Posted on 11/12/2025 8:51:54 AM PST by MtnClimber
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, I thought it would be prudent to upgrade my firearms collection. So, for the past two months, I’ve been in and out of my local gun shop, filling out paperwork and purchasing components for a new pistol and a new shotgun. During this period, I’ve gotten to know some of the men behind the counter, and, after one recognized me for my appearance on Joe Rogan’s show, I’ve talked politics with them.
Last week, when I went to pick up a new red-dot sight for the pistol, the conversation turned back to Kirk’s murder—with a twist. One of the gentlemen told me that he believed that the official story—that Tyler Robinson assassinated Kirk as a way to stop “hate”—was fake. I was taken aback, but after asking some questions, I realized that he had accepted some of the schizoid narratives emanating mostly from Candace Owens, who has insinuated that the official story is a cover-up.
Owens, whose YouTube channel has more than 5 million subscribers, has raised questions about camera angles and underground passageways near the shooting site; suggested that Israeli cellphone signals detected on the day of the shooting might have had something to do with the assassination; and argued that the alleged shooter’s chat messages, released by the FBI, are, in fact, fabrications deployed in service of a grand cover-up.
This narrative is, of course, nonsense. The evidence released to the public is persuasive. In this account, a young man named Tyler Robinson, who had a transgender-identifying boyfriend and was “terminally online,” assassinated one of the Right’s most effective communicators, Charlie Kirk, because he had “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred.” Law enforcement obtained chat logs, video, forensic material, and the murder weapon. Robinson’s parents, according to law enforcement, turned him in.
If we wish to attribute the Kirk assassination to a larger cause, we could point to what I have called the “left-wing terror memeplex”: a system that radicalizes disturbed individuals and spins them into random acts of violence. But for some, the random, distant, and chaotic nature of this system is not satisfying enough, and the perpetrators are too banal—or perhaps too “normal”—to serve as symbols of pure evil. Thus, figures like Owens discount the mainstream narrative and divert attention toward an elaborate conspiracy plot, reminiscent of a thriller film. The acts of violence must trace to other sources: traitors, the Jews, the Deep State.
We seem to be entering a period of digitally driven “schizo-politics,” in which both sides’ fringes have developed a web of political narratives, conspiracies, and counter-conspiracies. On one side, we have the left-wing terror memeplex, optimized toward radicalization and random acts of violence. On the other side, we have a paranoid right-wing variant, which refuses to accept reality—“maybe we didn’t really land on the moon”—and directs a growing segment of the population down rabbit holes.
The rise of American schizo-politics is a sociological problem, but it’s also a technological one. The nature of the Internet changes how narratives move through society and tap into the population’s psychological weaknesses and temptations. On the left, this phenomenon creates real physical danger, motivating the most disturbed nodes in the network to commit acts of violence. On the right, conspiracy theorists offer a sense of control, certainty, and meaning to those who lack it, stitching together seemingly random and chaotic events into a coherent narrative, but ultimately separating their audience from reality and undermining the Right’s ability to maintain political discipline—something Charlie Kirk once managed effectively.
What is the solution to America’s schizo-politics? Each side requires a different approach. The problem of the left-wing terror memeplex is diffuse, complex, and difficult to stop. Confronting it demands a close study of digital structures, radicalization narratives, and the identification of disturbed individuals who may turn to violence. It requires law enforcement to infiltrate and disrupt the Left’s system of decentralized violence.
The problem of right-wing conspiracism also presents a significant challenge. Those on the Right should resist any call to revive the old censorship model, which was used to suppress conservative ideas in the guise of “trust and safety.” Instead, they should work to redirect audiences captured by conspiracism and build credible, mainstream institutions capable of commanding attention in the digital sphere—while recognizing that a small portion of the population may be beyond reach.
There is no going back. Digital politics is here to stay. It requires all of us to meet the challenge.
I agree that a small part of the population, on both sides, may be beyond reach.
“build credible, mainstream institutions capable of commanding attention in the digital sphere”
Credible and mainstream are contradictory terms for most young people.
