The “it’s the Jews who did it!” folks didn’t waste any time
As expected.
I didn’t know exactly what form it would take, but after I heard that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated, I considered it inevitable that the Jew-haters would blame the Jews, and quickly. This of course includes the Jew-haters on the right, one of whom (Candace Owens) I wrote about recently in this post.
I didn’t know exactly what form it would take, because Charlie Kirk was such a strong supporter of Israel. But where there’s a Jew-hating will, there’s a Jew-hating way that the narrative can be shaped.
And so we have this:
One of the most popular unfounded narratives promoted a “false flag” conspiracy theory, suggesting Israel or Jewish organizations colluded to have Kirk killed because he had supposedly become more critical of Israel, or that Israel suspected he would eventually “turn on them.” An initial analysis on September 11 found that there were over 10,000 posts on X that included the phrase, ‘Israel killed Charlie Kirk.’ As of September 16, five days later, that figure has increased to over 72,000.
Please read the whole thing if you want to get an idea of how widespread it’s been. It doesn’t list the politics of all the people spreading this sort of word, but they seem to be people who liked Charlie and they seemed therefore to be on the right. Some, of course, are unequivocally on the right; this guy follows the typical “I’m just asking questions” modus operandi of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens:
I’ve got questions about Charlie Kirk’s assassination:
> He used to be an Israel loyalist
> He feared ‘Israel would kill him’
> He started *mildly* criticizing Israel
> He said Epstein was Mossad
> He said no Iran war on behalf of Israel
> He let anti-Zionists speak at his events
> Zionist media started attacking him
> Netanyahu calls Charlie about Israel visit
> FBI fires chief of Utah FBI field station
> Tells Ben Shapiro “question Israel”
> Loomer says Kirk backstabbed Trump
> Charlie shot in jugular from 200yd away
> Police arrest patsy claiming to be shooter
> Patsy tells “shoot me!” during arrest
> Actual shooter flees without a trace
> Netanyahu tweets within minutes
> Israeli media 1st to confirm Charlie’s death
> Assassin escapes without a trace
> Private jet takes off 12 minutes away
> Private jet disables location monitoring
> Jet is owned by Chabad Lubavitch donor
> Netanyahu posts about Charlie’s Israel trip
> Police arrest 2nd suspect with pellet gun
> 2nd suspect is not the shooter
> FBI claims they have photos of shooter
> Rifle found in nearby wooded area
> Scope was likely planted on shooter’s gun
> FBI says shooter was wearing tactical gear
> FBI releases photos of suspected shooter
> Alleged shooter wearing no tactical gear
> Alleged shooter not carrying gun in photos
> Zionists go on social media blitz about Kirk
> Netanyahu goes on media blitz about Kirk
> Netanyahu says Islamist behind shooting
> Netanyahu says Israel didn’t kill Kirk
> FBI says foreign intel assisting manhuntBut I’m sure it was just some random liberal kid…
That was written prior to Robinson’s arrest and all the revelations that followed.
But Hinkle is small potatoes compared to Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. As Roger L. Simon (who used to be quite friendly with Carlson) writes:
… [N]ow we are learning that, according to Tucker, Charlie Kirk had secret concerns with Israel despite all Charlie’s public praise for the Jewish state we have seen and can see now on YouTube. We have to take Tucker’s word as evidence. It’s hard to do. Meanwhile, he seems to be positioning himself as the posthumous spokesperson for Kirk who most agree is already well-represented by his wife Erika.
The whole thing is at once creepy and ineffably sad. The best we can say for the new Tucker is that he is not as whacked-out as Candace Owens. Candace has become the poster woman for something we might call ICI or “Internet-Caused Insanity,” the lust for more and more online notoriety until your brains explode. Every day it’s something new. Brigitte Macron is a man. Stalin is Jewish. Now it’s the Jews who killed or coerced Charlie (hard to tell with Candace who appears to be dodging another defamation suit in her phrasing—one’s enough). Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is in some kind of lead position in manipulating Kirk, she claims to have been told. Charlie’s own producer, Andrew Kolvet, has debunked the whole thing, but it’s nonsense on its face.
