RadixJournal - September 11, 2025


Live with Richard Spencer

Hosted by
Mentioned
The West, the Best, and the Rest Candace, Charlie, and the Golem

Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

121.64

Word count

4,437

Sentence count

—

Harmful content

Toxicity

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and whether or not we should speculate about the possibility that he was killed by a member of the far-right wing of the right wing. I also discuss some of the theories that have been circulating about the assassination, and why I don't buy them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 everyone i hope you're doing well this is a very late night's dream but i did want to get a lot of
00:00:11.360 my initial thoughts out about the charlie kirk assassination that occurred today and we're gonna
00:00:20.800 have our show as usual tomorrow and uh our frequent guest old buddy of mine jf will be on there on for
00:00:34.080 our usual thursday night show and um you know jf has a lot of experience in politics in this movement
00:00:43.540 if we want to call it that and so there's a lot to be said but i just wanted to get my thoughts out
00:00:52.740 initially um though first off the first layer of the onion it was uh pretty traumatic it was shocking
00:01:07.320 to say the least um i was not a fan of charlie kirk i i think you could safely say that i couldn't
00:01:18.840 stand charlie kirk i did not benefit from his commentary etc etc etc etc but uh when this
00:01:33.820 murder came over my timeline i was shocked and my sympathy just began pouring
00:01:42.460 out i had a tremendous amount of
00:01:51.420 love for him and and fear for what seemed to be happening and sympathy for his family
00:02:01.880 uh so there's that there's just the shocking thing of a murder being broadcast live for everyone to see
00:02:13.020 and for it to be broadcast in graphic detail
00:02:16.680 i mean there was the trump assassination attempt but he of course survived that
00:02:23.280 and it was almost immediately apparent that he had survived i'm not sure anything really compares to the scene
00:02:33.520 of charlie engaging with a
00:02:37.280 a questioner at a college campus and the next moment blood is gushing out of his neck
00:02:45.920 simply horrifying but you all know this and i imagine that
00:02:53.280 you feel the same way as i do and it's important
00:02:58.540 and to talk about other aspects of this whole case
00:03:03.160 um first off
00:03:05.880 i'm really conflicted in terms of whether we should speculate about this at all
00:03:12.880 now more information is going to come out no doubt tomorrow
00:03:16.420 and to be honest
00:03:18.560 24 hours later i think we could basically assume that he's
00:03:25.840 got away scot-free
00:03:28.220 thinking about it processing all of this stuff
00:03:34.440 i do think that this scene this was a professional job
00:03:39.380 i get a very strong impression that this was a professional job
00:03:45.100 that this wasn't just some lone nut taking a pot shot
00:03:50.480 now that doesn't mean that this was done by the cia or or whatever or foreign entities
00:04:00.520 israel russia etc it doesn't mean that
00:04:04.100 i i just think it's safe to say that this person either had military training or
00:04:11.720 professional sniper training of some kind
00:04:15.480 first off the shot was dead on and it was a kill shot
00:04:20.700 uh and there was one shot
00:04:24.920 brooks firing at trump he fired off a number of times killed some bystanders miss trump etc
00:04:32.600 this was one and done and the assassin we have video of him escaped
00:04:39.920 uh kirk was hit in the neck
00:04:44.900 maybe that was what the assassin was aiming for
00:04:49.800 i saw some speculation about the the bullet deflecting off the um
00:04:54.460 uh some sort of kevlar vest i i don't
00:04:58.240 buy that actually i it sort of does look that way but
00:05:01.860 the angle is all wrong if you're thinking he's firing from above etc i i think he was
00:05:06.900 i think the bullet hit the target now perhaps because he was high uh he was aiming for a headshot
00:05:16.220 and he hit the neck gravity pulled the bullet a little bit
00:05:19.440 very possible perhaps he was going for the jugular
00:05:23.560 as the phrase goes and um no doubt it was a it was a fatal blow immediately
00:05:30.240 uh so my first impression again is that this person had some sort of military
00:05:38.020 and professional training
00:05:40.620 now my my next thoughts on this are
