Extremist groups reemerge in Tucson & around Arizona, amid backlash to Charlie Kirk shooting

In the hours after far-right activist Charlie Kirk was shot at a Utah
university, prominent right-wing figures called for retribution. And in
Arizona, once-dormant extremist groups began to resurge.

Within
minutes of Kirk’s shooting, far-right politicians and activists flooded
social media with unfounded claims that the “far-left” was to blame:
School-shooting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones declared, “This is war”
on his Infowars channel. Chaya Raichik, the operator of the anti-LGBTQ+
account Libs of TikTok, issued a similar post on X. And Steve Bannon,
the former advisor to President Donald J. Trump, told viewers on his
livestream that “Charlie Kirk’s a casualty of war. We’re at war in this
country.”

Then Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the
anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers—and a former clerk for
Arizona Supreme Court Justice Mike Ryan—also appeared on Infowars. He
said he intended to restart his militia to provide public “protection”
for political figures such as Kirk.

The next night, a far-right
extremist group in Southern Arizona resurfaced online for the first time
in more than three years. Within a few weeks, another extremist group
in Northern Arizona had told supporters to show up at a school board
meeting.

The pattern echoed past moments in Arizona politics, where online
outrage prompted by national right-wing figures played out among
residents in cities and towns across the state. There, local extremist
groups seized the opportunity to reassert themselves. Even though
neither of the actions materialized, one local elected official was
forced to temporarily relocate.

A Tucson-based extremist group reemerges

On
Sept. 11, the day after Rhodes’ directive for militias to reactivate,
one group in Arizona that calls itself the “Arizona Armed Milita”
[sic] posted to its Facebook page, targeting Tucson City
Councilmember Lane Santa Cruz, who is nonbinary, because of an
Instagram story Santa Cruz shared from their personal account the night
Kirk died.

The extremist group accused Santa Cruz of mocking
Kirk’s death and urged its followers to protest outside of Tucson City
Hall the following Monday. Before that week, the group’s Facebook page
had been inactive since 2022, when it had spread disinformation about
drag performers at a Tucson Children’s Museum event.

Screenshots
from Santa Cruz’s story—including a repost from pastor-turned-activist
John Pavlovitz that referenced Kirk’s dismissal of “empathy” as a
“made-up, new-age term”—circulated rapidly among conservative networks.

Scott
Pressler, a gay man known for propagating far-right conspiracy theories
who’s also part of the movement pushing to separate trans people from
LGBTQ+ rights, used his platform to ask people in Tucson if “this is who
you want representing you.” Pressler’s post was shared by thousands of
users on Truth Social, the American alt social media platform owned by
Trump’s technology company.

Locally, former state Sen. Justine
Wadsack (R-Tucson) and current state Rep. Rachel Keshel (R-Tucson)
called for Santa Cruz to resign.

Keshel’s statement, amplified by
the Arizona House of Representatives Republican Party’s X account,
accused Santa Cruz and a staffer of fueling “horrendous events” and
partially blamed the political left for Kirk’s assassination. She
doubled down, tagging U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI’s X
accounts in a request to “take a closer look at hate speech and rhetoric
like this being classified as incitement of violence.”

Later that afternoon, the story of Santa Cruz’s post twice made the news on local TV station KVOA.

By Sept. 13, LOOKOUT learned that Santa Cruz and their staff were forced to relocate due to threats and harassment.

“The
misrepresentation of my Instagram story has resulted in an online mob
and direct threats toward me, my family, and my staff,” Santa Cruz said
in an email to LOOKOUT. “I had to close my Ward 1 office and
move my team to remote work. I also left my home out of an abundance of
caution once I found that my address was leaked online.”

Santa
Cruz said the story at the center of conservatives’ campaign—“Krama, if
you know you know. diosito te maldiga”—was misinterpreted.

“Nowhere
in that post do I reference [Kirk],” Santa Cruz said. “The intentional
misspelling of ‘karma’ was a childhood reference [to a word] that people
I grew up with often misspelled and believed it meant ‘God be damned.’ …
It was familiar only to those who share that context, not a comment
condoning the assassination.”

But on the morning of Sept. 15, no
extremist group members appeared at city hall. Instead, counter
protesters, police wearing “community network” patches, and television
crews gathered in anticipation of a confrontation that never came.

A similar presence in the Chino Valley

Despite
Santa Cruz’s clarification, their stories proliferated in internet echo
chambers, and people continued to say that they celebrated Kirk’s
shooting.

Some Kirk fans launched online efforts to identify and
punish others accused of making similar remarks, like in Chino Valley
where the far-right group The Lions of Liberty commended the school
district’s decision to recommend firing a teacher who had allegedly
posted a message on social media critical of Kirk.

In a statement,
Chino Valley Unified School District said the post was made by an
off-duty district employee using a personal device. The district
recommended terminating the worker at the Oct. 13 governing board
meeting, according to the statement.

The Lions of Liberty, an
anti-government extremist group that’s known for having attempted to
“monitor” ballot boxes during the 2022 midterm elections and was later
sued by the League of Women Voters of Arizona for voter intimidation,
called on the school district to “investigate” other teachers for any
messages referencing Kirk, and urged its followers to attend the school
board meeting to put pressure on dismissing the employee.

However,
attendees at the board meeting said no one from The Lions of Liberty
showed up. Rather, counter-protesters arrived at the governing board
meeting in solidarity with the employee.

Calls to punish critics
of Kirk have sprouted up across the internet, primarily from far-right
accounts, lawmakers and political influencers.

Drop Site News
reported that at least 50 people across industries, like schools,
universities, airlines, tech firms, and government agencies, were facing
firings, suspensions, or investigations as of mid-September over
alleged comments about Kirk’s assassination.

A short-lived website
calling itself the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation” encouraged users to
submit the social media profiles of people who promoted or glorified
political violence. It claimed to be a “lawful data aggregator” rather
than a “doxxing website.”

For those on the receiving end of
internet harassment, the threats are grave: “The harassment has real
impacts,” Santa Cruz said. “We’re living with that reality every day.”

Additional reporting by Joseph Darius Jaafari.