Israël, Charlie Kirk et l'instrumentalisation du meurtre (avec Max Blumenthal) | Le rapport Chris Hedges
Max Blumenthal détaille les tensions entre Charlie Kirk et Israël au cours de ses derniers mois, et ce à quoi il faut s'attendre d'une nouvelle ère de répression d'extrême droite en réponse à son assassinat.
CHRIS HEDGES, 15 SEPTEMBRE 2025
L'assassinat de Charlie Kirk marquera probablement le début d'une nouvelle ère de violence politique et de répression aux États-Unis. Depuis que Kirk a été abattu lors d'une conférence à l'Université de l'Utah Valley, des groupes et personnalités d'extrême droite ont exigé une censure massive de tous les discours critiques en ligne dirigés contre lui. Le président Donald Trump a imputé l'attaque à la « gauche radicale » et s'est engagé à poursuivre ceux qu'il juge responsables. Des campagnes massives de doxing ciblant les personnes ayant contextualisé les positions politiques de Kirk ou célébré son assassinat ont entraîné des licenciements dans tout le pays. Dans le chaos qui règne en ligne, les récits entourant l'assassinat de Kirk, issus de reportages incomplets des médias grand public et d'un manque d'analyse claire de la part du FBI, ont alimenté la confusion et l'indignation dans tout le spectre politique.
Max Blumenthal, rédacteur en chef de The Grayzone, rejoint Chris Hedges dans cet épisode du Chris Hedges Report pour analyser les implications de l'assassinat. Il détaille également son dernier article, qui révèle des informations exclusives sur les relations tendues de Kirk avec Israël et les tensions au sein de l'administration Trump.
Le refus de Kirk d'accepter des contributions financières sionistes ainsi que son déconnexion croissante avec Israël « l'ont laissé froid et anxieux, et même, selon les mots de son ami, effrayé », confie Blumenthal à Hedges.
TRANSCRIPTION (Les erreurs, coquilles, liens et contenus entre crochets sont de mon cru) :
Chris Hedges: The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. Political violence, including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump seems certain to expand. So does state repression of individuals and groups accused by the far right in the Trump administration of fermenting the hate that led to Kirk's assassination.
Trump blames the radical left for Kirk's murder, claiming it is “directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today and it must stop right now”. He vows “to find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our society.” If Trump means what he says, and I suspect he does, we will see the full force of the federal government used to target Trump's opponents and organizations, including the Democratic Party, the media, universities, and advocacy groups, which are already under heavy assault.
More ominously, it will give a green light to far-right vigilante groups to carry out violent attacks. Those blamed for polluting America, including Muslims, the LGBTQ community, groups such as Antifa, feminist, liberals, the left, the undocumented, the poor, and people of color.
Joining me to discuss Kirk's assassination, what it means for the United States, and the future of our disintegrating democracy, is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, whose most recent article is "Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu funding offer, was ‘frightened’ by pro-Israel forces before death, friends reveal," which adds, of course, another fascinating twist to this unfolding saga.
So, Max, before we get into the ramifications of this assassination, in terms of civil liberties and repression, let's talk a little bit about the article that you just published about Kirk's alienation or distance from the Zionist lobby.
I know you've been writing about Kirk for some time.
Max Blumenthal: Yeah, I've been writing about him since 2015, three years after he started TPUSA [Turning Point, the group founded by Charlie Kirk is a right-wing political organization that focuses on motivating young people], which became the largest, most influential conservative youth organization in history.
And at that time, he was at the forefront of a massive infusion of Israel lobby cash into his group through the David Horowitz Freedom Center [l'ancien Center for the Study of Popular Culture, CSPC, une fondation islamophobe d'extrême droite], which was basically making him the property of Israel in exchange for this sort of Faustian bargain. He was going to be at the top of the conservative youth grassroots or astroturf grassroots.
And so, he could talk about race, immigration, all the social issues, and take the most extreme lines possible, say whatever he wanted as long as he pushed this so-called Judeo-Christian relationship, and constantly talked about the Judeo-Christian roots of the country, and supported Israel, and attacked BDS, the BDS movement, which was growing on campus at the grass, whenever he could.
And so, Charlie Kirk was actually at the forefront of many of the blacklisting operations that have targeted college professors as well as students. He was in the same circles as those who were behind Canary Mission [Canary Mission documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses, they say. It is indeed an anonymously run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations that it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic —ce dont les Sionistes vous accusent dès que vous critiquez Israël. Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the Internet and without their consent], which is now being used to target green card holders and visa holders for deportation under Trump.
So, I was covering it early on before anyone had heard about him. He was like a baby-faced activist then, but he was obviously very hardworking, talented, a huge asset for them. And flash forward to… July of this year, Charlie Kirk is the most influential conservative activist, period.
He's on his way to possibly becoming the next president. Almost certainly would have become senator if even though he's from Illinois, and he runs… I mean, TPUSA is major, but there's a crisis taking place.
Charlie Kirk is under pressure from his own grassroots on the issue of Israel.
Israel's exerting under Netanyahu so much control on Trump, amid a genocide, that the grassroots have turned against it.
And if you look at recent polling, YouGov polling, Pew polling [Pew Research Center], it all of them show about only 25% of Republicans under 35 support Israel over the Palestinians.
If you actually pay attention to what Nick Fuentes, who's the most influential right-wing America First streamer says, they're not just upset over Jewish influence. They're not just being anti-Jewish. They're actually upset by the same things that upset us. The deliberate starvation of civilian population unfolding in real time… and then, watching their president just fold to a foreign apartheid state.
And so, this pressure was building within Charlie Kirk's camp, and Charlie Kirk himself was beginning to turn.
