The assassination of the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which took place on 10 September 2025 during a public event at Utah Valley University, sent shockwaves through American and international public opinion. The politically symbolic stature of the victim – a key figure of the youthful alt-right – initially led many to interpret the event within the familiar framework of an ideological attack in an atmosphere of acute polarisation. Yet, a more thorough examination of the perpetrator’s profile and trajectory suggests a more complex reality: we are confronted with a troubling product of the contemporary cultural and technological ecosystem, where political sociology, digital culture, ideological extremism, and processes of self-radicalisation intersect.

The alleged perpetrator, a 22-year-old named Tyler Robinson, does not correspond to the archetype of the radical militant affiliated with a traditional extremist organisation. On the contrary, his radicalisation appears to have unfolded largely online – across social media, forums, and even the shadowy recesses of the web – in a process of self-indoctrination mediated by memes and virtual communities. This article approaches the Kirk/Robinson case through an interdisciplinary lens that bridges political sociology, digital culture, and the study of ideological extremism. It is structured to move from an analysis of the perpetrator’s personal background and trajectory of online radicalisation to a broader reflection on the contemporary dynamics of self-radicalisation. The conclusion aims to offer original theoretical insights alongside practical policy recommendations, with particular attention to the potential role of Artificial Intelligence in anticipating and preventing comparable phenomena.

Profile of the Perpetrator

Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old American from Utah, grew up in a provincial town within a seemingly ordinary family well integrated into the local community. His parents – MAGA-oriented Republicans and practising members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) – raised him in a traditionally conservative environment. From adolescence, Tyler displayed familiarity with firearms: family photographs circulated on social media depict him smiling beside rifles and machine guns during visits to shooting ranges or patriotic events. At the same time, like many of his Generation Z peers, he led an active digital life, dividing his time between online gaming, social platforms, and virtual communities. Academically gifted, in 2021 he was admitted on a scholarship to Utah State University, but abandoned his studies after just one semester. He subsequently enrolled in a technical training programme in electrical engineering at Dixie Technical College in St George, returning to his hometown and living once again with his family.

It was during this transitional period, between 2022 and 2025, that acquaintances and relatives began to observe a gradual change in him. Robinson became increasingly politicised in his views, exhibiting unusual verbal aggression towards public figures and topical issues. According to testimonies provided to investigators, the evening before the attack Tyler expressed, during a family dinner, profound contempt for Charlie Kirk and what he represented, describing the latter’s ultra-conservative stances as intolerable. This explicit animosity towards a single political target – voiced only hours before acting – suggests that in Robinson’s mind Kirk had already been demonised as a symbolic enemy. Yet it is important to note that, despite such radicalisation of opinion, Robinson was not affiliated with any known extremist group or movement, nor did he have a criminal record: his extremism appears largely self-fashioned and devoid of formal organisational ties.

The attack on the university campus was carried out with remarkable composure and planning, revealing both technical proficiency and methodical premeditation. Investigations revealed that Robinson had visited the site two days earlier (Tuesday, 8 September) for a careful reconnaissance: arriving in a sports car, he had scouted the Utah Valley University buildings, identifying a strategically elevated vantage point. At 12:20 on Wednesday, 10 September, during the outdoor “Prove Me Wrong” event in which Charlie Kirk was debating with students under a tent on campus, Robinson executed his plan. Positioned on the roof of an adjacent building (the Losee Center), approximately 200 metres away, he aimed and fired a single high-powered rifle shot (a .30-06 Mauser bolt-action), striking Kirk fatally in the neck. In front of hundreds of shocked onlookers, the conservative activist collapsed, while the assassin fled. Robinson descended from the rooftop and managed to escape amidst the chaos, leaving behind the murder weapon and other evidence in a nearby wooded area. In this improvised hiding place, investigators later recovered the rifle, wrapped in a towel, along with several unexploded cartridges bearing strange inscriptions.

Robinson was apprehended within 48 hours, following an intense manhunt. The decisive factor was the cooperation of his own family: his father, recognising him in the suspect images released by federal authorities, contacted the local sheriff through a family friend, facilitating the FBI’s intervention. Concurrently, forensic evidence collected at the scene (hand and footprint impressions, biological traces) corroborated the identification. At the time of his arrest (Friday, 12 September), Robinson offered no resistance nor a clear confession. His profile thus resembles that of an atypical “lone wolf”: a young man without known accomplices, acting on his own with lethal determination, outside any organised terrorist structure.

