The Meaning Of Tyler Robinson
It's Not 'Stochastic' And The 'Brain Rot' Came From The Left
Although I am an admitted hothead, I’ve been cautious about ascribing motives to Charlie Kirk’s assassin. But since we know something about him now, I’m going to go ahead.
I’ve recently been arguing about the meaning of the word “stochastic.” Again1:
Stochastic: by definition, the term implies no certainty about any single instance. You can talk about probabilities, risk factors, or likelihoods across a population, but you cannot assign causal certainty to one specific event. That’s why Hanania’s claim that assassinations are stochastic prevents him from definitively blaming Trump or any single political actor for this assassination.
Agent-driven / causal: by contrast, Dylann Roof’s actions are directly attributable to him. He left a trail of writings, communications, and intentions that make the causal chain clear. You can pin responsibility with certainty because it’s intentional, deterministic, and observable.
So, let’s apply this to Tyler Robinson.
At this point, all signs point left. He went from Mormon Republican kid to broken shell of a man sharing an apartment with a drugged-up man laboring under the delusion he’s becoming a woman, otherwise known as a “male-to-female transgender.”
What is this if not of the left?
Some gatekeeper leftist hacks are claiming that Robinson was a groyper, i.e., a follower of Nick Fuentes. (More about groypers.)
The linked article was written in 2019 —
Since mid-October, Charlie Kirk’s Culture War college tour has been increasingly haunted by the Groyper and nicker Groyper Q&A trolls. These offline trolls use the Q&A-sessions that are part of the Culture War show format to frame Charlie Kirk as a fake, 'anti-white' conservative. A new chapter in the alt-right's cultural war re-emerges in full force.
So, at first it was reasonable to point the finger at Fuentes, who badgered Kirk constantly and who immediately shed crocodile tears over the latter’s death. (Cui bono?)
And yes, I wonder whether Robinson went through a groyper period on his journey from Republican kid to leftist fanatic.2 Maybe, maybe not. It’s imperative to investigate everything down to the last detail.
It appears Robinson migrated to the left as a teenager. Before college? I don’t know. He went to Utah State University on scholarship to be an engineer, dropped out, and attended a trade school. He spent loads of time online, on Discord and gaming sites. The push is on: It was internet “brain rot,” not ideology.
I think this is centrist bullshit. Pointing fingers at Discord or gaming sites for his radicalization is a distortion and a distraction. You can have brainrot AND ideology—indeed, they go hand in hand. The question is: whose ideology?
Even if Tyler Robinson hadn’t cracked up, he was a bright kid who absorbed the message from the dominant culture that conservatives like Kirk are fascists, and fascists deserve death. Because he was crazy and logical, he concluded that he should kill Kirk. 3
Both of those premises (conservative = fascist, fascists deserve death) are mainstream left beliefs, operationalized by antifa groups around the country regularly. You don’t have to go on Discord or gaming sites to see that.
They aren’t mainstream Democrat beliefs, but they are absolutely tolerated and promoted by mainstream Democrats.
Hold on! I wrote that before I saw that Kathy Hochul now has endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor.
They are now mainstream Democrat beliefs.
Do I have to recite chapter and verse the crazy shit Democrat pols have said about gender?
Look at Portland and Seattle for the past ten years, and especially since 2020. This nonsense could have and should have been crushed, and yet it was not.
Yes, he spent time online, but the deeper issue isn’t where he talked—it’s what ideas he absorbed and how those ideas gained traction. Blaming tech platforms is a way to avoid asking harder questions about the political and cultural forces that made violence not merely justified but inevitable.4
Not “stochastic” — causal. As in Dylan Roof causal.
Of course, there are personal issues involved.
Two things caused Tyler Robinson’s personal crackup: his same-sex attractions and his inability to measure up to the unique demands of an engineering program.
By the time Robinson went to college, he was already shaky. Then came the confrontation with something you can’t handle — it happens to all of us. Engineering majors are tough. He wasn’t radicalized at Utah State’s engineering program. He was destroyed by it.
Engineering programs are structurally rigid and designed to chew people up and spit them out.5 This was shattering to Robinson. He’d been the A student, the 4.0 golden boy, and for the first time, he was challenged. Instead of buckling down or gracefully admitting it was too hard, he cracked up.
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Sometimes. And sometimes that’s where the poison seeps in—in this case, the sewage of modern leftist ideology.
When I first heard that he was living with another guy, I thought “gay.” Then I said to myself, “You really are an old Boomer bat. No one’s gay nowadays.” And then the revelations about his boyfriend came up. This guy was absolutely batshit, and I do not believe the stories about him “cooperating” with the authorities. His head is in a wringer. He’s being squeezed hard, and if he escapes justice it will only be because he furnished incriminating information. But not voluntarily.
As Hillel Halkin points out in this article from Commentary in 1992:
true believers tend to reach for their guns when they feel the rage of a wider public behind them
Isn’t this exactly what we’re seeing now, with the thousands of pro-assassination tweets, TikToks, and even posts on LinkedIn?
I do not believe that these are just fringe voices, as useless centrist Cathy Young says. They strike a far deeper chord among Democrats. Why? How?
Because this is the world they gave us.
Over the past few decades, civil rights laws have gone through wave after wave of expansion. What started as equal treatment morphed into rules that demand ideological conformity, punish disagreement, and reshape institutions. Each generation of reform has gone further than the last.
At the same time, we’ve seen a complete overhaul in how society treats “gender.” What used to be based on biology—male and female—has been replaced by a system where identity is self-declared and constantly shifting. Institutions now treat this fluidity as fact, and anyone who questions it is labeled as dangerous or hateful.
Who gave us this? Trump?
The violence we’re seeing isn’t just about one person or one website or Discord. It’s a symptom of deep cultural upheaval. If we want to understand it, we need to stop chasing distractions and start mapping the real shifts in law, identity, and power.
So, no, this was not “stochastic”— it was causal. If you deny that “the left” caused this assassination, then it’s only because “the left” has become the governing environment—something that Hanania actually wrote a book about.
Oh, final final word on Hanania, before I move on.
If Trump is responsible for the atmosphere that killed Charlie Kirk, and Kirk was a huge part of Trump’s world, isn’t he saying that Kirk asked for it?
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I asked Hanania about this when he deigned to come to my lowly quarter, and it evoked a hysterical response.
My guess is that if he hadn’t done it, he’d be one of the thousands expressing glee that it was done.
Oh, by the way, final nail in the coffin in the Hanania theory: if Trump is responsible for the atmosphere that killed Charlie Kirk, and Kirk was a huge part of Trump’s world, isn’t he saying that Kirk asked for it? Isn’t that the logical conclusion of Hanania’s misuse of “stochastic”?
I have relatives who did just that. They all went on to earn cognitively demanding degrees in math, computer science, and physics. But engineering was a bridge too far for them.
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