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Dozens of social media posts and messages about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including some that celebrated his death, are being spotlighted by conservative activists, Republican elected officials and a doxxing website as part of an online campaign to punish the posters behind the messages.
Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk’s Wednesday assassination.
…
The Charlie’s Murderers site, whose domain was registered anonymously and which says it is not a doxxing site, claims it has “received nearly 30,000 submissions,” according to a message on the site’s front page on midday Saturday. Currently, there are a few dozen submissions published on the site. “This website will soon be converted into a searchable database of all 30,000 submissions, filterable by general location and job industry. This is a permanent and continuously-updating archive of Radical activists calling for violence.”
Most people whose messages have been posted on the site do not seem to refer to themselves as activists, nor did it seem many were calling for violence. Administrators for the site did not respond to a request for comment. The site also opened an X account on Friday.
Ok so not activists and not calling for violence but were they saying what a great guy Kirk was? If not, on the list they go. It’s all perfectly fair and aboveboard.
[Rebekah] Jones posted about Kirk on Wednesday, writing: “Save your sympathies for the innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of MAGA’s violent political messaging machine.” The website republished that post along with other pieces of Jones’ personal information.
So we’re not allowed to object to MAGA’s violent political messaging machine?
Welp, I for one object to MAGA’s violent political messaging machine.
Some Republican elected officials are also publicizing people who posted about Kirk’s murder, including some public-sector employees like teachers.
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said a Middle Tennessee State University employee should be removed after writing they had “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk’s death. The university confirmed to CNN in a statement that the employee was fired “effective immediately.”
“No university employee who celebrates the assassination of Charlie Kirk should be trusted to shape the minds of the next generation in the classroom. The firing of this MTSU employee was the right decision, and it sends a clear message that this kind of reprehensible behavior must not be tolerated,” Blackburn said in a statement to CNN.
It’s interesting that she specifies celebrating the murder of Kirk specifically, as opposed to saying no university employee should celebrate a murder, period.
DC Comics canceled the just-released “Red Hood” comic book series after its author, Gretchen Felker-Martin, made comments about Kirk’s death on social media.
Interesting that Felker-Martin’s novel Manhunt that included burning JK Rowling alive was not seen as a reason to decline his new comic book series.
In since-deleted posts captured in screengrabs shared by other social media users, Felker-Martin allegedly wrote on social media after news of Kirk’s death: “Hope the bullet’s OK.”
“At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the company, which like CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement.
Oh? Then what about the JKR thing? Hello?
The website says its explicit aim is to get the people it spotlights fired. It was registered through a privacy service with an address in Iceland.
And the site’s name already implies that the people whose information it shares are responsible for Kirk’s murder, paving the way for harassment, Hank Teran, CEO at open-source threat intelligence platform Open Measures, told CNN. The website also echoes back to Kirk-founded conservative group Turning Point’s “Professor Watchlist,” whose purpose was to unmask what it called “radical professors,” but often led to harassment and violent threats directed toward people named on that list.
Altogether, “it could be reasonable to conclude that there’s some intent to incite harassment,” Teran said.
Harassment, and firing, and worse.
“Zero sympathy” isn’t the same thing as “celebrating.”
Don’t forget that the Republicans were the party that claimed to be against “Cancel Culture”.
And I had been trying so hard to avoid controversial topics until this happened.
Anyone who lacks the humanity to summon a quantum of sympathy in such an egregious case has no right to make demands on my humanity or anyone else’s. Anyone whose morality is so contingent upon group affiliation is so morally deficient that I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking him or her to take a picture for me while walking my dogs.
And here I’d thought my commitment to anti-nihilism was unshakable. It seems the partisan sociopathy displayed in response to Kirk’s murder by so many people I thought good and decent has all but completely black pilled me.
How do you know the morality is contingent on group affiliation? How do you know it’s not about the consequences of what people do and/or say? How do you know the partisan aspect is not grounded in sympathy? There’s sympathy for Kirk and his wife and children but there’s also sympathy for immigrants rounded up and sent to random places around the globe. Kirk isn’t a great figurehead for non-partisan sympathy or empathy, from what I’ve seen over the past few days. (Before that I was happily unaware of him.)
