The On-line's Conspiracy Right is Getting Crazier and Crazier

Candace Owens

by Rod Williams, Dec. 8, 2025 - I have a lot of time on my hands, so I consume a lot of news and analysis. I normally watch or read mainstream or respectable stuff from a variety of viewpoints. I daily watch Meet the Press and I watch a lot of The Bulwark podcasts and The Dispatch. I sample some Fox News and occasionally will zip through a little bit of Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly just to see what they are talking about.  I watch some Heather Cox Richardson, Anne Applebaum, Ezra Kline, Matt Walsh, Josh Shipiro, any podcast with David French, and various others. I also read The Atlantic and National Review, and Wall Street Journal online. 

While I consume a lot of news and commentary from a variety of viewpoints, I seldom get down in the gutter with the far-right weirdos. For the last two days I have. What spurred me to delve into the far-right pool of crazies was the controversy surrounding Charlie Kirk's assassination and Candace Owens' claim that maybe it was an inside job. She is claiming that because she is raising questions about the Kirk assassination, the French foreign legion, with the help of Israeli intelligence, has marked her for assassination, and she is living in fear for her life.

There have been a lot of others who have weighed in on the topic of who really killed Charlie Kirk, and there are a variety of theories about who was behind the assassination. I am not going to try to document who said what and the evidence for the claims, but it is bizarre. 

One theory is that Kirk had long been a supporter of Israel but had seen the light and was going to turn against Israel, and so the Jews had him killed. Another theory is that Donald Trump had him killed, but I am not exactly sure why. And there is a theory that Turning Point USA staffers had him killed, again, not exactly sure why, but part of it was that Charlie was preparing to purge Turning Point USA of some staffers who had been stealing from the organization. 

There is another theory that Charlie Krik is not really dead, and it was someone else who was buried. Bizarre!

While none of the podcasters say explicitly that Erica Kirk had Charlie killed, they hint at it. A few of the podcasts have done stories on Erica and painted her as a bad mother, a manipulative, and a power-hungry woman. She is said to have some ethical lapses and connections with shady characters. One podcaster says she has her sights set on marrying J. D. Vance and becoming First Lady.

Watching all of these podcasts, I am not sure how much of this is genuine and how much of it is performative.  Do they really believe this stuff, or are they chasing followers, clicks, views, and subscriptions? It seems that upping the ante and criticizing a fellow podcaster increases viewership for both parties to the fight. 

Another thing I learned from watching over 20 hours of the far-right nut jobs is that they are paranoid. They think their fellow podcasters are actually "fed" out to discredit the movement. Some of them think their fellow podcasters intend to have them killed, and they go on each other's podcasts with trepidation.  It is a bizarre world.

Today, I got the Morning Jolt National Review newsletter written by Jim Geraghty in my inbox, and it addressed the very thing I had been observing and thinking. I am reposting excerpts of it below. I would like to post the whole thing, and it is behind a paywall, but I try to respect copyrighted material and so am attempting to follow fair-use guidelines. Here is an excerpt: 

The latest question from the “I’m just asking questions” crowd is, “Is Charlie Kirk really dead?” I wish I were making that up, but I am not. Unfortunately, a new survey from the Manhattan Institute indicates that the GOP is made up of two factions; the smaller but still sizable faction of new Republicans is not only not all that conservative in their policy preferences — in fact, on issue after issue, they’re pretty progressive — but significant numbers believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that stories of the Holocaust are exaggerated, and that the moon landing was faked. 

Tim Pool

Geraghty then introduces us to Tim Pool, a rightwing podcaster with 2.57 million subscribers on YouTube.  During my two days of exploring far-right podcasters, I watched some Tim Pool. Geraghty reminds us that Pool was one of six commentators who worked for Tenet Media, which was a front for Russian-government-funded propaganda operations. Tim Pool is a big guy on the far right.

