Wired

09/10/2025

MINUTES AFTER RIGHT-WING activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah on Wednesday, far-right influencers and extremist communities lit up social media with calls for violence against the left.

Kirk, the cofounder of the conservative youth organizing group Turning Point USA, was shot and killed while taking questions at a TPUSA event held at Utah Valley University. Law enforcement officials said late afternoon Wednesday that a “person of interest” was in custody, but that individual was later released. No motive has yet been reported by authorities.

Despite this, many far-right influencers and Republican officials immediately blamed the left for carrying out the shooting. In some extremist groups, members called for civil war and violent retribution. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” said Alex Jones, the influencer and school-shooting conspiracy theorist, during a livestream on his Infowars channel.

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” said President Donald Trump in a taped address posted to his Truth Social account. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in the country today.”

Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, who had his sentence for seditious conspiracy with regards to the January 6 Capitol riot commuted by Trump earlier this year, announced on Infowars that it was time to restart his militia group in order to provide public protection for figures like Kirk.

Rhodes then called on Trump to “do what’s right, what’s necessary” and “invoke the Insurrection Act” in the wake of the shooting. “You should declare the left in this country is in obvious open rebellion against the law of the United States. They’re committing insurrection, they’re aiding and abetting an invasion, and they’re blocking the execution of federal law,” Rhodes said.

More mainstream right-wing commentators and lawmakers have also joined in the rush to blame the left and call for action.

Ed Martin, the US pardon attorney and former acting US attorney for DC, wrote on X: “For it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord,” citing Romans 12:19.

Elon Musk, the X owner and former figurehead of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), posted: “The Left is the party of murder.” He then quoted a post blaming “the 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 at DOGE and is the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, wrote on X that even liberals condemning the violence “had blood on their hands.”

“You could be next,” influencer and unofficial Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X. “The Left are terrorists.”

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who popularized the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a post on X that the “radical left” was responsible for the shooting, and urged the US government “to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

Republican representative Derrick Van Orden from Wisconsin also blamed the shooting on “leftwing political violence” and warned on X that “whoever does not condemn this is part of the problem. The gloves are off.”

Blake Masters, a twice-failed US congressional candidate once backed by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel and endorsed by Trump, called for RICO investigations into nongovernmental organizations as a result of the shooting.

“Left-wing violence is out of control, and it’s not random,” Masters posted on X. “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments it, or it will destroy us.”

Masters was quoting a post from right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, who blamed the shooting on the left. “Congressional hearings now,” Cernovich posted on X. “Every billionaire funding far left wing extremism. Soros, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman. Massive RICO investigations now.”

Chaya Raichik, who operates the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok, simply wrote: “THIS IS WAR.”