I know what you mean, or at least part of what you mean. No of course people shouldn’t be shot for saying things. Of course the misery inflicted on Kirk’s wife and children is horrible. But Trump inflicts that kind of misery on people by the shipload, day in and day out. I don’t think it’s mere “group affiliation” to recoil from people who love Trump.
Speaking of people whose morality is contingent upon group affiliation, Charlie Kirk called the Democrats “maggots, vermin and swine” and said a Joe Biden speech was ” domestic call for the suppression of political opponents”.
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-refers-democrats-maggots-vermin-and-swine
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-bidens-speech-independence-hall-was-almost-declaration-war-against-half
“Not a great figurehead for non-partisan sympathy or empathy”, indeed.
I wonder….did Charlie Kirk say anything about the murder of Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband in June?
Or the murder of a police officer by a conspiracy theorist at the CDC?
I just watched the clip – yes he does say that. [Updating to add: the vermin thing.]
He doesn’t seem evil, in the way Trump does. He doesn’t seem evil and wacko in the way Hitler did. But calling people maggots and vermin is…not benign. No he shouldn’t have been murdered, but no we don’t have to pretend he was a good guy.
From the Meidas Touch Network:
“Stephen Miller characterized the current moment in America as a battle between ‘family and nature’ and those who celebrate ‘everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.’ He said the ‘fate of millions depends upon the defeat of this wicked ideology.’”
… Eric Trump on Fox: “This is a hit on our country. It’s a hit on our movement. It’s a hit on Christianity. It’s a hit on religion. It’s a hit on freedom. This could have been greatest mistake these people have ever made.”
… Elon Musk: “The left is the party of murder and celebrating murder.”
To misquote the Bible (Matthew 7:16): “Ye shall know them by their words as well as by their works.”
I, too, have been appalled by some of the comments about Kirk’s murder coming out from random commentators on the left (though it should be remarked that right-wing organisations are also doxing people who have merely been critical of Kirk’s expressed opinions, and that Hegseth has ordered that the accounts of members of the military should be combed through in order to discover any comments critical of Kirk ), but I have been more appalled by the cynical exploitation of the murder by Trump, his family, his sycophants and Elon Musk. Kirk’s death is mere political capital for them. To misquote Matthew 7:16, “Ye may know them by their words as well as their works.” Words are also acts (and may well be dangerous, particularly in the case of people with power). Words are not merely things you find in dictionaries and that may be strung together according to grammatical rules in order to deliver information, as is fondly supposed by certain linguists, at least in their practice. I understand why the Royal Society chose the motto it did, but it is far from sufficient where the world at large is concerned.
Trump said nothing about the murder of the police officer at the CDC. After all, he was black, and doubtless in Trump’s mind, a “DEI hire”. Nor, so far as I remember, did he say anything about the murders of Melissa Hortman & her husband or get in touch with their families. He was asked by some reporter whether he would get on the telephone about these murders to Tim Walz, but said he wouldn’t since it would be a “waste of time”.
I don’t know about being “black-pilled”, but at the very least it should be recognised that the increasing violence in the USA is very largely the responsibility of the right.
Here is a link to a very good video in which the historian Heather Cox Richardson speaks to former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama about his prosecution, many years after the event, of two of the men involved in the bombing, in 1963, of the 16th Street Baptist Church (a black church) in Birmingham, Alabama in which four young girls were killed, and another seriously injured. He speaks about the “dog-whistles” and the way a “permission structure for violence” was created by white politicians and police-chiefs, and links them to what is going on today. Doug Jones comes across as a wonderful person, unlike Charlie Kirk:
https://youtu.be/bccqUo0mZvQ?si=jrrVWb9_IkjPOkO1
And here is a link to an article in The Black Wall Street Times in which black people talk about the racism that Charlie Kirk propagated. A number of Kirk’s disgraceful comments remark about black people are quoted, as is his praise (on his show) for Kyle Rittenhouse for killing people: “You’re a hero to millions, it’s an honor to be able to have you.”
https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2025/09/11/charlie-kirk-is-dead-but-black-america-remembers-his-racism/
One black screenwriter remarks, “In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, y’all expect Black folks to muster up sympathy and empathy for a man who never had any for us? A man who mocked victims of gun violence, trafficked fake crime stats, and wrapped his white supremacy in ‘dog whistles’ that weren’t even subtle? You can’t be serious.”
