The killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk ignited a wave of fury on the far right, where some Trump supporters cast the murder as a political flashpoint and threat to conservative power amid a broader reckoning over rising violence.
Some supporters of US President Donald Trump blamed the political left, casting Kirk’s murder as the culmination of years of hostility toward Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. On social media, they pointed to posts that appeared to celebrate Kirk’s death as evidence of conservatives increasingly being targeted.
The killing of Kirk has become a potent symbol for a segment of the American right that increasingly views the political left not merely as ideological opponents but as existential threats to conservative identity and power. Fueled by years of rhetoric, amplified by social media echo chambers, this anger reflects a broader narrative in which Trump’s allies often portray themselves as besieged patriots facing a lawless and hostile opposition.
“They couldn’t beat him in a debate, so they assassinated him,” Isabella Maria DeLuca, a pardoned January 6 rioter and conservative activist, wrote on X.
A 22-year-old man, Tyler Robinson, was in custody on Friday (Sep 12) for the shooting after a 33-hour manhunt. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said Robinson had recently become more political and had expressed disdain for Kirk, one of the right’s most influential figures whose social media posts often included inflammatory comments about Jewish, gay and Black people. Cox said an unfired cartridge recovered with the shooter’s gun was engraved with, “Hey, fascist! Catch!”
Jen Golbeck, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland who studies right-wing online activity, analyzed more than 3,000 posts on two websites – X and the pro-Trump forum Patriots.Win – in the 24 hours following the shooting. She found a volatile mix of grief, rage, and signs of growing radicalization. With the shooter’s identity and motive still unknown, Golbeck said Trump supporters were “grabbing on to a narrative that fits what they want.”
On Patriots.Win, calls for vengeance surged. “The entire Democrat party needs to fucking hang now!” one anonymous poster wrote. “This is the Reichstag Fire,” another said, referencing a 1933 arson attack that helped usher in Nazi rule in Germany. “It’s time to end democracy.” Reuters was unable to reach a representative of Patriots.Win for comment.
One anonymous user on X called Kirk’s death a breaking point, warning that the nation was “teetering between a political rupture and civil war.” “We’re past words,” the post read.
