Charlie Kirk Suspect was "Extremely Online" | Pivot

1. 0:04 – 1:07

   Emergency episode: Arrest in Charlie Kirk assassination case

   1. KSKara Swisher0:04

      Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

   2. SGScott Galloway0:09

      And I'm Scott Galloway.

   3. KSKara Swisher0:11

      So, we have a special, uh, emergency, uh, video episode because of, uh, Utah authorities have arrested a suspect accused of assassinating, uh, conservative activist Charlie Kirk after a two-day manhunt. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was taken into custody late Thursday and is believed to have acted alone. Officials say Robinson made incriminating statements to relatives and sent Discord messages about retrieving a rifle from a drop point. Uh, investigators also say they found, uh, on messages, messages on the ammunition, the bullets, including anti-fascist slogans and references to video games and online memes, and also an anti-gay, uh, remark. Uh, Robinson is registered voter in Utah, but doesn't have a party affiliation. His family is, seems to be Republican, uh, Christian, uh, gun-oriented, uh, as many people in Utah are. Uh, Scott, what are your initial thoughts when you heard about this suspect?

2. 1:07 – 1:58

   Political opportunism and premature blame from prominent figures

   1. SGScott Galloway1:07

      Well, my initial thoughts are how disappointed Representative Mace, President Trump, and Jesse Waters-

   2. KSKara Swisher1:11

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SGScott Galloway1:11

      ... might be that it's not a transgender, uh, woman with blue hair working on immigration for AOC.

   4. KSKara Swisher1:18

      Yeah. Exactly.

   5. SGScott Galloway1:19

      They have all promised us that in exchange for this needless death, that they were gonna declare war. And so my question is this, are they going to declare war on young, white, heterosexual men who come from Mormon families who traditionally have voted Republican or gun owners?

   6. KSKara Swisher1:35

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SGScott Galloway1:35

      So, the notion somehow that they are trying to pin this on, quote unquote, "The radical-"

   8. KSKara Swisher1:40

      Yeah.

   9. SGScott Galloway1:40

      ... left-

   10. KSKara Swisher1:41

       Yeah.

   11. SGScott Galloway1:41

       ... is just so insane and... Well, I'll let you respond, and then I have some thoughts about solutions.

   12. KSKara Swisher1:49

       Well, here's the deal. Um, uh, I, I, I think saying something before we knew anything, uh, I was hoping, you know what I mean? We all are, like, hoping that this-

   13. SGScott Galloway1:57

       Right.

3. 1:58 – 2:58

   Kara’s callouts: Trump, Jesse Watters, Nancy Mace, and Mike Lee

   1. KSKara Swisher1:58

      ... doesn't give them what they need. But particularly, two people, that, well, besides President Trump, who absolutely abrogated every one of his responsibilities as the Commander in Chief by immediately accusing people of things, and then front-loading the entire thing. He gave a, uh, speech this mor- I mean, uh, interview this morning on Fox News that was insane, actually. I've ne- I've, I've always thought that he is batshit crazy, but this was, even by those standards, it was batshit crazy. Um, and it was, uh, it was violent. It was, it was vi- uh, talking about, uh, war, et cetera, et cetera. I found two people in part- two, well now three, Mike Lee, the Utah s- uh, senator, um, three people are just terrible. Jesse Waters of Fox News. You know, if, if Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC, he should be fired from Fox. Secondly, the way he talked about war, world war. Um, uh, Nancy Mace calling it a tranny killer is, as usual, as unhinged as ever. Uh, listen,

4. 2:58 – 4:09

   “Extremely online”: Meme culture, Discord, and unclear ideological signals

   1. KSKara Swisher2:58

      this is... We don't know why this guy did this. We don't actually know a lot about him. We know his family background. We know, you know, obviously, uh, a little bit about him from what's written, but really, we don't. All we know is one thing that I would say, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is that he's extremely online. He is obviously-

   2. SGScott Galloway3:17

      100%.

