The case against Robinson is about as strong as a case can be. It’s not just that there isn’t a reasonable doubt, there is simply no doubt. And that’s been obvious for quite some time. But that doesn’t stop the conspiracy theorists. They thrive on something about human nature: cynicism, suspicion, the urge to doubt authorities (an impulse which, unfortunately, is sometimes quite justified), and the need to feel superior to the common gullible masses.

It’s also a kind of club thing: we are the cognoscenti and you are not. Or maybe a sorority, because people who study such things say that Owens’ followers tend to be women. Although it’s certainly possible that a great many are bots, I have little doubt that a significant number are real people. There is a big market for such things – including and perhaps especially the virulent Jew-hatred that Candace spreads.

It’s certainly not limited to Jew-hatred, either, although that’s a large part of it. Owens also has been viciously attacking Ericka Kirk, whom she’s painted not only as being in on her husband’s murder, but as having never been what she says she is but rather is – among other things – a child trafficker. Owens acolytes (and/or bots) roam around the internet, commenting on videos featuring Kirk and casting her as a villainess extraordinaire. It is actually a sickening thing to behold.

As a result of the overwhelming evidence against Robinson in the legal proceedings, will conspiracy theorists abandon the murky webs they’ve spun regarding Kirk’s death? There might be a couple of people here and there who do so, but not the major players and not the bulk of their followers. They will simply wiggle out of it or change the focus slightly. Not only is it a money-making endeavor for people like Owens, but for her followers it has become a deep belief.

[NOTE: Over the years, I’ve written many posts about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists. The majority of Americans still do not think that Oswald killed Kennedy or that he acted alone (see this). However, the evidence that he did is totally overwhelming, as I’ve explained in many previous posts.

I’m not going to rehash it here, having already spent so much time doing so. Suffice to say that I recommend the book Reclaiming History to anyone interested. You can find the text (or at least most of it) online here. As I said, I’ve written many posts on the subject, but here’s one of my posts that’s an overview.]

The post The Charlie Kirk murder conspiracy theorists and the Tyler Robinson evidence appeared first on The New Neo.

As you might imagine, many of the pundits who think Tyler Robinson is being framed (whether or not they are of the ISRAEL DID IT variety) are writing about this (see, for example, Candace Owens’ reaction).

From the Daily Mail article

But his defense attorneys now argue that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ‘was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr Robinson.’

The defense team may now offer the ATF firearm analyst’s testimony as exculpatory evidence, they said in a motion filed on Friday to push the preliminary hearing back at least six months, Fox News reports.

The Fox article has nothing about the allegations regarding the bullet evidence. And the Daily Mail article has nothing more about it than the quote I posted, despite the incendiary headline.

Note that it doesn’t say the gun was ruled out; it says the Bureau was unable to identify it to the rifle, which sounds as though the evidence about the bullet was probably ruled “inconclusive.”

The article didn’t add that this is not all that unusual in forensics cases. But see this article from a forensics periodical:

A forensic firearms examiner, when comparing two bullets or two cartridge cases, for example one an “unknown” or “questioned” (from crime scene) and the other a “known” (from a suspect weapon), will in the U.S. ordinarily follow The Association of Firearms and Toolmarks Examiners (AFTE) or the Uniform Language for Testimony and Reports (ULTR) guidelines issued by the Department of Justice, and arrive at one of three major conclusions: “identification”—the bullets came from the same gun, “elimination”—the bullets came from different guns, or “inconclusive”—the bullets might have come from the same gun, might have come from different guns. … The AFTE criteria further divide the Inconclusives into three sub-categories labeled A, B and C, where A leans to without reaching an Identification, C leans to without reaching an Elimination, and B is neutral.

We have no idea which, if any, of these designations were given the bullets in this case. Nor do we know if any other forensic scientists also examined the bullet and gun evidence. The media isn’t saying.