Kirk, like some others on the right I have come across, had the ability to come across as personable, even charming, at times (particularly when in front of an audience that did not consist of his followers, where – as in my experience is common among those on the extreme right – he did not spell out what he was happy to spell out to his followers), but he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, filled with that sense of grievance that characterises people like him. I have small sympathy, or empathy, for him, though, like the black screenwriter quoted above, I do for his family.
Ophelia wrote:
Correct.
Tim wrote:
I’m not going to waste my time with an article of such low quality that its author can’t be bothered to make sure that attributed quotations actually appear in the linked sources, because it seriously doesn’t even matter.
I don’t think you appreciate how few fucks I give what Charlie Kirk’s views were. His views are not the point. His views are completely, totally, utterly irrelevant. All that matters and all that should matter is the fact that he was a father murdered in front of his wife and small children, and the fact that his throat was shot out while exercising his First Amendment right to free speech and wearing a shirt emblazoned with “FREEDOM”. To search for reasons, justifications, rationalizations for feeling anything aside from stomach-turning horror at that is to trip over what should be one of the easiest moral bars to clear in the history of moral bars.
To use the victim’s political views as a means to diminish the act’s moral weight is to diminish the moral weight of political violence and murder itself. It depends on the implicit premise that the moral valence of an act, even one as heinous as murder, supervenes on the thoughts in the victim’s head. It is to excuse evil, and that is per se evil.
“Killing him wasn’t that bad, because he was a racist.”
“Raping her wasn’t that bad, because she’s a TERF.”
“10/7 wasn’t that bad, because they were Zionists.”
We often wonder around here how the TRAs can be so monstrous. Well, now you know.
You people are crazy. How do continue to support the rhetoric that caused Kirk’s death.
Views are irrelevant, yes. Campaigns on the other hand are not. Campaigns to get X people to hate and despise Y people are not irrelevant.
Republican politicians and other conservatives are now calling for Americans to have their jobs terminated for their social media posts about Kirk’s killing.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/09/12/6-more-faculty-staff-removed-kirk-comments
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/15/charlie-kirk-death-university-firing-suspension
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-kirks-killing-a-growing-conservative-campaign-seeks-to-get-his-critics-ostracized-or-fired
As I said before, the MAGA supporters NEVER had any problem with Cancel Culture or the Purity Spiral. They just wanted to be the ones controlling the Cancel Culture, and whipping up the Purity Spiral.
Nullius, I did not in fact write the words that you attribute to me (“evidence that Kirk espoused views I disagree with”). It does not surprise me, alas, that you give very few “fucks” about Charlie Kirk’s views. You know, it is possible to keep more than one thought in one’s mind at the same time, even where “morality” is concerned: 1) that the killing of Charlie Kirk was an immoral act, as well one with dangerous political implications (as in the way his death is being seized upon as political capital by the Trump administration — search out Kari Lake’s recent speech on Youtube; 2) that Kirk’s stated opinions on a great number of issues were also immoral and politically dangerous.
Do you seriously suppose that Kirk’s political position was all about “FREEDOM”, and that this is demonstrated by his wearing a shirt with the word emblazoned on it? You seem to suffer from terminal naivetie.
I do not recall any moral outrage from you after an individual broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house in order to murder her, and very nearly killed her husband; or after the murders of Melissa Hortman & her husband. Why are you so exercised by Charlie Kirk’s death? Why is his death so special for you?
I don’t know who Andrew H is, but he should also learn to distinguish between decrying a murder and criticising the rhetoric espoused by the victim, and not suppose that the criticism of Kirk’s views constitutes dangerous “rhetoric”. That is the dishonest ploy that you find all over the extreme right and, of course, in the Trump administration.
That’s exactly the sort of thing that TRAs accuse gender atheists of, and exactly why their ability to feel sympathy for us is crippled. To be unmoved by sympathy for those who suffer atrocity IS to hate and despise.
———–
Tim, are you for real, or do you just feign unfamiliarity with common Internet modes of communication? The exact string of characters “[evidence that Kirk espoused views I disagree with]” was not attributed to you. That’s what the brackets mean. The content of what you wrote was evidence that Kirk’s views were objectionable.
You’re sounding like your worry is that the assassination won’t have the intended effect of chilling or suppressing the speech of those whom you find objectionable.
I don’t care whether his opinions were immoral or politically dangerous. I seriously don’t. That he opposed things I think good and supported things I think bad has exactly zero weight in the moral calculus of his assassination.