These people have enormous followings on the right, and although most people on the right don’t subscribe to this sort of hateful message, it does pull in way too many. The goal is not just to stir up the right against Israel and Jews – although that indeed is a big goal – but also to split the right and gain power (and clicks, of course).
Jew-hating is an ancient sport and its manifestations and motives are legion. It has taken root on the left (and among its adherents number some ethnic Jews, which is not new either). It has a long history on the right, too, although in recent years that segment of the right had shrunk way way down. But it’s growing again, fanned by online “influencers” with massive followings. Yes, some of those followers are bots. But way too many are real.
If they can twist the assassination of Kirk into a supposed Jewish plot, they can do the same for just about anything. But that’s the protean nature of Jew-hatred.
[ADDENDUM: See also this for a report of recent coolness between Kirk and Owens. Hat tip: commenter “Jon baker.”]
The people who have convenced themselves that the Jews run the world will always think they were behind it.
Just like the people who always blame the US will say it was the CIA(or other US intelligence agency).
That is from both the right and the left.
The biggest push from the left is to try to deny his alignment with them in fact. They are the ones celebrating the totally justified murder of Mr. Kirk but for some reason they really need the actually man who did the totally justified murder to be from a group they hate. Deep inside themselves they know it was an evil act and since they are the definitionally good people it can’t have been any of them that did it.
Owens has become irrelevant to normal people, and Tucker is well on his way to the same position.
Both are despicable these days.
The “I’m just asking questions” style of argumentation is the least courageous, most cowardly means of debating. Tucker is rapidly driving himself off a cliff into the abyss of irrelevance.
robert downey jr eye roll, oh spare me, if anything the venn diagram is probably overlapping with the trantifa, and the Hamas mummers,
but as recently as two years ago, Ben Domenech was attacking Charlie, not showing good faith,
Way too many people playing Internet Colombo. I’m not sure if thousands of people online are trolls all the time, or have just lost their damned minds.
It really doesn’t matter what it is, at this point. Anything seen in the news, anything the US government is involved in, large numbers of people are going to refuse to believe that it is what it appears to be, because all of our institutions have lost most of their credibility. Some percentage of those large numbers are going to attribute it to a plot of Jews, which is not a new thing either.
There are conspiracy theories circulating right now about Brigitte Macron and Michelle Obama being biological men, about Barack Obama being gay and having murdered his chef to keep it quiet, that the narcotics boats destroyed by the US in the last few weeks weren’t actually, that Irina Zarutska’s murder was staged, that the COVID vaccines are uniquely dangerous and known to Big Pharma to be so, and of course that Jeffrey Epstein was blackmailing a “pedophile” ring possibly for Mossad. We can add Kirk’s murder to the list. All of us here can think of others. Some of us here believe in these or others like them.
And the Left is always going to lie and exaggerate the currency of these theories on the Right while freely indulging in and spreading their own, using the institutions they still control to amplify their message.
One of Althouse’s lefty trolls is pushing the “Jews killed Kirk” meme hard right now, having had to pivot off three other conspiracy theories that imploded already.
Jews.
Is there anything they can’t do?
The people blaming the Jews for everything are in the same mental category as the sufferers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Maybe we can even call it Jew Derangement Syndrome. Wherever there is something that these people don’t like or approve of, it’s Trump’s/The Jews fault.
Article from the Gatestone Institute re this type of propaganda: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21908/kgb-russia-soviets-palestinians
Niketas:
Indeed.
With Jew-hatred, a lot of the impetus has always been from lies. The blood libel. The Protocols. Hitler’s WWI “stab in the back” propaganda.
And more generally (not about the Jews) we also have the proliferation of JFK assassination conspiracy theories. What do they have in common? The idea that the actual Communist who killed him, Oswald, either didn’t do it or was a tool of others. Oswald himself planted that last thought, by saying “I’m just a patsy.” (You can watch it here).
I mentioned this somewhere yesterday, but be aware that there is an effort brewing to carve off Evangelical support from within by claiming that the church completely replaced Israel in God’s plan . They do this by quoting part of what the Apostle Paul said but ignoring what he said in Romans chapter 11.
Also , the Apostle Paul indicated that there would be a Temple in existence in the latter days in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 – which he calls ” God’s Temple”. Who do these people think is going to build this Temple???
