AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

The alleged shooter of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was formally charged Tuesday by Utah prosecutors. Twenty-two-year-old Tyler Robinson faces charges of aggravated murder and six other counts. Prosecutors say they’ll seek the death penalty.

On Tuesday, prosecutors released the transcripts of text messages Robinson allegedly sent to his roommate, who’s also his romantic partner, that he sent after the shooting. In one of the alleged messages, Robinson wrote about Charlie Kirk, quote, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” unquote. Robinson also texted his roommate after the shooting that he had left a message under his keyboard. The message reportedly read, quote, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it,” unquote.

The messages showed the roommate was shocked that Robinson was the assassin. The roommate now is cooperating fully with investigators, according to the Utah governor.

In the wake of Kirk’s murder a week ago, the Trump administration has vowed a crackdown on the political left, but the motives and ideology of Robinson, whether or not he acted alone, are still mostly a subject of speculation. Some of the first evidence released in the case were inscriptions written on bullets found with a rifle. This is Utah Governor Spencer Cox reading some of the inscriptions.

GOV. SPENCER COX: Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read, “Hey fascist! [exclamation point] Catch! [exclamation point]” up arrow symbol, right arrow and — symbol and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing read, “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!” And a third unfired casing read, “If you Read This, You Are GAY Lmao.”

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by senior writer at Wired, Makena Kelly. Her latest piece is headlined “Bullets Found After the Charlie Kirk Shooting Carried Messages. Here’s What They Mean.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Makena. If you can start off just by explaining — I mean, yesterday, also in the questioning of the FBI Director Kash Patel, there was this whole discussion about Discord, and he says that everyone that he was communicating with — you know, apparently, Tyler Robinson said on Discord, “I hate to tell you, I’m the one who did this.” They’re going to investigate all the people he was talking to. But Discord, the deep web — can you explain to people who are not familiar with all of this, and then what these messages — how they may have been misinterpreted and what they mean?

MAKENA KELLY: Sure, yeah. So, Discord has become a huge messaging platform, especially for young people. It operates similarly to Slack, if you use Slack at all. So, there’s options to create a server, which is what your company would use, and then separate little channels divided into topics. So, a Discord channel operates in the same way. There are different channels, oftentimes for groups of friends. Like, the one that it looks like Robinson was involved in had a channel for probably memes, had a channel for like a general discussion, things like that.

And so, the people who use Discord, it’s a variety of folks for a variety of different purposes. They could just be kind of a friendly group chat, something that maybe you would have on your messages app on your phone, with a little bit more direction or topic and some more niche focuses. But also Discords can be used for a bunch of different things. I have friends in the New York area, actually, who use Discord for political organizing and for bringing folks that they meet, you know, on the streets or helping organize voting drives and things like that.

And so, it’s not necessarily a political platform. It is a very, like, politically neutral platform that people use because it serves a certain purpose. But that doesn’t get away from the fact that people who are involved, deeply involved and deeply, you know, indebted to the internet, who get on it every day, who maybe are accessing stranger forms than you or I do every day, they’re able to organize and bring people from those maybe deeper, darker places of the internet, bring them to Discord and be in touch with them, basically at any moment every day.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Makena, FBI Director Kash Patel, during an interview on Fox News, said that Tyler Robinson, quote, “subscribed to left-wing ideology.” Can you talk about this idea that Robinson’s motives may not be rooted in traditional extremism, but constructed from randomness and irony of online culture?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah, if you even look at the documents that came out yesterday, the charging documents for Robinson, in the text exchange that they show, these transcripts, he specifically notes that, like, “I will die laughing,” or something like that, “if Fox News reads some of the memes that I have inscribed on these bullets.” So, all of these memes themselves are not inherently political. “Hey fascist!” sure, that can be read, you know, as maybe being a bit leftist. It can also be seen to be maybe ironic. And until we actually get some idea of the communities that Robinson was involved in, then we’ll get a better idea of what he ascribed to. But these memes are everywhere online. You would have people using them ironically, people using them perhaps seriously. But we just don’t have enough information to go off of right now to really make any real decision on what it is that Robinson ascribed to.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Makena, can you talk about video game culture and the up and down arrows and how they are being misread, and how you talked about particular games they’re from, as opposed to a leftist ideology?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah. So, the first bullet casing that they mentioned in that press conference said, “Hey fascist! Catch!” And then it had an up, and then a right, and then three downward arrows. At the beginning of this investigation, a lot of folks were saying that those three downward arrows were an anti-fascist symbol, but when you add those additional first two arrows, it’s actually just a code that you would input when playing a game called Helldivers 2, which is a satirical anti-fascist game where you’re playing as what you — what the characters believe to be anti-fascists, but you really are the fascists. So it’s just a game that folks play.

The bomb that that code calls for is like this thing called an Eagle 500-kilogram bomb or something. And it’s a meme in the community of Helldivers, where it’s seen as — when you call that down, it is in a comically excessive bomb to drop. It will just basically — in the game, it’ll solve all of your problems, and you don’t have to think about anything else.

And so, instead of thinking — instead of looking at that bullet casing and saying, like, “Oh, this is a leftist ideology, right?” you could look at it coming from the community around the folks who play this game, be like, “Oh, I’m doing something perhaps comically excessive in assassinating this man,” fortunately, and trying to send that sign — right? — trying to make it a joke and a meme, something that we kind of saw him reference in the charging documents yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will, of course, continue to follow this case. I think the funeral, next Sunday. Makena Kelly, I want to thank you for being with us, senior writer at Wired. We’ll link to your piece, as you focus on the intersection of politics, power and technology.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Memphis, Tennessee, where President Trump has authorized sending the National Guard. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: That’s Roger Waters performing “We Shall Overcome,” accompanied by Alexander Rohatyn on cello in the Democracy Now! studio.