Opinion From the Center
With all eyes remaining on the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk (Right bias), media outlets across the spectrum have speculated frantically, trying to satiate the desire of readers who want to know what exactly motivated the suspected murderer, Tyler Robinson.
Some have done so to the point of haphazardness. The Guardian (Left) was one of the first. The left-wing publication reported a quote from a source who reportedly attended high school with Robinson, and said he was “pretty left on everything” and “the only member of his family that was, like, really leftist.” It later removed the quotes from its article and noted, “The verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship.”
The Wall Street Journal (Center), shortly thereafter, wrote in a widely amplified report sourced from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives bulletin that said bullet casings recovered were engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” The Journal later poured cold water on its own scoop.
Desperate to be onto something big, one of the recent major publications to grasp at straws was Britain’s The Telegraph (Lean Right). On September 14, it published an analysis titled “Charlie Kirk suspect spoke the language of the far-Right.” The article’s featured photo includes a side-by-side of a younger Robinson, squatted down, wearing an Adidas tracksuit and newsboy cap, and Pepe the Frog, in a similar posture, clad in very similar Adidas wear and a black hood.
The Telegraph’s Deputy US Editor Connor Stringer opened by writing:
Squatting low in a black tracksuit and with a flat cap pulled over his eyes, Tyler Robinson looks at first glance like any other teenager.
But to the niche and often dark corners of the internet where Mr Robinson appears to have spent much of his time, the suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing is performing a so-called slouched “Slav squat”.
The pose and the clothes he is wearing in the photo, shared proudly by his mother, form the basis of an internet meme that has long been associated with the far-Right.
A few paragraphs later, he adds:
The “Slav squat” meme comes from a variation of the Pepe the Frog image, a pudgy cartoon toad that has become a calling card for young men on the hard edge of America’s Right.
Stringer goes on to tie the “Slav squat” to right-wing commentator Nick Fuentes, who has enjoyed a stark rise in popularity in recent months.
If Robinson were indeed an ardent fan of Fuentes, it could, of course, serve as a significant clue towards realizing his own personal ideology, yet to connect the dots, Stringer is grasping at straws and glossing over decades of history to do so.
Just as having a transgender romantic partner and roommate doesn’t concretely tie Robinson to the right or left (though it could point to a motive, considering Kirk’s rhetoric on the topic), neither does dressing like a gopnik and getting down into a “Slav squat.”
What is a Gopnik?
For those unfamiliar with Eastern European culture, gopniks were a specific subculture from post-Soviet cities whose identities revolved around their working-class upbringings and flair for street hooliganism.
Their typical wear was effectively exactly as Robinson was dressed in the aforementioned photo, a highly coveted Adidas tracksuit and keparik – newsboy cap. Their typical pose, squatted on a step or sidewalk, chomping on a bag of sunflower seeds – semki.
As for the “Slav squat,” while gopniks were often squatted, sipping Baltika 9, and sticking their noses into trouble, the pose wasn’t necessarily a surefire sign of gopnikism on its own. Oftentimes, and still even today, finding a seat in the concrete jungles of the former Eastern Bloc could be less than opportune.
These stereotypes weren’t isolated to Russia or the former Soviet states. All around the Eastern Bloc, be it in Belgrade or Warsaw, most countries had their own flavor of gopnik.
The culture peaked in the 1990s, as most socialist states fell on hard times during their respective transitions to the Western-backed free market. But in the 2010s, the gopnik uniform and “Slav squat” saw a revival as an internet trend that spanned from the West to even parts of the Eastern Bloc.
Are Gopniks and the ‘Slav Squat’ Politicized?
Though the revival in the 2010s was apparently conscious, the real deal in the 1990s was much less so. It was rather a product of its times.
Citing an article from The Calvert Journal, a Western-funded English-language Russian publication that ceased operations with Russia’s full-scale military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Wikipedia describes gopniks as “conservative, aggressive, homophobic, nationalist and racist.”
It also cites an opinion from Michele A. Berdy published by the Russian paper-in-exile The Moscow Times (Center) in describing gopniks as “anti-Western.”
Beyond those few articles, there is little other English-language commentary in mainstream media that talks about the political attitudes of gopniks, or even the Western revival of the trend in the 2010s.
According to The Telegraph, however, the “Slav squat” “has been adopted by the ‘Groypers’ – an extreme online faction led by Right-winger Nick Fuentes.” (Fuentes himself has since denied any association between his fanbase and the “Slav squat.”)
As the darker corners of the internet often remain out of view to most “normies,” there was little mainstream media coverage of potential ties between the “Slav squat” and the “far-right” before Kirk’s assassination.
On September 13, one day before the publication of The Telegraph’s feature, articles of the same premise appeared in the Hindustan Times (Center) and Byline Times (not rated by AllSides).
