In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination, people are once again taking the opportunity to reveal who they are. On the Left, the reaction was sadly predictable. A religion professor from the University of Toronto stated that “shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist c***s.” Manitoba’s Minister of Families Nahanni Fontaine responded to the death of a young father by calling Kirk names and announcing that she has “absolutely no empathy for people like that.” There were hundreds of similar reactions, reminding us once again that progressivism is a fundamentally revolutionary worldview.
Then came the conspiracy theories, pushed by those who see evil in the world and have an instinctive and revealing response: The Jews did it. Just days ago, Kirk posted a simple message: “Jesus defeated death so you can live.” Ian Carroll, the openly antisemitic podcaster who filled in for Candace Owens while she was on maternity leave, promptly responded: “And you’ve dedicated your life to serving the people who killed him.” Carroll was referring to Kirk’s longtime support for the State of Israel.
However, on September 11, before the assassin had even been captured, Carroll was already proclaiming that he knew precisely who had killed Kirk: “Yesterday was a turning point for Israel US relations. Less than 24 hours and the internet already figured out who the most likely culprit was. He was their friend. He basically dedicated his life to them. And they murdered him in front of his family. Israel just shot themselves.”
The post went viral—over 15,000 reposts—and the Online Right went to work to spread the narrative, which went something like this: In recent months, Kirk had critiqued Israel and expressed frustration in a conversation with Megyn Kelly that some of his donors and others had pushed back very strongly when he did so. Some had also objected to his hosting of a debate between Josh Hammer and Dave Smith, a libertarian and one of the most prominent anti-Israel voices, at a TPUSA event. To legions who follow Online Right figures, this clearly meant that the State of Israel had “called a hit” on Kirk because he was starting to “turn” on them.
The theory is absurd on its face, but it reveals how thoroughly people have been algorithmically programmed to believe that Israel, and the Jews (Carroll and his followers make no distinction, as a quick scan of the posts reveals) are responsible for anything evil that occurs—even in the face of clear, countervailing evidence. As I noted with the JFK assassination files, these influencers and their followers will not accept any evidence or answer except the one that endorses their prejudices. The idea that the Israeli government would assassinate a young conservative activist, one of their key allies, with a shooter who was using a bolt-action hunting rifle, reveals nothing about Kirk’s killing and everything about those who push it.
Even Dave Smith, who has built a commentary career condemning Israel, was visibly stunned by this theory. “I’ve said nice things about Ian in the past, and he’s said nice things about me,” Smith said on his podcast, shaking his head. “But I see him out there, and I see a bunch of other people doing the same this…it’s just crazy. He had this post about how Israel did this. Israel just murdered Charlie Kirk. You know me, I’m not the biggest fan of Israel, but I literally just replied: What evidence do we have that Israel was involved with this at all?”
The answers Smith got were just pure, unalloyed Jew-hatred. “I mean, man, if you want to be disturbed, go look through the replies to that,” Smith continued. “It is unbelievable how people put together theories. What evidence do you have? By the way, the answer to that is none. We have absolutely none. There is absolutely no reason to even suspect that is the case, let alone to determine that it’s a fact. And all the things people are posing…Like, if you got some evidence, bring it to me, and I’ll be the first one to look into it, but the people are like: He was waking up to Israel!”
Smith was genuinely incredulous. “Like, dude. [Kirk] said release the Epstein files, and he once on an interview that the pro-Israel people are getting a little too crazy when they’re accusing even [him] of being anti-Israel, but that’s about it…you’ve just got no real theory here, and it just makes no real sense at all. You’re telling me the government of Israel took out their number one guy who still had influence amongst young people?” Well, exactly. And anyone who saw these theories online and gave them credence should seriously consider the extent to which they are being algorithmically programmed by genuinely malevolent influencers.
Smith’s conclusion was, I think, very important—and all the more important because it was coming from him: “I think those guys might have fallen into their own dark force where they’re just so wrapped up in blaming Israel for everything that you try to start to see it or desire that conclusion even before you’ve reached it…I love a good conspiracy theory. Lots of them are true. But you’ve gotta have a case to make. You’ve got to have evidence. A coherent narrative…You can’t just be like: We’ll say it was them! Who cares!”
But people are doing that. Thousands of them. They’ve been doing it for several years now. It isn’t about evidence. It isn’t about truth. It is about funneling all the evil in the world towards one permanent, unshakeable conclusion: The Jews did it. As I noted at The European Conservative recently, Smith himself has avoided most of these conspiracies, but even he has shared a platform with many self-professed and open Hitler apologists. I don’t mean people who are merely pushing revisionist World War II narratives. I mean actual Nazi apologists.
There are important lessons to learn in the wake of a tragedy for everyone who is trying to make sense of this bewildering, chaotic world. Who is worth listening to? Who is intent on finding the truth? Who is merely pushing an agenda? What people say should reflect directly on their credibility, and that goes for both progressives and the Online Right. Ian Carroll—and so many others—have once again revealed who they are. If he is so willing to assert a fact-free, absurd theory without a shred of available evidence, why should anyone believe anything else he has to say?
When InfoWars begins pushing the same idea based on third-hand, dubious information, should we not remember that they were the same outfit that claimed the mass killing of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook was a false flag attack? You’re going to take Alex Jones—the guy who claimed Joseph Goebbels was Jewish—seriously? What does it actually take, in our insane online world, for someone to lose credibility? How much do they have to get wrong? How egregious do their errors—historical, factual, and, yes, moral—have to be before people reject them? In the never-ending roar of the toxic digital world, it is very easy to lose our own moral compass, and for our own minds to be influenced by a barrage of lies by dopamine-peddlers pushing hatred without realizing that they have climbed into our heads.
It’s happening on the Left, as we saw with their bile-inducing, rage-filled celebration of Charlie Kirk’s murder. It’s also happening on the Online Right, where insidious influencers are trying to lay the corpse of a young man they so often viciously attacked at the feet of those they hate so much. They will now claim that Charlie Kirk was on the verge of joining “their side.” But recently, Kirk explicitly called out the Online Right’s Jew-hatred, warning that it was “from the pit of hell,” and gave his audience a warning well worth heeding: “Any young person that goes into this hyper-online brain rot, you are serving yourself over to your own demise. You are serving yourself over into a suicide mission.”
