Former undercover FBI agent, college professor warns that political violence is taking on a new pattern

A former FBI agent and current university professor has a grim warning about the future of political violence following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The age of agreeing to disagree is over, according to Greg Rogers, a 30-year FBI veteran. Not only are public figures like Kirk a target for political violence, but everyday Americans are increasingly being victimized.

Rogers, who spent time as a SWAT sniper and now serves as a Utah Valley University professor, discussed the ramping up of targeted violence with Fox News Digital.

“The [Minneapolis] church shooting, the Charlie Kirk shooting, these are different,” he said.

“These are just citizens that are being murdered for political reasons, which is…certainly not unique and brand new, but it’s happening more frequently. We haven’t seen much of that…If you think about political assassinations in the past, even in modern times, you’ve got John and Bobby Kennedy, you’ve got Ronald Reagan was shot, you’ve got George Wallace when he was a governor was shot. You’ve got all these big political national figures. That to me seems very different than normal citizens that are kind of just doing their thing, getting murdered for their political views,” he added.

He then addressed the suspect, Tyler Robinson, allegedly using the communication platform Discord to confess to the crime to his friends.

“How comfortable do you have to be with these people and believe that they’re so much on the same page that you are that you’re somehow OK writing that? You must firmly believe that they’re all going to agree with you. And not only are they going to agree with, they’re going to think that what you did was impressive,” Rogers said.

His experience infiltrating different groups as an undercover agent has allowed him to see how certain areas of the internet can turn into an echo chamber, which can egg on even the most dangerous of ideologies.

“I’ve seen it in the undercover cases I worked, when I was hanging out with militia guys and other White supremacists, you get into these sites like he did, and you’re spending hours and hours a day talking to like-minded individuals, and it really does become your reality,” he explained. “That’s where you go for everything. For socialization. They think it’s news. And this becomes their reality. That’s what they believe. And they believe it fervently. And I think that’s what happened to him. He got there and he got there quickly.”

Ultimately, one of the only ways to prevent young people from being victimized by radicalization tactics is for parents to be more actively involved in their time on the internet.

“Parents need to be much, much more attentive to who their kids are talking to and what they’re talking about, and there’s ways to do that where you don’t seem overbearing.”

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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