Dozens of social media posts and messages about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including some that celebrated his death, are being spotlighted by conservative activists, Republican elected officials and a doxxing website as part of an online campaign to punish the posters behind the messages.
Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called "Expose Charlie's Murderers" have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk's Wednesday assassination.
The campaigns show how social media posts or personal messages — even by accounts with few followers or from people who are not public figures — could easily be surfaced and publicised, and people's personal information can be spread across the internet at a time when doxxing is easier than ever.
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The Charlie's Murderers site, whose domain was registered anonymously and which says it is not a doxxing site, claims it has "received nearly 30,000 submissions," according to a message on the site's front page on midday Saturday. Currently, there are a few dozen submissions published on the site. "This website will soon be converted into a searchable database of all 30,000 submissions, filterable by general location and job industry. This is a permanent and continuously-updating archive of Radical activists calling for violence."
Most people whose messages have been posted on the site do not seem to refer to themselves as activists, nor did it seem many were calling for violence. Administrators for the site did not respond to a request for comment. The site also opened an X account on Friday.
Loomer posted on X on Wednesday, hours after the fatal shooting, that "I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death." CNN was unable to reach Loomer for comment.
On X, one account has begun a running "Trophy Case" — a "mega-thread of all of the people Twitter gets fired, updated live as the news comes in," with dozens of entries of people it claims have lost their jobs.
And after MSNBC fired senior political analyst Matthew Dowd after he said Kirk's rhetoric might have contributed to his shooting, President Donald Trump himself weighed in.
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"They fired this guy, Dowd from (MSNBC), who's a terrible guy, terrible human being, but they fired him. I hear they're firing other people," Trump said on Fox News on Friday morning. On his Substack after the firing, Dowd said the "Right Wing media mob" attacked him on several platforms. CNN has reached out to Dowd for comment.
Some of the people whose posts have been highlighted say they're now receiving a barrage of harassment and are worried about becoming the victims of violence.
For example, Canadian independent journalist Rachel Gilmore posted that she is "terrified" about retaliation from Kirk's "far-right fans" after the shooting. That post is the first listed on the anonymous website, including a part where Gilmore said she hoped Kirk survives. She said in a video online that she did not celebrate Kirk's death and said she hoped he survives in another post. She also said she received a "tsunami" of threats and called the last 48 hours of her life "a living hell."
Rebekah Jones, a former Florida coronavirus data scientist who in 2022 claimed the state of Florida pressured her to manipulate pandemic data, said she contacted the police twice about death threats and about the "hit list," her name for the anonymous site. Jones posted about Kirk on Wednesday, writing: "Save your sympathies for the innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of MAGA's violent political messaging machine." The website republished that post along with other pieces of Jones' personal information.
"It is absolutely fair to call it a coordinated harassment campaign," said Laura Edelson, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the Cybersecurity for Democracy Project. "That's absolutely why it exists, to coordinate and target the harassment toward the selected individuals."
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Who is getting fired?
Some Republican elected officials are also publicising people who posted about Kirk's murder, including some public-sector employees like teachers.
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said a Middle Tennessee State University employee should be removed after writing they had "ZERO sympathy" for Kirk's death. The university confirmed to CNN in a statement that the employee was fired "effective immediately."
"No university employee who celebrates the assassination of Charlie Kirk should be trusted to shape the minds of the next generation in the classroom. The firing of this MTSU employee was the right decision, and it sends a clear message that this kind of reprehensible behaviour must not be tolerated," Blackburn said in a statement to CNN.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina also encouraged the firing of a public school teacher, whom the school district later confirmed to local news was no longer employed with the district.
And private companies, such as Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers and the Carolina Panthers, have also let employees go for their social media posts about Kirk.
DC Comics cancelled the just-released "Red Hood" comic book series after its author, Gretchen Felker-Martin, made comments about Kirk's death on social media.
In since-deleted posts captured in screengrabs shared by other social media users, Felker-Martin allegedly wrote on social media after news of Kirk's death: "Hope the bullet's OK".
"At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC's standards of conduct," the company, which like CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement. CNN has reached out to representatives for Felker-Martin for comment.
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In most places, private companies can fire employees for any reason — and that includes crass social media posts, said Jeffrey Hirsch, a professor of labour and employment law at the University of North Carolina. It's a little trickier for public sector employees, but their firings are also justified if the speech is "so egregious it disrupts operations."
In a 1987 case, the Supreme Court decided that it was constitutionally protected speech, and not grounds for firing, for a government employee to tell her co-workers she was sorry that a would-be assassin failed to kill President Reagan.
And it's extra sensitive for teachers, Hirsch said, since they work with young people, especially if the posts are applauding political violence. "The reality of the situation is, if they're getting flooded, even if it's from one political wing, with complaints, it's likely to push an employer to fire somebody," he said.
A range of posts
In other cases, some social media users highlighted Kirk's pro-Second Amendment stance, including past news reports that he said some gun deaths were "unfortunately" worth it to keep the Second Amendment.
The highlighted social media entries span a range of responses to Kirk's shooting. One post, for example, simply noted the world continued on.
The website says its explicit aim is to get the people it spotlights fired. It was registered through a privacy service with an address in Iceland.
And the site's name already implies that the people whose information it shares are responsible for Kirk's murder, paving the way for harassment, Hank Teran, CEO at open-source threat intelligence platform Open Measures, told CNN. The website also echoes back to the Kirk-founded conservative group Turning Point's "Professor Watchlist," whose purpose was to unmask what it called "radical professors," but often led to harassment and violent threats directed toward people named on that list.
Altogether, "it could be reasonable to conclude that there's some intent to incite harassment," Teran said.
High political tensions across the country are ramping up people's emotional responses, said Edelson, the Northeastern professor, and it "creates a need to do something."
The blanket blame on "the left" in some cases extends the blame past the shooter into an amorphous enemy, Whitney Phillips, assistant professor of information politics and ethics at the University of Oregon, told CNN.
"Attempts to call out people designated as being celebratory of Kirk's death, or merely critical of Kirk's life, work to give shape and weight to that enemy," Philips said.
That feeds into "a false culture war framing". As a result, she said, disconnected groups can be perceived as "a downright spiritual enemy of conservatives, and by extension, of America itself."
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