00:05:47.780 i guess maybe sort of contradict what i just said
00:05:52.500 there has been a lot of speculation about charlie kirk was killed by israel
00:06:01.520 i don't and that that seems to be the major speculation that's going on on the timeline
00:06:07.320 uh i don't buy that in the slightest and there was a a tweet from a few months ago
00:06:14.880 by harrison smith of info wars where he was saying oh charlie told me that if he turned on israel israel
00:06:21.540 would kill him or something and i saw a number of tweets they were getting a lot of
00:06:26.500 it was secretly going against israel and so on
00:06:32.160 first off i don't buy this in the slightest bit i have been around right wingers for a long time now
00:06:38.740 and i if i had a nickel for every time i heard
00:06:44.000 that someone who is a mainstream
00:06:47.800 hack like charlie was
00:06:50.200 sorry to speak a little bit ill of him but i i think that that's accurate
00:06:54.440 was secretly based and secretly knew all the truth and
00:07:00.020 it was only a matter of time before he turned on his paymaster
00:07:04.300 i i just if i had a nickel for every time i've heard that one i would be
00:07:08.360 a very rich man i don't buy it i right wingers talk this way and it doesn't have a lot of meaning
00:07:14.760 in my humble opinion um secondly if we we give any credence to this notion
00:07:23.960 uh i i don't think that that massad or israel would have killed charlie kirk in such
00:07:32.280 a spectacular manner the fact is you made this man into a martyr you made this man into a symbol
00:07:41.100 it just he will be more powerful in death than he was while alive i i just simply don't buy it
00:07:50.800 i don't buy that charlie kirk was anything other than a good friend of israel i think that is very
00:07:58.940 clear and i don't think israel would have done this some other speculation now and this is just
00:08:07.480 pure speculation um if you do think that this is a professional job done by a foreign entity
00:08:16.340 would be uh russia and why i say that and i i i understand that you know the russia russia russia
00:08:26.380 can get old just blaming russia for everyone everything um is that it fits with a certain
00:08:34.220 propaganda strategy of the kremlin and that is not propaganda in the way that you're used to it
00:08:44.180 that is posters saying you know uncle sam wants you to buy war bonds or something russian propaganda
00:08:51.840 is more about spreading chaos it's about putting normal people into this kaleidoscope where they
00:09:00.960 don't know what's up and what's down and what's real and what's fake and what's left and what's right
00:09:06.780 and there's no doubt that this sort of act can do that to people and it can inspire the worst
00:09:16.500 on the left we've definitely seen that on twitter there have been
00:09:19.960 celebrating his death uh it can inspire craziness on the right as well it can inspire a kind of
00:09:28.060 overreach on the right another trend that i've noticed on the timeline is right wingers basically
00:09:33.940 saying like this is it this is war and the in the words of libs of tiktok we're going full fascism now
00:09:40.260 we can never allow the left to not be in prison or something like this you know uh they are violent
00:09:47.840 fascists and so the only protection against them is fascism of course of the most violent kind
00:09:52.940 uh so basically a lot of people are taking the bait as it were and they're getting
00:09:59.460 put on an edge they're get they're getting anxious and nervous they're they're losing their minds
00:10:07.040 because of this and in that sense i wonder if this could be thought of as a kind of propaganda
00:10:17.480 effort in a way um another thing and this is a a tweet that i tweeted out from um someone actually
00:10:26.240 from texas monthly of all places but he was uh recounting a story that is true which is that
00:10:33.960 charlie kirk throughout his career has been basically loathed by the far right and here
00:10:41.680 he's referring to the gripers in particular i mean i couldn't stand charlie kirk as well
00:10:47.600 uh but i never really fixated on him i just sort of dismissed him uh the griper war occurred i guess
00:10:57.420 seven years ago now wow time flies when you're having fun and it was really an attempt of the
00:11:05.520 nick fuentes people to isolate charlie kirk as the enemy and basically say that he's cocked he's
