Asha Rangappa Bluesky thread on the shooter, recommending another thread (+ a related one)
Interesting thread/theory, and would fall in the “intra-faction conflict†part of my MAGA Map analysis open.substack.com/pub/asharang...
— Asha Rangappa (@asharangappa.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:52:54.097Z
The thread she's drawing attention to, from Tom Schaller - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schaller for info on him:
The killer may turn out to be a confused, young, white man from a gun-friendly Republican home with no coherent set of political views or inspirations.
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.842Z
But that’s not the weirdest possible scenario here.
What follows is a 🧵 that considers a far more bizarre scenario…ready?
1/x
If, in fact, he is a Groyper inspired by Nick Fuentes and his “Nicker†followers, that means the shooter believed Kirk and TPUSA types are *insufficiently intolerant* of anyone not straight, white, Christian nationalist—i.e., that Kirk wasn’t far right and absolutist *enough.*
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.843Z
Ponder that! 2/x
Yet, before shooter was arrested, many top Kirk allies and MAGAs, from Benny Johnson to Steve Bannon, rushed to issue fatwas declaring war on liberals, Dems, CNN/MSNBC as guilty of stochastic terrorism—a concept they suddenly love, never mind Jan6, MN legislators, etc.—that led to Kirk’s death. 3/x
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.844Z
In effect, they were claiming that the threat environment resulted from attacks by left on Kirk for being too conservative (even calling him a moderate!), when the killer may actually believe Kirk insufficiently conservative and radicalized.
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.845Z
BTW: Laura Loomer is among those who said so.
4/x
In short, they rushed not only to wrongly predict the killer’s *identity*—presuming he just had to be non-white, lib/Dem, trans, etc. (hence all the bomb scares and death threats yesterday at places like DNC and HBCUs)—but also got his *ideology* wrong, too.
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.846Z
5/x
If in fact killer’s hate emanated from Kirk’s right, not left, and from *inside* not outside their movement, then what happens next?
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.847Z
Few if any of those who immediately targeted the wrong people will apologize or retract, sadly. That’s the Roy Cohn/Trump way.
More interesting is whether… 6/x
…there will be internecine war (again) *within* the Right between Groypers and TPUSA types.
— Tom Schaller (@schaller67.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:53.848Z
There certainly will be arguments. But you can bet fury we saw directed yesterday at the Left will be significantly muted if Kirk’s death was fratricide—a domestic terrorist murder within the family.
7/7
As mentioned in the thread title, I'm including a related thread, one recommended in the replies to Schaller's thread. I don't have any info on J.C. Cantwell other than what's in his Bluesky profile, but Bluesky also provided the info that he's followed by a few people who also follow me on Bluesky and Twitter, one of whom is one of the few people on those platforms I correspond with via DMs, indicating Cantwell probably is someone who'd fit in on DU, so I'm posting his thread here even though I know next to nothing about him.
last night as i was trying to wind down for bed i had a unified theory of what the fuck just happened, and i wrote it down, and filed it under "well, i can't talk about this on main without sounding insane until and unless the perp gets caught and is provably a groyper"
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.105Z
anyways, great news! (1/X)
the bitch of it for them is charlie kirk WAS a generational talent who was going to become president someday. he was genuinely extremely fucking good at his job and he's almost certainly the reason Trump won reëlection
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.123Z
one of the big things that happened in the background that a lot of people didn't see was the Groyper Wars - Fuentes and Kirk were beefing, Fuentes controls a bunch of insane white twinks who were intimidating everyone at conservative events
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.145Z
it was a whole thing I can't adequately summarise, but Kirk was the one who, at least for a while, had managed to defuse it - this is why he suddenly tacked hard to the right on immigration and racism, that was calculated.
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.164Z
by kneeling to the groypers, Kirk was - successfully - defusing the tension in the Hitlerjugend, conceding ALL the ground on racism and immigration and, like, channer shit, basically, in exchange for being able to position himself as the intellectual heir to Trumpism.
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.186Z
that was his play here. keep up the gadfly act until he could be, like, Vance's chief of staff or something, G-d only knows, but the point is, he was the man who could unite Turning Point and the groypers by knowing what to concede to Fuentes et al. and how to do so
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.205Z
recently, Kirk kept calling for the release of the Epstein Files, even after Trump called him and asked him to stop, and Fuentes has been FURIOUS about it, and won't-someone-rid-me-of-this-meddlesome-priest about it: stochastic terrorism wasn't a "if", at this point, it was a "when".
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.225Z
Kirk thought, i am SURE of it, that if HE was able to get out in front of the Epstein files - he KNEW what was in them, obviously. He knew that there's SOMETHING there that's genuinely, actually, catastrophically explosive
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.253Z
He wanted the fucking positionality of being the one within the conservative Trumpist movement to expiate its own sins by throwing the old dying man under the bus and claiming the mantle as the one who Purified The Movement
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.257Z
the promised prince of QAnon, the Guy Who Exposed The Pedophiles, it would not be the Democrats, it would be Charlie Kirk, and he'd be able to use it to win the Groyper Wars forever and marginalise them for good.
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.258Z
the next few seasons of the show were supposed to be about him, and everyone knew it, and then nick fuentes, that poor, stupid, loyal twink, fucking beefed it for all of them by killing him. or engaging in stochastic terrorism such that he was killed by one of his followers. the world may never know
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.259Z
and nobody's going to be able to grab the ring - CERTAINLY not Fuentes - because you need to be able to code-switch between Christian Pastor and also Charm The Grandmas and ALSO gutter-racist antisemite Branch Hitlerian Dialect. and nobody is going to be able to do that like he could.
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.260Z
some people have said "oh the billionaires will just decant another one" or install Tim Pool or Hanania or something like that but, I need you to believe me when I say that that is *not how this works*, and Turning Point was the work of decades, and Charlie Kirk was load-bearing for it.
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T16:13:46.261Z
coda, more than a correction:
— J. C. Cantwell 🌻 (@segfaultvicta.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T18:13:08.412Z
bsky.app/profile/did:...
= new reply since forum marked as read
