Did Mossad and Trump kill Charlie Kirk?

No, they didn’t.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death, many rumours are circulating about who killed him.

The culprits blamed include Mossad, Trump and unspecified handlers who “owned” Kirk, which seems to mean Jews.

There are many videos dissecting his murder and questioning whether it even happened. Some accept he was killed and speculate on who was behind it. Others reject this and claim Kirk was an actor and his death faked.

The same speculators are also musing over the motives for the assassination.

Kirk’s views on some topics had become more conservative over time. He started out as a moderate; pro-gay, pro-immigration, and endorsing a kind of inoffensive civic nationalism. In recent times he made public statements indicating a shift in thinking. His attitude had seemingly hardened against immigration, diversity and trans issues, bringing him into alignment with a more dissident view and away from safe liberal conservatism.

He had even made comments about America’s blatant anti-white culture and adopted a tougher stance against Israel’s actions in Gaza, angering Jewish backers.

The picture emerging was of a relatively young man reassessing previous convictions.

He had wandered off the reservation which meant he had to go.

Why this is unlikely

Many conspiracists overlook the fact Kirk was a minor figure. He was in the entertainment business, not a serious political player with clout.

His main thing was “owning the libs” to make viral videos. Not so long ago Ben Shapiro made his name in a similar way. Kirk presented himself as the open-minded conservative keen to maintain dialogue even with his political enemies. Videos circulated after his death where he made a sadly poignant observation, when we stop talking the violence often starts.

But we should remember both Kirk and Shapiro were confident public speakers let loose on college campuses to thrash inexperienced young people and make their political fads look ridiculous. Kirk easily demolished their badly reasoned arguments about marginalized groups, colonization and transphobia. His confidence, relative maturity and preparation made the fumbling, sometimes incoherent students seem crazy and inept.

This kind of thing is strictly entertainment and has no bearing on anything else in politics. These are money-making operations with minimal effect on public opinion. No left-wing voter was tuning into Kirk’s videos and walking away convinced of his well-argued positions. It was mildly amusing to watch but nothing more.

The elephant in the room with many convoluted assassination conspiracies, therefore, is why bother? Assassinations are messy. If Kirk was a threat to the people bankrolling him they could have simply withdrawn his funding and he would have faded into obscurity. If they have the power conspiracists claim they have, he could have been neutralized without bloodshed and made persona non grata overnight.

The mundane reality of Kirk’s life and untimely death is being made more exciting than it really was by invoking the image of a president controlled by a foreign intelligence agency to end the life of a US citizen.

In a fast-moving event like a filmed public assassination there are many anomalies and loose ends. Who was standing where? What were those people behind him doing? A 200 yard shot seems impressive. Was he trained? Was he a professional assassin? And how did he get away so easily? Did he have accomplices?

In an era of widespread video recording there is an abundance of material we can consider after the fact to construct different narratives.

What is less visible are the cultural factors that make this kind of thing all too easy to imagine happening again.

Irrational hatred is commonplace

You don’t need to go far online to see how unhinged many on the progressive left have become. The range of people championing violent acts in the wake of Kirk’s murder includes schoolteachers, firemen, academics, politicians and media pundits.

What they are responding to is the existence of ultra-right-wing extremist fascism of which they are told Charlie Kirk was an exemplar.

This seems to mean anyone who disagrees with their worldview. Opposing mass immigration, climate initiatives, kids on puberty blockers. To an intolerant hard-left mindset moderates like Charlie Kirk are seen as extremists because cherished beliefs are being challenged.

Many commentators clearly believe Kirk advocated for violence, hate, racism, sexism, aggressive homophobia and worse. Kirk held none of these positions. He was at most centre-right and always polite and reasonable to his opponents.

Those drawn to hard-left ideas seem to accept a hodgepodge of fantasy causes more readily than most. They adopt them as they infer social benefits with their peers. For some it can become part of their identity so they feel threatened when questioned.

Standing against them, as Charlie Kirk publicly did, challenges their fragile, downloaded identities as good people. Anyone who does this therefore is not a good person. And some mentally disturbed people, especially the very online, may believe they are doing God’s work in taking out these not-good people for the benefit of us all. They are after all violent hatemongers intent on harm.

There are many like the alleged shooter and his online cheerleaders. They are being produced every day, plugged into their addictive devices, uncritically absorbing establishment thinkslop and broadcasting their fealty to anyone who will listen.

Some sadly go a step further than just posting videos.

The comfort of fiction

The enduring criticism of the progressive left is their adherence to fantasy even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Some are obsessed with things that only exist inside their heads, most famously obsessions around poverty, inequality and unfairness. They imagine a better world where no one goes without and everyone is equal.

Many progressives prefer the neatness of their imagined utopia to the hard realities of life. The vision, and its grip on their minds, means the actual world we inhabit with its poverty, its tragedy and its unpredictability becomes intolerable.

Those drawn to conspiracy do something similar I fear. They invent a pleasing narrative preferable to real life with all its uncertainty and confusion.

A clever conspiracy ties up loose ends. It explains the inexplicable. It can reinforce comforting beliefs. It feels good, like utopia.

Conspiracies are an attempt to impose a neat solution on a messy world. That is not so different from the zealots fantasizing about Net Zero, diversity and carbon rationing. They too wish a more ordered, predictable world.

Does this mean all conspiracies are wrong? No, conspiracy is real, how could it not be? But an instinct to see clandestine movements, power plays and Machiavellian scheming in every unexpected event is a weakness, a habit serving a need. And the need is to tame the uncertainty of confusing events and embrace a more comforting predictability, something that makes sense.

The danger here is we can become trapped in a false view of the world where omniscient groups control everything, a self-limiting position.

The first rule of any psychological operation is to demoralize the enemy, to encourage him to put down his rifle without a shot being fired. Get the other fellow to believe he cannot win, to overwhelm him mentally so he won’t need to be confronted physically.

Speculative conspiracies that attempt to see beyond the evidence and imagine a more convoluted sequence behind the scenes tap into this same well, believing an enemy is somehow all powerful, able to plan very complex events with precision. It is a kind of self-generated inverse of a deliberate demoralization campaign based on a latent, unchallenged belief powerful groups are somehow more intelligent, skilled or capable than us.

Much of the evidence we have for elite levels of society suggests their key attributes are nepotism, hedonism and dysfunction, none of which incubates superior ability. Believing them omnipotent overlooks the potential we have to rid ourselves of their influence.

Time will tell what happened to Charlie Kirk. Although speculation has its place it has all the hallmarks of a confused young man taking matters into his own hands with tragic results.

The bloodthirstiness of his champions on social media should convince us the more immediate danger is not in elaborate hoaxes or false flags, but those normal everyday people quite willing to cheer on murder. It is them we must tackle first if we are to live as civilized people.

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