The alarming stranglehold of Charlie Kirk trutherism

It only took me a day after his death to start seeing the left-wing conspiracy theories on my social-media feed, with people sharing posts that claimed that MAGA activist Charlie Kirk was killed by someone on his own side.

According to a recent survey carried out by YouGov, 33 per cent of Democrats say that Kirk’s killer was motivated by right-wing beliefs. Only 10 per cent of Democrats appear to accept what is thus far the most likely scenario: that the suspect saw Kirk as a political opponent.

It isn’t hard to see where this wanton ignorance is coming from. Indeed, ever since Kirk’s death there has been a concerted effort by prominent left-wing and mainstream media figures to obscure the political leanings of the suspect, Tyler Robinson.

Take Keith Edwards, a former Democratic spin doctor who has over 800,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. On 12 September, two days after the shooting, Edwards made the following claim in a video that has more than 800,000 views:

‘It is looking more and more like this is someone who is far right, very online… Maybe what is called a Groyper… Groypers are a group of alt-right white nationalists and Christian-nationalist activists.’

Edwards even claimed that some of the etchings on the suspect’s weapon were ‘symbols of far-right ideology’.

The Daily Beast, a prominent liberal outlet, also published a disturbingly dishonest piece on the same day, with a headline blaring: ‘Charlie Kirk’s suspect’s grandma says family all MAGA.’ The piece quoted Utah governor Spencer Cox as saying Robinson had ‘become more political in recent years’, leaving the reader to imply that his politics were conservative.

Had the reporter bothered to contact Cox, she would have discovered the opposite to be the case. Indeed, Cox was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the day after the Daily Beast article was published, saying that he believed Robinson was ‘deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology’.

This is a reporting sleight of hand, in which a writer scatters a few truthful elements into a reported piece, but will write it up in such a way as to minimise or obscure the salient facts. The death of Kirk showed the extent to which America’s progressive media establishment has turned this into an art form.

On 20 September, NBC reported that three unnamed sources ‘familiar with the federal probe’ said there was ‘no evidence yet’ that the shooter had ties to ‘any left-wing groups’. The article also cited a statistic from the Anti-Defamation League, which said that since 2002, ‘right-wing ideologies have fuelled more than 70 per cent of all extremist attacks and domestic-terrorism plots in the United States’.

Here we see yet more obfuscation and misrepresentation. No one is claiming that Kirk’s shooting was coordinated by a left-wing group or organisation, yet by placing this denial in the headline, NBC makes it seem like there is no connection to the left at all. What’s more, no reasonable observer could deny that there is a trend of young people engaging in violence on behalf of leftist causes.

Consider what NBC left out of its report. The August shooting of children at a Catholic school in Minnesota and the 2023 shooting at a Christian Covenant School in Tennessee, both by trans activists, are two prominent examples. Let’s not forget the widespread rioting after the death of George Floyd in 2020, which killed at least 25 Americans. And this year, a US Border Patrol agent was allegedly murdered by members of a leftist, trans cult in Vermont, while two Israeli embassy staffers were killed by a suspected pro-Palestine supporter in Washington, DC in May.

In just the past week or so, a local ABC news station in Sacramento, California was attacked by a gunman who may have been motivated by Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension from the network. A man shouting ‘Free Palestine’ shot up a wedding in New Hampshire, killing a guest. Former Smiths frontman Morrissey, who is outspoken and on the right, had to cancel shows in the US after what was described as a ‘credible assassination threat’.

Notably, polls show that, while a large majority of Americans still abhor all political violence, Republicans abhor it more than Democrats, and young people abhor it less than older folks. This played out in response to Kirk’s death, given how many young leftists seemed to revel in it.

The aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting has shown there is no longer such a thing as a politically neutral news platform. This has been true for some time, but when the left-leaning side of the US is being wildly misled, we should be deeply worried. The liberal bubble has drifted a long way from reality.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here