Extremist Groups Reemerge Amid Backlash to Charlie Kirk Shooting

In the hours after far-right activist Charlie Kirk was shot at a Utah university, prominent right-wing figures called for retribution. And in Arizona, once-dormant extremist groups began to resurge.

Within minutes of Kirk’s shooting, far-right politicians and activists flooded social media with unfounded claims that the “far-left” was to blame: School-shooting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones declared, “This is war” on his Infowars channel. Chaya Raichik, the operator of the anti-LGBTQ+ account Libs of TikTok, issued a similar post on X. And Steve Bannon, the former advisor to President Donald J. Trump, told viewers on his livestream that “Charlie Kirk’s a casualty of war. We’re at war in this country.”

Then Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers—and a former clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Justice Mike Ryan—also appeared on Infowars. He said he intended to restart his militia to provide public “protection” for political figures such as Kirk.

The next night, a far-right extremist group in Southern Arizona resurfaced online for the first time in more than three years. Within a few weeks, another extremist group in Northern Arizona had told supporters to show up at a school board meeting.

The pattern echoed past moments in Arizona politics, where online outrage prompted by national right-wing figures played out among residents in cities and towns across the state. There, local extremist groups seized the opportunity to reassert themselves. Even though neither of the actions materialized, one local elected official was forced to temporarily relocate.

A Tucson-based Extremist Group Reemerges

On Sept. 11, the day after Rhodes’ directive for militias to reactivate, one group in Arizona that calls itself the “Arizona Armed Milita [sic]” posted to its Facebook page, targeting Tucson Vice Mayor and City Council Member Lane Santa Cruz, who is nonbinary, because of an Instagram story Santa Cruz shared from their personal account the night Kirk died.

The extremist group accused Santa Cruz of mocking Kirk’s death and urged its followers to protest outside of Tucson City Hall the following Monday. Before that week, the group’s Facebook page had been inactive since 2022, when it had spread disinformation about drag performers at a Tucson Children’s Museum event.

Screenshots from Santa Cruz’s story—including a repost from pastor-turned-activist John Pavlovitz that referenced Kirk’s dismissal of “empathy” as a “made-up, new-age term”—circulated rapidly among conservative networks.

Scott Pressler, a gay man known for propagating far-right conspiracy theories who’s also part of the movement pushing to separate trans people from LGBTQ+ rights, used his platform to ask people in Tucson if “this is who you want representing you.” Pressler’s post was shared by thousands of users on Truth Social, the American alt social media platform owned by Trump’s technology company.

Locally, former state Sen. Justine Wadsack (R-Tucson) and current state Rep. Rachel Keshel (R-Tucson) called for Santa Cruz to resign.

Keshel’s statement, amplified by the Arizona House of Representatives Republican Party’s X account, accused Santa Cruz and a staffer of fueling “horrendous events” and partially blamed the political left for Kirk’s assassination. She doubled down, tagging U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI’s X accounts in a request to “take a closer look at hate speech and rhetoric like this being classified as incitement of violence.”

Later that afternoon, the story of Santa Cruz’s post twice made the news on local TV station KVOA.

By Sept. 13, LOOKOUT learned that Santa Cruz and their staff were forced to relocate due to threats and harassment.

“The misrepresentation of my Instagram story has resulted in an online mob and direct threats toward me, my family, and my staff,” Santa Cruz said in an email to LOOKOUT. “I had to close my Ward 1 office and move my team to remote work. I also left my home out of an abundance of caution once I found that my address was leaked online.”

Santa Cruz said the story at the center of conservatives’ campaign—“Krama, if you know you know. diosito te maldiga”—was misinterpreted.

“Nowhere in that post do I reference [Kirk],” Santa Cruz said. “The intentional misspelling of ‘karma’ was a childhood reference [to a word] that people I grew up with often misspelled and believed it meant ‘God be damned.’ … It was familiar only to those who share that context, not a comment condoning the assassination.”

But on the morning of Sept. 15, no extremist group members appeared at city hall. Instead, counter protesters, police wearing “community network” patches, and television crews gathered in anticipation of a confrontation that never came.

HOW IT ALL UNFOLDED

A Similar Presence in the Chino Valley

Despite Santa Cruz’s clarification, their stories proliferated in internet echo chambers, and people continued to say that they celebrated Kirk’s shooting.

Some Kirk fans launched online efforts to identify and punish others accused of making similar remarks, like in Chino Valley where the far-right group The Lions of Liberty commended the school district’s decision to recommend firing a teacher who had allegedly posted a message on social media critical of Kirk.

In a statement, Chino Valley Unified School District said the post was made by an off-duty district employee using a personal device. The district recommended terminating the worker at the Oct. 13 governing board meeting, according to the statement.

The Lions of Liberty, an anti-government extremist group that’s known for having attempted to “monitor” ballot boxes during the 2022 midterm elections and was later sued by the League of Women Voters of Arizona for voter intimidation, called on the school district to “investigate” other teachers for any messages referencing Kirk, and urged its followers to attend the school board meeting to put pressure on dismissing the employee.

However, attendees at the board meeting said no one from The Lions of Liberty showed up. Rather, counter-protesters arrived at the governing board meeting in solidarity with the employee.

Calls to punish critics of Kirk have sprouted up across the internet, primarily from far-right accounts, lawmakers and political influencers.

Drop Site News reported that at least 50 people across industries, like schools, universities, airlines, tech firms, and government agencies, were facing firings, suspensions, or investigations as of mid-September over alleged comments about Kirk’s assassination.

A short-lived website calling itself the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation” encouraged users to submit the social media profiles of people who promoted or glorified political violence. It claimed to be a “lawful data aggregator” rather than a “doxxing website.”

For those on the receiving end of internet harassment, the threats are grave: “The harassment has real impacts,” Santa Cruz said. “We’re living with that reality every day.”

Additional reporting by Joseph Darius Jaafari