More here about the science of bullet matching:

We always knew it was never a perfect science. We knew that not every bullet could be traced to a specific firearm. Microscopic tool marks left behind on a fired bullet as it travels down the barrel were never really seen as “a firearm’s DNA,” as some have termed it. Bullets fired into non-homogenous substances such as the human body can impact muscle, bone, clothing, and internal objects, all of which can deform the bullet, making identification difficult.

We knew that—our trust in television aside—not every bullet can be traced to a specific firearm. For example, some rifles, such as a particular Canadian law enforcement agency’s patrol carbine, are manufactured with hammer-forged barrels that do not machine the rifling grooves in a barrel in the traditional way. Instead, they use a hardened die inserted into a barrel blank that is pounded by tens of thousands of powerful hydraulic hammer blows to form and shape the barrel to exact dimensions. This process may make it difficult to come to a conclusive decision about the precise firearm a bullet was fired from

Other firearms manufacturers that use non-traditional rifling may not leave enough marks on the bullet that can be matched to a specific barrel even if recovered fully intact. …

A 2009 report by the National Academies of Science first called into question how ‘exact’ the science was and how there were few—if any—scientific, double-blind research studies to back up the claims made by examiners in court. The report pointed out that, unlike fingerprints, bullet examination protocols don’t specify how many points of similarity are needed to form a conclusive opinion.

A 2016 report to the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) concluded that firearms analysis did not meet the criteria for scientific validity, which requires repeatability and reproducibility.

There is no question that further research is needed.

In another widely quoted research paper from 2022, the Ames II Study, 173 firearms examiners compared thousands of fired cartridge cases and bullets. The overall rate of errors and false positives in the study was considered to be under one per cent.

Critics of the Ames II Study point out that the three categories the examiners used, “Identified,” “Eliminated” or “Inconsistent,” skewed the result numbers substantially. Being able to answer “inconclusive” and still be scored as perfect meant error rates of under one per cent were, in fact, closer to 30 to 40 per cent. Critics also pointed out that examiners disagreed on a number of matches made by their own colleagues, and even the same examiner reached different conclusions when given the same test batch twice. Critics considered that the large number of “inconclusive” results was like answering every multiple-choice question on a test with “I don’t know” and still scoring perfectly.

I am not a ballistics expert, to say the least. But just twenty minutes or so of research revealed all of that.

The Daily Mail article does detail some of the other evidence against Tyler Robinson, which is simply overwhelming.

I wrote all of the above prior to listening to this video, which answers some of the questions – apparently based on information that was released two weeks ago and which the Daily Mail article’s author didn’t see fit to mention (nor did any of the conspiracy theorists that I read on X). The gist of the video is that the autopsy results revealed a fragmented bullet that would be very difficult to match to a weapon. The fragmentation also accounted for the lack of an exit wound (no exit wound is something the conspiracy theorists often cite as suspicious). Here’s the video:

The woman in the video is lawyer Andrea Burkhart.

The post The conspiracy theorists regarding the Charlie Kirk murder are quite happy about this appeared first on The New Neo.

The upshot is that there are many people and groups vying for influence with this cohort, and although some of those people and groups are friendly and benign, some are malevolent exploiters. Among the former are Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk (when he was alive) and Turning Point USA; among the latter are Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Mamdani, Antifa, violent trans activists, and various incel “influencers.” I’m sure I left some out, but you get the picture. The competition exists on both right and left, but the struggle on the right is highlighted at the moment.

Charlie Kirk’s accused killer was definitely part of this group that was searching (I’m going to assume that Trump’s would-be killer was, too). Tyler Robinson is a young disaffected white male who spent an inordinate amount of his time gaming, and seems to have immersed himself in the violent trans activist movement as well as using some Antifa memes.

I’ve been thinking about all of this lately, and a few days ago I began wondering whether Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had ever gotten together for a chat, and if so did they ever discuss this sort of topic. Sure enough, I discovered that they had, about six months ago. In the following YouTube interview, it’s also mentioned that Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had met back in 2016 when Kirk was early in his career, and Kirk says he was inspired by Peterson. Not surprising, actually.

