By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Reuters on Saturday all tried to link Nick Fuentes and Groypers to the Charlie Kirk shooter on the flimsiest of pretexts — all while the authorities were insisting the alleged gunman was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”
The WSJ and NYT argued Fuentes and the Groypers are connected to the accused shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, because there’s a random “Groyper” playlist on Spotify that contains a “version” of the song “Bella Ciao” — lyrics from which were allegedly inscribed on one of Robinson’s bullets.
Bella Ciao is an old Italian song of unclear origins that became associated with anti-fascists over the years. The song is regularly featured in TikTok videos and has well over 1 billion views on YouTube.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox personally told the WSJ in an exclusive statement, “It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”
Nonetheless, in the next sentence they try to link the shooting to Fuentes.
You could likely pick any public figure out of a hat and find one of their fans has a playlist containing the song, but they only attempted to link Fuentes and the Groypers to the shooting.
The New York Times printed similar:
The most egregious smears were from Reuters, who ran quotes from Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, basely declaring that “the symbology found on the bullet casings suggests the shooter had affiliation with the so-called Groyper movement, associated with far-right activist and commentator Nick Fuentes.”
“It’s an eclectic ideological movement marked by video game memes, anti-gay, Nick Fuentes white supremacy, irony,” Kleinfeld said. “It certainly leans right, but it is quite eclectic.”
Reuters continued:
Kleinfeld said that, in some respects, “the ideological beliefs of the shooter don’t matter. What matters is how they’re taken by society. And if our society chooses to keep pointing fingers, whether the person turns out to be right, left or just unstable, then the violence will grow from the pointing of fingers, regardless of the act itself.”
Kleinfeld said most perpetrators of political violence were not clearly on one ideological side or another, but typically driven by “a hodgepodge of conspiracy beliefs and mental illness.”
As I noted in a viral post on X, Kleinfeld first falsely claimed the inscriptions on the bullet casings were linked to Groypers and Fuentes, then said the shooter’s ideology doesn’t matter because “violence will grow from the pointing of fingers.”
By her own standard, she is encouraging violence against Fuentes through her finger-pointing!
As I further reported on X, Rachel Kleinfeld went on PBS News on Thursday to say the most dangerous thing our leaders can be doing right now is pointing the finger at the other side and blaming them for political violence.
Two days later, she went on Reuters to point the finger at Nick Fuentes and the Groypers.
Kleinfeld further exposed her bias by going on The Bulwark and telling host Sarah Longwell that she hopes the shooter is not a leftist.
“I sure hope it was not from the left—that would be better,” Kleinfeld said. “I hope this wasn’t from the left, for all sorts of good reasons.”
Longwell had to help her clean up her remarks.
“My followers and I are currently being framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk by the mainstream media based on literally zero evidence,” said early Saturday on X. “After the Left gunned him down, they celebrated and justified it. They said I was next. Now they are blaming me. These people are pure evil.”
After I exposed Kleinfeld’s blatant bias, Reuters on Saturday evening pulled her quotes attempting to link Fuentes and Groypers to the shooting.
They have yet to issue a formal correction on the piece.
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are still sticking with their smears.