After Kirk, right-wingers double down on eliminating opponents

As of this writing, there are few solid clues as to the identity or affiliations of the individual/s responsible for the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on Wednesday at at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

Police say that they have leads, which is just as well given that the pressure on them to produce some, any suspect must be significant.

But as of this writing we're only about 24 hours in, and early reporting on incidents like this is usually radically incomplete.

What we do know from the public record is that while Kirk certainly had his critics on the left, he also had enemies on the right. Famously, he was harassed and his early events were brigaded by the likes of Nick Fuentes and his acolytes.

In any case, we can't say right now what if any political motivations Kirk's assassin might have had. As we saw in Butler, Pennsylvania, would-be political assassins often have a political perspective that we might charitably describe as muddled.

The information void has not deterred rightwingers online from responding to the assassintation Charlie Kirk with antisemitic conspiracy theories, calls for the elimination of their perceived enemies, and demands that the Trump administration launch a crackdown on leftist groups.

This rhetoric was even employed by elected officials.

Former Green Beret Nick Freitas is a five-term Virginia state delegate who narrowly lost both a 2018 senate primary and a 3030 congressional primary.

In a long X post (which The Federalist reproduced in its entirety as an article, nice work if you can get it), Freitas all but pledged to fight a civil war.

"I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is", he wrote, adding "It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose."

Disturbingly, Freitas said he would use the murder videos ciculating online as a kind of political inspo:

So every time I feel tired, every time I feel discouraged or overwhelmed, I am going to watch the video of a good man being murdered in Utah…I will force myself to watch it…and then I will return to the work of destroying the evil ideology responsible for that and so much more.

We saw similiar eliminationist rhetoric on the anarcho-capitalist blog alt-markets from Brandon Smith, in an article with the level-headed title "Men Of The West: We Are At War".

Smith wrote, "We have been engaging in civics while the woke cult engages in sabotage, mob violence, child grooming and assassination."

He further asserted, "Leftists and globalists HATE the west. They hate the US. They want to turn it to dust. They want the memory of it erased from history. There is no level of reason or diplomacy that can dissolve their bitter psychopathy", concluding "In other words, [Joseph] McCarthy was right. The left needs to go."

At The Federalist, Briuanna Lyman--the publication's apparent elections correspondent--didn't see the need to sit around and wait for evidence.

"We still don’t know the identity of the shooter, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know who is responsible", she wrote, adding "Radical leftists bear great blame for engaging in inflammatory rhetoric that can only be described as assassination prep."

Which radical leftists? "The entire network that subsidizes this violence must be confronted — Antifa, the Soros-funded NGOs, the media mouthpieces who justify leftist terror, and the politicians who normalize hatred of Republicans. It’s the only way to stop the murderous left from doing it again."

On X, Dale Stark (a "Retired A-10 Pilot" and "Angus Beef Producer" per his bio) wrote "The Democratic Party is a domestic terrorist organization. We’ll will never have peace with these demons among us."

Other prominent rightwingers appeared to use the moment to make their fascist commitments explicit.

Daryll Cooper's previous moments of prominence came just after a year ago, when he used a guest appearance on Tucker Carlson's show to promote Holocaust revisionism. The End reported in July that he had appeared on the podcast of outspoken antisemite Pete Quinones just ahead of his return appearance on Carlson's show.

In an X post on Wednesday, Cooper wrote, "Fascism is just the word used by freaks and degenerates when normal people realize that the Left won’t stop unless it’s forced to."

Cooper was on a tear. Earlier that day, in response to the alleged murder of Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska, he wrote a post beginning "The black migration of the first half of the 20th century destroyed the majority of America's big cities", playing his part in a general rightwing effort to leverage that incident to push their preferred narratives about race and crime.

Cooper has also made several guest appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience, and Rogan has defended him against charges of Holocaust denial. He continues to host a podcast with manosphere influencer and former Green Beret Jocko Willink.

Others--many--saw the shooting as an opportunity to purge whichever remaining moderates who can be said to exist in American rightwing politics.

The account of White Nationalist publisher Antelope Hill posted "The bullet fired at Charlie Kirk may have killed the moderate right."

There was a strong undercurrent of posters who immediately resorted to explaining the shooting in terms of a wider conspiracy.

One widely read X post from @mr_freedomestick ("Husband/Father/Retired Combat Veteran/EMS/LEO/Urban Tactics & Survival Instructor/Constitutionalist/Author of “Navigating Chaos” available on Amazon" according to his bio) read "This was a professional hit, more than likely with a team pre positioned to call the shot, agitate the crowd and create misdirection to allow the shooter to Exfil. "

He added, "I smell an intel agency. Shooter is in the wind and more than likely already out of the country"

There were many posts, also, from antisemites seeking to claim Kirk as one of their own.

One post from an account named Red Pill USA claimed that "Charlie Kirk Was Starting to Notice!", and offered a quote from a recording of Kirk in which he said "First of all, the evidence that shows that Epstein was a creation of either Mossad, Israeli intelligence, American intelligence".

At conspiracy site We Are Change, founder Luke Rudkowski, who has a history of publishing fake authors acting in Russian disinformation operations, reposted a 20 minute video in which he claimed that the shooting was a professional hit.

Others appeared to blame Israel for the murder.

A post from @KAGDrogo asked "What's going on here?" over a grainy screenshot of a post attributed to Alex Jones's Infowars offsider Harrison Smith, in which Smith claimed that "Charlie thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against them."

Some eulogies verged on the bizarre.

At conspiracy site Gateway Pundit, Antonio Graceffo kicked his off with the claim that "I asked Claude AI what Charlie Kirk actually said or did that led the left to vilify him and even call him Hitler"

"The AI’s response was telling", he continued, "it listed his opposition [to gun control, abortion, and LGBTQ activism; his criticism of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Martin Luther King Jr.; his defense of Christian values; his challenges to the COVID-19 narrative; his claims about election fraud; and his supposed promotion of 'Christian nationalism' and the 'Great Replacement theory'."

As far as it was possible to tell, he seemed to be arguing that the AI's passable summary of Kirk's views indicated that they were true.

At Claremont Institute website The American Mind, America First Institute identity Joshua Trevino depicted Kirk as a martyred philosopher.

"In this way, Charlie Kirk was perhaps the closest thing to Socrates in the American public square", he wrote, adding that "The leftist intellectuals who sneered at him—the rube peddling his simple lines, his crass sophistry, his heartland aw-shucks certainties—would guffaw at the parallel, but it is no less true.".

He appeared to blame the same "leftist intellectuals" for the murder, writing, "And like Socrates, they had him killed."

Hey all, Jason here. I have been struggling a bit with the mission of this newsletter. I think frequent updates on rightwing media will be the bread and butter--I did this before in the Guardian "Burst Your Bubble" series. I can do this well and I am well set up for it. Let me know if this approximates what you came for: jason.a.wilson@protonmail.com