Charlie Kirk was building the new right. His death is tearing it apart.
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?
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Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
