Jezebel Adds Editor’s Note to Article About Hiring Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk Published Two Days Before He Was Killed

Screenshot via Jezebel.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, Jezebel hastily added an editor’s note to an article published Sept. 8 that reported how the online outlet had “paid some Etsy witches to curse” him.

The 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder was speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday when the shooting occurred. Video taken by students attending his speech shows Kirk appearing to have been shot in the neck after the sound of a single gunshot was heard.

Kirk was a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, encouraging the young voters in his organization to vote for Trump during his presidential campaigns and speaking at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last year.

Over the years, Kirk made numerous controversial comments and was frequently criticized by the left, including in several past articles published at Jezebel.

The website’s Sept. 8 article drew a spike of attention after Kirk was shot, having come only two days beforehand.

“We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk,” read the headline. It was originally published with reporter Claire Guinan’s byline, according to the Internet Archive, but was later updated to remove her name and just credit “Jezebel” with authoring the piece.

The text of the article bashes Kirk as a “far-right misogynist” who is “a reliable pawn” for the right, “parroting Project 2025 talking points and championing the owning-of-the-libs” and “basically a fake news vending machine with a terrible haircut.”

Guinan devotes several paragraphs to taking umbrage with Kirk’s commentary on women, before deciding that hiring witches on Etsy was a fair response:

Throughout history, society has branded bold and assertive women as witches to silence them. Since Kirk already assumes every liberal, college-educated woman is a feminist witch hellbent on destroying civilization—even recently declaring that the “Jezebel spirit has just infected an entire generation of young ladies” (shoutout!)—we’re reclaiming it. If Kirk wants a villain, I’m more than happy to be the hag of his nightmares.

And, thanks to the internet, wrote Guinan, “I can now buy a curse as easily as I can buy a phone charger,” but she did offer a disclaimer that she had no intention to “cause him harm,” but just “ruin his day with the collective feminist power of the Etsy coven”:

Now, is it ethical to curse a man I’ve never met? Probably not. But is it unethical to let him keep talking? Yes. So here we are, in the gray area.

I want to make it clear, I’m not calling on dark forces to cause him harm. I just want him to wake up every morning with an inexplicable zit. I want his podcast microphone to malfunction every time he hits record. I want his blue blazers to suddenly all be one size too small. I want one of his socks to always be sliding down his foot. I want his thumb to grow too big to tweet. To ruin his day with the collective feminist power of the Etsy coven would be my life’s greatest joy.

There were thousands of self-proclaimed witches offering to cast hexes on Etsy, and among the spells Guinan selected in late August were a “MAKE EVERYONE HATE HIM” spell, a “POWERFUL HEX SPELL,” and another unnamed spell cast by someone with the username “Priestess Lilith,” who sent “proof of cast” that Guinan described as “a photograph in flames, the edges slowly curving inward, engulfing Charlie’s ridiculous scrunched-up little face.”

The next few days passed with no apparent bad luck coming Kirk’s way, and Guinan “began to wonder if I’d been scammed.”

“But then I reminded myself: this is witchcraft, not Amazon,” she wrote. “The forces operate on their own schedule.” She speculated that Kirk might get taken down a peg by Swifties after his recent comments on Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce and shared a tweet joking that Kirk’s head was getting bigger, and made a prediction:

I believe this is it. Slowly over the course of the coming months, the circumference of Kirk’s head will increase inch by inch until he becomes a literal human bobblehead. Or maybe it keeps growing until it eventually pops. Either way, it feels… appropriate.

The article concludes with uncertainty about whether the “Etsy curses” would be effective. “Time will tell,” wrote Guinan, and these “forces move in mysterious ways.” She thanked the “witches of the modern age, who work tirelessly to hex Republicans and topple conservative regimes (and the occasional ex-boyfriend). Your work is appreciated.”

“And to you, Mr. Kirk: May the rash come swiftly,” the article ends.

At some point on the afternoon of September 10, after Kirk was shot, the article was updated to remove Guinan’s name and replace it with “Jezebel” in the byline and adding an editor’s note. The remainder of the article text seems unchanged.

The editor’s note read:

Editor’s Note: This story was published on September 8. Jezebel condemns the shooting of Charlie Kirk in the strongest possible terms. We do not endorse, encourage, or excuse political violence of any kind.

Jezebel also locked down its September 8 tweet sharing the article to disallow any new replies after several small accounts had posted disparaging comments.

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