00:11:14.800 ruining the movement he doesn't understand trump etc etc so i don't think it's totally out of the realm
00:11:24.000 of possibilities that the shooter might very well become a right winger and i i we sense a little
00:11:34.980 bit of this with crooks crooks donated that is the the young man who um attempted to assassinate
00:11:41.460 donald trump uh july of 2024 he donated to democrats he was uh called right wing by people who knew him
00:11:51.420 we know next to nothing about him but there there does seem to be that quality of him who knows
00:11:57.200 exactly but all i'm saying is that i in in within the realm of possibilities is this going to be a
00:12:06.220 situation where a right winger was directly attacking uh charlie kirk certainly possible
00:12:14.580 more likely is this that it is what it is what you think this was all about is what it's about
00:12:26.200 this is a person with a left-wing ideology but but i think the left-wing ideology is is not the primary
00:12:33.620 cause i think this person would be profoundly narcissistic someone who feels that he it's most
00:12:43.300 likely he has never been appreciated throughout his life and they'll know my name now they'll listen to
00:12:52.180 me now finally at last and he did this and ideology is a sort of justification in a way for an act that
00:13:04.940 is ultimately derived from profound narcissism and uh i could see this being a uh you know vausch supporter
00:13:14.300 or um uh hazan that's his name watcher we've already had a situation where one of his fans was accused of
00:13:25.520 terrorism um and and that's how it goes on the internet isn't isn't it that you
00:13:33.580 you're streaming video games and you're talking politics and there's just this natural tendency
00:13:40.780 to be as extreme as possible they're not they're not very many middle of the road centrist democrats
00:13:48.780 who are popular online who are in discord forums who are streaming video games the the name of the
00:13:59.060 the game is to either go full leninist communist or full nazi fascist that that's how it goes there's
00:14:06.580 just a tendency for this to happen and um so i could also imagine this being some sort of leftist
00:14:15.840 assassin uh that is probably most likely if i'm to think about it someone who's watching all these
00:14:23.560 things you know when someone on cnn calls trump a fascist they are sort of putting their tongue in
00:14:31.720 their cheek i i think they do have genuine concerns about overreach of government uh destroying
00:14:39.200 long-standing institutions authoritarianism i think those concerns are genuine but i i don't think
00:14:45.240 they believe that trump is literally hitler in this sense i think people who watch vausch do
00:14:52.200 actually they think charlie kirk is much like these goofballs for men for a worse they believe that 0.97
00:15:02.100 charlie kirk is secretly an anti-semite and secretly uh wants to round up all non-whites and put them 0.93
00:15:12.220 into camps or something i i think they actually believe this and uh someone again who's maladjusted
00:15:21.320 anti-social obviously and someone who gets lost in these forums and watching social media all day
00:15:31.120 extremely online as they say could have done this i i think that's well within the realm of possibilities
00:15:37.980 and i think that's probably most likely but we'll see um we'll there is a possibility this man is going
00:15:47.740 to get away with it and that would make everything much worse because it would add this layer of
00:15:55.720 ambiguity to the situation that would resemble the jfk assassination where you know everyone has two
00:16:02.020 opinions and and it's just uh it can never be resolved really i think that's very possible um
00:16:10.640 from the standpoint of a left liberal charlie kirk was a fascist charlie kirk was baby hitler 0.99
00:16:23.120 that you need to kill in the crib 1.00
00:16:25.780 on the right who are online basically take charlie kirk as a pushover as a cuck 0.99
00:16:39.140 as the alt light maybe not even that as sort of representative of everything that they hate
00:16:46.560 about the gop that's not the perspective of outsiders and into it to try to understand what
00:16:53.880 just happened you have to put yourself in the shoes of those people you can't just be like well
00:16:58.860 charlie kirk had a gay black guy at one of his rallies or uh you know charlie kirk said something
00:17:06.360 nice about blm once or whatever that all of that is immaterial charlie kirk is a powerful influencer
