CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Radical Normie Terrorism.

In addition to their shared fixation with transgenderism, both Westman and Robinson immersed themselves in peculiar digital subcultures. These online spaces were not hubs of Marxism—or even transgenderism, strictly speaking—but of memes, attitudes, copycatting, in-jokes, and irony that, in certain cases, spilled over into violence. Both men allegedly acted out their fantasies not to advance a coherent ideology shaped by study or political organizing but to gratify an obscure personal urge.

In a note to his transgender boyfriend, Robinson wrote that he wanted to stop Charlie Kirk’s “hate.” While this may hint at a nascent ideology, the remark was perfunctory and incidental to the crime. Robinson did not seek to change policy or dismantle a system of government. He seems instead to have wanted to kill a man who spoke openly about transgenderism and embodied a vague notion of “hate.”

Another striking pattern in these crimes is that, at least from initial reporting, the alleged perpetrators came from ordinary, middle-class, Middle American families. Westman’s mother, for example, was active in her Catholic parish in Minneapolis. These were not visibly broken homes but functional households that nonetheless produced monsters—what we might call “radical normie terrorism.”

Radical normie terrorism poses a new challenge for law enforcement. As a veteran FBI agent told me, domestic law enforcement has no systematic program to identify, assess, and respond to this kind of online radicalization. The Bureau still relies on old-fashioned methods—processing tips, knocking on doors, interviewing witnesses—and, in most cases, cannot intervene against disturbed individuals until after they strike.

Maybe the FBI could try reading Reddit.