It's becone a truism in American life; the surest say to make people believe there's a conspiracy is to say there is no conspiracy.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is no exception. In almost the same way as action...
Authorities do believe the man accused of killing conservative political influencer Charlie Kirk acted alone in carrying out the shooting.
...leads to reaction:
Yeah I'm convinced that he didn't act alone, a 100%https://t.co/bNAbB9Uo4d
— ⭐⭐⭐Robert Crosby⭐⭐⭐ (@Robert_Cr59) September 15, 2025
The entire argument - like the one over wheter "Anti"-Fa is an organization or a decentralized network - misses the point; one need not belong to an organized, cohesive group to still do that group's bidding.
Here's an incomplete list of politically or socially-with-plenty-of-politics-motivated spree killers, terrorists and assassins who *weren't affiliated with any group*:
- John Wilkes Booth
- Charles Guiteau (President Garfield's assassin)
- Leon Czolgosz (socialist who murdered President William McKinley)
- Lee Harvey Oswald, people are still arguing over whether he was a solo act. The Soviets thought he was nuts - but he still acted in their interes.
- Luigi Mangioe, the alleged murderer of UHG CEO Brian Thompson. He appears to represent no group - and yet the groundswell of support for him indicates that a large "group" of people support him, and they have a few things in common...
- Richard Reid - the "Shoe Bomber". He wasn't an Al Quaeda member, but he still acted on their behalf - with side-effects that rippled through society until just months ago.
- Elias Rodriguez, the alleged murderer of Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in DC last year.
- Nidal Hasan, the Ford Hood spree killer who murdered 12 servicepeople.
- Ted "Unibomber" Kaczinski, who was aggressively not a member of any group, and yet was a pretty potent supporter of anarchism.
- Ryan Routh, convicted earlier this week of trying to assassinate President Trump. Whatever his motivations, we can all think of groups and actors who'd have loved to have suggested it, and to have made it happen.
- Dylann Roof, the killer of 12 at the Emanuel African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015. Roof was not a member of any white supremacist group - but he certainly acted in the interest of any white supremacist group with murder in mind.
- Vance Boelter, the alleged assassin of former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Melissa Hortman, her husband, and the attempt on state Senator John Hoffman, his wife and daughter.
- Payton Gendron, like Roof a white supremacist who acted alone in killing 10 black shoppers at a grocery in Buffalo New York in 2022.
- Anibal Hernandez-Santana, who allegedly shot up the ABC station in Sacramento last week. He is not alleged to have represented any group (people who are bored to self-harm over Kimmel don't count) - and yet acted in many groups' interest.
- Every rioter at the Capitol on January 6
- Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who murdered 14 and injured 22 in a shooting spree in San Bernarindo in 2015. They were Islamist "homegrown extremists" - but their actions were certainly in the interest of some bad foreign actors (ISIS having been the flavor of the month back then).
- Thomas Crooks, who tried and nearly succeeded at assassinating President Trump last year.
- Mauricio Garcia, a neo-Nazi who murdered eight at a mall in Allen Texas in 2023.
- Micah Xavier Johnson, who murdered six Dallas police officers in 2016 -
- Ryan Palmeter, who murdered three in a racially-motivated terror attack in 2023.
- Robert "Robin" Westman, who murdered two children at Annunciation Catholic School in MInneapolis earlier this summer.
- Anderson Lee Aldrich, who murdered five at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs in 2022.
- Audrey "Aiden Williams" Hale, who om in 2023.
- Omar Mateen, who massacred 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
- And, let's be honest, Timothy McVeigh, who *had* been part of a group, of which he and Terry Nichols were pretty much the two remaining members.
All of them were individuals. None of them were members of a group. Most of them were most likely insane, either clinically or morally.
The problem is, the US is a big country with a lot of people with mental health issues, and when you spend enough time and effort telling unstable people that that some inscrutable murky sinister evil force is going to "erase" you/destroy democracy/steal your future/commit "genocide"/erase your race/are "Nazis" or "fascists" - people against whom we fought a life or death war two generations ago - eventually someone's going to connect the dots and start shooting people.
And - this is a lukewarm take at best - if you are part of a group whose goal is to destabilize society, having people who aren't in your group do the dirty work is a feature, not a bug.
It someone is doing the dirty work in a group's direct or indirect interest, what difference does it make if they have a membership card?