If you think it ought affect moral judgement, then I don’t think I’d trust you to watch my pets, because you might use the fact that we have political disagreements to justify not caring for them as well as you might for someone with whom you agree. I’d be even more unlikely to trust such a doctor or fiduciary. If they discovered my views on transgender issues, would they consider me immoral and politically dangerous? Would I be a nasty piece of work in their eyes? Would they then be even partially absolved of moral culpability in sabotaging my health or financial security?
God, it’s like being asked why I care about the trans issue.
Because I’ve spoken my views in public. Because I’ve marched in protests. Because I’ve been called Communist, Fascist, Nazi, racist, sexist, transphobe, baby-killer, sinner, and evil spawn of Satan. Because I used to volunteer as an escort at a women’s health clinic. Because I’ve been given labels that mark me as a non-person whose murder it would be permissible to feel happy about.
No, Nullius, I, for one, do not think you are a nasty piece of work, I think you are being thoroughly infantile. I suggest you also address the political hay that people like Miller, Vance, Kari Lake and a number of others in the Republican party and on the extreme right began trying to make immediately after Kirk’s murder. Or the jokes that Trump and his son cracked after the attempted murder of Pelosi’s husband.
I stated that I think Kirk’s murder was an immoral act, and I also stated that I think Kirk’s stated opinions were both immoral and dangerous and should be discussed. I also stated that I was appalled by some comments by leftists on X & elsewhere.
Yes, the “content” of what I wrote was certainly to do with Kirk’s objectionable views. I quoted some of them.
Anyway, that is that. I am not going to bother with responding to you here any more. It isn’t worth it.
Hey! I did not say I was unmoved by sympathy for those who suffer atrocity. What I said was very limited. I said “Campaigns to get X people to hate and despise Y people are not irrelevant.” That’s all I said. It doesn’t entail denying sympathy for those who suffer atrocity.
(Excuse delay, Tim, there was a rogue letter in your sign-in.)
Nullius, I think you’re missing the point. The way I look at it is this: I despise and deplore the murder of Charlie Kirk, as I do the murder of anyone. The circumstances of his murder were particularly awful, and we should rightly deplore the action, and the outcome. Gunning people down because you disagree with them is morally atrocious, and the act was horrifying. We should all be outraged, and we should all recognize the immorality of the act (unless, of course, our views are consistently that such things don’t matter in the long run, and I don’t think I’ve seen evidence that people here have expressed that sort of world view).
At the same time, we cannot possibly let the impact of his work be silenced. It’s the old ‘never speak ill of the dead’. When Ronald Reagan died, I wrote a column about his environmental legacy. People were saying, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I agree with that, in some contexts, such as personal deaths of loved ones, and the grieving of the family. But when that person is a public figure, and the things they say and do have an impact on the lives of others, it is important that we not let the ‘legacy’ be whitewashed. I’ve seen that happen with Reagan; some people, even on the left, have moved him into the great presidents column, because they remember only that he was a pleasant, sunny fellow.
It is completely possible for a person to hold both those views at the same time, as Tim was saying. His views were deplorable; that does not excuse his death nor make the murder any less awful. It is important not to lose track of what has been said and done, because in this country, history has been so mangled by ‘be nice’ or by ‘offended feelings’ or just by people who want to create the history they believe is true. Some of the inaccurate history is being used to make decisions, such as the so-called ‘original intent’ justices who appear not to know what the intent of the founders was, in spite of years studying the constitution. It is the whitewashing of history that gave us Trump in the first place, and it could yet give us worse (and yes, unfortunately, that is possible). \
I, for one, deplore the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I also deplore the things Charlie Kirk said and did, and the fact that he founded an organization that had an impact on public policy, an impact we will not be able to undo in my lifetime, and possibly never. I think both of these are important discussions, and I think we should continue to discuss his ‘legacy’ while deploring the gun culture that created the horrifying murder.
Thank you, Ophelia, and thank you, iknklast, for stating the matter so clearly.
Nullius #4
Your mistake, as far as I’m concerned, is bringing sympathy into it at all. I think David Frum summed it up beautifully in a recent podcast interview. I don’t remember the exact wording, but the gist of what he said was that opposing or condemning violence – even against people with whom you don’t sympathize – is not really about them at all- It’s about who you are, about your values, your principles etc. It’s about not wanting to live in a world in which respect for the most basic rights of others (and it doesn’t get more basic than the right to live) is contingent on anything as shaky and unreliable as human sympathy in the first place.
