.-') _ .-') _ | |
( OO ) ) ( OO ) ) | |
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,' | |
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\ | |
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | ) | |
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/ | |
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ | | |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ | | |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--' | |
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
People are getting fired for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s | |
murder. It looks like a coordinated effort | |
By Ramishah Maruf, CNN | |
Updated: | |
6:09 PM EDT, Mon September 15, 2025 | |
Source: CNN | |
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 publicized, and people’s | |
personal information can be spread across the internet at a time when | |
doxxing is easier than ever. | |
The Charlie’s Murderers site, whose domain was registered anonymously | |
and which says it is not a doxxing site, claimed it has “received | |
nearly 30,000 submissions,” according to a message on the site’s | |
front page on midday Saturday. At the time there were 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.” | |
As of Monday, the site was taken down after donations in | |
cryptocurrency. An X account with more than 100,000 followers claiming | |
to be controlled by the “political operatives” behind the site said | |
it had as the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation” but does not feature | |
the list of social media users who commented on Kirk’s death. That | |
site was also taken down later that day. | |
Most people whose messages were 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 , 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 after he said Kirk’s | |
rhetoric might have contributed to his shooting, President Donald Trump | |
himself weighed in. | |
“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. 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 were 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 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.” | |
, a former Florida coronavirus data scientist 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’ claims about Florida’s pandemic data | |
were found to be “unsubstantiated,” according to a state inspector | |
general report, a finding she disagrees with. | |
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.” | |
Who is getting fired? | |
Some Republican elected officials are also publicizing people who | |
posted about Kirk’s murder, including some public-sector employees | |
like teachers. | |
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee a Middle Tennessee State | |
University employee should be removed after writing they had “ZERO | |
sympathy” for Kirk’s death. The university 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 behavior 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 to local news was | |
no longer employed with the district. | |
And private companies, such as and the , have also let employees go for | |
their social media posts about Kirk. | |
Longtime Washington Post writer Karen Attiah said she had been from the | |
paper’s opinion desk for “speaking out against political violence, | |
racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.” The | |
Post declined to comment on personnel matters. | |
DC Comics 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, 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. | |
And the big three US airlines – Delta Air Lines, American Airlines | |
and United Airlines – all said they had workers for social media | |
posts they made about the shooting. | |
In most places, private companies can fire employees for any reason — | |
and that includes crass social media posts, said Jeffrey Hirsch, a | |
professor of labor 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 , 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. | |
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 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 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 Kirk-founded | |
conservative group Turning Point’s “Professor Watchlist,” whose | |
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.” | |
CNN’s Dan Heching, Brian Stelter and Pete Muntean contributed to this | |
report. | |
<- back to index |