@Jon Baker:there is an effort brewing to carve off Evangelical support from within by claiming that the church completely replaced Israel in God’s plan
Also not new. Plenty of denominations had something like this within my lifetime and only recently changed it, if at all. You can find things like this in the earliest Christian writings. St Augustine of Hippo wrote about it, I don’t think he endorsed it exactly.
Somewhat similar are beliefs that today’s Jews are not the “real” Jews, like the odd one about the Khazarians–though Khazaria was real and it really did adopt Judaism, around the time Islam was new.
Or, not always intended invidiously, the belief that non-Jews are descended from Jews, like the British being the Ten Lost Tribes, or that Native Americans descend from Jews.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell who means these literally or figuratively.
Frankly, I was waiting for the “Mormons did it” crap to come forward.
As Mormons have been a historically persecuted minority I could see some blaming Kirk’s killer being brought up in the LDS faith as being a reason that ALL Mormons are responsible.
But, I guess to some it will be just as easy to blame the Jews since many are always looking for some group to blame.
So much of what is happening makes me want to go crawl under a rock somewhere to just get away from all the insanity.
Niketas:
Owens subscribes to the “Jews aren’t real Jews; they’re Khazars” theory. I don’t think there’s an anti-Semitic theory on earth to which she doesn’t subscribe.
The first Jew I got to know was my wicked stepfather and boy was he wicked. But I never generalized him to Jews.
I’ve believed a lot of foolish things in my life, or was at least open-minded about them, but anti-Semitism was never among them.
Yet reasonably savvy and intelligent people fall for anti-Semitism.
neo writes about Changers. I’m not sure she has covered those who might be called Dark Changers.
Have they put it about that The Kennedy’s and MLK were really murdered by the Jews?
To me, all this conspiracy nonsense started with JFK.
Tucker has been very anti Israel/Jew for a very long time. He would have some military idijt on spouting such nonsense.
Re: MLK assassination
SHIREHOME :
Someone said in the past few days, Gutfeld?, that Charlie Kirk’s assassination has been the most impactful since MLK’s.
From what I’ve seen so far that’s true. Except widespread violent riots didn’t take place.
______________________________
The riots, which lasted from April 4 to April 11, 1968, involved widespread rioting, looting, arson, and protesting, resulting in 43 deaths, over 3,000 injuries, and more than 20,000 arrests.
Major cities like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, and Kansas City experienced the most severe unrest, with Washington, D.C. suffering the most extensive damage, including over 1,200 fires and $27 million in property damage.
–Google AI
______________________________
Food for thought.
There are conspiracy theories circulating right now about Brigitte Macron and Michelle Obama being biological men, about Barack Obama being gay and having murdered his chef to keep it quiet,
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Those aren’t conspiracy theories, those are fantasies. Actual conspiracy theories have testable theses. There’s a subset of fantasies which are stated as conspiracy theories but are devoid of inductive reasoning.
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It’s a reasonable wager that few of the people who call Michelle Obama ‘Big Mike’ actually think she’s a man in drag; they’re purveyors of lame jokes. The notion that BO is gay is trash talk based on an old photograph, odd things he said to his girlfriends in correspondence, sketchy claims by the usual randos who’d be ignored if they weren’t useful to push some line (Garry Trudeau fell for one of these characters when he wanted to trash Dan Quayle), and the epistemological principle which holds that if someone calls an adult male gay you’re a sucker if you say he is not. If you look under the hood you might also discover among Unz types the assumption that any negroid male without an exposed history as a roué with women must be on the down low.
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Have they put it about that The Kennedy’s and MLK were really murdered by the Jews?
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Ron Unz has a regular contributor who maintains that the Kennedy Assassination was a Mossad hit. His name is Laurent Guyenot. My wager would be that one of the reasons Messrs. Sailer and Derbyshire have moved over to Substack is their anxiety that if you rent a cottage on the grounds of an asylum, people get the idea you’re one of the inmates.
Candace Owens has gone full nutter, so I put no stock in anything that comes out of her mouth.
