‘Brain-Worms Stuff’: Substack’s Most Popular Author Torched Over False Claim About Charlie Kirk’s Assassin
Heather Cox Richardson, Substack’s most popular individual author, is being raked over the coals online over a false claim she made about Tyler Robinson, 22-year-old arrested for allegedly assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week.
In a post over the weekend, Richardson wrote the following:
But in fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.
Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world. Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been “radicalized” in college. Then, when it turned out he had spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college before going to trade school, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrated Kirk’s death on social media.
But there is presently no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Robinson is a far-right extremist who was upset Kirk didn’t advocate a more strident conservatism. To the contrary, Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) revealed on Saturday that “It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person [Robinson] who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” The next day, Cox verified Fox News reporting that Robinson was dating a transgender individual whom he lived with.
“We can confirm that again according to family and people that we’re interviewing, [Robinson] does come from a conservative family,” said Cox on Meet the Press. “But his ideology was very different than his family. And so that’s part of it. We do know that the roommate that we had originally talked about, we can confirm that that roommate is a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female. So we know that piece. I will say that that person has been very cooperative with authorities.”
Social media took note of the distance between reality and Richardson’s description of it.
“This is so goddamn depressing. I’ve been saying for years that our problems with epistemic hygiene have been getting worse on the left, and here, arguably *the* most successful left-of-center public intellectual makes my point for me,” submitted Jesse Singal.
“Richardson is an American academic and popular source of political analysis for other academics, many of whom are busy writing papers decrying the threats of misinformation, propaganda, epistemic bubbles, and echo chambers,” observed the University of Florida’s Brandon Warmke.
“They are actively and aggressively creating a fiction in which the leftist killer is a right-winger, while revising demonstrable reality as fiction — as many of their comrades revel in the victim’s death. It’s actually pretty frightening to watch,” wrote Fox News’ Guy Benson.
But wait, there’s much, much more:
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