The following interview occurred six months ago, as I noted. But since then, Peterson has become gravely ill starting in August, although he’s said to be recovering. And of course Charlie Kirk was assassinated early in September. The whole interview is of interest, but I have cued up a 9-minute clip in which they begin by discussing the phenomenon on the left but Peterson immediately says it’s a growing problem on the right too and he was certainly correct. The phenomenon is the growing popularity of “influencers” with what’s called Cluster B traits and the dark triad or tetrad (see this for an explanation). They also talk about what it means to use the Lord’s name in vain:

Because he appears to be an example of this Cluster B dark triad type, please do not ignore the essentially “performative” and mocking nature of Fuentes. He’s like the Joker. It’s impossible to know what he really believes; perhaps nothing. His goals seem to be destructive and narcissistic: attention and power for himself, but perhaps mostly the power to destroy and to make people angry and uncomfortable, as well as to be admired by other Cluster B dark triad types, or just people who are lost and searching and happen upon him.

Christopher Rufo seems to understand this, too:

Rather than engage in the surface-level debate, conservatives should seek the deeper ground of reality and deconstruct the “metapolitics,” or underlying rules, of this conflict. Conservatives should do this by treating Fuentes as an essentially fraudulent phenomenon. He is a manipulator who pretends to believe in every evil in order to drive clicks, cause chaos, and achieve celebrity, even as a villain.

I think that this is the best way to look at someone like Fuentes that I can find so far, and Fuentes is hardly alone although he’s the flavor du jour.

I also came across this video by Dinesh D’Souza speaking of the same phenomenon; he also discusses the “groypers” and their online activities. The section I’ve cued up is about 7 minutes long; if you’re impatient like me, though, I suggest speeding it up by changing the speed setting:

ADDENDUM: I decided it would be instructive to add this short clip. Kirk detested Fuentes and thought he was dangerous, not only didn’t ally with him but discouraged anyone from platforming him by debating him. Fuentes was extremely harsh in his criticism of Kirk. He also was quite open in his rivalry with Kirk for this group of young men they were both trying to reach:

Nick Fuentes to Charlie Kirk just days before he was murdered:

"I took your baby Turning Point USA, and I f**ked it. I just get a sick sense of satisfaction out of it. Mr. 'Family Man.'" pic.twitter.com/PgtbRR6V7L

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 28, 2025

The post The battle for the hearts and minds of disaffected, lost, and angry young men appeared first on The New Neo.

Yes, there have been plenty of assassination attempts since then – including of course the Butler PA shot that hit Trump’s ear. But that experience probably only served to underline what I’m referring to, because Trump’s amazing survival with only a bloody ear probably seemed almost cartoonish: See, he bounces back! And – except for relatively minor political figures that probably escaped most people’s attention, such as the murders of Minnesota Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband – all other American political assassinations in recent years in the US have been failed attempts.

The young people I’m talking about are even too young to have experienced the shock of 9/11. To them, that’s another semi-distant historical event, long ago and far away in the background.

So young people may not even have quite believed that a successful assassination was possible till now, although obviously it was. This one was different, because they saw the gore of murder with a rifle in full public view up close. And they saw it happen to a young man, speaking to a large crowd of mostly young people on a college campus. They saw right before their eyes the difference between stupid phrases such as “words are violence” and real violence.

In a sense, they entered history, at least a little bit.

Tyler Robinson, who has not been convicted but who is almost certainly the culprit, was an avid gamer who wrote video game phrases on the casings. And many young leftists online acted like this murder was a video game, and whooped it up about the murder. But I bet a not insignificant number were stunned and are now wondering about some of the things they’ve been blithely mouthing before this happened. What percentage? I don’t know; perhaps it’s quite small. But I believe this groups exists. And as for those already in the middle, I doubt that leftism holds much appeal at all for most of them at this point.

The post Young people in the US have had little experience of successful political assassination – till now appeared first on The New Neo.

Of course the killers back then came from different backgrounds and political persuasions, and had different motives. Were they crazy? No. The fact that some – such as Oswald – could be described as somewhat disturbed is irrelevant. They were all sane in the legal sense.