Those days are over.
The "both sides" arguments miss the mark. Do some on the right engage in false narratives and conspiracies? Yes. But no more than they historically have. The real story is the radical authoritarian push by the Left over the past decade. The Right's reaction to it may not always have been as pristine as the National Review types may want it to be, but its a reaction to the Left's insanity. If a murderer breaks into your house and you shoot at him, "both sides" aren't engaging in bad conduct.
Question: What exactly is the "far Right"?
Answer: whatever the Left says it is.
The Left thinks the far Right is Patriots who love America and freedom...their constitutionally-ensured freedom from unconstitutional federal gov't.
That answer has been the only answer since Stalin invented the term.
Yeah, especially since so much of it turns out to be true.
“If a murderer breaks into your house and you shoot at him, “both sides” aren’t engaging in bad conduct.”
...unless you use racial or ethnic bad words or misgender them.
Lol.
So many conspiracy theories turned out to be true that people no longer trust the official version of things. If you’re older, you may connect to the world through books and lived experience, so you won’t automatically accept what you see on the internet. If you’re young, you’re less likely to have that background, so you’re more likely to be at the mercy of what you can find on the internet.
Check out the Board of Directors who control the policy of this publication:
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/manhattan-institute-for-policy-research/
I see Bill Kristol for starters...
They even got money from Bill Gates!
Bkmk
The point of the article is that conspiracy is as bad as violence.
It is getting harder and harder to sort out legitimate conspiracy facts from erroneous conspiracy theories.
There is no fair or reliable “referee”.
How do we deal with this?
Example: One poster here talked about his father who believed that the IRS no longer existed.
That we can test with a drive to a local IRS office. We can go in the door, talk to people who are there—confirm it still exists.
So—that conspiracy claim can safely be discarded.
When David Icke says the Queen of England is a reptilian alien we could not prove either the positive or the negative. Debating about it is hopeless and ultimately a waste of time.
Generally it is a good idea to give non falsifiable conspiracy theories a wide berth.
That leaves the interesting conspiracy theories—where evidence is there to look at—pro and con—and new evidence might become available to help settle the issues.
Those are the ones that are worth discussing—calmly with no name calling.
If only, if only, the populace had the precise god-like objectivity that this man possesses.
However, can anyone explain that a 30.06 slug can penetrate someone’s neck but not exit, captured by one little vertebrate?
Whatever Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are doing is not right wing or conservative. They are trying to make a buck or two by being flamboyant. They are capitalizing on previous popularity to become notorious because they are lost in a sea of intelligent people who are commanding the conservative media space. There are only 24 hours in a day and only so many podcasters to watch. It’s a doggy dog world. Money is measured by clicks and they and others like them need clicks to be relevant.
The "conspiracy" lie has been successfully used for about a century. The Left paints the conservatives as paranoid for pointing them out.
True conspiracies are all over the place:
Commies in Hollywood since forever.
Trump's Piss-gate with the Russian prostitutes.
The rest of the Russian dossier.
Stealing the 2020 and the Biden installation.
The Covid manufacture, deployment, and associated psyops and other acts to ruin the economy and Trump's first term.
Jan 6 et seq.
Kennedy.
Trump's first assassination attempt.
Maybe Trump's second assassination attempt.
Kirk's assassination.
Hunter's laptop with the 51 lying co-conspirators putting their names on a letter and a magazine cover (pretty brazen if you ask me but it shows how much they rely on the tried-and-true 'conspiracy' op).
Lawfare against Trump which is about 50 more conspiracies.
And on and on.
Then some clown like the author throws in some whataboutism that refutes NONE of the actual conspiracies the Rat Commies have been doing to the good guys since WW1.
And their bogus conclusion: "See, both sides are delusional."
My message to the author is nice try a$$face but we are hip to all of your Rat ops.
The left *runs* on conspiracy theories, so up yours Rufo!
1) Arm themselves and practice.
2) Report each and every communist whackjob.
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