00:17:15.160 deeply connected with the trump system with trump world and that is how he's viewed by most liberals
00:17:24.580 and leftists they don't get the nuance or they don't hear the criticisms online they see him for what
00:17:33.080 he is which is a kind of front man of the trump regime um charlie kirk is a fascinating figure in
00:17:42.840 this regard in the sense that i i you know i wonder if he ultimately won the griper war and what i mean
00:17:52.920 by that is that charlie kirk as i mentioned was isolated as a representative of the establishment
00:18:02.860 back in 2018 and 2019 he was called a cock people at q a sessions were yelling at him and waving rosary 0.96
00:18:13.460 beads at him and you know how does gay sex help the american people and our families and things like 0.98
00:18:22.020 this and so maybe immediately he lost the griper war in the sense that he was being heavily criticized 0.83
00:18:31.520 he was being made fun of and the energy seemed to be on the far right but the the fascinating thing
00:18:39.040 about car charlie kirk what made him not just a republican hack made him more than that in fact
00:18:45.360 was that he was able to absorb excuse me he was able to absorb all of those energies and he was able to
00:18:56.500 absorb anti-covid energies he was able to absorb anti mlk and civil rights energies he was able to absorb
00:19:07.120 white nationalism he was even to a degree able to absorb anti-zionist sentiments anti-israel sentiments
00:19:17.140 he is a truly remarkable man in this regard so his first line of attack when the griper war started 0.99
00:19:29.020 was to push back and basically say you're all losers fuck off we love israel you're not part of this 0.99
00:19:39.000 movement that was successful to a degree but it's more successful to absorb all of these energies 1.00
00:19:46.860 the best opposition is the best opposition is the best opposition is you you can be your own
00:19:53.560 opposition that's operating at a high level of discourse and charlie kirk despite the fact that
00:20:00.900 i didn't find him insightful at all and i i found him off-putting to be honest uh he gained me the
00:20:11.380 uh uh he was operating at a very high level of discourse because he was able to do that
00:20:19.460 and so people would come to tp usa events and they would talk about whether we need to
00:20:28.440 assassinate dr fauci or we need to bring guns to the pharmacy and shoot the vaccines the people 0.99
00:20:38.620 trying to give them give them to us and i'm only exaggerating slightly here there was a lot of hard
00:20:45.380 talk hard right-wing talk going on at tp usa and charlie kirk never really counter-signaled it
00:20:53.700 charlie kirk never he rejected anti-israel sentiment and even anti-semitic sentiment but he sort of
00:21:05.720 did a in run around it and one of the most famous incidents is when he said that israel
00:21:15.420 that was attacked on october 7th 2023 they now get to feel how white people have felt all these years
00:21:25.880 so he's sort of in this way that that that occurs quite often he was sort of creating an amalgamation of
00:21:34.740 the anti-anti-white sentiment and pro-zionist sentiment so you're a racist for israel you're a
00:21:45.200 nazi for the jews in the words of gavin mcginnis he was able to do that and i think that's what 0.95
00:21:50.820 makes him interesting though the liberals have a point when they say that charlie kirk was a racist
00:22:00.160 fascist he wasn't of course on a basic level he's a off-the-shelf b-party activist i think that's
00:22:11.140 where he got his start religious right conservative but what made him different is that he was able
00:22:17.680 to absorb the fuentes energy and in that sense i think he actually won the groyper war
00:22:23.620 some groypers might not want to hear that perhaps they they agree with me perhaps and they think that 0.74
00:22:31.860 they won because they influenced him in this way i have a more of a cynical view being absorbed and
00:22:38.140 having your energy redirected is not necessarily influence
00:22:41.940 so that's what made charlie kirk powerful that's what made charlie kirk interesting now what comes
00:22:54.260 next i there are other people who do what charlie kirk has is doing or did i should say sadly
00:23:04.140 tucker carlson most obviously he clearly wants to absorb alex jones energy and even groyper energy
00:23:13.120 while denouncing nick fuentes but can he replace charlie kirk charlie kirk was 31 and he sort of grew up
