowing nothing about the shooting seem a little suspect? I know the partner is apparently an AnCap follower of Jordan Peterson and immediately cooperated with the police, but the text logs seem a little off. Particularly when combined with an 'IT WAS ME!' note left by the shooter under his keyboard for his partner to find.
Edit: Additional links
Wait, what?
Hoo boy. I don't have a solid link to confirm that, as referencing /pol/ is like pointing at yesterday's sandcastle on the beach.
Best I can do with the Peterson reference is this. I've got nothing for the AnCap thing, but you could do a deep dive on the partner's suspected reddit account history if you have a real interest in this.
Also it was in 2020-21. I don't think 'Guy reads Jordan Peterson 5 years ago then re-pivots over to the Left side' is some historically unprecedented swerve plus I assume a lot of terminally online people have 'Arm the babies with assault rifles to defend themselves from abortions' radical centrism.
Yeah I agree, it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Someone in their early 20's can change their views a lot from when they were 18. I'm not trying to focus on the partner's political point of view as much as their trans identity and the possibility their 'innocence' was deliberately telegraphed by actions pre-planned with the shooter.
I mean, how do you surprise your live in romantic partner with a political assassination? They really didn't see any signs?
If their household was particularly leftist, then explicit death threats aimed towards people who have opinions that they sufficiently disagree with being just background noise isn't unlikely. Given that he's an adult with his own gun already, I don't think keeping this a secret would've been hard for Robinson regardless, but even if he didn't keep it secret, it's perfectly plausible that his lover just had no reason to believe that it was anything other than the umpteenth hyperbole said by him.
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Most people think highly of their partners and don’t want to believe they’re murderers? Intentional ignorance is a hell of a drug.
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The same way you surprise everybody else: keep your mouth shut and your material hidden? We are here on the
Devil Sacramentthree principled libertarians and a zillion witches website; I know some people here share everything with their SO, but we do realize that it's not the only option, right?I never really considered that users might be 'hiding their power level' from their spouses. Sounds exhausting, but considering the amount of polarisation in Western political discourse, its not that surprising.
It is, and it's not. My wife regularly tries to initiate struggle sessions with me because I took the black pill over a decade ago and started pointing and laughing at politics instead of taking it seriously. "I know you're a good raven, Muninn and I'm trying to understand how a good corvid like you wouldn't be alarmed at $Latest_Thing," is typically how these things go, and I just feed her the, "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," line that I feed just about everybody these days because a single specimen of bacteria residing on the flesh of a random state legislator has more influence over national politics than I do and long experience has taught me that if I actually engage and start talking about the landmarks that the US passed on the way to arriving at $Latest_Thing, I'm likely to be seen, at best, as an argumentative and pedantic asshole, and at worst as a misguided rube with inordinate sympathy for the obvious Fascists. Sticking to my guns will eventually lead to grudging acknowledgment that paying so much attention to that shit is making her miserable too, and for bonus points maybe we can even have a productive conversation about some of her more heretical thoughts.
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I mean check out the graphs of growing divide between women and men.
They are starting to be separate circles with little overlap, many women on dating websites make clear their political affiliation, and most high quality men pay lip service only to progressive politics if they acknowledge it at all. Anyone who still wants to date has to lie a bit.
Historically women have been willing to take on or ignore the politics of their partner a bit more, we'll see if that stays true....if it doesn't......
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I think it is entirely possible that Robinson had been mentioning that he wanted to kill Kirk for a while and the partner assumed he was just being edgy and joking around. This would be entirely consistent with the slightly weird text logs, where there’s (imo, at least) a clear tone of “oh god please tell me you didn’t actually go out and do this”, even as Robinson is talking about it in a tone that’s more like “lol obviously I did, why are you so surprised?”
By all accounts the partner started talking to the police/feds almost immediately after Robinson was identified/arrested and turned over the chat logs voluntarily. I suppose it is possible that the partner was involved and either regretted it or decided to play innocent, but that seems to require a lot of epicycles compared to the simple scenario where the partner knew Robinson hated Kirk, but didn’t know about the actual assassination plot. Any signs he may have given off would be much more readily explained at the time as “edgy jokes” than “literal murder plot”, until he went out and did it.
I agree that its possible that the partner knew nothing (or at least thought the shooter was just being edgy/hyperbolic). It reminds me of observations of a friend before he took his own life. It was similar in that he was considering a massively life altering choice that his loved ones would disapprove of and send shockwaves through the lives of those around him. He pretty much managed to keep it hidden with only small hints that were only obvious in hindsight.