And I believe that is true of most political assassins, such as Robinson (and would-be assassins like Brooks), as well as long-ago assassins like John Wilkes Booth.

On the other hand, would-be assassin Hinckley chose a political target – Reagan – but his motive was not political and he came closer to the definition of “crazy” in that he was trying to impress Jodie Foster and was likely schizophrenic (although his diagnosis was disputed). In fact, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was kept in a mental hospital until 2016. I wonder whether he’d have been found not guilty if his trial had occurred nowadays, however. And I wonder if the fact that Reagan recovered factored into it as well.

Now the left is bound and determined to say all assassins are MAGA until proven otherwise, and that when their bullets are engraved with leftist sayings, they’re just being ironic and cute. Likewise, when they have leftist political histories, the left claims it’s a lie. When all of that falls through, the killers are just random crazy people, as good old Jimmy Kimmel – he’s baaack! – said on his return to TV last night:

This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution and it isn’t — ever — and also selfishly, I am a person who gets a lot of threats, I get many ugly and scary threats against my life my wife, my kids, my coworkers because of what I choose to say, and I know those threats don’t come from the kind of people on the right who I know I love, so that’s what I wanted to say on that subject.

So there we have the “sick person” description, as well as the “I’m actually the victim” and the “both sides” argument. All of which you hear a lot of these days.

Of course Robinson almost certainly is a “sick person.” The internet and the furry gaming community was part of that, a world into which he descended in recent years (did COVID lockdowns also have a role, perhaps?) But that doesn’t mean he’s not also a cold-blooded political assassin of the left, motivated almost certainly by political hatred and propaganda. It doesn’t mean he’s crazy. And it also doesn’t mean that it’s equal on both sides.

What’s more – and this is key – Kimmel also stated: “I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone.” Wrong, and we have the “X” posts to prove it, the ones from the leftists who celebrated the shooting. They were very numerous, and very chilling, and although Robinson wasn’t formally allied with these people in an organization, they nevertheless support him and it’s no stretch at all to say that Robinson represents them.

Words are not violence. But words can spark violence in a receptive mind, and Robinson’s mind had become quite receptive. I have a hunch the reasons were a toxic stew of the following: immersion in an internet world; the idea that Kirk was a “hater” (particularly of trans people) and a “fascist,” things the left has been saying for a long time; and especially the idea that trans people are under physical attack and even victims of a “genocide.”

I noticed that latter assertion – that there’s some sort of genocide going on against trans people – around the time of the Floyd riots and Black Lives Matter’s ascendance. The latter was pushing the “trans genocide” myth in addition to the anti-police myth of widespread killing of unarmed black people by cops. Somewhere I believe I even have an old draft for a post on the subject, which I don’t have time to look for now. Fortunately I don’t need to, because Andy Ngo – a longtime expert on Antifa – has done the work on this:

These assassins are fostered by the left, and it is almost certainly quite intentional.

The post Why all these assassinations? appeared first on The New Neo.

But sometimes I think there are aspects of human nature – and of left and right – that have hardly changed at all, and that perhaps we’re just more aware of them because of social media, the internet, and cable news.

For example, as an instance of something that’s really changed, we have Jimmy Kimmel, a talk show host on a major network expressing something other than empathy/sympathy/sorrow/shock at the assassination of a prominent American political/religious figure. In the 1960s, or when Reagan almost lost his life, talk show hosts kept their politics to themselves. Kimmel has become highly political in recent years – and unfunny as well as unentertaining. But until now he hasn’t been at all reluctant to offend at least half the country.

He got into trouble a few days ago, but now he’s being reinstated – sort of:

Nexstar Media Group, Inc., announced on Tuesday that it will continue preempting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” despite Disney allowing the show to return to ABC.

“We made a decision last week to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse. We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve,” the company said in a statement.

“In the meantime, we note that ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be available nationwide on multiple Disney-owned streaming products, while our stations will focus on continuing to produce local news and other programming relevant to their respective markets,” Nexstar added.

It may even help his sagging ratings. More people might tune in to hear whether he’ll continue to diss the right or whether he’ll pull back a bit.

