The murder of Charlie Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus has ratcheted up political tension at home and abroad. Kirk, a far-right commentator and founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while holding a question-and-answer session at an outdoor amphitheater. Kirk’s assassination, captured on video and rapidly disseminated online, has been weaponized by far-right activists, politicians, and extremist groups, many of whom are calling for retaliation and violent retribution. Some of those demanding action have millions of followers.
Kirk’s murder has energized white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups to take to the streets. The White House, administration staffers, and Trump allies have responded with threats against left-wing organizations and individuals. The White House has also floated the idea about potentially designating “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist group in response. This is despite the United States not maintaining a list of domestic terrorist organizations as it does foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). “Antifa” is short for anti-fascist and is not a coordinated group that could be classified by the government. Rather it’s a term used by the far-right to describe dissenters and protesters.
White Supremacists Fantasize of War and Revenge
American extremist groups were quick to fantasize about civil war and violent retribution, including state action, against democrats, transgender people, and the left generally. The white supremacist Proud Boys, whose leadership and many members were jailed for their violent actions during the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and subsequently pardoned after Trump began his second term in office, had several chapters speak out on Telegram.
Proud Boys Ohio calls for “state violence” against their political opponents. (Source: Telegram).
Proud Boys Ohio, encouraging the Trump administration to use violence against political opponents, said “massive, top-down, state violence against evildoers will solve this problem.”
A Proud Boys “meme” group called POYMemeFarm posted “are we still standing back and standing by Trump?,” This is a reference to a phrase, “Stand Back and Stand By,” originating with Donald Trump during a presidential debate in 2020, which was taken as an endorsement of the organization.
Brien James, president of the Indiana Proud Boys chapter, called on his followers to “stop having peaceful opinions.”
The Orange County Proud Boys, based in California, reposted a message stating that “old white liberal boomers need to be put into camps” alongside “demonic blacks.” This statement was about George Zinn who allegedly told police he had fired the shot immediately after the Kirk shooting. Zinn has been charged with obstruction of justice.
Leader of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus, stating that the time for “debating is over.” (Source: Telegram).
Leader of the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus, a former marine, posted an image of the Charleston, South Carolina, mass shooter, who in 2015 murdered nine Black people at a church. The image was captioned “Miss me yet?,” followed by a post saying “The time for debating is over.”
Violent misogynist Andrew Tate similarly posted “Civil war,” and claimed to his followers “they’re coming for the rest of us,” implying a grand conspiracy to murder far-right influencers. Tate also claimed that he would “take the shot” to execute Kirk’s murderer after conducting a series of gruesome torture methods.
Far Right Political Figures Call for Violence
Several political figures and influencers have also reacted to Kirk’s murder by calling for civil war, violence against their political enemies, and targeting transgender people as responsible for the shooting.
Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller tweeted “all of us must now dedicate ourselves to defeating the evil that stole Charlie from this world.”
While appearing on an episode of Kirk’s namesake podcast, hosted by Vice President JD Vance on September 16, Miller blamed left-wing political organization, saying they make up a “vast domestic terror movement.”
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he said.
“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Christopher Rufo, an anti-trans activist with reported influence in the Trump administration, called for a “reckoning…more profound than you can imagine,” specifically citing transgender and Black people in the post. Rufo also responded to a post saying “The democrats incite these people to murder and assassination” with “That is true.”
Laura Loomer, a virulent Islamophobe who, according to CNN, influenced the Trump administration to fire “disloyal” staff from the National Security Council (NSC), called for “massive lawsuits” so that “the media propagandists…pay for what they have done,” continuing a long-standing tradition of far-right attacks on journalists and the media.
TPUSA contributor Savanah Harnandez called for “Antifa” to be “deemed a domestic terrorist organization,” and for “everyone associated [with Antifa]…to be dealt with as such.”
Far-right podcaster Steven Crowder shared a video clip of his show, captioned “I am not advocating blood in the streets… But you know what, I’d get it,” insinuating that he would “get,” or understand, why people would enact violent retribution against the far-right’s political opponents.
Chaya Raichik, known as “LibsofTikTok,” an anti-LGBTQ+ influencer often associated with bomb threats against hospitals treating transgender people, posted “THIS IS WAR.” Raichik has also been part of a doxxing campaign against online users celebrating Kirk’s murder.
Self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh made a particularly violent claim, blaming the murder on “left wing LGBT terrorism,” and calling for “all left wing terror networks” to “be arrested, prosecuted, and put to death.”
The doxxing has culminated in a website including users and journalists, who did not make any inflammatory comments about the murder, being harassed and sent death threats.
The website, originally dubbed “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” rebranded as the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation” after receiving backlash. At time of writing, the site has gone offline.
Vice President Vance was supportive of doxxing efforts, saying “Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Chaya Raichik, better known as Libs of TikTok, calls for “war” after Charlie Kirk’s murder. The tweet has so far amassed more than three million views. (Source: Twitter).
