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The Police Found Messages After Kirk’s Killing. What They Mean Is Unclear.
The messages relied on an enigmatic, coded communication style used by the habitually online.
When investigators in the killing of Charlie Kirk found a bolt-action rifle near the site where he was shot on a Utah campus, they said they also found casings scrawled with what seemed to be mysterious messages.
One read, “hey fascist! CATCH! (up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols),” according to an affidavit filed on Friday in a Utah court.
If the reference to fascism appeared to be straightforward, the arrows were most likely understandable only to certain subsets of gamers. They seem to refer to the popular video game Helldivers 2 and its sequence of controller moves to unleash a powerful bomb.
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Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp.
Aric Toler is a reporter on the Visual Investigations team at The Times who uses emerging techniques of discovery to analyze open source information.
Charlie Kirk Shooting
Connecting With Young Men: With his right-wing group Turning Point USA, Mr. Kirk engaged controversial topics. Some were inspired. Others found his views appalling.
’Something Is Wrong’: In interviews from across the country, people expressed fear and wariness, and said that the country seemed to be spinning out of control.
Condemning One Side: In the wake of Mr. Kirk’s killing, President Trump captured the raw sentiment of his conservative base. But he addressed only part of the alarming cycle of violence in America.
The Last Question: The last person to speak to Mr. Kirk before his assassination was a liberal TikToker who disagreed with Kirk on just about everything — except for their shared belief in free speech and raw political debate.
Calls for Unity: Joint statements from groups representing young Republicans and Democrats and messages of tolerance from prominent figures stood out amid the public discourse.
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