State media and online trolls have seized on the assassination to score geopolitical points against the United States, according to a new report.
In the week since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Russia, Iran and China have spread thousands of false or incendiary claims about what happened to the conservative activist, in an effort to stoke political divisions or to portray the United States as a dysfunctional country.
Official state media in the three countries mentioned Mr. Kirk 6,200 times from Sept. 10 to Sept. 17, framing the killing as a conspiracy, though they differed on the nature of the plot involved, according to an analysis on Wednesday by NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online.
The findings underscored remarks made last week by Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, where Mr. Kirk was fatally shot during an appearance on a college campus on Sept. 10.
“What we are seeing is our adversaries want violence,” Mr. Cox said two days after the shooting. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world, that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence.”
Foreign influence campaigns have become a recurrent backdrop to virtually any news event in the United States — from natural disasters to elections to political crises.
Russia, China and Iran, especially, try to exploit events in the United States to push their own geopolitical agendas. While their narratives differ, and even contradict each other, they share a goal of undermining American democracy and its reputation globally.
