Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a terrorist attack meant to discourage the conservative movement. Even before authorities had suspected sniper Tyler Robinson in custody, we knew it was likely the work of a radicalized mind brainwashed by far-left extremist rhetoric so vile that he thought it was okay to kill someone.
Where does this radicalization come from? Follow the money.
Conservative Mike Cernovich was correct in his Wednesday X post calling for a congressional investigation into the funding of far-left extremism. Our political climate is not an accident. Provocative leftist ideologies pushed with guerrilla marketing are used to manipulate weak minds. Influence always costs money when the message is not pure enough to resonate with people on its own.
For example, who funds the Southern Poverty Law Center that, as The Federalist’s Sean Davis pointed out, put a target on Turning Point USA, which Kirk founded and led? SPLC connected Turning Point to “white supremacy,” and warned it would “destroy our foundational democratic principles and institutions.” Tax filings show SPLC received $339 million in 2023.
Congress should dig into nonprofit foundations like the Soros family’s $5.2 billion Open Society Foundation, which funds other nonprofits pushing for all-access abortion, open borders, LGBT rights, and aggressive activist groups like Black Lives Matter. These groups funnel money to Democrat and socialist candidates.
With enough financial support and candidate campaigning, culture-changing ideas take root, and we end up with House Democrats who protest taking a moment to pray for Kirk after his assassination. In the old days, a politician would care about the optics of refusing to pray for a shooting victim. Now they shout “No!” It shows how much U.S. culture has shifted.
The Federalist has extensively reported on how censorship groups work to silence conservative voices and amplify left-wing narratives. As Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway testified in Congress earlier this year, censorship entities like the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard “produce widely used censorship tools and blacklists to favor left-wing media while working to silence media that fight false narratives.” She added that such tools “routinely rate leftwing news outlets, that are no threat to the permanent bureaucracy, higher than those that challenge prevailing orthodoxies.”
Companies can then use these lists to “boycott some publications and reward others with advertising,” Hemingway noted. NewsGuard has given poor ratings to conservative outlets, including The Federalist, as previously noted in these pages.
Evidence suggests that NewsGuard has received federal funding as well. As The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland reported, the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard almost $750,000 in grant funds. Congress should ensure no more tax dollars go to biased censorship.
Well-funded nonprofits send out a lot of press releases and push their agendas to reporters. This likely contributed to outlets like the Rolling Stone running biased pieces on events such as the No Kings protests, furthering organizers’ messaging that President Donald Trump and his followers are a danger to the nation’s security.
On Friday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the bullet casings left behind by the suspect held for Kirk’s assassination were etched with phrases, including “Bella ciao.” Where did a white boy from Utah learn the words to this Italian resistance song sung by those who fought against the Nazis? Why was he worried about fascists?
The propaganda press and Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to jump on any story when there is an opportunity to connect Trump to Hitler. It only takes one unstable person to think, “If I could go back in history and kill Hitler, would I?” Next, they are plotting to harm Trump or his allies like Kirk.
When taxpayer-funded NPR compares Trump to Mussolini and Hitler in an article complete with a photo of a protest sign reading “Make fascists afraid again!” someone is going to take matters into their own hands.
The propaganda press practically encouraged more assassinations after fawning over young, wealthy Luigi Mangione, accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk.
Words should not lead to murder, but because people with deep pockets are destabilizing the United States, our culture is a tinderbox for violence.
We will likely never know precisely what words moved the assassin to action. But we know the movement. It is the evil shadow cast over American politics, funded by big money that has created a cesspool of players hungry for power at all costs.
It is time to name the money sources, map out the network of funding, and stop billionaires from pushing garbage political issues that radicalize weak-minded individuals.