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As Americans grappled with grief over the assassination of Charlie Kirk, malign foreign governments maneuvered to exploit the shock.
They fanned the flames of national division and polarization, weaponizing the pain of the free-speech champion’s killing for their own ends.
A public murder seen around the world is not a crime the Kremlin would overlook out of respect for Kirk, his family or the country that mourned him.
Leading Russian officials and the Kremlin’s state news outlet pounced on the opportunity to manipulate Americans’ heightened emotions.
Former Russian president and current Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev worked to link the assassination to the war in Ukraine.
Before the identity of the alleged assassin was known, he wrote: “Maybe it’s time for the MAGA team to realize that by supporting Ukraine, they’re supporting murderers.”
That was rich talk from Medvedev, who recently threatened all-out war against the United States and who frequently rattles Russia’s nuclear saber to intimidate Americans.
Mobilizing in lockstep, the Russian news agency TASS amplified Medvedev’s claims, suggesting without evidence that Kirk’s skeptical stance on US support for Kyiv may have contributed to his murder.
Aleksey Pushkov, a top Russian lawmaker, went further, suggesting that Kirk’s murder was a “warning” to President Donald Trump and other prominent Americans: They could be next.
Perhaps most unsettling of all was Russian ultranationalist Aleksandr Dugin, who posted, with more than a hint of wishcasting, that Kirk’s death was “very much like the beginning of a civil war,” and painting the Democratic Party as “America’s Ukraine” — that is, in his twisted telling, agents of insurrection.
None of these assertions were rational. They were evil.
While pretending to mourn Kirk, these pro-Kremlin voices were just exploiting his loss.
What’s worse, they were not alone.
The FBI and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox both confirmed that Russian and Chinese “bots” — automated social media accounts — actively amplified malicious online posts about Kirk’s murder.
“What we are seeing is our adversaries want violence,” Cox said.
They aimed to manipulate the raw anger, grief and loss that many Americans were feeling to incite further domestic conflict.
What’s most vile about these state-sponsored campaigns to translate Kirk’s death into societal breakdown and political violence is that they are directly at odds with his life’s work and worldview.
“When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence,” Kirk famously said. “That’s when civil war happens.”
Indeed, his conservative ideals were fundamentally incompatible with Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and the communist roots that both regimes still lionize.
As a leading defender of free speech, Kirk embodied America’s constitutional values.
In the rough-and-tumble of public debate, he championed the First Amendment both for those who agreed with him and for those who passionately did not.
Kirk steadfastly rejected appeals to emotion and what Abraham Lincoln called the “wild and furious passions,” opting instead for civil engagement and vigorous, factual debate.
That’s our premier civil right, and Americans honor Kirk’s legacy when they stop listening to the foreign bots — and start talking to each other.
To do that, we must first recognize that the campaign to exploit Kirk’s assassination was not our adversaries’ first use of divisive propaganda.
They have been refining their media manipulation techniques for decades.
During the Cold War, the Kremlin used a similar playbook to spread falsehoods about everything from the JFK assassination to the origin of the AIDS virus — and social media have made their efforts easier than ever.
The goal then, as it is now, is to get Americans to fight with Americans, leaving Moscow a free hand, whether to challenge Washington on the global stage or to conquer Ukraine.
We must also remember that the aim of hostile figures like Medvedev and Dugin is chaos and noise, not to promote one preferred narrative.
By consistently spinning conspiracy theories and “alternative facts,” their state-sponsored campaigns look to pollute the information space with competing talking points, spreading discord and acrimony with every share.
Most important, we must realize that Russia and China are opportunists.
Kirk’s murder adds to a list of recent high-profile political attacks and deaths that their information operations have exploited, including last year’s assassination attempt on Trump.
Perhaps the greatest danger is not that Russia or China will persuade all Americans to despise their neighbors, but that we will become so exhausted by competing falsehoods that we lose faith in each other and in the shared philosophy underlying our national cohesion: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We have innumerable reasons to be angry about Kirk’s murder.
But for the love of God, country and Charlie himself, we must not allow our grief to be manipulated by those who oppose everything America stands for.
Peter Doran is adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ivana Stradner is a research fellow.