But although talk show hosts didn’t do this back then, I remember that when JFK was assassinated the left lost no time whatsoever blaming the right even though the killer was a Communist. The left – and many regular Democrats – blamed the right for creating a “climate of violence.” Sound familiar?

And what of the chickens of the title of this post? It comes from a speech and answer given by Malcolm X – who later was himself cut down by an assassin’s bullet that most agree came from his old allies now turned enemies, the Nation of Islam. At the time of the speech, not long after JFK was assassinated, he was still allied with that group, but by the time he was killed in 1965 he had pulled away. If you read the speech you can see themes that are very popular with today’s left; here are some excerpts, for example:

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that as it was the evil sin of slavery that caused the downfall and destruction of ancient Egypt and Babylon, and of ancient Greece, as well as ancient Rome, so it was the evil sin of colonialism (slavery, nineteenth-century European style) that caused the collapse of the white nations in present-day Europe as world powers. Unbiased scholars and unbiased observers agree that the wealth and power of white Europe has rapidly declined during the nineteen-year period between World War II and today.

So we of this present generation are also witnessing how the enslavement of millions of black people in this country is now bringing White America to her hour of judgment, to her downfall as a respected nation. And even those Americans who are blinded by childlike patriotism can see that it is only a matter of time before White America too will be utterly destroyed by her own sins, and all traces of her former glory will be removed from this planet forever.

But before God can set up his new world, the Muslim world, or world of Islam, which will be established on the principles to truth, peace, and brotherhood, God himself must first destroy this evil Western world, the white world…a wicked world, ruled by a race of devils, that preaches falsehood, practices slavery, and thrives on indecency and immorality. You and I are living in that great Doomsday, the final hour, when the ancient prophets predicted that God himself would appear in person, in the flesh, and with divine power He would bring about the judgement and destruction of this present evil world. …

The white liberals control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. As long as they control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro’s struggle, and they can control the Negro’s so-called revolt. The Negro “revolution” is controlled by these foxy white liberals, by the government itself. But the black revolution is controlled only by God.

The black revolution is the struggle of the nonwhites of this earth against their white oppressors.

It goes on for quite some time in that vein. But the “chickens” part came as part of a question and answer period afterwards. I don’t think there’s any recording of it, but here’s Malcolm X a few months later, attempting to explain his remarks. Again, it’s very familiar stuff:

If you go to YouTube and look at the comments there, they almost all say some version of “Yes, that’s what happened to Charlie Kirk, too.” I’ll give you just a few typical examples, all put up after Kirk was killed:

Charlie Kirk

I thought about this after Charlie Kirk got popped

The chickens appeared in Utah yesterday to greet Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk is all I shall say.

When I heard about Charlie Kirk this was the first thing that came to mind.

“They won’t even admit the knife is there” is basically half of Charlie Kirk’s content

We Know Why we’re all here.

And of course we have so many social media postings, and pundits and politicians, openly saying the same thing about Charlie Kirk’s killing. One popular observation is the idea that it’s fitting that Kirk was killed with a gun, since he supported gun rights and said that defending liberty by supporting the Second Amendment meant – sadly – that some people would be killed by guns. The assassination is generally justified and even applauded by many people on those grounds plus the idea that Kirk was a “hater” – although nothing could be further from the truth.

But plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The post “Chickens coming home” – again appeared first on The New Neo.

Erika Kirk is clearly a remarkable woman, but one would expect that because she was married to a remarkable man.

To even be able to give a public address so soon after her husband’s murder shows tremendous fortitude, especially for a young widow with two small children. But it’s not just that; the content of her speech was also impressive.

You can read the full transcript here. You can find a video here. The speech focuses on many things – religion and one’s purpose in the world, for example – but a goodly portion is devoted to her marriage with Charlie and his message, which is now her message, of what such a marital relationship can and should be. A relevant excerpt on that subject:

The greatest cause in Charlie’s life was trying to revive the American family. When he spoke to young people, he was always eager to tell them about God’s vision for marriage — and how, if they could just dare to live it out, it would enrich every part of their life in the same way it enriched ours.

