Charlie Kirk is not dead and other conspiracies
Within hours of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, edited videos began to spread online. Some focused on the moment Kirk was shot — zooming in on the obviously fatal wound to make the strange claim that he hadn’t been killed at all: that the video was a fake, generated by computer, or that a squeeze of his right arm was proof he had popped a capsule to make it appear as if blood was pouring from his neck.
In videos that each racked up hundreds of thousands of views, one Illinois creator pointed to photos of the Turning Point USA founder making an “OK” sign with his hands: these symbols, they said, proved Kirk had not only had faked his death, but that it also actually revealed his alignment with a demonic cabal that secretly controlled the world.
Conspiracy theories live on a spectrum of possibility and politics. Some built around the Kirk assassination are far-flung ones, pushed by flat-earthers and false-flag obsessives. Others, more mainstream, have without strong evidence pointed blame at Israel, farther-right antisemitic activists, imaginary underground progressive terrorist organizations and Donald Trump himself. Some were likely motivated by belief, but others perhaps by a desire for internet attention, for entertainment or for political purposes yet to be seen.
"Charlie Kirk’s assassination was not just some kid,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his War Room listeners Monday, inviting them to watch surveillance video of the alleged shooter descending a roof, footage that has been held up as evidence by some MAGA influencers that Kash Patel’s FBI is hiding something.
Candace Owens, his longtime friend and former employee, has spent the last several days publicly grieving while posting about “some very powerful billionaires” that she said Kirk was facing pressure from over his wavering support for Israel. In her online show Monday, she also suggested something nefarious about the FBI’s handling of the crime.
"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,” deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said, defining the unnamed networks as “the organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging designed to trigger, incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.”
This narrative is the ultimate conspiracy theory. That its enemy is so fundamentally undefined is the source of its power. The characters in this story are so broad that it can be weaponized against any and every perceived political enemy. It already has been.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna231698
Within hours of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, edited videos began to spread online. Some focused on the moment Kirk was shot — zooming in on the obviously fatal wound to make the strange claim that he hadn’t been killed at all: that the video was a fake, generated by computer, or that a squeeze of his right arm was proof he had popped a capsule to make it appear as if blood was pouring from his neck.
In videos that each racked up hundreds of thousands of views, one Illinois creator pointed to photos of the Turning Point USA founder making an “OK” sign with his hands: these symbols, they said, proved Kirk had not only had faked his death, but that it also actually revealed his alignment with a demonic cabal that secretly controlled the world.
Conspiracy theories live on a spectrum of possibility and politics. Some built around the Kirk assassination are far-flung ones, pushed by flat-earthers and false-flag obsessives. Others, more mainstream, have without strong evidence pointed blame at Israel, farther-right antisemitic activists, imaginary underground progressive terrorist organizations and Donald Trump himself. Some were likely motivated by belief, but others perhaps by a desire for internet attention, for entertainment or for political purposes yet to be seen.
"Charlie Kirk’s assassination was not just some kid,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his War Room listeners Monday, inviting them to watch surveillance video of the alleged shooter descending a roof, footage that has been held up as evidence by some MAGA influencers that Kash Patel’s FBI is hiding something.
Candace Owens, his longtime friend and former employee, has spent the last several days publicly grieving while posting about “some very powerful billionaires” that she said Kirk was facing pressure from over his wavering support for Israel. In her online show Monday, she also suggested something nefarious about the FBI’s handling of the crime.
"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,” deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said, defining the unnamed networks as “the organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging designed to trigger, incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.”
This narrative is the ultimate conspiracy theory. That its enemy is so fundamentally undefined is the source of its power. The characters in this story are so broad that it can be weaponized against any and every perceived political enemy. It already has been.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna231698
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
