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 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.
Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, who had his sentence for seditious conspiracy with regards to the January 6 Capitol riot commuted by President Donald 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.
“I’m going to be rebuilding the Oath Keepers, and we will be doing protection again,” said Rhodes. “If my security team had been at that event, if they had been up there on the high point, looking for potential threats, they would have saved Charlie Kirk from being shot.”
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 of 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.”