Someone once asked me how Charlie and I kept our marriage so strong when he was busy traveling.

And our little secret? It was love notes.

Every Saturday, Charlie wrote one for me. He never missed a Saturday.

In every single one of them, he’d tell me what his highlight was for the week, how grateful he was for me and our babies.

And always, at the end, he would ask the most beautiful question:
“Please let me know how I can better serve you as a husband.”

Charlie perfectly understood God’s role for a Christian husband: a man who leads so that he can serve.

To all the men watching around the world — accept Charlie’s challenge and embrace true manhood.

Be strong and courageous for your families.
Love your wives and lead them.
Love your children and protect them.
Be the spiritual head of your home.

But please — be a leader worth following.

Your wife is not your servant.
Your wife is not your employee.
Your wife is not your slave.

She is your helper.

You are not rivals. You are one flesh—working together for the glory of God.

That’s an ideal worth striving for, and isn’t limited to Christian believers. Erika Kirk clearly wants that message to reach young people.

But probably the part of her speech that got the most coverage was this:

Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West—the young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live.

The men wasting their lives on distractions.
The men consumed with resentment, anger, and hate.

Charlie wanted to help them. He wanted them to have a home with Turning Point USA.

When he went onto campus, he was looking to show them a better path—a better life that was right there for the taking.

My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.

That young man.

That young man.

On the cross, our Savior said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

That man—that young man—I forgive him.

I forgive him because it’s what Christ did.
And it’s what Charlie would do.

The answer to hate is not hate.
The answer—we know from the gospel—is love.
Always love.

Love for our enemies.
Love for those who persecute us.

The idea of forgiveness that she is demonstrating in extremely impressive and not the least bit easy. But it is not about law. It is her personal choice, informed by her religion and probably also her desire to set an example of love and not be consumed by hatred. But earthly justice follows different rules – and must.

For many years I have thought deeply about forgiveness. Long before my political change, I balked (and still balk) at the idea that forgiveness is required towards a person who has not apologized or shown any understanding of his or her offenses or desire to change. But yes, forgiveness can nevertheless be given, as a religious or personal choice.

NOTE: I wrote a previous post on the subject of forgiveness that’s very relevant; you can read it here.

The post Erika Kirk’s forgiveness appeared first on The New Neo.

Instapundit today links to a debunking of a conspiracy theory that Charlie Kirk was shot at close range with a gun disguised as a cell phone.

I have to say I have no idea what to do about people who would find such a thing plausible. I don’t know where they get their priors from: maybe the RAND corporation, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are putting something in the water.

That last bit about the vampires putting something in the water is a joke, but it’s one that posits a conspiracy theory to which somebody somewhere probably ascribes, so numerous and strange are these theories.

I’ve written many times before about the propensity of so many humans to come up with such things, but if you read just one of those posts I suggest it be this one. I suggest you read the whole thing. But I want to add what I think is at the root of these belief systems.

One part of it is – as I already mentioned in the linked post – that some generalized distrust of government and official reports (or at least skepticism) is justified by certain lies that officials have told in the past. A good example of this is Russiagate, or their lies about the origins of the COVID virus.

But I want to emphasize something else here, which is that people like to feel that they are smarter than average, and much less gullible than average, and some people do this by rejecting the obvious explanations that are supported by the actual evidence and prefer to latch onto something more obscure and even contradicted by the evidence. Why would that make them feel superior? Because they see themselves as marching to a different drummer, as not being taken in by duplicitous authorities mouthing lies, as being better and more intelligent than the rest of you who are stupid enough and trusting enough to believe in the lying official narrative.

So yes, to believe someone with a gun resembling a cell phone killed Charlie Kirk by firing at close range is preposterous and flies in the face of everything we know about the assassination. But there are always going to be those who reject everything we know and say it’s all (or mostly) lies put out by officials who have some sort of evil agenda to cover up, and that the conspiracy theorists and those of like mind have sussed all of this out and have the inside info – unlike the rest of you naive dupes.

