Conspiracy theories were inevitable in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.
The conservative activist helped build the foundation for a new conspiracism apparatus that now lays claim to the story of his killing. I expected Kirk’s death to fuel a popular right-wing conspiracy theory: that some semblance of leftist, trans antifa forces are responsible and represent a threat to America. Instead, it launched a new MAGA conspiracist movement — one that has pointed inward at the Trump administration, Kirk’s wife Erika, and his own organization, Turning Point USA — that seeks a complicated answer to a simple question:
Who killed Charlie Kirk?
In the 10 months since Kirk’s death, some of the loudest voices on the right have worked to discount the official narrative from Utah prosecutors: that Kirk was murdered by Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old who hated Kirk’s politics, who had a gun and saw an opportunity at one of his speaking events. Conspiracist podcaster Candace Owens and an ecosystem of large and small online creators have spent those months concocting dozens of far-out theories, including that Kirk was killed by shadowy forces in Israel, that the FBI had a hand in the crime and that his widow and a rogue Turning Point faction have been somehow complicit in its cover-up.
None of the theories has borne out despite refrains from Owens — a former Turning Point communications director — across scores of podcast episodes that she was getting ever closer to a break in the case that would prove them.
So why have millions followed Owens down the rabbit hole? Why despite a lack of evidence do she and her audience of millions cling to her claims?
To understand how this umbrella conspiracy theory took such tight hold, MS NOW watched hundreds of hours of podcasts and traced dozens of convergent theories. The reporting revealed a cottage industry of conspiracists — longtime antisemitic podcasters, gun YouTubers, mom bloggers, an Alabama lawyer and an Oklahoma kombucha brewer among them — who cite and monetize off one another. A lucky handful have turned Kirk’s death into a full-time job.
The theories are as diverse as the conspiracists peddling them. Elizabeth Lane, a former model from the Republic of Georgia who makes videos for the conspiracist streaming network UNIFYD TV, has posited without evidence that the CIA could have brainwashed Robinson and made him a patsy. In the shed of his Oklahoma farm, beside simmering batches of fermented sodas and rendering beef tallow, Jon Bray’s experiments with pig carcasses and explosives have powered the most popular conspiracy theory of the moment: that Kirk was killed by a tiny bomb planted in his microphone in a convoluted plot by Israel.
Owens and the conspiracists in her orbit only dug in when prosecutors laid out their case against Robinson at a preliminary hearing this month, where they presented DNA, videos, letters and testimony indicating that Robinson, who has pleaded not guilty, confessed. Outside the courtroom, Erika Kirk, Donald Trump Jr. and Turning Point influencers have begged their followers to listen to the evidence.
But Charlie Kirk spent a decade spreading conspiracy theories and telling followers to reject the media, the government, experts and the courts. Can the movement he built be persuaded to trust any of those institutions about his death?
Watch “Who killed Charlie Kirk? Inside the conspiracy theory fueling MAGA’s civil war” on YouTube.
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