The Internet Radicalization Engine is Coming for Sport
What begins in the algorithmic warrens of online subcultures may not stay there.
Last Wednesday, internet personality and conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
His murder, like all murder, is tragic and a disaster. His death is a horrific loss for his family and another symptom of a deeper, worrying trend.
Kirk’s assassination was designed for social media. He was hosting a campus debate with multiple phones streaming as he was killed. Each video became a vector from which the moment was transmitted, ensuring maximum dissemination in a grotesque apotheosis of how the internet’s toxic dynamics have blurred into real-world violence.
Social media decay permeates every aspect of this event. From the memes and internet slogans the assassin wrote onto the bullet casings, to the online turning some sites into tribes of thuggish gangs, threatening death and cancelation upon each other. It’s brainrot all the way down.1
I woke up Saturday morning feeling anxious about how the internet has become an engine for radicalization.
Some of my anxiety is generational: the memes and the internet subcultures the shooter referenced are bewilderingly alien. See for example how much sense you can make of this Polygon article about Helldivers 2, the video game cheat code referenced on one of the bullet casings. It reveals a warren of bizarre identity and ideological subcultures, reified and amplified through algorithmic bias toward engagement, which elevates the loudest, the most literal-minded, the most reductive, and the most inciting.
My other anxiety revolved, paradoxically, around how familiar those same engines appear. Last week felt another real-world reckoning of two decades of digital systems that began when Facebook unveiled its News Feed in September, 2006.
I came of age at that liminal moment.
I was an adolescent right as the phone-scratch tones of dial-up gave way to broadband. By high school, I spent hours chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger at the family computer, putzing around Ebaumsworld’s celebrity soundboards and flash videos.
Being a runner, I eventually found LetsRun.com and its message boards. LetsRun of the 2000s was tame compared with today’s social media, but the boards had an edge. Mostly populated by young, anonymous men, they were and remain prickly—every post vulnerable to fly-by sniping or shitposting from insecure D2-type guys, leaving comments in between lectures and wank sessions.2
I lurked and occasionally posted, but never got too sucked in because the boards felt so distant from actual competition and sociability in the real world. Even in college, when testosterone and tempers ran hot, relationships with running rivals were almost always respectful, even friendly. Sure, we wanted to beat the shit out of each other on the racecourse. But that never went beyond the finish line, where handshakes and backslaps were the order of the day. No matter the kit on your torso, dropping a “Nice job, man” to finishers around you was good etiquette.
That started to change when the Facebook News Feed kicked into gear. In the years between 2010 and 2022, many of us, myself included, started making our personal politics clear on social media. Looking back, I regret many of my posts. They were stupid attempts to be clever in the comments by riffing on culture war topics, or sharing some dumb article with acerbic or partisan commentary.
I was trying to win in a casino. The house won my attention and I gained nothing except alienation from friends.
I think about one of my high school running rivals, Brendon, who lived in a nearby town. We raced each other in cross country and track for several years and ended up at schools in the same NCAA conference. That meant nearly seven years of competition, including championship races where we went head-to-head, elbow to elbow multiple times.
I look back on our races with affection, grateful he pushed me in a few finish-line sprints. At the time, I knew we had divergent views on politics and the world. But what did that matter? Our interactions were in person, our politics never divorced from ourselves.
There was a clear separation between the internet and our competitive lives. Would there be one if we were in high school now? Or even back when the News Feed dropped? I doubt it. If we were racing each other today, social media might expose and amplify our political beliefs. A chorus of rage merchants and partisan hacks would cheerlead the ‘othering’ of one another.
In the face of that, could we have still had a collegial rivalry? Shaken hands? Cooled down together while chatting about training and our futures? Maybe. But the chances of that friendship might have been lower. That would have diminished the small moments of social richness that make life worth living.
Such collegiality, in sports or otherwise, is not a given.
Americans’ experience of politics in sport has been largely symbolic.
It has consisted of gestures. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in 1968. Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. Or of symbols, like the NFL’s longstanding jingoism—flags, military flyovers, and national anthem pageantry that reached fever pitch after 9/11.
We’ve largely been spared the radicalized politics that weaves through sport elsewhere.
In Italy, devoted “ultras” fans emerged during the Anni di piombo, the Years of Lead in the 1970s and 1980s, when far-left and far-right terrorism shook the country. The term is derived from the 19th-century politics of France after the Revolution from the ultraloyalistes, a right-wing faction that supported the Bourbon monarchy. So too did the devout fanbase of the Italian football club ultras contain factions of radical political groups.