The problem, of course – at least, one problem – is that sometimes there really is a conspiracy and the official word is sometimes a lie. Russiagate was a conspiracy and a lie, for example, and the first COVID origin story – wet markets rather than a lab – was a coverup. It can be challenging to sort these things out. But Oswald killed Kennedy on his own; it’s really not in question any more (see my previous posts on the subject).

And Charlie Kirk was not killed with a gun disguised as a cell phone.

The post The outlandish conspiracy theorists appeared first on The New Neo.

Is your name Neo as in Neo Nazi.
I wouldn’t be shocked anymore.

Anyhow, Tyler was a far right maga.

I await the next Nuremberg Trials. Trump and His admin will judged.

The word “be” is left out in that last line, but I think it’s just from haste rather than any unfamiliarity with the English language.

This message is very typical of trolls. First, the quick insult to me. Then, the simple statement of a popular leftist falsehood, with no need for supporting data. Next, the threat of a reckoning when the left gets into power.

This comment was actually rather mild, as trolls go. And as is also typical, it’s from someone who seems not to have been here before.

There’s a common perception that trolls are paid. I have little doubt that may be true for many. But I think at least as many just do it for the love of trolling.

The idea that Tyler Robinson was MAGA is a piece of leftist propaganda that could be characterized as a classic Big Lie – that is, there’s not a single shred of evidence for it. It’s preposterous, knowing what we know. Why is this the left’s approach? Let me count the ways:

(1) If it’s done in order to troll someone on the right – as with the above comment – it rubs salt into the wound of Kirk’s assassination and isn’t meant to convince. When the audience is the left, however, it is meant to convince, and that is its aim for the most part.

(2) It relies on the cognitive dissonance of many people on the left on learning that Robinson was the epitome of someone who’s been radicalized by the left. On the one hand, the person on the left hearing the news might be happily applauding Kirk’s murder. On the other hand, the fact that the murderer was a leftist goes against the leftist listener’s notion that it is the right that is violent, the right that uses hunting rifles to blow people away. So the perfect solution is to applaud Kirk’s murder while simultaneously believing it was done by a MAGA supporter – which is preposterous and also false, but it resolves the cognitive dissonance. People often eagerly embrace ideas that resolve the unpleasant emotions roused by cognitive dissonance, no matter how wrong or how preposterous those ideas are.

(3) It relies on some people not following the facts at all closely, and plenty of people don’t. Slogans and lies flourish with ignorance.

(4) It relies on some people’s distrust of authorities such as the FBI and local police, and plenty of people feel that way.

I’ve said the idea that Tyler Robinson was MAGA is preposterous. We have way too much evidence to the contrary: the writing on the bullets, the reports of friends and family, the text messages to the roommate/lover, and of course the victim himself – who was a person on the right. But in the absence of the first three of those things it wouldn’t be so utterly preposterous to believe the assassination might be a right-on-right crime. Stranger things have happened – although they happen more often on the left with left-on-left crimes, with the victims seen as insufficiently extremist and/or as rivals for leftist power. As one example, there is the murder of Trotsky on Stalin’s orders. To take another, there’s Malcolm X (whose murder at the hands of the Nation of Islam has – of course – spawned a number of alternate conspiracy theories).

So in general the left doesn’t find it all that odd to think that the murder of Kirk represented a power struggle on the right – at least, they could entertain that notion for a short while. But after the first day, it would be impossible to support the idea unless one was either woefully ignorant of the facts that had emerged or willfully lying (perhaps including lying to oneself), or both.

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But it’s perfectly okay for networks to drop shows if they don’t like the content and/or if they’re losing money. Kimmel’s show was already in big financial trouble, and was probably not going to be renewed. What’s more, by the time FCC head Carr made his statements (and I wish he hadn’t made them, because they were unnecessary under the circumstances and also gave the left ammunition for their accusations), the affiliates were already objecting to what Kimmel had said and saying they’d drop him, which put even more financial pressure on ABC to get rid of him even before his contract was up.

