While Donald Trump was quick to blame ‘lunatic Left’, a more complex picture of the alleged assassin is emerging

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 Mr 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.

While Donald Trump was quick to blame the “lunatic Left” in the wake of the assassination of Kirk on a university campus, a more complex picture of the alleged killer is emerging.

The Slav squat comes from a variation of Pepe the Frog, a pudgy cartoon toad which 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.

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 insufficiently racist.

Kirk, with his slick Turning Point empire and close ties to Mr Trump, had long been in their crosshairs.

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’s 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.

Right-wing references on ammunition

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 Second World War 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 Mr Robinson and his friends, he is seen to dress up as President Trump for Hallowe’en, with Mr Trump’s face painted green – a possible reference to the Pepe the frog edit that Mr Trump shared in 2015.

None of the above forms incontrovertible evidence of Mr Robinson’s political leanings. His family say he was not interested in politics until recently, suggesting he may have either hidden his leanings or become radicalised.

Attention has focused on Mr Robinson and the Groypers as the latest stage of a battle between America’s extremes to blame the other for inspiring Kirk’s killing.

Spencer Cox, Utah’s Republican governor, said on Sunday that while it was too early to establish a motive for the Kirk killing, Mr 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 odd references on bullet casings have been misconstrued. Indeed, some FBI agents drew early conclusions that the messages hinted at a “transgender ideology”, but this was later clarified.

Details of an alleged romantic relationship with a transgender roommate have led to more speculation that Mr Robinson may have taken issue with Kirk’s campaigning against trans rights.

Mr Robinson’s digital footprint, however, at the very least suggests that he understood and spoke the language of the alt-Right at some stage.

Mr Fuentes moved to distance himself from Mr 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,” adding: “I disown you in the strongest possible terms.”

’Memes the currency of Gen Z’

Other alleged young male killers have adopted similar memes to Mr Robinson while carrying out politically motivated mass shootings.

In 2019, just before Brenton Tarrant began an attack in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 51 people dead, he told viewers of his livestream to “subscribe to PewDiePie”.

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, calling it a “real life effort s---post”.

In 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly shot Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, with bullets that read: “deny”, “defend”, “depose.”

Weeks ago, 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.

“Memes are the sort of currency of Generation Z. They’re the thing. It’s the subcultures that they’re most interested in,” Mrs 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.”

While there is no agreement yet on what politics inspired Mr 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.