00:23:22.040 with the the online right i've seen so many people who claim that charlie kirk was their friend
00:23:31.080 it's a bit incredible actually you know i knew charlie kirk what i think happened is that
00:23:39.280 they talked to him once at a tpus meeting usa meeting and they really felt a connection
00:23:45.120 with this person who was roughly their age 31 they were 20 or even 17 there are a lot of young
00:23:57.000 people who were politically active and they felt a connection with him i don't think that they can
00:24:03.180 feel that connection with me for instance for multiple reasons one of which is that i'm older
00:24:11.060 than they are i don't think they can feel that connection with someone like tucker carlson who's
00:24:15.720 even older than i am so i don't know where the replacement comes from i don't think there is
00:24:24.460 anyone comparable who is as talented as charlie kirk was in his realm now again i didn't really like
00:24:32.900 his commentary i didn't really respect him i guess i had a grudging respect for his political operation
00:24:39.540 in the sense that that was very successful but i don't know if there's someone who's a young person
00:24:48.680 who's wily enough to absorb all of these far-right energies and ultimately push them towards the
00:24:59.140 republican party basically you can be a nut you can believe in ufos you can be anti-semitic for
00:25:07.900 traditionalist catholic reasons you can criticize israel you can be a hardcore libertarian you can think 1.00
00:25:15.840 that the vaccine is just about to kill everyone on earth you can think all of this crazy shit but so 0.99
00:25:22.060 long as you are pushing towards the gop and so long as you are voting for trump you're a-okay by me 0.99
00:25:30.140 that is charlie kirk is there someone else as who has the right you know identity as a young
00:25:41.180 white conservative who can do these kinds of things i don't know i don't know i've also heard
00:25:50.460 that nick fuentes will rise to be the leader of the right i don't think so and i'm not saying that as
00:25:58.520 a criticism i think nick fuentes will continue to grow and the you know article in the new york times
00:26:05.580 was obviously a good step in that direction of notoriety etc but there's a big asymmetry between
00:26:15.400 charlie kirk and nick fuentes nick fuentes is a growth or nick fuentes is our audience is largely
00:26:27.300 organic they are young people they listen to him every night they're live streaming with him they
00:26:37.700 like him they feel connected to him etc charlie kirk really wasn't that charlie kirk was much more
00:26:48.820 of a synthetic creation i do think he was talented at what he did but i don't think charlie kirk
00:26:56.900 could have independently developed the audience that he did charlie kirk was backed by you know
00:27:04.900 billionaires in utah who owned chains of plumbers who would give them millions of dollars to promote
00:27:15.360 the pro-life cause on campus i mean he was connected to that traditional boomer and even silent gen
00:27:23.640 donor base in a way that nick fuentes is not and i don't think nick fuentes ever could be and i mean
00:27:31.860 that as a compliment he's too independent he's too willing to go his own way he's too hardcore you could
00:27:40.500 say in many ways so i don't think that but i also don't have a name of someone who could replace
00:27:50.380 charlie kirk who's coming from that conservative wing they're going to try too hard to be like him
00:27:57.840 you've got to be your own man you've got to go your own way you can't just mimic what other people do
00:28:04.320 and that's basically what i see from conservatives
00:28:08.380 um so in terms of the future of the gop the conservative movement or whatever i i don't know
00:28:18.240 i don't know who's going to replace him i maybe maybe he can't be replaced and it's actually going to be
00:28:24.440 very detrimental
00:28:25.960 um what does this mean for america going forward i i've retweeted a couple of posts that were
00:28:38.880 basically saying we're entering our years of lead the years of lead is more or less italy in the 1970s
00:28:45.380 that included many political politically motivated assassinations a escalation between the far left
00:28:54.320 and the far right former fascists who were funded by the cia and operation gladio which is real
00:29:01.300 communists probably funded by the kremlin i mean it was nasty and i think that that is a good analogy