Plus, the FCC is actually charged with regulating networks – and there’s a law (unenforced for decades) about equal time for political speech. Some information on that:

Mollie and Mark Hemingway made this point: The federal government really does have a statutory regulatory power over broadcast networks. The airwaves are regulated by the government because we can’t just have six stations all attempting to broadcast on the same frequency in the same area, or else they’d all interfere with each other. So the federal government assigns these valuable spectrum rights to companies, but with restrictions and requirements. One is equal time, and Brenden Carr says he’s going to enforce that requirement.

More here [emphasis mine]:

… Carr makes a very important distinction about jurisdiction. The FCC issues licenses for broadcasters only pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 and other legislation, ie, those whose signal goes out over the public airwaves. As Carr notes (and as I noted briefly last night), the FCC does not have jurisdiction over cable channels such as Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, or others. The FCC has absolutely nothing to do with online outlets either, nor newspapers. …

Most of the offensive material they would normally police has moved to cable or the Internet. The irony of this is that the FCC has largely stood down while the Biden administration essentially created its own OfCom [censorship operation] at the State Department and HHS, funding “misinformation” policing that targeted mainly the online and cable-channel markets. The federal government created censorship regimes on platforms where they had no jurisdiction, while allowing broadcasters to exploit government-provided monopolies with carte blanche on blatantly false content with clear partisan and malicious intent.

Now, one can argue that the FCC really should use a more laissez-faire approach to enforcing the “public interest” clause. However, one can’t argue that the authority doesn’t exist and hasn’t been enforced in the past.

The Biden administration pressured social media to censor the right and statements questioning the administration’s COVID policies, as Mark Zuckerberg has testified.

As the headline to this article says:

So Now the Left Is Against Government Extortion to Suppress Speech?
Congratulations, Democrats. You’re now living in the world you created.

The equal time requirement was never repealed, just ignored.

Also, we have this:

The Commission’s [FCC’s] prohibition against the broadcast of hoaxes is set forth at Section 73.1217 of the Commission’s rules, 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217. This rule prohibits broadcast licensees or permittees from broadcasting false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if:
— the licensee knows this information is false;
— it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and
— broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm.

Kimmel was giving out false information about a crime, and that information could cause public harm (although it doesn’t seem to have actually caused harm in any provable way). You’d also have to prove that Kimmel knew it was false, which could be difficult. So I don’t think this rule would apply.

More here:

First, a summary of what happened. Kimmel during his show’s opening monologue on September 15, 2025 blatantly lied, claiming that Kirk’s murderer was a conservative and part of Trump’s MAGA movement. Not only was this statement fundamentally untrue, based all the available evidence, it was an evil slander against the millions of people who voted for Donald Trump.

The uproar against Kimmel was immediate and gigantic. Within hours local affiliates told ABC they would not air Jimmy Kimmel Live!. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said that if ABC did not take action to publicly correct the record its FCC license could be revoked.

It is important to point out that Kimmel did not lose his job because of government action — though that action was threatened. He got fired because numerous ABC affiliate stations told the network that they would no longer air his show. These local stations decided they had had enough of this slander culture. It had to stop.

ABC was thus forced to take action. It knew that if it didn’t address the concerns of its local affiliates, its entire network could collapse.

Nor is Kimmel’s removal an unjustified action similar to the hundreds of blacklisting cases I have documented since 2020. Kimmel wasn’t fired because he stated an opinion based on reasonable facts — the typical situation when conservatives were blacklisted for the past decade. He was fired for spreading a lie about current events that could be easily verified to be false in only a few seconds of research on line. And the lie was expressly designed to defame Kimmel’s political opponents in the most vile manner.

However, Kimmel didn’t actually say point blank that the killer was MAGA. He said this: “The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kimmel was strongly implying the killer is MAGA and that saying the killer is anything other than MAGA is false. The implicit assumption – no other interpretation makes sense – is that of course the killer is MAGA. That is something for which there is zero evidence and goes against everything police and FBI had said at that point and thereafter. But he may have phrased it that way in an attempt to avoid exactly what happened.

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