Activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah on Wednesday, and far-right influencers and extremist communities flooded social media with calls for violence against the left, writes Wired.
Numerous far-right influencers and Republican officials immediately blamed the left for carrying out the shooting. In some extremist groups, members have called for civil war and violent revenge.
"This is war, this is war, this is war", said Alex Jones, an influencer known for his conspiracy theories about school shootings, during a live broadcast on his channel Infowars.
"For years, the radical left has been comparing wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the worst mass murderers and criminals in the world," President Donald Trump said in a recording posted to his Truth Social account. "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we see in this country today."
Oath Keeper founder Stuart Rhodes, whose conviction for conspiracy to commit incitement in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot was commuted by Trump earlier this year, told Infowars that Trump should "do what is right, what is necessary" and "invoke the Riot Act" after the shooting. "You need to declare that the left in this country is in blatant open rebellion against the law of the United States. They are committing insurrection, aiding and abetting invasion, and obstructing federal law enforcement,” Rhodes said.
Elon Musk, the owner of X and former head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), posted: “The Left is the Party of Murder.” He then cited a post blaming “left-wing mainstream media, as well as figures like Gavin Newsom” for radicalizing people against right-wing figures like Kirk. "Exactly," Musk wrote.
Katie Miller, who worked closely with Musk on DOGE and is the wife of Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, wrote in X that even liberals who condemn violence "have blood on their hands."
"You could be next," influencer and unofficial Trump advisor Laura Loomer wrote in X. "The left is a terrorist."
Christopher Ruffo, a conservative activist who promotes the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a post in X that the "radical left" is responsible for the shooting and called on the U.S. government to "infiltrate, dismantle, arrest and imprison all those responsible for this chaos".
In the House of Representatives, after Democrats and Republicans held a "moment of prayer" led by House Speaker Mike Johnson for Charlie Kirk and his family, Representative Lauren Bobert called for a verbal prayer. Some Democrats said "no" and referenced the Colorado school shooting, which also occurred on Wednesday. Screams erupted, and Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna shouted across the aisle: "You did this." According to The New York Times, one Democrat responded: "Pass gun control laws!"
In X, Luna continued to blame the left: "EVERYONE OF YOU WHO CALLS US FASCISTS DID THIS. You were too busy drugging children, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence, supporting organizations that exploit minorities, defending criminals, and stoking hatred. YOU ARE THE HATE you claim to be fighting. Your words caused this. Your hate caused this.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also posted about Kirk’s death, urging people to “stand up and end this.”
Blake Masters, a two-time unsuccessful U.S. congressional candidate once backed by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel and endorsed by Trump, called for RICO investigations of NGOs in the wake of the shooting. “The violence of the left is out of control and it is not random,” Masters wrote in X. “Either we destroy the NGO/donor network that fuels it and feeds it, or it will destroy us.”
Masters cited a post by right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, who blamed the left for the shooting. “Congress hearings now. "Every billionaire funds far-left extremism. Soros, Bill Gates, Reed Hoffman. Massive RICO investigations now," Cernovich wrote in X.
On fringe platforms like Trump's own Truth Social and The Donald, a fervently pro-Trump forum that was responsible for some of the planning for the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, numerous users echoed Jones's comments about the war.
"War is coming," wrote one user on The Donald in a thread about the Kirk shooting. "War is here," replied another.
Even some of Kirk's far-right critics, who thought he wasn't extreme enough, have presented his death as a potential recruiting tool.
"In his lifetime, Charlie Kirk was our enemy because he did everything he could to undermine white collectivism," wrote Christopher Paulhaus, the neo-Nazi leader of the white supremacist group "Blood Tribe." "In his death he is a martyr because he was killed in a political climate where he was perceived as one of us, despite the fact that he was not."
"We hope this is a lesson to other moderates," the neo-Nazi group American Futurist wrote on its Telegram page. "We hope that all the people who are reluctant to engage will realize the reality of our situation before they end up like Charlie. You will be an evil racist Nazi no matter who you are. You are their enemy."