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The late activist and media personality Charlie Kirk speaks at the 2025 Student Action Summit, at the Tampa Convention Center, in Tampa, Florida, July 13, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Antisemites Push Baseless Lies to Blame Jews and Israel for Assassination of Charlie Kirk

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This analysis was authored by the Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) by CAM:

The horrific assassination of U.S. activist and media personality Charlie Kirk during a speaking event in Utah on Wednesday sent shock waves across the globe and underscored the growing threat of political violence fueled by unchecked hatred and extremism.

While the arrest of 22-year-old suspect Tyler Robinson was announced on Friday morning, the investigation was just getting underway, and the exact motives behind the shooting have yet to be officially determined.

Nevertheless, antisemites have already exploited Kirk’s death to advance a hateful agenda, asserting without evidence that the State of Israel was responsible for Kirk’s murder. Similar narratives have already proliferated on social media several previous times this year, including in response to wildfires in Los Angeles and Jerusalem. Claims that Israel was behind the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy have also gained renewed popularity in antisemitic circles in recent times.

The reflexive scapegoating of Jews or Israel for tragic events is not a new trend. In his 2013 book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, medievalist David Nirenberg highlighted the two-millennia-long persistence of this phenomenon, describing it as the “product of a history that had encoded the threat of Judaism into some of the basic concepts of Western thought, regenerating that threat in new forms fitting for new period.”

Constructing a Conspiracy

In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, antisemites on social media drew attention to a nearly month-old X post by Harrison Smith. A journalist for the far-right media outlet Infowars, Smith had previously accused Israel of murdering Jeffrey Epstein and of preventing President Donald Trump from releasing the so-called “Epstein files.” He also falsely asserted that a “global government” was running world affairs from Israel.

In an X post dated August 13, Harrison claimed that he was told by someone close to Kirk that “Charlie thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against them.” Following the shooting of Kirk, antisemites quickly turned to this month-old post to “prove” that Israel had murdered Kirk for “turning against them”:

As news of Wednesday’s shooting broke, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to X to initially offer his prayers for Kirk, and later to offer his condolences to Kirk’s family. Antisemites responded with cruelty, hijacking the Israeli leader’s words of empathy to accuse him of plotting the murder:

Ahead of the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the United States, antisemites also attempted to connect unrelated dots, accusing Israel, “them,” or “🧃” — an online euphemism for “Jews” that antisemites employ online to evade content moderation — of culpability for 9/11, as well as the Kirk and JFK assassinations.

Antisemites also assigned blame to Israel because Kirk was mortally wounded by a gunshot to the neck, somehow associated with (and only with) the IDF:

Searching for a rationale for their false assertions, antisemitic social media users claimed that Israel targeted Kirk because he was beginning to “notice” the country’s supposed influence and control over American politics:

Furthermore, several posts blamed Israel or Jews for the killing of Charlie Kirk, which largely originated from accounts that operate solely to denigrate Jews for clicks, virality, and revenue.

Collectively, these 24 X posts — representing only a small sample of similar content published online in recent days — were viewed by millions of people, liked by hundreds of thousands, and shared and circulated by tens of thousands more. The rapid dissemination of these unfounded and malicious accusations validated recent research highlighting the post-COVID emergence of social media as a means to propagate conspiracy theories.

Reject the Irrational Hate Peddled by Propagandists

Jean-Paul Satre, grappling with the atrocities of the Second World War and the Holocaust, published Antisemite and Jew in 1946. In his telling, “antisemitism is a conception of the Manichaean and primitive world in which hatred for the Jew arises as a great explanatory myth.”

Now, antisemites have latched onto alleged Jewish malevolence as the “great explanatory myth” for Kirk’s senseless murder. Such conspiracy theories are designed to manipulate those rightly enraged by the assassination, potentially fomenting violence against Jews or Jewish institutions.

Social media companies have a duty to remove from their platforms disinformation and hateful content that falsely assigns blame to Jews for this despicable crime. Failure to do so only increases the risks of violent retribution, fueled by festering, baseless grievances against a people falsely accused of a monstrous crime.

Lies and misinformation about calamities also distract from efforts to work toward a more tolerant and peaceful society where political disputes are settled with words, not bullets.

Political violence erodes the bonds that hold together people of disparate views and backgrounds in a liberal society, sowing discord that culminates in death and destruction. Antisemitic conspiracy theories that thrive amid tragedy, only adding fuel to the flames of discord, must be exposed, condemned, and refuted. Achieving justice for Kirk and healing and closure for Kirk’s family and the American nation as a whole demands nothing less.

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