By Kyiv Post
Copyright kyivpost
Western mainstream media outlets, including AP, Politico and The Independent, were full of allegations on Wednesday that social media bots as well as state mainstream media from Russia, China and Iran were flooding the internet with false information about the shooter, his identity and motivation, along with suggestions his actions were about to spark a civil war.
The NewsGuard “fake news” tracker said official media in those three countries had mentioned Kirk more than 6,000 times in the week following his death.
Outlandish social media claims included one from a pro-Russian propaganda site that Kirk was killed after being added to the Ukrainian Myrotvorets Center database as an “enemy of Ukraine,” which NewsGuard said was picked up and repeated on Google’s AI-generated news summary.
Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin also pointed the finger firmly at Ukraine on X, saying the alleged gunman Taylor Robinson was in touch with Ukrainians because Kirk opposed providing US military aid to Kyiv while Ukrainian networks were “celebrating” the assassination.
Pro-Iranian online groups suggested that the killing was part of an antisemitic conspiracy engineered by Israel – a claim that was soon seized upon by white supremacist groups.
Meanwhile Chinese bots said the assassination was yet more evidence of the violence and dysfunction endemic in modern day US society, where rogue gunmen roamed the streets.
Russian news outlets TASS and Izvestiya on Thursday cited Andrey Bondarev, spokesman for the Russian embassy to the US who rejected the charge that Moscow had spread disinformation about the assassination saying: “We consider it unacceptable that this tragedy is being used as a pretext to fuel anti-Russian hysteria.”
He then added that “Russia does not interfere and does not intend to interfere in the internal affairs of other states, including the United States.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian’s comments on allegations against Beijing, which have been widely disseminated on Asian social media, said that China condemns all illegal acts of violence and in particular condemned comments made by Utah Governor Spencer Cox that Chinese and Russian chatbots were attempting to “instill misinformation and encourage violence” following the shooting.
He said, “We firmly oppose some American politicians who frequently use China as an excuse and firmly oppose the spread of false information to slander and smear China.”
Quite apart from the allegations against the usual foreign disinformation channels, AP made the point that the majority of social media inspired “conspiracy theories” surrounding Kirk’s murder originated on domestic platforms – which Russian bots, in particular, were happy to pick up on, amplify and rebroadcast.
