Charlie Kirk: JFK-type conspiracies and false reports of culprit spread in aftermath of shooting

MISINFORMATION, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, and baseless accusations have quickly spread in the wake of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, a conservative American commentator, at an event he was hosting at a university in Utah yesterday.

Videos quickly spread online showing the moment a shot rang out and Kirk, who had been discussing gun violence, buckled and collapsed while blood streamed from his neck. Footage of the arrest of a bald man at the event followed shortly afterwards.

31-year-old Kirk was a prominent conservative figure and an ally of the US President Donald Trump. 

A father-of-two, Kirk was a conservative activist for much of his life. At the age of 18, he co-founded Turning Point USA, an organisation that advocates for conservative politics at schools and universities.

Kirk had also promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories himself, on subjects including Covid-19 and climate change, and had denied Trump lost the 2020 election, alleging election fraud.

Although he made his name through provocative debates with progressive college students, Kirk also had enemies among the “Groyper” movement, the explicitly racist and antisemitic element of the conservative movement in the US, largely due to his support for Israel.

News of his death last night was met with extreme reactions online, including people sharing celebratory jokes about the shooting, as well as strong condemnations and calls for revenge against democrats and “the left”, despite the shooter and their motives remaining unknown.

Online speculation about the identity of the shooter and their motive was all-but inevitable, particularly because a person was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

The person who was arrested was released hours later, though not before conflicting claims about their identity were shared widely.

Many of these posts gave various names to the arrested (the real name, which police later released, was one among them) or claimed to know where he was from (Utah or Canada), or said the same man had previously been arrested for making bomb threats years before.

However, most of these posts agreed, without evidence, that the shooter was left-wing or a “registered democrat,” and the killing was an attempt to hurt the MAGA movement.

The FBI have said that that man, as well as another person they had interviewed yesterday, were not suspects.

Others baselessly claimed that the arrested man was transgender — a common trope among far-right groups, who often amplify stories about violence carried out by transgender criminals, as well as falsely claiming that specific mass murderers are trans.

The US Justice Department last week suggested that it would ban trans people from owning guns, following the real case of a mass shooting in Minneapolis carried out by a trans assailant.  

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Several social media users posted photos of people, such as one “Mexican American” or a transgender person who had supposedly wished death on Kirk, along with claims that they were the ones who had carried out the shooting.

Political assassination

Another series of claims compared Kirk’s shooting to killings of other political figures, including the assassination of JFK — an event that remains one of the most speculated over events to this day and frequently appears in conspiracy theory discussions.

“Everyone knows who killed Charlie Kirk,” reads a post on X by a supposedly Irish account that was shared more than 1,400 times.

“They call it the Deep State, but they are the same ones who killed JFK, carried out 9/11, or bombed countries without any consequences.”

Many posts speculated that the shooting could have only been done by a professional killer.

One such post claimed to show photos of the assassin on a rooftop, though the image had been published by the satire website The Onion in 2019.

An influential political commentator on X alleged, without evidence, that Kirk, who was consistently pro-Israel, had said that Israeli officials had threatened to kill him. The post was viewed more than 3.5 million times on X.

Another popular post read: “After seeing Trump’s response and how quickly they had it prepared, I’m pretty convinced MAGA just sacrificed Charlie Kirk in an effort to save Trump from the Epstein Files and wars he can’t stop.”

That post was viewed more than 4 million times.

Other theories included that two people filmed behind Kirk were part of the plot to kill him, and that their gestures were in fact a “signal to the assassin.” Videos show one of the men adjusting his cap, while the other scratches his arm. Footage of these actions show nothing unusual until the shooting.

There were also outlandish theories that the entire assassination — which took place in front of hundreds of people and was filmed from multiple angles — was a hoax.

Many alleged that the footage was created by artificial intelligence, or that an apparent bulge in Kirk’s shirt, outlined in red in a still frame from a video, was a prop blood packet (videos of Kirk from before the shooting do not show the same bulge, which is likely a crease in his t-shirt).

Poor quality screenshots featured in many of these theories, with artifacts in the footage (often degraded from being downloaded and uploaded multiple times) cited as proof that the shooting was faked.

“The magic bullet erased Kirk’s mouth, chin, ears and eyeballs… they definitely have not perfected deep fakes,” one post said sarcastically, alongside photos taken of a screen showing a poor quality video in which Kirk’s features cannot be discerned.

Charlie Kirk was confirmed to have been killed yesterday. His shooter remains unidentified.

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