Hindustan Times cited X’s AI tool Grok as its source, and wrote:
The ‘black Adidas hoodie crouching meme’ refers to variants of Pepe the Frog (often called ‘Groyper’ in some online communities) depicted squatting in a black Adidas tracksuit, sometimes with a cigarette or beer, embodying a ‘Slav squat’ or ‘Gopnik’ stereotype from Eastern European youth culture. It originated on sites like 4chan and is used in alt-right or ironic memes. The photo in the thread echoes this pose.
It went on to add:
Despite the online chatter, there is no conclusive proof of Robinson's link to the alt-right group.
Byline Times laid out the historical context on how the “Slav squat,” Pepe the Frog, and Nick Fuentes all converged:
The journey begins with Pepe the Frog, an apolitical comic character co-opted by the alt-right around 2015-2016. By September 2016, the Anti-Defamation League had designated certain variants of Pepe a hate symbol. Its march into the mainstream was confirmed in 2017 when a Pepe emoji trended heavily during the Super Bowl.
This period of 2016-2018 saw the ‘Gopnik squat’ meme merge with Pepe, creating the ‘Gopnik Pepe’ – a symbol of defiant, low-life resistance that resonated deeply within the nihilistic communities of 4chan. This is the exact cultural moment Robinson’s Halloween costume inhabits.
By 2018-2019, this meme culture crystallised into a formal political project with the rise of Nick Fuentes. A new, chubbier frog variant called the ‘Groyper’ – a portmanteau of ‘frog’ and ‘grouper’ fish – became the namesake for Fuentes’s network of white nationalist, Christian nationalist activists. Their goal: to tug mainstream U.S. conservatism sharply to the far right.
Despite claiming gopniks are related to Pepe the Frog, which is in turn related to Fuentes, the article doesn’t provide much in terms of examples on how the “Slav squat” allegedly became politicized. The only meaningful citation it makes is to a 2020 article from Emerging Europe, a publication with a site that doesn’t provide much information about what it is or who funds it, other than the litany of Eastern Europeans on its board of advisors.
In 2020, Milana Nikolova wrote for Emerging Europe:Some might argue that Slavic memes were appropriated by the Western alt-right, others might say that it was those making Slavic memes who adopted aspects of the Western alt-right ideology. Either way, it is not difficult to come across memes combining the vernacular of both groups.
How The Telegraph Funnels Readers to a Conclusion
While something doesn’t have to be reported in mainstream media to be true, there’s little concrete evidence available that dressing like a gopnik and doing a “Slav squat” in 2018 would have made someone “far-right” as Stringer from The Telegraph suggests.
The analysis also has several holes in it. For starters, it opens by saying Robinson’s mother, Amber, “proudly” posted the photo of her son in his allegedly “far-right” costume, but doesn’t mention the caption itself. Searching beyond The Telegraph’s coverage, one will see the full caption, which cheerfully mentions all three of her children’s costumes: “Tyler is some guy from a meme, Austin is the crazy end of the world homeless guy, and Logan is a fancy skeleton.” This framing alone guides readers to view Robinson’s mother as a hyperpolitical right-winger, when in reality, she was just an excited mother who most likely wasn’t regularly surfing Reddit or 4chan.
But more notably, the coverage makes no mention of the real-world origins of the “Slav squat” itself, relegating it to nothing but a trend that lived on some of the internet’s more decentralized corners. Slavic culture on its own has been a popular trend for quite some time, both in Eastern Europe and abroad. In fact, it’s traditionally been liberals or left-wingers who are more interested in other countries’ cultures, especially that of the USSR.
Grammatically, Stringer subtly refers to the alleged adoption of the “Slav squat” by “Groypers” multiple times in the present perfect tense, suggesting that it is an ongoing right-wing trend, though this appears to be untrue.
Lastly, deploying a smokescreen caveat midway through the article, Stringer writes, “None of the above forms incontrovertible evidence of Mr Robinson’s political leanings.” But his headline and body make it clear that he himself doesn’t believe this. He says Robinson “spoke the language of the far-right” and etched “right-wing references” onto the ammunition he used.
This analysis from The Telegraph is a textbook example of a grossly slanted article from a major journal that ostensibly holds itself to a higher standard. The article, which perhaps should have been marked as an opinion, relies on a scant selection of nebulously sourced opinions, the omission of facts and context, misleading grammar, and a distracting caveat at odds with its headline to funnel readers to reaching a certain conclusion.
Editor’s Note: Days after The Telegraph published the feature, it changed its headline to “Charlie Kirk suspect may be a ‘Leftist’ but used language of the far-Right.”
Andy Gorel is a News and Social Media Editor at AllSides. He has a Center bias.
This piece was edited and reviewed by Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right), and Evan Wagner, News Editor and Product Manager (Lean Left).