I’ve always wondered where antisemitism comes from. As society becomes more secular, it seems unlikely that hatred toward Jews still stems from blaming them for the crucifixion. That explanation feels outdated—almost irrelevant now. So what drives it today?
I wish we could resolve this somehow. It’s such a persistent, senseless problem.
Growing up, I was insulated. I don’t recall knowing any Jewish kids in school—maybe there was one, but the memory is hazy. I vaguely remember someone being called a name, though I’m not even sure that moment was real. It’s hard to hate people you’ve never met. And once I left Georgia, I began meeting Jewish people more often. Most are good, upstanding individuals. And smart—so smart. I find I like surrounding myself with people who challenge me intellectually, who elevate my knowledge. Maybe that’s part of the issue: some people don’t like being challenged.
Anyway, I come to this site because Neo is one smart cookie and has a pretty good take on the issues she discusses.
I really cannot explain this outbreak of Jew-hating without reference to demonic influences.
I’ve always wondered where antisemitism comes from.
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One person you occasionally see in this forum used to run a publication and later a blog in co-operation with two other individuals. The politics of the Near East was not one of their topics but on his own time one of his co-bloggers would remark on it. All the trouble in the world, and this putz lands on Israel. He has an antic hatred of the place and its people.
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One aspect of Israel is that its people accomplish things at a more rapid clip than anyone in the world outside the occident and a few places in the Far East. The place is filled with handsome public works, factories, dwellings, service enterprises, and functional public institutions all constructed in inclement circumstances. They have pound-for-pound a military whose prowess is second-to-none which smacks its enemies hard. You know what else this fellow hates? Cops. Denunciations of police officers having banal confrontations with people are another of his signatures.
Megyn Kelly is also becoming insane.
Antisemitism is indeed an ancient disease. It is real, it is dangerous, and it is ugly.
I’ve heard many theories for its origin. One I find convincing is this: both Christians and Muslims claim to have replaced Judaism (“replacement theology”); that God has abandoned the Jewish people, and has now chosen them instead.
If your theology is rooted in the idea that the Jewish people have fallen from grace, then their mere existence is an affront to you (to say nothing of their persistence, and their repeated successes).
Please note that antisemitism has been prevalent in most Christian and Muslim societies, sooner or later… but not in Buddhist or Hindu societies.
And yes, the Jews fighting against their own interests have been with us for a long, long time. My wife sometimes refers to the Biblical account of twelve spies, sent to Canaan by Moses; two reported favorably, and the other ten insisted that they should all turn back. (It was because of those ten that the Jewish people wandered in the desert for forty years.) My wife refers to those ten naysayers as the original Jewish anti-Zionists.
Steve Bannon has also become very anti-Israel lately. Antisemitism is becoming increasingly popular among young conservative men. There is a whole new generation of people who are now latching on to old conspiracy theories as if they had just discovered them.
The complete lack of trust that people have in all of our institutions has fueled the conspiracy theories. The government has done so much crazy stuff that some people will now believe almost anything. Once you jump on the crazy train it’s hard to know when to get off.
Disagree with BrooklynBoy, specifically on this topic, because Megyn Kelly is quite critical of Candace and Tucker on this very topic.
https://youtu.be/yHIW4nRyNns?si=VBOAqdc2Vgog2pmq&t=3090
It is a bit long, and you have to stick with it, because it may seem Megyn is defending Candace at first (which is where I the link above takes you), but when you get further along to it at the 1:15 mark, Kelly makes it clear there is no evidence supporting the theory and it is “crazy talk”. What initially sounds like a defense of Candace is really just accepting that Candace may have something, but then she picks apart what that something may be and that Candace is very likely misrepresenting it.
Steve at 6:35 – it’s easy to hate people you’ve never met. People do it all the time.
Some people who never met a Jew have no difficulty at all believing the craziest things about Jews.
I’m glad for this blog, where people are more sensible!
See “Why The Jews” by Prager and Telushkin.
It’s worth noting that Jew Hatred is truly ancient, so much so that connecting it to Jesus being crucified is a Johnny come lately by thousands of years, with the likes of Antiochid Greeks and Assyrians at times trying to wipe it out for reasons that has nothing to do with a Nazarene Carpenter hundreds of years in the future. Even the Romans who were less interested in wholesale extermination were quite oppressive and could be counted on to conduct genocides to maintain control.