I reminds me of a point that often came up in my militant atheist days. Christians would routinely hold up commandments like “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” as the ultimate moral principle, whereas I would argue that morality has nothing to do with love. It doesn’t take any strong moral principles to treat people well if you love them, and sometimes it takes very strong moral principles to defend the equal rights and dignity of others even if you hate their guts. And, of course, there is no shortage of people who do evil things precisely because of blind love for God, the Great Leader, the nation, the family, the movement, the ingroup etc. and a determination to destroy anyone perceived, rightly or not, as standing in their way.
Sympathy, like love, is not entirely voluntary nor something you can simply decide to feel as a matter of moral duty (if you can, then it’s not real love/sympathy), nor would it automatically make you a better or more moral person if you could. Same with empathy. As Paul Bloom has argued, human empathy is selective, biased, and easily manipulated, and can lead to exceptional cruelty and indifference to those perceived, once again rightly or not, as antagonistic towards your chosen subject of empathy (once again, the willingness of TRAs to let women pay any price for their misplaced empathy for autogynephiles comes to mind).
1) There are plenty of people out there for whom I don’t feel any sympathy what so ever, nor do I ask for any sympathy in return.
2) As long as they don’t directly harm, or violate the rights of, others (and “offensive” thoughts and utterances don’t count as “harm”), I still think they should have all the same rights and protections as myself and any act of violence against them should be condemned and punished as harshly as if it had happened to me.
If one of them were murdered tomorrow, neither of these two facts would change.
Apart from what I have already said about sympathy vs. morality (#23), as Ophelia pointed out (#5), getting from a lack of sympathy for people who think/say/do things antithetical to our values to morality being “contingent upon group affiliation” seems like a rather large leap of logic. In a trivial sense it is, of course, always possible to come up with a name for “people who think/say/do X”, frame that as a “group” (or an “identity” , a “community” etc.), and spin any lack of sympathy for “X-doers” as morality being “contingent upon group affiliation”. By that standard anyone who fails to sympathize with anyone on any grounds what so ever can be accused of having their morality contingent on group affiliation. To me this seems like identity politics at its worst.
Nazis are a “group”.
Serial killers are a “group”.
Ok.
The point being…?
Once again, I’m not excusing those who celebrate/defend/trivialize/fail to condemn violence (let alone the actual violence itself!) against ideological opponents, even highly obnoxious ones. I just don’t think making it about sympathy or group affiliation does anything to elevate the debate. Sure, there is plenty of tribalism, and ethical double standards, and “my side” bias going on (any support for Trump or the MAGA movement is, of course, a resounding yes to all the above – the more the better!). It still doesn’t follow that anyone who fails to sympathize with people actively hostile to everything they value is engaging in tribalism, and ethical double standards, and “my side” bias. I wouldn’t feel any more sympathy for someone who said/did the same things as Kirk if (s)he had a different skin color, came from a different part of the world, voted for a different party etc. In any non-trivial sense (c.f. my first paragraph) that’s the opposite of morality being contingent on group affiliation.
And thank you, too, Bjarte, for your thoughtful response.
Here is Brian Tyler Cohen discussing the issue of the way the right, including Trump, Bannon, Jesse Watters, Nancy Mace, Alex Jones, Markwayne Mullin, and (not mentioned on this video) J.D. Vance have been cynically exploiting Kirk’s murder for their political ends:
https://youtu.be/5ujnR33ZkZE?si=pAMPRJTaywenqCYi
I suggest that Nullius should watch it. And I am sorry but I am going to come out and say that the following suggestion that Nullius made in his response to me is dishonest & beyond contempt:
“You’re sounding like your worry is that the assassination won’t have the intended effect of chilling or suppressing the speech of those whom you find objectionable.”
It seems to boil down to an all or nothing point of view. I reject that point of view. We can talk about what was and is wrong with Kirk’s rhetoric without condoning his murder. We can condemn his murder without flattering his rhetoric. Nullius doesn’t care “whether his opinions were immoral or politically dangerous” – ok but I do, and lots of people do, and I don’t agree that we’re being wickedly callous or similar in discussing his opinions and his energetic campaign to spread them.