So, while I'm not entirely sold on the partner being completely innocent in all this, its probably best to go with Occam's razor until there's any new official revelations. Better than the alternative.
Or is it?
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The chat log doesn't read genuine. It feels off, staged. Rumor has it the roommate was no shrinking violet but quite vocal in their extremist politics. [EDIT: Specifically, the chat log reads like bad exposition where one party asks stupid questions so the villain can explain his dastardly plan to the audience].
My guess is that you have a local trantifa group, mostly online, immersed in far left ideology but veiled in ironic internet meme culture. They talk about assassinating Kirk and egg each other using innuendo and cryptic memes and such. They make plans, but there is no mastermind. One or more of them say they are going to do it. The others encourage the assassination but are unsure whether they'll follow through, because such discussions about violent action happen often in these circles but rarely does anyone actually do it. A few people in this group post suggestive messages that something big is about to happen for internet clout. The shooter and his roommate, meanwhile, agree to obscure the roommate's role in the planning by staging exonnerating chat logs.
While thrilled with the assassination, the other trantifa are genuinely surprised that the shooter actually did it. Usually people chicken out. They might not have posted those suggestive messages if they knew, so now they scramble to scrub the internet of any evidence of their complicity or foreknowledge. The roommate "cooperates" with the police as part of their plan to obscure their role in the murder.
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I seem to recall that in at least one of the alleged Discord group[s?], someone thought the photo looked like him and they joked about it. That implies that at least that group more broadly wasn't aware. I presume it's possible a Discord friend helped him on a more individual basis, but nothing other than maybe the questioner really required any help. In fact, he literally used a drop spot for the rifle, so I'd assume an actual accomplice would have been ready to grab it - actually would have been smart, or even worked, since no cameras covered the area and the other person would have looked different, though transportation would still be risky. Kirk's last questioner was interviewed and seemed innocent to me, despite affiliation with a group that usually hounds Kirk with gotchas allegedly he wasn't doing so on that particular day, though I supposed given the context and timing it's possible (OTOH, it's a right-wing AMA, of course guns are going to come up and probably trans issues too at some point no matter who has the mic).
The texts suggest that he really thought there was a good chance he'd get away with it. He was maybe loosely correct, but criminals of all types often forget that they have more human connections, even when loners, than you might think. Plus witnesses are everywhere in a manhunt, and he seems to literally not have planned for cameras (I mean come on dude, there are ALWAYS cameras somewhere, and an accomplice probably would have said as much). The grandpa recognized the rifle, and at least three people that we know of instantly thought it looked like him based on the pictures only.
The lone caveat then is I don't think we were told exactly how he got back home to Washington county - one report I believe mentioned a vehicle, but it wasn't clear if they actually matched its location to anywhere relevant that day, or found out where he parked, etc. I suppose someone could have driven him?
The dolt had his damned phone in his pocket, these days the devices are semi-online and ping the towers even when you think they are turned off. This level of incompetence blows out of the water any theories of isreal involvement(as alleged on our favorite internet watering holes) or grander strategy plan in my view.
If you turn them "off", they do shut down the radio and don't ping anything. Unless they've been infected by certain sorts of malware. (And if you happen a target of an investigation, there is special firmware that shuts down everything but the radio that can be loaded onto your phone by a co-operative carrier, which is to say any carrier whose CEO doesn't want to go to pound-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison)
So if you're a nobody with a clean phone, you're PROBABLY ok if you turn it "off". But it'd be dumb to bet on it.
Yeah, you can never know how "off" these devices are unless you have one of those older samsungs that you could physically take the back off and take out the battery. Those are rarer now tho.
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newer iPhones have their bluetooth running when they are 'off' (i think this runs for up to 1 day?) in order to network with nearby iPhones to support the find-my-phone feature. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluetooth/
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I'm sure he would have been identified eventually, but on the other hand he had sufficient leeway if he didn't confess/brag to probably get out of the country without anybody raising him. Even the photos were like enough that somebody who knew him would have a reasonable suspicion but they weren't exactly smoking guns.
Get out where?
If you look at succesful escapees from highest profile manhunt, the secret is to have friends/family in third world country who will hide you (while the authorities are not looking very hard).
If you are Diego Robles, your chances are good. If your name is James Robinson, forget it.
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