Hard-right groups and commentators — particularly openly racist groups — have used the killing of Charlie Kirk to promote long-held conspiracy theories about supposedly violent, left-leaning groups.
Following Kirk’s killing, hard-right groups pushed conspiracy theories that blamed the left, Democratic Party supporters and Black people, sometimes not differentiating between the three. In other words, hard-right groups elevated one of their go-to narratives about left-leaning groups and Black people, seeking to win political points by simplifying and distorting the complex and multifaceted reasons people commit violence.
According to government research, militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. According to libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, since 1975, people motivated by hard-right ideologies were responsible for 63% of politically motivated murders. This includes the murders of nine Black churchgoers in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina; 23 shoppers in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in an attack that targeted Latinx people; and 10 Black people in 2022 at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
In June, a gunman killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, both Democrats, at their home. Earlier that day, the gunman shot and injured state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, also Democrats. Police found a list of about 70 targets in a suspect’s car that included Democratic politicians and reproductive health care providers and advocates. In many of these cases of political violence, the killers were motivated by the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely suggests that Democrats want to replace white people and their culture with people and the cultures of the Global South.
However, despite these historic trends, after the killing of Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, hard-right groups doubled down on their preferred conspiracy theories about violent Democrats and perceived “Black criminality” to crush dissent and mobilize support for authoritarian policies.
For example, on the day Kirk was shot, Isabella Maria DeLuca, who was at the U.S. Capitol during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, posted on X: “We don’t have a gun problem. We have a Democrat problem.”
Hard-right commentator Benny Johnson put the conspiracy theory in starker terms in a Sept. 12 X post, writing: “The modern Democratic Party is not ‘sorry’ when political violence happens. They want it to happen. They create the conditions for it.” Chet Hand, a Republican lawmaker in Boone County, Kentucky, went even further, labeling Democrats as “the party of political violence, intolerance, hate, anger, and evil … insanity, demonic possession and radical extremism” in a Sept. 10 post to Facebook.
Conspiracy propagandist Alex Jones echoed this on X, saying, “The Democrat Deep State Killed Charlie Kirk In A Desperate Attempt To Shut Down Populist Free Speech. … This Could Be The Staged Catalyzing Event Ahead Of A Deep State False Flag Designed To Trigger a New Raced Based Civil War.”
Kirk himself was known for his controversial views and comments questioning the qualifications of Black people. Kirk had called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “a huge mistake.” Reuters reported that Kirk said prominent Black women such as political commentator Joy Reid, former First Lady Michelle Obama, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “did not have the intelligence to achieve what they did without affirmative action.” On a July 2023 episode of his show he said, “You had to go steal a white person’s slot to be taken somewhat seriously.”
Kirk had also erroneously claimed the U.S. has significantly more Black-on-white crime, something not reflected in crime statistics. In 2023 Kirk said, “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” Right before his killing, he commented online about the killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, “If we want things to change, it’s 100% necessary to politicize the senseless murder.” The comment sparked a debate with Black media figure Van Jones.
Kirk’s killing has also been often mentioned alongside other killings perceived to be linked to left-leaning groups, including the killing of Zarutska, who was killed Aug. 22 in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a Black man diagnosed with schizophrenia who was living without housing. Hard-right groups link the killings of Kirk and Zarutska by suggesting Democrats and their supporters are to blame for demonizing white people and supporting perceived “soft on crime” policies that supposedly let criminals escape accountability.
Jake Lang, a current U.S. Senate candidate and antigovernment figure accused of hitting police with a baseball bat and shield during the Jan. 6 events at the U.S. Capitol, was one of many activists on the right who linked Kirk to Zarutska. Saying solidarity needed to be shown for Kirk and Zarutska, he posted on X, “White Americans will NO LONGER STAND Democrats / Black EXTREME Violence on us!!!” Lang shared what appears to be an AI-generated video that shows a large crowd of white men at the Washington Monument, carrying flags and crosses, with the superimposed words “RISE UP WHITE MEN.”
According to far-right influencers, Democrats are to blame for targeting Kirk with hateful rhetoric and for championing criminal justice reform to undo the mass incarceration of Black men.
Hard-right groups have tied together Kirk’s and Zarutska’s killings to mobilize street protests across the U.S. On Sept. 13, in Huntington Beach, California, about two dozen members of a few white nationalist groups, including Patriot Front, hijacked a vigil organized by a more mainstream conservative group, which led to violence.
According to a Left Coast Right Watchreporter at the scene, a vigil participant who was observed calling the collection of white nationalists “un-American” and “traitors” followed several of them to a parking garage and then was violently attacked by the group. The attackers appear to be part of the group seen in a viral video chanting, “White men fight back!” in Huntington Beach on the day of Kirk’s death.
Image at top: Photo illustration by the SPLC. (Source images from iStock and Getty)