Garaghty posts excerpts from a Pool podcast featuring Milo Yiannopoulos and George Santos as guests. You may remember Milo Yiannopoulos. A few years ago, he was in the news for this or that outrageous thing he said.  He is a British far-right political commentator whose speeches and writings criticise Islam, feminism, and anything considered woke except acceptance of homosexuality. He had worked for Britbart and Buzzfeed and worked as an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene. He is still around but fell out of favor with some on the right, due to his saying that sexual relationships between teenage boys and adults could happen “perfectly consensually” and can be positive experiences for adolescents. 

Milo Yiannopoulos

Former Representative George Santos is the Congressman who lied about his job, his education and a lot else and who pled guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, then was sentenced to more than seven years in prison but was then pardoned by President Trump. 

Here are the excerpts from the Tim Pool episode with George Santos and Milo Yiannopoulos:

Santos: What? How is she sinister? No, Milo. Milo, please.

(CROSSTALK)

Santos: Please, please, explain to me, how is Erika Kirk sinister?

Yiannopoulos: Have you seen the difference in the size of her hands with Charlie’s in their wedding pictures, and then compared it to him in his casket?

Santos: Are you saying she’s a man?

Yiannopoulos: No. No. I’m saying that that wasn’t Charlie in there.

Santos (stunned): What are you talk — come on!

The conversation continues:

George Santos

Yiannopoulos: But his body hasn’t been buried. Did they lose it? It happens.

Pool: Do you think there’s a possibility that Charlie is alive?

Yiannopoulos: I think it’s vanishingly slight. I think it’s the probably the most —

Santos (incredulous): Oh, you even give it a slight —

Yiannopoulos: Of course it’s possible. And the behavior of some of the Turning Point people makes me wonder.

Is that not bizarre? Yet these are the people that millions of Americans are turning to for their news and insight. These are prominent new right-of-center voices. 

Geraghty then turns his attention to a new survey from the Manhattan Institute which compares the beliefs between longtime Republican voters and what they call “New Entrant Republicans,” these being “recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.” This group made up 29 percent of the overall sample of Republicans. Among the findings are these:

The 2020 election: Just over half of the Current GOP (51 percent) believes that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was fraudulent, while 41 percent say that view is probably or definitely false. Among New Entrant Republicans, support for this belief rises to 60 percent.

Vaccines and autism: One in three in the Current GOP (33 percent) believe that childhood vaccines cause autism. This view is more common among college graduates (42 percent) than non-graduates (29 percent), and among New Entrant Republicans (47 percent).

9/11 conspiracies: Four in ten in the Current GOP (41 percent) believe that the 9/11 attacks were likely orchestrated or permitted by U.S. government actors. Belief is highest among men (48 percent), college graduates (51 percent), Republicans under 50 (53 percent, compared with 34 percent of those over 50), and New Entrant Republicans (53 percent). Among black GOP voters the figure is 58 percent, and among Hispanic GOP voters, 56 percent.

Holocaust denial or minimization: Nearly four in ten in the Current GOP (37 percent) believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Younger men are especially likely to hold this view (54 percent of men under 50 vs. 39 percent of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41 percent agree, compared with 18% of women over 50.

Moon landing: A similarly sized chunk of the Current GOP (36 percent) believes that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked by NASA. Again, younger men are more likely to hold this view (51 percent of men under 50 vs. 38 percent of women under 50). There are stark racial divides: while only 31 percent of white GOP voters believe the conspiracy, this rises to 59 percent among Hispanic Republicans and 63 percent among black Republicans.

... These “New Entrant Republicans” aren’t just not all that conservative, and they are prone to believing in conspiracy theories. On policy preferences, they’re really not all that much of Republicans at all:

Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives. A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence. Yet they overwhelmingly identify as Republicans today and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Wow! I knew there were a lot of nut-jobs in the MAGA movement, but 36 percent of Republicans believe the moon landing was faked and 41% believe 9-11 was an inside job. I am speechless. It is alarming. 

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