Several others called for the dismantling of the Democratic party and anyone associated with being “left-wing.”
Mike Cernovich, a misogynist and “alt-right” influencer, called for congressional hearings against “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism.”
In the comments, one user “MahLittlePwny” said, “We must finish what McCarthy started, however it cannot result in prison time and deportations. We must send these people to God.”
The comment refers to Senator Joseph McCarthy, a prominent anti-communist figure during the Red Scare period in American history, who was best known for investigating suspected “communist subversions,” but whose tactics are now synonymous with politically-motivated “witch hunts.”
Harrison Smith, a host on the far-right conspiratorial show InfoWars, piled onto the anti-democratic reactions of other influencers by advocating for extrajudicial arrests of political opponents, saying “round them the fuck up.” A clip featuring far-right author Scott Adams went viral, amassing over one million views, in which he says “now we just need to destroy the entire Democrat Party,” even calling the political party a “criminal enterprise.”
False Narratives Driving Hate
In the hours leading up to alleged shooter Tyler Robinson’s arrest, several false narratives sprung from Twitter and other social media platforms. Misinformation from Steven Crowder (which has received almost 30 million views on Twitter) suggesting that the shooter wrote words relating to transgender ideology, a problematic term in itself since being transgender is not a political belief, spread across social media.
After the misinformation spread, InfoWars’ founder, Alex Jones, said there is “a hyper violent TransRage movement” responsible for “carrying out mass murders and other killings across the United States.”
Rumors targeting transgender people culminated in 4chan users falsely identifying a transgender woman as the shooter, resulting in harassment and death threats directed at her.
Another conspiracy theory, pushed by far-right influencers such as Jackson Hinkle, baselessly suggested Israel was responsible for the assassination. Hinkle’s tweet, which claims Charlie Kirk “feared Israel would kill him if he stepped out of line,” amassed over four million views.
Candace Owens, an antisemitic influencer, reportedly hosted a stream with over 200,000 live viewers blaming Israel for Kirk’s murder, saying “You’re not going to gaslight us and tell us to shut up or call us antisemitic for pointing out the fact that Charlie was having a change of heart about the tactics that Israel was using in America, and that he felt when he had left that meeting, that he had effectively been blackmailed.”
Jackson Hinkle, a far-right influencer, suggests Israel is responsible for Kirk’s murder. (Source: Twitter).
Transnational Calls for Revenge
Reaction to news of Charlie Kirk’s murder was swift throughout the international far-right, as individuals and organizations took to social media to voice their support for the fallen leader. Many called for punishment, not only against the perpetrator, but against their shared political enemies.
Turning Point UK, the British division of Kirk’s TPUSA, made several posts saying they “will not forgive” and like others, blaming the murder on “radical transgender ideology,” furthering the blatantly false claim that transgender people “are a danger to us all.”
Turning Point UK tweets that transgender people “are a danger to us all” after claiming that the shooter was “motivated by a radical transgender ideology.” (Source: Twitter).
Also in the United Kingdom, leader of Patriotic Alternative, Mark Collett, commented on Kirk’s death. Collett dedicated most of a live stream on September 12, 2025 to discussing the assassination, where he put forward a number of his own conspiracy theories around the killing.
“Bit of a coincidence that as soon as Charlie Kirk begins to criticise Israel he gets assassinated,” Collett wrote on Telegram.
On the stream, he went further, painting Kirk’s death as a threat to all true nationalists.
“Those people celebrating Charlie’s death would celebrate me getting a bullet through the neck. They’d celebrate you getting a bullet through the neck,” he told his audience. “If it was any of us, they’d be laughing. And whats more, I’m convinced that the people laughing and jeering and saying things about Charlie on social media now and running his name through the mud and mocking his death, not only would they laugh at our deaths, if they could I think they’d see us all the same way as Charlie.”
Islamophobic anti-immigrant activist Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, held a minute of silence for Kirk during his “Unite The Kingdom Free Speech Festival” that took over the streets of London, England, on September 13. Official estimates from authorities say that over 100,000 people participated, while organizers claim it was in the millions.
During a speech, Yaxley-Lennon called Kirk “one of the generation’s greatest.”
On the social media platform X, he retweeted his own post from August which included a video clip of Kirk debating at Oxford University.
Yaxley-Lennon captioned it, paraphrasing from the footage: “The dying out of Britain is the dying out of Christianity…soon Britain will have more practicing Muslims than practicing Christians.”
In Australia, neo-Nazi Joel Davis, an organizer with the National Socialist Network, called “the shooting of Charlie Kirk another act of left wing terrorism,” linking it to the death of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee murdered while riding public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina. The case has been seized on by the far-right as proof that non-white people are a danger to others, pointing to the fact that the suspected killer is Black.
