Tanisha Long does not think conservative icon Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed, but as a Black woman, she doesn’t mourn him. She said as much in a Facebook post.
“We don’t owe him sympathy,” Long wrote after Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. “We don’t owe his supporters thoughts and prayers. We don’t have to empathize with agents of our oppressors.”
It’s a stance the Pittsburgh-based community organizer didn’t think would be hard to understand. Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr. awful and the Civil Rights Act a mistake.
But within hours, her phone was lighting up with notifications: people trying to hack her Instagram, calling her racial slurs, and wishing her dead. This all happened after conservative activist Scott Presler, who has 2.3 million followers on X, shared her post, a screenshot of her liking a joke regarding Kirk’s death, and a screenshot of her LinkedIn.
“They’re calling my friends, they’re calling my directors, they’re texting me pictures of people who have been bloodied,” Long said. “They’re sending me pictures of my address. They’re sending me photos of my [place of] work.”
With 4,600 Facebook followers on her public page, Long doesn’t see herself as a prominent figure. Yet she finds herself one of the many targets in a nationwide push to punish those perceived to have spoken ill of Kirk.
In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, local officials, lawyers, teachers, and even teens have been targeted. Several have said they received threats to their physical safety.
What people said to spark this fury has varied widely: Many disavowed violence, while also pointing to divisive comments Kirk had made. Others cheered his death.
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While doxing and efforts to get people fired are not new, Kirk’s killing has kicked the practice into overdrive. Websites were created to collect tips and share information on those who commented on the activist’s death. Prominent Republicans have called for people to face consequences.
University of Notre Dame professor Tim Weninger, who studies artificial intelligence and social media, called it a moment of social contagion. Except in this instance, “the rhetoric is more violent in this case and more pointed.”
That rhetoric soon led to real-world consequences and confusion. People were incorrectly identified. Philadelphia businesses were mistakenly targeted with bad reviews. And for Long, the threats extended to her workplace at the Pittsburgh Abolitionist Law Center, which took heightened security measures to protect staff following a death threat against colleagues.
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“Everybody’s like, Charlie didn’t deserve this because he was just using free speech, but you feel I deserve violent consequences because I’m using free speech,” Long said. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s like free speech is now only speech that you like.”
‘Charlie’s Murderers’
Presler, who says he moved to Pennsylvania last year, first responded to Kirk’s assassination with a call to prayer on X. Then, a call against violence.
Then, Presler called out the chair of the Crawford County Democrats after she made a comment that condemned violence but also criticized lax gun laws and policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.
From there, Presler launched a campaign targeting people he said were celebrating Kirk’s death. A well-known doxing account, Libs of TikTok, which has 4.4 million followers on X, joined the effort.
Though not even a day had passed, and at that point nobody knew who had shot Kirk, a website called “Charlie’s Murderers” was launched. The site listed people’s names, social media profiles, and employers, and promised to become a “searchable database.”
Social media only further fueled tensions, said Weninger.
“Their algorithms are looking for provocative things to show people,” Weninger said.
‘I don’t think a lot of research was done’
The Charlie’s Murderers website showed a photo of a Philadelphia woman, listing her employer as a company called Fresh Prints — a somewhat common business name.
The woman who was doxed declined an interview, afraid she would open herself up to more death threats. She shared images of the threats she’d already received.
At the same time, Fresh Prints of West Philly, a pet-sitting company that has never employed the person in question, was bombarded with calls, messages, and bad reviews.
“I don’t think a lot of research was done,” the owner said, asking her name be left out, citing privacy concerns.
She worried about the reputational damage Fresh Prints of West Philly would sustain. “People were just saying, ‘You’re disgusting, we’re going to ruin your business.’”
The owner limited comments on its Facebook page and changed the company’s voicemail message, letting people know that if they were calling about the woman’s comments, they had the wrong small business. Printfresh LLC, a small Philadelphia fashion company, was also wrongly accused of being the woman’s employer, receiving a handful of one-star Google reviews.
The owner of Fresh Prints of West Philly said harassment dropped off by Monday. By then, Yelp and Google had removed the one-star reviews, and the Charlie’s Murderers website had been taken down after people reported the site to its domain host, Squarespace, for violating the company’s terms and conditions.
A similar site, however, has already popped up elsewhere.
Teachers and teens
Public schoolteachers in particular were often the focus of these online posts — including teachers in Crawford, Lancaster, and York Counties.
Members of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teacher’s union, have been frequent targets of harassment after Kirk’s murder, spokesperson Chris Lilienthal said.
“I think, as we’ve seen social media become more of a ubiquitous part of our lives, we’ve seen more of this,” Lilienthal said.
The attacks also extended to students.
Thursday morning, a Haddonfield Memorial High School student received a screenshot of Chris Maynes, a classmate’s father and the owner of Whole Hog Cafe in Cherry Hill, naming her and three other classmates on his public Facebook page. He said his daughter saw the teens watching Kirk’s shooting and “passing a phone around in glee,” a characterization disputed by the teens.
Maynes did not respond to requests for comment.
In his post, Maynes said he named the girls because he considered the teens to be misguided and other parents whose children associate with them “might want to have them keep some distance.” He edited the post to remove the teens’ names the day he made it.
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A doxed teen’s mother agreed to speak to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity. While her family hasn’t received threats, she doesn’t want to subject her daughter to additional public scrutiny.
The teen’s mother wishes Maynes had raised whatever concerns he had with the four teens’ parents instead of putting children’s names on the internet. The teens watched the video, but there was no cheering.
“They’re kids, they’re all kids,” said the mother. “Everyone’s entitled to their differences of opinion. I just feel bad for all the children involved. No grown man should put that out there.”
Apologies and resignations
In Montgomery County, Ambler Township Tax Collector Jennifer Wexler Stomsky faced calls for resignation after she criticized her fellow Democrats for being “weak,” “righteous,” and “squeamish,” adding “history is filled with blood.”
“Let’s make some more martyrs,” Stomsky said.
Edwin Steinmetz of Gloucester County read that post with disgust.
“I actually was so upset, I called the tax collector’s office,” Steinmetz said, though he didn’t get through to anyone.
The 69-year old security consultant said free speech is a complex topic. You shouldn’t be allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. However, he said that he wouldn’t want the United States to have stricter laws against speech.
Perhaps people who celebrated Kirk’s death should not be fired from their jobs, Steinmetz said. “But if you’re saying we should have more assassinations, well, I wouldn’t want a doctor working on me who says that.”
Stomsky has since publicly apologized and resigned her local Democratic committee position.
“The comments were written in a moment of frustration and were hyperbolic, never intended for public view, and in no way meant as a call for violence,” Stomsky said. “Still, I understand that words have power. Political violence has no place in our community or in our discourse, and I regret that my words suggested I would ever believe anything to the contrary. For that, I am truly sorry.”