by Laurent Guyénot
The Unz Review
In just a couple of days, an impressive amount of information has been brought to light pointing to Israel’s strong motive to take out Charlie Kirk ASAP. I will here compile that information, as I found it on X and other Internet outlets.
In doing so, I am not influenced by my personal opinion on Kirk. I hardly ever listened to him before the last three days, and my opinion was mostly negative. Today, I still feel that Nick Fuentes was right in his very severe judgment of him as a traitor to his country paid by Israel to keep the MAGA movement in line with Israel’s interests, even when he was doing some “damage control”. That doesn’t mean, in my view, that Kirk was not sincere in his defense of Israel. As an evangelical Christian, he probably really saw this as a calling from God. On the other hand, I think that ambitious men are never exclusively interested by truth, that men in general (women included) are very good at lying to themselves about their true motivations, and that religion is a very practical way to lie to yourself. I also think that Kirk, although an energetic and talented fast talker, was not extremely intelligent—less intelligent than Fuentes, in my view. Like Fuentes, I don’t think anybody who supports Israel because the Bible tells him so can be very intelligent.
So based on what I have seen recently, I believe that Kirk was turning, but I wouldn’t be able to say to what extent his turning was motivated by his love for truth and morality, or by his concern for keeping the trust of his base of followers, and saving his political future. I suppose he was feeling opposite pressures from two sides: from his pro-Israel backers on the top, demanding that he keeps his unconditional support of Israel, and from his grass-root followers on the bottom, who find Israel’s actions and Israel’s influence on U.S. policies more and more unbearable (Kirk’s followers also listen to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes).
Whatever his motivations were, and no matter how far he was planning to go in his critics of Israel, the fact is that he had gone quite far already. Candace Owens, who holds him in great esteem as a friend, said he was going through a “spiritual transformation”, and believed he would have ultimately changed his mind entirely on Israel. That’s a reasonable possibility. Tucker Carlson, also his friend, encouraged him in this way, and there are unmistakable signs that Kirk was listening to him and moving in the same direction. Would Kirk have gone all the way? No one can say, but there is a major difference between Owens and Carlson on the one hand, and Kirk on the other: Owens and Carlson both left comfortable situations to build their own platforms, whereas Kirk is not his own man: some influential people have invested a lot in him and will not let their investment go to waste. If for some reason they thought Kirk would be more useful dead than alive, then dead he would be.
In any case, Charlie Kirk was slowing turning, and he had been turning faster in the last few months. He had been the most pro-Israel MAGA influencer, together with Ben Shapiro, drawing millions of young people behind him. But his followers and others had been noticing that he was starting to ask embarrassing questions for Israel, about October 7th, about the “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza (he used the term, and “not lightly”), about the Epstein files, and about Israeli censorship in the media.
And he could see that his public applauded him for it. In July, he invited Tucker Carlson as a guest speaker to his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event; Carlson spoke about Epstein as a Mossad agent, and encouraged the public (as he had Kirk privately, without doubt) to ask questions without fear of being called antisemites: “you’re allowed to do that, because you’re not a slave.” The clip went viral. Kirk actually heeded his advice and voiced the same questions himself on stage. Other guests like Megyn Kelly or comedian Dave Smith spoke very harshly of Israel under his watch. Obviously, Trump’s decision to close and dismiss the Epstein affair created strong resentment among the MAGA youth, and Kirk could not ignore it.
Weeks later, August 13, Kirk was reported by Harrison Smith of InfoWars to have said to a friend that “Israel will kill him if he turns against them” (watch Smith’s second follow up on his tweet). You don’t say such a think unless you have received some warning or implicit threat. Then Kirk received a phone call from Netanyahu (confirmed by Netanyahu) inviting him to Israel, and Kirk is believed to have declined. Worse, he continued to raise questions. In his last interview aired the day before his death, as if heeding Carlson’s encouragement, he challenged Ben Shapiro, the arch-Zionist Jewish editor of the Daily Wire, telling him “You Jews own the media, Ben,” insisting that we have a right to question the mainstream narrative on Israel, and stating that he doesn’t like Bibi Netanyahu’s statement: “You can’t be MAGA if you’re anti-Israel”.
From what I have seen of his recent interventions (here is a 32-minute compilation), it seems that he was moving in the direction that Carlson and Owens had taken before him, hesitantly for sure. And it is clear that he was testing his public on these issues, and receiving positive encouragement from them. It is also evident that he was receiving very negative pushback from his Jewish backers and donors, as well as from the White House. Knowing Kirk’s colossal influence on young MAGA supporters, it’s plausible that Netanyahu’s mafia had decided to eliminate him (and also punish him and make an example). He had to be eliminated before he completed his turn, while it was still possible for Netanyahu to mourn the death of a “lion-hearted friend of Israel” (killing two birds with one stone). It is the turn that is most dangerous. In this article, Kevin Barrett illustrates the threat hanging over Kirk with the warning issued to him on August 5 by Daniella Bloom in The Times of Israel.
On the Qui Bono aspect of the case the best source on this affair so far is The Greyzone article titled “Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu funding offer, was ‘frightened’ by pro-Israel forces before death, friend reveals.” The authors (Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil) start like this:
Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.
In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.
According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.
