Just as sickening as the terrible murder of Charlie Kirk is the stampede to weaponize his death, an ominous online scramble that has swept across the far right in recent days -- from tiny online accounts to Republican members of Congress to the White House, where the president himself mocked any effort to unify Americans and instead declared war on half the nation.

We know why Donald Trump seeks confrontation and division, presumably in hope of distracting attention from his poor approval ratings, his worsening economic data, his embarrassing, scandalous, and increasingly obvious connections with the dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Long before Kirk’s killing, Trump vowed “retribution” against his political opponents, and that tragic event now provides a fresh rationale for presidential vengeance.

But Trump and his bloody-minded MAGA cult are not the only political force that seeks to exploit “civil war.” Both he and his movement also remain what they became during the past decade: useful idiots for the geopolitical machinations of a hostile foreign power.

The shrillest noises now promoting violence and division in American society echo from the same figures who have long served up Russian propaganda in our media and politics – and they are easily identified, from Trump down.

Last year saw the exposure of a gang of “influencers,” under the patronage of an outfit called Tenet Media, with a stable that included such reliable MAGA mouthpieces as Benny Johnson and Tim Pool – and a multi-million-dollar payroll subsidized by Russia Today, the Kremlin’s central media apparatus. Their posts and podcasts routinely echoed Kremlin political themes, from sycophantic support of Trump to pushing Putin’s line on Ukraine. Naturally they all claimed to be innocent and unknowing “victims” of this Russian operation, an alibi that may be assessed in light of their generally poor credibility.

But today, Johnson and Pool are among the loudest voices promoting the “civil war” theme online, inciting fury against Democrats and demanding vengeance. Despite hundreds of condolence messages from Democratic elected officials, party leaders and ordinary voters, Johnson declared on various podcasts and his X stream that “the Democratic Party is not ‘sorry when political violence happens. They want it to happen. They create the conditions for it…”

He went to concoct a conspiracy theory claiming that “Left-Wing dark money groups fund, arm, and radicalize people to target you…They hype violence, glorify killers, and manipulate minds with drugs and social media…” Johnson is a notorious fabricator and plagiarist, and of course could not cite a fragment of proof to support those wild charges.

Tim Pool, also subsidized lavishly by Russia via Tenet, has spread a disingenuous propaganda line, “regretfully” proclaiming that the civil war has already begun – because the left and Democrats are gloating online over Kirk’s murder. He and Johnson are far from alone in promoting such dangerous, inflammatory reactions on the right. Even some Republican members of Congress, such as Wisconsin’s Derrick van Orden, are posting hysterical proclamations that “the gloves are off…The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it. Just like the democrat party wanted our 1st civil war.”

Blaming the “democrat party” for Kirk’s death and announcing the inevitability of civil war may serve the short-term interests of Donald Trump, but exacerbating social tensions and violence in America remains the long-term goal of this country’s international adversaries – most notably in Putin’s Russia. And the principal exponent of the Russian dictatorship’s brand of imperial fascism, Alexander Dugin, has explicitly welcomed what he predicts will be the shattering impact of Kirk’s death in the United States.

The Putin adviser joined in with his own outrageously dishonest framing of the Democrats, suggesting on an Internet platform that “half of the Democratic Party – at the level of senators, at the level of congressmen, and at the level of their social network said: ‘Correct, we killed, we are killing, and we will continue to kill. They are all Nazis.'”

In his lengthy screed, Dugin fashions an agitprop mythology of Kirk, lauding the far-right influencer as a "mature and wise" adversary the "perversions" of global liberalism, who "long before Trump, opened the front of conservative resistance." And in a style that reflects his origins in the Kremlin disinformation apparatus, he invents a conspiracy version of Kirk's murder that affixes guilt on his preferred enemies.

It was, according to Dugin, a "professional assassination," perpetrated by "the same forces that secretly rule America," naming "liberals, globalists, the Deep State" and of course the "Democratic Party," defamed as "embarking on the path of political terror."

"Enough of being tolerant," rants the Putin pamphleteer. "The left always accuses the right of violence. But violence comes only from liberals and the left. The right are victims. Enough of tolerating this. We move to the next phase: total radicalization...Some MAGA supporters call things by their names. This is the beginning of a new Civil War. That is how they usually start: with the assassination of an Archduke. Seemingly an isolated local incident, but entire peoples and continents are set in motion.

Dishonest as Dugin’s outburst was, his desire to intensify and inflame divisions in this country is utterly sincere. His comrades in the Russian intelligence services undoubtedly are employing artificial intelligence to supercharge the bots that they have long used to pursue such ends. Only a year ago, the Justice Department uncovered and disrupted a Kremlin operation that had sprouted thousands of fake social media profiles posing as Americans.

Following Kirk's death, a similar op appeared to be under way, according to tech reporter Joshua Quittner, with swarms of social media postings calling for “war,” “civil war,” and vengeance against liberals, Democrats, and the left. No proof and no definitive studies have emerged concerning this online assault, but it featured "aggregations of accounts with strikingly similar characteristics: generic bios, MAGA-style signifiers, 'NO DMs' disclaimers, patriotic imagery, and stock or nondescript profile photographs."

"In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we are going to see a lot of accounts pushing, effectively, for civil war in the U.S. This includes the rage-baiter-in-chief, Elon Musk, but also an army of Russian and Chinese bots and their faithful shills in the West," wrote University of San Diego political science professor Branislav Slantchev on X.

Who benefits from the civil war meme? Who is promoting it? Whoever does that here, whether ostensibly “right” or “left,” whether consciously or just plain stupidly, is doing the work of our country’s enemies.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024).

Reprinted with permission from Creators.