AS Roma had the far-left Fedayn, named after a Palestinian liberation group, and the far-right Boys Roma. The ultras for Roma’s crosstown rivals Lazio were (and remain) decidedly right-wing. The “Irriducibili” a Lazio ultras group once unveiled a banner: “Auschwitz is your town; the ovens are your houses,” referencing Roma’s Jewish fans. They’re big fans of Benito Mussolini.
The curvas became spaces of little to no policing, where political iconography often led to actual violence. In 1979, a Lazio supporter was killed by a rocket fired by a Fedayn member. Street fighting between ultras was (and remains) common.
Knifings, pub brawls, and shootings continued into the 2000s. The fascist footballer Paolo Di Canio spent much of the 2005 season giving Roman salutes to fans. And far-right ties have been renewed with the rise of populism. Wright Thompson’s 2013 piece on Italy’s soccer culture showed how the immigration wave of the 2010s revitalized racism and neo-fascism in the terraces of Italian stadiums. Last December, Reuters reported Inter Milan’s ultras had ties to neo-Nazis in Lombardy and to the mafia.
"This is a medieval town. I am medieval. I am Veronese. We've been here 900 years. We have our colors. We have our traditions. It's the last corner of what is left. Everything is globalized. We are totally anachronistic. We are the only ones who still keep the flag flying. We believe in certain things."
—from Wright Thompson’s “When The Beautiful Game Turns Ugly.”
There are examples elsewhere in Europe: the Chelsea Headhunters in the UK, or the riot between Red Star Belgrade and the Bad Blue Boys in Zagreb.
Is American sport vulnerable to this sectarianism?
Perhaps not. Whereas Italian and European clubs grew amid radical politics, American sport developed in the amid relative ideological consensus and commercialism. Sure, there were leftist factions and antiwar protests on campuses, but American politics tended to shift en masse.
Commerce is woven into U.S. sport in ways unlike Europe: our leagues exist to sell you disposable things you don’t need. That may be why American sport has avoided sectarian violence, except for occasional gestures. It has certainly avoided fans and participants being riven into political factions.
But that’s no guarantee it can’t happen here.
Because the radicalizing politics of the Internet have already bled into most realms of the real world. The assassination of Kirk follows the murder of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota. It follows attempted assassinations upon the President, governors, and other leaders. That’s to say nothing of the hundreds of mass shootings over the last twenty years. We may already be in America’s Years of Lead. This time, the lead is infused with silicon—the servos that power internet radicalization.
Charlie Kirk’s killing is a tragedy and a disaster in this political moment. I pray for his wife and children, that he rests in peace, and that our better angels regain influence in the turbulent years to come.
Garbage Day broke down and translated the memes in a post trying to make sense of our era of extremely online political violence. I recommend it. They show the casings represent a level of sub-culture and sectarian swirl that the media will struggle to interpret successfully. The only thing certain thus far is that suspect—who came from a family of Utah Republicans, had a 4.0 GPA in high school, and was a member of RTOC—had extreme online brain rot. We’ll learn more in coming days, but my strong suspicion is that we won’t find a coherent ideology at the shooter’s core. That won’t stop those in power from using the crisis to scratch more power to themselves, but that’s just the way things go in historical moments of ideological realignment and democratic slide.
I don’t want to overstate the toxicity of Letsrun’s message boards. It’s more adolescent shitposting and trolling than anything truly vile. Compared with 4Chan or even X, Letsrun is like visiting Disney World.
I have watched the Tour de Vuelta a España the past 3 weeks. Politics with demonstrations wove its way through the 21 stages around Spain’s beautiful countryside. Many stages were truncated. One stage brought the cyclist through the protesters. Yesterday’s final stage stopped the cyclists 8km from the finish. My opinions were conflicted. Let these athletes, after months of training and preparation, ride their race. On the hand, where else but public space can people voice their concerns? I don’t know the answer. Thanks for sharing and as always, well done.
Excellent, excellent essay, Sam. You really hit on something with this line: "Mostly populated by young, anonymous men..." I remember in the years immediately after 9/11, when we were all trying to figure out why there was so much rage against America in the Islamic world, that was a theme as well -- so many young men, unemployed and without prospects, who'd spent years being radicalized in hothouse environments that, while not necessarily online, kinda resembled the online echo chamber we see today. I wish I knew what to do about it.