|
The Russians Are Loving This
Charlie Kirk’s assassination and political violence in America have Russian propagandists downright giddy. It’s all fodder for a war being waged on social media.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
Evan Gottesman is the director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative.
Cheering on political violence is never a good look. But the person who seemed most excited about the assassination of Charlie Kirk might have escaped your notice.
It wasn’t some edgy Gen Z TikToker.
It was an anonymous Russian propagandist. Whoever runs the Twitter account of Russian state media outlet RT was downright giddy after Kirk’s murder.
As news from Utah started rolling in last week, I was struck by how prominently RT was featuring in my social media algorithm. The Russians seemed to be reveling in the chaos.
Bombastic headlines with all-caps for emphasis (mirroring the over-the-top style of Jackson Hinkle, another pro-Russia grifter).
Above a screenshot of a two-word tweet—“civil war”—RT exhorted Americans to internecine violence: “Andrew Tate thinks it’s TIME.”
 |
Andrew Tate. RT really knows how to raise up the best of us.
And RT didn’t just give a spotlight to far-right figures like Tate. RT also blasted out left-wing social media users short on sympathy for Kirk.
Of course, the people saying the slain TurningPointUSA founder “deserved it” are responsible for their own posts. These over-eager social media users have agency and we can’t blame the Russians for their words.
Still, we can emphasize how Russia is deliberately fanning the flames by making sure that every nasty post has an audience. Some of the people Russian media amplified were influencers. Yet many of the people RT boosted were nobodies with negligible viewership. Several accounts had just a few hundred followers.
To RT, that’s what passes as news. And the selection of TikToks, Instagram reels, and Twitch streams Russia blasted out was carefully curated. Russian disinfo artists know exactly what caricature they are reinforcing when they focus on videos from black Americans, women, trans people, folks with dyed hair and piercings, and so on.
RT’s tweets practically scream: “Look at the evil trans leftist blue hairs!”
 |
One RT tweet wasn’t doing anything to hide the ball. Responding to an account called “LGBTQ Nation,” which declared that it would not be mourning Kirk’s loss, the Russians chided:
“No one asked, LGBTQ Nation. Let people mourn!”
 |
Racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBT rage not your thing? How about antisemitism?
Well, RT had another menu to rile up the Jew-haters in the crowd too. Maybe the Israelis killed Charlie Kirk. Or Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Or perhaps it was Soros, as Kremlin ideologue Alexander Dugin suggested.
RT gave a wink and a nod to each of these well-worn conspiracy theories.
 |
Russia was also quick to take advantage of the somewhat whitewashed coverage of Kirk’s career.
In life, Charlie Kirk parroted Putin’s talking points about the War in Ukraine. In the hours after the shooting, RT re-upped Kirk’s Kyiv-bashing content. RT’s logic seems to go as follows: If you were inclined to feel a little more sympathetic for Kirk because of the way he died, perhaps you’ll be a bit more receptive to his views on Ukraine.
Someone in Russia certainly thinks this line of attack is worth a try.
 |
If this all looks like a scattershot approach, that’s because it is.
Russia’s gambit is not about philosophical consistency. RT is not such a sophisticated op. On a more visceral level, the Russians are clearly pleased whenever we in the United States are miserable.
It doesn’t even have to be ideological. Watching a bloody murder has an effect on the viewer. Media companies know this. Where US outlets added content advisories or cut off footage of the fatal gunshot before things got really gory, RT blasted the uncensored snuff film from multiple angles.
 |
Look, I’m not going to tell Americans what to say (and what not to say) or what to watch (and what not to watch) because of what a hostile foreign government might do. Demanding we all get behind a veneer of false unity only rewards domestic authoritarians here in the US.
But it would be irresponsible not to point out Russia’s strategy. According to Moscow’s zero-sum game, whatever makes Americans angry should make Russians happy. Whatever sows disorder in America is good for order in Russia. If you find yourself scrawling out a rant or recording one for your story, recognize how your words are being used. And if you find yourself getting heated over something you see online, recognize how you are being used.
More from The Next Move:
| ||||||||||