   3. KSKara Swisher3:17

      ... s- the, the stuff on the bullets. Anyone who has any m- minute... I was trying to figure out is he Groiper, which is sort of the Nick Fuentes gang. I can't tell.

   4. SGScott Galloway3:27

      Right.

   5. KSKara Swisher3:27

      There's so many different memes going on here.

   6. SGScott Galloway3:29

      Yeah.

   7. KSKara Swisher3:29

      And they're all dank, by the way, so I couldn't even say. Was it Nick Fuentes? Is he... You know, there was a bit of ANTIFA in there. There was all kinds of nasty shit, um, that he was... But I do know he was steeped in dank memes of the internet that are, uh, radicalizing young people, you know? Especially, mostly men, uh, mostly young men.

   8. SGScott Galloway3:50

      That's right.

   9. KSKara Swisher3:51

      Mostly young white men, right? Um, and I think it's really troubling. And, uh, you know, you've just r- you're about to come out with a book about this, but, so I'd love to hear solutions. But it's eminently clear this kid was online, deeply and unfortunately online, I would say.

5. 4:09 – 5:34

   Scott’s two big solutions: gun reform and reducing algorithmic radicalization

   1. SGScott Galloway4:09

      There are two fairly obvious commonsense solutions that unfortunately cost a lot of money or diminish the shareholder value of key companies that are driving our entire economy, uh, and get in the way of the political narrative of special interest groups in charge right now. The first and most obvious solution is that Australia and the UK just don't have cultures that much different than us. The last time they had a mass shooting, they put in place sensible gun control. What do you know? No mass shootings. Since Charlie Kirk was murdered, more people have been shot and killed in the US than will be shot and killed in the UK over the next year. Uh, uh, UK will lose 30 people to gun violence in the next 12 months. We lose 120 people a day.

   2. KSKara Swisher4:46

      Yeah, that's a lot. Their numbers just

   3. NANarrator4:47

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SGScott Galloway4:47

      ... right? So, if, if you wanna take down political violence and all gun violence, you just have to have sensible gun reform. And we like to think that we live in a democracy. No we don't. We have a passive majority that is bested by well-organized special interest groups. Gun control. Number two, every one of these political assassinations, almost all heroic acts of people trying to regain social capital through heroics a- acts of violence, are young men. And 40% of the market cap of the S&P in our entire economy right now... The US is increasingly, it used to be a platform for prosperity and rights. It's become increasingly a platform for shareholder value, full stop. 40% of the S&P is now 10 companies, and the primary objective of those 10 companies-

   5. KSKara Swisher5:34

      Mm-hmm.

6. 5:34 – 6:45

   Isolation, disappearing ‘third spaces,’ and the young men crisis

   1. SGScott Galloway5:34

      ... is to create more and more engagement, and more and more time online. I get that these are not malicious bad people, but the algorithms they have programmed have figured out that enragement equals engagement. And when you have men sequestering from work because of remote work, when you have men spending more and more time online, finding Reddit, when you have algorithms that want to convince them that their enemy is a Republican or a Democrat or an immigrant, as opposed to saying, "Oh no, actually your enemy is the CCP or Russians pouring over the border of Ukraine." And they're not going to church. They're not, they're not establishing romantic relationships. They sequester from their family. And when you put an orca killer whale in a tank alone, it goes crazy. When you, when you, when you leave a dog alone, it goes crazy. And when you take...... an individual who has a profit incentive behind him of the godlike technology commanded by these companies and convince that person they don't need to have relationships with other people, when young men don't have guardrails, they go down rabbit holes and they get radicalized.

   2. KSKara Swisher6:35

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. SGScott Galloway6:35

      We need gun control and we need third spaces and we need more involvement in young men's lives, or this is only gonna get worse.

   4. KSKara Swisher6:42

      This-

   5. SGScott Galloway6:42

      And we need regulation against these companies.