On the investigation, I recommend listening to Jackson Hinkle’s talk posted september 12. Hinkle provides crucial information about inconsistencies concerning the suspect, such as: the gun found in the wooded area that is not seen on any image of the suspect, the “full tactical gear” that the FBI had said the suspect was wearing but that he is not wearing on the photos allegedly taken of him at the event, and the private jet owned by wealthy Chabad Jew Derek Maxfield that took off one hour after the crime from Faro airport (a 12-minute drive from the crime scene), and turned off its transponder. Obviously, there is a lot of explanation expected from the FBI, and Hinkle doesn’t miss the opportunity to mock FBI director Kash Patel and his Mossad honey-pot wife.
Nick Fuentes has not commented clearly on the Israel theory, and wisely: he is now strongly attacked by leftists for having incited hatred against Kirk, and accused of having motivated the killer, with rumors that the killer followed him on X.
Candace Owens has not dwelled into the case, but has expressed her conviction that Kirk “was going through a spiritual transformation,” and her anger at Netanyahu’s attempt to capitalize on Kirk’s death. She has accused him of having lied by omission when reading on television a letter that Kirk had sent to him, the content of which Owens claims to know. In that letter, according to Netanyahu, Kirk wrote: “One of my greatest joys as a Christian is advocating for Israel and forming alliances to defend Judeo-Christian civilization.” However, Owens is implying that the important part of the letter was the following part starting with “but…”
Carlson has also, to my knowledge, made no comment on the investigation, but, in tweets and in a talk with Megyn Kelly, has confirmed his conviction that Kirk was turning away for his support of Israel. Carlson said that Kirk who had personal access to Trump, tried to convince him not to let Israel drag the U.S. into a war against Iran, and that Kirk was receiving a lot of backlash for trying to oppose the neocon agenda.
Though there is still a lot of blanks to fill, I feel rather confident at this point that this is an Israeli targeted assassination, approved probably by Trump (who at this stage approves anything Netanyahu asks him). I’m not sure if the exact simultaneity of Trump and Netanyahu’s first posts on Kirk’s death is a clue, but I do find Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s assassination rather bizarre. I also think it is significant that Kirk was executed very publicly, in front of cameras: this reminds me of JFK’s assassination filmed by Abraham Zapruder.
My tentative conclusion is simply based on a rational assessment of Israel’s interest in removing Kirk as soon as possible, and having Shapiro take up his “blood-stained mic”. How high were the stakes is well expressed in this 19-minute breakdown by Propaganda & Co.
Stew Peters summarizes what I think is the most rational hypothesis at this point: “Pretty obvious that Israel ordered the hit after Charlie started noticing and now they’re handed his organization over to Shapiro, an actual Mossad operative.”
Good point also from Ryan Dawson: “Kirk’s organization had $40 million mostly from Jewish donors. He said what they paid him to say. When you invest that much in someone and they start to go off script at all…”
Also a sensible comment by Mats Nilsson : “When Charlie Kirk, ‘Israel’s biggest supporter’ starts suggesting that Oct 7th was an inside job, that Epstein was a Mossad agent, that Jews hate white people, and that the US should not be involved in Iran, Israel had a problem.”
Charlie Kirk’s evolution on Israel
Let’s get through Kirk’s evolution stage by stage. It apparently started in the weeks following Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023. He said on Patrick Bet-David’s show that he found Israel’s official story “very hard to believe” and suspected a “stand-down order”. That must have been his first red pill.
On his Charlie Kirk Show, he also complained about “Jewish donors” being “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies… This is a beast created by secular Jews.” This was not aimed at his own donors, but was certainly perceived by them as a disgraceful antisemitic trope at the very least. Sure enough, Fox News contributor Ben Domenech posted: “If Charlie Kirk remains the head of TPUSA, the right has an anti-Semite problem that will follow them into the coming elections.” There were many complaints along this line, as reported in this December 2023 Rolling Stone article titled “Turning Point USA’s Americafest is Infested by Antisemitism.”
In the last couple of months, Kirk crossed new lines:
On July 11, as I said before, he invited Tucker Carlson to his Turning Point USA yearly event. Carlson said that “every single person in Washington, D.C.” thinks that Epstein was running a blackmail operation for Israel. In the same event, Kirk openly discussed the Epstein issue, was cheered for it, and asked “how many people believe that [Epstein was working for Israel]? Raise your hand.” He was clearly trying to figure where the wind was blowing. He asked for the files to be released, a treason to Trump. Here you can hear him also saying that Epstein was a Mossad agent.
In the same month, Kirk spoke strongly against taking military action against Iran and went to the White House to talk to Trump about it. Trump reportedly “barked” at him.
35 days before he died, Kirk seems worried and afraid when complaining to Megyn Kelly: “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”
August 13, Harrison H. Smith of InfoWar tweeted: “I’m not gonna name names, but I was told by someone close to Charlie Kirk that Charlie thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against them.” Smith later confirmed and elaborated on what his source told him, without still naming him or her. Around the same time, Smith spoke at length about the fear of people like Kirk to “step on a landmine” by saying something against Israel.
Two weeks before his death, Netanyahu personally called Kirk to invite him to Israel.
In his last interview, recorded 48 hours before he was shot, Kirk was telling Ben Shapiro to his face that we should be allowed to ask some critical questions about Israel. In this clip filmed around the same time (before or after, I don’t know), Ben Shapiro says: “You can’t be a leader of the right if you think the president is covering up a Mossad rape ring or struck Iran for Israel.” There is little doubt that Kirk is targeted.
And now, Ben Shapiro is already implicitly announcing that he will replace Kirk at the head of TPUSA, saying he will “pick up that blood-stained microphone where Charlie left it.”
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https://dailynewsfromaolf.substack.com/p/who-killed-charlie-kirk-the-case?utm