For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.
Though Kirk denigrated trans people, Muslims, unmarried women, and many minorities and advocated for an America with Christianity at the center of every aspect of life, he was, in their view, a moderate. For some, his staunch support of Israel’s government made Kirk a target rather than a friend.
But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.
These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.
“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”
The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”
Another donor, who called himself “White Nationalist,” commented: “Time to take our country back fellas. Get to work!”
Sánchez, an acolyte of far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, has already mobilized. A video from a vigil for Kirk that Sánchez promoted in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday shows a group of men chanting: “White man fight back.” He shared another image of himself speaking at the vigil on his Telegram channel, with the caption: “DEATH TO THE LEFT.”
The video of the chanting in Huntington Beach was shared in many other extremist groups, including the Anti-Communist Combat HQ channel on Telegram, which is a hub for amplifying antisemitic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from groups including Active Clubs and the National Justice Party.
The channel’s operators highlighted just how useful a recruitment tool such events are. “Those guys chanting in this video will probably have a dozen conversations each that will bring the conservatives around them a little closer to us and that is infinitely more valuable than purity spiraling on Telegram,” they posted.