Telegram posts from Australian neo-Nazi activist Joel Davis discussing his conspiracy theories around the killing of Charlie Kirk. (Source: Telegram).
“Both of these murders are a consequence of the rhetoric of left-wing ideologues. If the equivalent happened in reverse they could blame it on not just people like me, but anyone who expresses a moderate pro-white view (such as Charlie Kirk himself) — so we must blame this on the entire Left, on every single politician, activist and commentator who expresses an anti-white viewpoint.”
In Canadian far-right circles, accounts associated with the white nationalist Diagolon network, and their group Second Sons Canada, echoed the sentiment that Kirk’s death was part of a greater attack on white people.
Pointing to an unnamed “they” as killing Kirk, Second Sons Canada founder Jeremy MacKenzie used his live stream to say “they can kill him, they can kill me, they can kill you.”
He added, “they can lobby your government to open your borders and fill your home and your towns with violent criminals and foreigners who do not belong here.”
In a diatribe that linked together the Kennedy family, immigration policy, and vaccine mandates, MacKenzie told his viewers he wants to know the nationalities of the people responsible. “Who are they, where are they from, what do their passports look like?” he asked.
Kirk’s death is being used similarly in Europe, as Pablo González Gasca, a representative of the Spanish far-right youth movement Revuelta, shared a clip showing Kirk being shot with the message “Violence against patriots has reached a point of no return. There is no political leader left whom they have not attempted to assassinate. They are killing us.”
Founded in September 2023, the group maintains strong ties to the far-right political party Vox, with many of its most prominent members either working for or affiliated with the party. Revuelta has quickly become one of the most active organizations within Spain’s far-right landscape. It gained visibility during 2023 riots outside the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) headquarters in Madrid, which also drew international far-right figures, including American commentator Tucker Carlson.
Likewise, Austrian founder of the transnational white nationalist Generation Identity, Martin Sellner, made statements making it clear that he thinks a physical confrontation is coming.
“They tried to kill Trump. They tried to kill Fuentes. They killed Charlie Kirk. They will not stop, until they are stopped—physically,” Sellner wrote on X on September 10.
Sellner also took the opportunity on September 12 to claim that “antifa ideology is deadly” and “needs to be rooted out.”
A screen shot of Martin Sellner categorizing “Antifa ideology” as “deadly.” (Source: X).
Sellner has long promoted the concept of “remigration,” a practice where descendants of non-European people would be returned to the country of their ethnic background, even if they were born in Europe or have a legal right to residency.
In Portugal, the anti-immigration leader of the far-right group Reconquista, Afonso Gonçalves, blamed the political left before it was even confirmed that Kirk had died. Sharing footage of the shooting in X with a caption reading that the killing “is the logical conclusion of the extremist rhetoric from the press and the left against the right.”
German far-right politician with the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) party, Torben Braga, accused the German state of justifying political violence.
“Let’s not kid ourselves: If they constantly insult us as “Nazis,” as a “danger to democracy,” “anti-democratic,” “inhuman,” he wrote on X, “then they are hoping for exactly that. It can happen to any one of us & this state will approve of it, justify it.”
Online Hate, Offline Action
On the same night as Kirk’s murder, several far-right provocateurs took to the streets to protest so-called “anti-white” activities and violence.
Neo-Nazi Ryan Sanchez, a former member of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), a violent street gang based in California which evolved into the transnational Active Club movement, hosted a demonstration the night of September 10.
During the protest, Sanchez called to “destroy the radical left once and for all,” including “activist judges,” a label Trump uses against judges ruling against his administration (which has led to targeted threats and violence against the judiciary), and “NGOs,” which are often scapegoated as “masterminds” of left-wing movements such as Black Lives Matter.
Attendees of the protest were documented chanting “white man fight back.”
Days later, on September 13, Sanchez and his group planned to attend a vigil being held for Kirk.
Footage of the protest, shared on Telegram by the white nationalist group Patriot Front, shows a crowd of men dressed in the group’s distinct khaki and blue uniforms. Stating they were at the vigil to protest “unsafe conditions in America brought on by the radical left and racial foreigners,” the same post indicated that members of other neo-Nazi groups, the Nationalist Network, SoCal Active Club, and NorCal Active Club, were also in attendance.
Reporting from Left Coast Right Watch reports mixed reactions from the crowd to the white nationalist groups. With some cheering on their presence, others confronted the masked racists, eventually resulting in a fight.
In London, England, around a thousand supporters of Charlie Kirk gathered on the evening of Friday, September 12, for a memorial event. Yaxley-Lennon shared a video of the event on his X account, where some attendees were heard chanting “Christ is King.”
Kirk’s death has reverberated globally. In Berlin, members of the AfD attended a tribute. In Madrid, representatives of the Spanish far-right Vox party joined a similar gathering.
In Vienna, Austria, a memorial was promoted on the afternoon of Friday, September 12 by Sellner, who promoted it under the slogan “White Lives Matter.”