Best as I can tell it seems to be a mixture of religious and tribal hatreds and the sort of special place Jewish culture and thought had at shaking up the norms of the Bronze and Iron Age worlds. The persecution of Jews by other Abrahamics is justifiably infamous and for very good reasons but I think we blind ourselves (like the US Holocaust Museum did) by just focusing on those reasons for the motives.’
Turtler:
Dennis Prager has written on the subject:
Re: Dennis Prager
Sure, anti-Semitism has a long history, but that doesn’t mean the more contemporary explanations of Jewish success and the need for scapegoats don’t count.
During my spelunking into white supremacist websites on account of my neo-Nazi surfer buddy, I didn’t hear anything about Judaism’s distinctive values. (For that matter, Christianity has distinctive values.)
What I did hear was how Jews controlled the media, finances, entertainment and the government. ZOG — Zionist Occupation Government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Occupation_Government_conspiracy_theory
I listened to a lot of Dennis Prager when I was working my way into conservatism. I eventually concluded he was a weak thinker, like David Brooks or Neil deGrasse Tyson, who nonetheless imagined he had the moral and intellectual high ground to speak down to the rest of us.
“it is impossible to be an anti-Zionist without being an antisemite”
If you are anti-Zionist as opposed to (theoretically) anti-nationalist it means any group can have its own country, except the Jews. Q. E. D.
huxley:
As I said, Prager describes seven major forms of anti-Semitism–pagan, Christian, Muslim, enlightenment, leftist, Nazi, and anti-Zionist. If I remember correctly, it was actually the pagan form and the Nazi form that Prager had described as having the main (although not the sole) source of their Jew-hatred an antipathy to the values of Jews. The other forms of Jew-hatred emphasize other things.
I also have – unfortunately – spent a fair amount of time reading at Jew-hating sites. In recent years one can find a wide variety of reasons they give for their virulent hatred of Jews. For example, you can definitely find the ancient “Jews killed Christ” and the related “Jews reject and don’t accept Christ as their Savior” reasons. You can find the “Jews control everything” reason (the one you mention). You can find the “Jews hate white people and promote immigration with the goal of replacing white people” one, and you can find the “Jews are privileged white people” one. Among leftists in particular, there’s “Jews are committing genocide against the poor brown Palestinians.” With someone like Candace Owens and her followers, you can see a lot of “Jews are international child traffickers,” “Jews are Satanic,” and “Israeli Jews are out to commit genocide on Christians in the Middle East” (that last one is a favorite of Tucker Carlson as well). Jew-hatred is a shape-shifter.
As far as Prager goes, I don’t know what he used to be like, but in recent years – at least in videos I’ve seen – I don’t see him as talking down to people or as being a weak thinker. He certainly seems to know a great about Judaism and talks about it, but I’ve not seen him being condescending or shallow or “weak.” Nothing at all like David Brooks. I’d be curious to see some examples; I certainly haven’t seen tons of his videos nor have I read most of his work.
Of course, for the last year or so he’s been fighting for his life and rehabbing, having become a quadriplegic. I don’t think he’s put out any (certainly not much) content since his accident other than updates on his health.
Steve on September 19, 2025 at 6:35 am said: “I’ve always wondered where antisemitism comes from.”
And some of the follow on commenters:
I came across this today and it appears relevant to this thread and possibly a partial answer to that question? September 6, 2024 Why Progressives Hate Israel by Richard Samuelson
Judaism perpetually frustrates their assumptions about comprehensive progress in politics.
https://lawliberty.org/why-progressives-hate-israel
Art Deco on September 19, 2025 at 7:28 am said: [Israel] ” is filled with handsome public works, factories, dwellings, service enterprises, and functional public institutions all constructed in inclement circumstances. ”
inclement circumstances!! I love that phrasing, thank you.
Inexplicably Meghan Kelly seems to approve of Candace Owens. She referred to her respectfully, as in my dear friend Candace, during a recent broadcast seemingly indifferent to the facts of her antisemitism and general insanity. I cannot explain it other than M. Kelly must be losing it.