00:29:11.140 i've heard also the analogy of the troubles in ireland between catholics and protestants there's
00:29:15.920 probably some other analogies as well it's not outright civil war i don't think you're going to
00:29:21.020 wake up tomorrow morning and people are building barricades or digging trenches and fighting over
00:29:28.680 territory i don't think that's going to happen of course but i do think that the political world
00:29:35.040 is going to become nasty i mean does anyone think that this is the end of political violence
00:29:43.220 i mean i can in my own lifetime i can remember this sort of escalation so before 2017 really
00:29:53.240 um antifa were almost like a comical band of weirdos who were kind of funny if anything
00:30:05.040 and you know going to a lot of these conferences etc i remember getting into arguments with antifa
00:30:12.300 throwing insults at one another and it was all sort of good fun in a way now they were obviously
00:30:19.340 nasty but you know it wasn't a big deal and the punching of me was a major wake-up call in january 0.98
00:30:31.400 20th of 2017 because i just walked out there a naive idiot thinking that nothing bad could ever happen 0.98
00:30:43.620 you know you can go sarcastically grin at antifa afraid a few insults and that's it 0.99
00:30:51.520 um i could have been killed in january of 2017 getting hit upside the head by someone running out of a
00:31:00.480 crowd you know i got away with slight damage no big deal but i could have been killed but even that
00:31:11.980 seems like a weekend holiday in comparison to political violence that involves assassinations
00:31:23.260 long guns spectacular deaths caught on camera um i i think it's a very good thing the spotlight is off me
00:31:35.560 uh let's just put it let's leave it at that i don't want to talk too much about this macabre subject
00:31:43.400 i does anyone really believe that we're going to go back or that we're going to reach across the aisle
00:31:54.020 and hold hands and say we all denounce political violence let's move forward together does anyone
00:32:01.460 really think that that's going to happen antifa in this fascinating way is gone antifa
00:32:09.820 i i don't know where they are they weren't present at j6 when there was an actual coup they weren't
00:32:16.940 present and i haven't really seen much of them since maybe they've all od'd on drugs who knows
00:32:27.300 maybe they too have been sort of absorbed into other different formations but what what seems to be
00:32:36.760 coming after antifa is clearly worse and the notion of a profoundly narcissistic radicalized assassin
00:32:52.840 picking off influencers is a pretty terrifying notion um before i go i wanted to reproduce something
00:33:06.740 a a observation that was made by a man named hierarchy who was on a space that i was on
00:33:13.640 and he he said something very interesting about how he believes that this was a left-wing shooter
00:33:21.540 now again i i open-minded about the whole thing it's fine to speculate it can't be bad to speculate but
00:33:31.420 it's fine overall fine to speculate so long as you know you're speculating you don't have this you
00:33:37.280 know confirmed conclusion you know exactly what it is i don't and i'm open to possibilities but i agreed
00:33:45.920 with hierarchy's argument which was this this does have a sort of hallmark of a left-wing shooter in the
00:33:53.740 sense that the left-wing shooter is more likely to go go after a person or an icon or a kind of idol
00:34:03.460 you're more likely to try to kill the czar you're more likely to try to shoot the president or something
00:34:16.340 like that um it has that kind of iconography of left-wing violence you personalize the situation you think
00:34:27.440 that this evil figure is changing the world and needs to be stopped at all all cost i do think that
00:34:38.060 that's a a a sort of left-wing mentality something we can talk about on thursday but does anyone have
00:34:48.220 any questions or comments i'm not going to stay on this too long but someone could actually even come
00:34:56.740 up if he or she wants to
00:35:08.060 all right i guess you guys just wanted to listen which is usually the case uh thank you for being
00:35:15.240 here i'm glad to get these thoughts out i have many more thoughts and we will talk about it on
00:35:21.500 thursday's show we'll see you then all right good night signing off
00:35:38.060 way
00:35:45.820 you
00:35:47.900 you
00:35:56.440 you
00:35:58.540 Thank you.