7. 6:45 – 7:15

   Kara: Beware misinformation, wait for verified reporting

   1. KSKara Swisher6:45

      From what I can tell, this kid had a very close family, by the way, FYI. And wh- which is interesting, but one of the things that was, is coming out of some of the reporting, and I urge people, there is so much misinformation out there, you do not know what is happening with this kid. We don't know anything yet, at all. And don't believe, including, do not believe the president of the United States on what he says about this. He's inaccurate, okay? Don't believe a lot of your leaders about this. Wait until we get good information about what happened with this kid.

8. 7:15 – 8:46

   De-escalation and empathy without scapegoating

   1. KSKara Swisher7:15

      Secondly, um, he's, uh, what's really critically important here is to calm the fuck down, right? The, the, the, the instant trying to ... Now, I understand. Let me just take, give a minute of empathy. I understand that these people have lost a friend, okay, in a terrible, murderous way. But it doesn't give them, as leaders, rights to take it out on the rest of us. And taking it out on trans people, taking it out on, n- without any knowledge is incredibly irresponsible and not what we deserve as citizens of this country. And we ourselves are responsible too. We cannot listen to this. I don't know what, uh, whether this kid is, he's definitely not, uh, uh, like a Democratic liberal, that's for sure. But what I, we don't know anything about him. What it feels like is that he's a nihilist. That's what it feels like. And too many kids are feeling this way because of what Scott was just saying, was, uh, uh, being extremely online and feeling isolated and feeling a rage, and then having access to a weapon, having enormous access to weapons. Look, I, I, I, we... Gun control does not mean not being able to have guns. It means not being able to have this many guns in the hands of people who, who really don't have an ability to figure out what they're doing. And so, I don't know what made this kid climb up on that roof and kill someone. It's just an astonishing leap, uh, but it cannot keep happening and it does keep happening. And I, I urge everyone to

9. 8:46 – 9:20

   “Touch grass”: Get offline and reclaim agency from engagement machines

   1. KSKara Swisher8:46

      calm down, and again, Spencer Cox actually gave the best speech here, again, is go touch some grass. I can't believe I heard "touch grass" from a U- a Republican Utah Sen- uh, governor, but touch grass. Get out there. Get offline. Stop being angry, scrolling incessantly. These companies do not care about you. I keep saying that. And Scott doesn't say they're malicious. I think it's become malicious, whether they are or not. Get offline. They're here to make money off of you, and it's time for us to, to, to take control of ourselves. Scott, you finish up.

10. 9:20 – 10:27

    Scott: Social media is worse than cigarettes—harm differs by gender

    1. SGScott Galloway9:20

       Well, Marc Benioff compared social media to cigarette companies, but when you smoke a pack of Marlboros, you then don't decide to self-harm or get radicalized and convince yourself the right thing to do is to take up violence against others. If, if we continue to let, uh, guns be everywhere and have social media platforms that have godlike technology and we have these Paleolithic institutions, uh, subject to regulatory capture, not able to regulate them, we're gonna take more and more young people offline. And what social media does to young girls is it convinces them to harm themselves, and what it does to young men is it convinces them or gives them license to harm themselves and harm others. This is gonna get worse unless we face obvious but expensive solutions that, unfortunately, will take the value of these 10 companies from 40% of the S&P to 38%. And our platforms, uh, armed with lobbyists, and our government have decided that that 38% versus 40% is worth the cost of violence.

11. 10:27 – 11:07

    Closing: ‘We are at war’—but with violence, incentives, and dysfunction

    1. KSKara Swisher10:27

       Absolutely. We are at war, but we're not at the war you think we're in. We are, we've got to put a stop to this and bring peace to this country. It's just, I'm not doing thoughts and prayers. I'm not doing, "Let's be peaceful." This is going to take an enormous amount of effort and pugnacity on the behalf of a lot of people, and it's, it's long past time, uh, to, to put, uh, put an end to this and get it out of our bloodstream. All right, uh, that's the show. Thanks for watching this special episode, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, go out and touch grass please. I, I demand it.

    2. SGScott Galloway11:02

       (laughs) Great advice. Thanks, Kara.

Episode duration: 11:07