A particularly revealing detail regarding the perpetrator’s psyche and cultural references comes from the inscriptions carved into his bullet casings. Contrary to expectation, these did not proclaim direct ideological slogans (no explicit political mottos or partisan references), but instead consisted of phrases and symbols drawn from internet culture and the meme universe. For instance, one casing bore the provocative phrase “If you read this you are gay, LMAO” – a puerile insult common in jocular online contexts; another displayed “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this”, a meme reference linked to the furry subculture, evidently intended mockingly; others reportedly contained verses from Bella ciao (the Italian partisan song) and even commands from the science-fiction military videogame Helldivers 2, rendered as arrow sequences. This eclectic mix of references – from gamer jargon to antifascist hymns, passing through niche memes – formed a sort of communicative “signature” deliberately left by Robinson at the scene. The interpretation of such coded messages is complex: they appear to indicate that the perpetrator sought to speak to an online audience of initiates, almost in pursuit of posthumous approval or complicity from the digital communities that had inspired him, rather than broadcasting a traditional political message. In other words, Robinson conceived Kirk’s assassination not only as the physical elimination of his target, but also as a mediatised performance infused with internet symbolism, intended to be deciphered and debated within extremist and trolling circles. This observation delineates a psychological trait of ludic nihilism: real violence fused with elements of play and toxic irony, signalling a distorted perception of reality in which murder becomes just another extreme meme to be delivered to the viral economy of the web.

Online Radicalisation and the Dark Web

The path that transformed Tyler Robinson from a disaffected youth into a political assassin constitutes an emblematic case of online radicalisation in the absence of traditional recruitment structures. Multiple indicators gathered by investigators confirm that the 22-year-old immersed his daily life in the most obscure and problematic digital communities. For example, it emerged that Discord – a messaging and VoIP platform popular among gamers – was one of the channels through which Robinson discussed aspects of his plan: in chats with his roommate, he alluded to the “pickup point” for his rifle, the disguise used to access the campus, and even the inscriptions prepared on his bullets. Yet Discord was only the tip of the iceberg. Utah Governor Spencer Cox publicly disclosed that Robinson’s friends and acquaintances had noticed his immersion in “a deep and dark culture of Reddit and other obscure corners of the Internet.” The expression “dark internet” suggests an incursion beyond the visible web: Robinson had ventured into the less regulated recesses of cyberspace, where extremist content and radical subcultures proliferate. In practice, his warped ideological education took shape while navigating anonymous forums, imageboards, closed groups on social platforms, and very likely the dark web proper – that sphere of sites accessible only through anonymisation technologies such as Tor, often serving as a haven for illicit or extremist activity.

In this context, the dark web functioned as both an ideological ecosystem and a catalyst for violence. It provides a fertile environment for radicalisation for at least two reasons: it guarantees anonymity and secrecy, allowing users to express and share extremist views without fear of legal or reputational consequences; and it congregates a heterogeneous array of extreme groups and narratives that, despite disparate origins, end up contaminating one another. Hidden dark web forums may host supremacist far-right factions, anti-system anarchists, conspiracy fanatics, apologists of violence for its own sake, and other deviant ideological profiles, coexisting and interacting. This creates a radical melting pot in which traditional ideological boundaries blur: allegiance is no longer to a well-defined political orthodoxy, but rather to a shared ethos of rejecting social norms and exalting brute force as a means of self-assertion. Within such extreme virtual communities – genuine digital echo chambers – hatred and resentment are continually amplified. Vulnerable or frustrated individuals find mutual validation there: violence, initially hypothetical or fantastical, becomes normalised and even romanticised through constant peer encouragement.

(This article will be continued in Part II, where we will further explore the hybrid nature of Robinson’s radicalisation, introduce the concept of nihilistic-memetic extremism, and consider policy responses and the preventive role of Artificial Intelligence.)

References – Part I

Conway, M. (2017) ‘Determining the role of the internet in violent extremism and terrorism: Six suggestions for progressing research’. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 40(1), pp. 77–98.

Hoffman, B., Ware, J. and Shapiro, E. (2020) ‘Assessing the threat of incel violence’. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 43(7), pp. 565–587.

Scrivens, R., Gill, P. and Conway, M. (2020) ‘The role of the internet in right-wing extremist radicalization: What we know and what we need to learn’. Terrorism and Political Violence, 32(5), pp. 1009–1026.

Warzel, C. (2025) ‘Something is very wrong online’. The Atlantic, September.

Scrivens, R., Conway, M. and Davies, G. (2024) Data collection in online terrorism and extremism research. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

UNICRI (2024) Beneath the Surface: Terrorist and Violent Extremist Use of the Dark Web and Cybercrime-as-a-Service. United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, June 2024.

National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) (2024) Memes as an Online Weapon: Undermining and Far from Recognisable. The Hague: Government of the Netherlands.