And it all exploded out in the open at the Student Action Summit, which I believe was in Tampa, Florida in July 2025. And that's where Charlie Kirk brought Tucker Carlson, someone who had already turned on this issue on stage to not only talk about how Jeffrey Epstein was possibly a Mossad agent, but to call for those who had gone and fought for Israel, American Jews who had gone to fought for Israel's military, rather than the US military, to be stripped of their citizenship.
And he called out Bill Ackman, one of the most influential Zionist billionaires in the US, who is a Netanyahu cutout, who had been sort of manipulating and bullying Harvard into submission. His money got Claudine Gay as president out at Harvard.
He mocked Bill Ackman as a financial con artist. He literally called him a scam artist, and questioned where his money came from.
And the crowd was cheering and delighting in this entire spectacle.
Megan Kelly, from Fox, was calling Jeffrey Epstein a Mossad agent.
Then, Charlie Kirk opened up the floor to a debate on the very issue of Zionism, and brought on an anti-Zionist Jew, a comedian named Dave Smith, to debate a Zionist apparatchik at Newsweek named Joshua Hammer.
And Dave Smith like mopped the floor with him. He's very effective.
He was also talking about human rights abuses, and the crowd was clearly with him. And after this summit, Charlie Kirk was bombarded with furious text messages, phone calls… there may have been meetings as well, very tense meetings as well with his donors, the people who built him up. And they said, "We built you up. We can take all of this away from you, if you don't stop this."
And here… and they… we are laying down the law.
And this offended him, alienated him. He was… not used to being talked to like that, where he like as though he were property, but when you join the firm, you don't get to leave and, at the same time, I was told, by a longtime friend of Charlie Kirk, that he was frightened, by the way, he was being treated, basically a mafia was reading him the riot act. And he wasn't the only one who was frightened.
I was told that, and the source is someone who knows people in the White House.
Donald Trump's frightened. Donald Trump is afraid to defy Netanyahu. He's afraid about what can happen.
And I was told that during one of several of Netanyahu's recent visits to the US —I think he's made four visits this year, which is unprecedented—, listening devices were planted by Israeli agents on the Secret Services emergency response vehicles, Stingray, maybe Stingray devices, some kind of listening device, electronic surveillance device.
This was found by the Secret Service. It was told to the White House. Obviously, the White House kept it under wraps, and this has made people nervous inside the White House and the national security team, and this is not something unprecedented.
Politico, in 2019 [Daniel Lippman, 09/12/2019 05:14 AM EDT: “Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House”], reported citing three former US officials that Israel had planted Stingray devices around the White House to spy on Trump's cell phone communications.
Boris Johnson, the former Israeli PM, wrote in his memoir that Netanyahu went to use his personal toilet and, afterwards, British his personal security team found a listening device in his toilet. Like immediately afterwards.
Tony Blair told his own team, "When you go to Israel, do not speak about anything sensitive in government buildings or cars."
So, I don't think I'm being fed a bunch of conspiracy theories here.
And what I reported —based on background sourcing— matches up with the things that Charlie Kirk said in public, that he was being bombarded by what he called “Jewish stakeholders”, meaning his funders and that he felt that he could not express his own views anymore as an American, and he was starting to move in public.
So, consider the consequence of a figure like Charlie Kirk, who's on his way to basically inheriting the mantle of Trumpism at some point, and who controls a large segment of that movement.
Taking the base away from the “Judeo-Christian” relationship, taking it away from rock-solid support for Israel —as Israel is in a seven front war carrying out genocide and Netanyahu believes that he has this short window of time to basically carry out regime change in Iran. It would have been catastrophic.
And I also learned from multiple sources that Charlie Kirk actually took it upon himself personally to go to the White House and personally lobby Trump against bombing Iran, back in June, and that he was shut down: Trump angrily rebuked him, because Trump is simply afraid. He's completely controlled at this point by Netanyahu.
So, am I saying that Israel killed Charlie Kirk? How would I know that? There's no evidence for that. But how am I going to not report this fascinating background about where the conservative movement, in the Republican party itself, are going on the question of Israel, when I'm learning all of this after his death and there are so many unusual aspects to the investigation, so many mishaps by the FBI, and such strange behavior by the Israeli government, and Netanyahu himself, since Charlie Kirk's killing that it has fueled speculation by millions of people online that there may have been an Israeli role. I mean, why wouldn't they speculate when Israel seems to assassinate everyone that defies it in its own region and has even dispatched thousands of pagers to low-level Hezbollah members and their families to assassinate them.
It's something that we would expect in this atmosphere, but I am not making any direct claim that Israel assassinated him.
What I'm saying is I think they would have taken him out. The Israel lobby would have taken him out, for sure, but they would have prefer they would not do it need to do it physically. They could just defund him and then castigate him, as they're doing with figures like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson, who have turned against them.
But so, this is just a fascinating look, and it won't be my last one at Charlie Kirk's final days and the political pressure he was under.
Chris Hedges: How much money was he getting, number one, and number two, can you talk about Netanyahu's reaction and his… —because you write about it in your piece— his interactions with Kirk?
Max Blumenthal: Well, this is something that was not known to the public and I hope to be able to report this out in greater detail. But I was told that by a friend of Kirk, someone close to Kirk who was speaking to them in his last days, that Netanyahu actually came in and personally offered to… like re-up Kirk's TPUSA organization with a massive infusion of Zionist money.
And his budget… all…, at its height, was something like $80 million. I mean, we're talking about a lot of money.
You just watch the Student Action Summit that became so controversial. There's nothing like it on the left or even within the Democratic parties associated organizations. It's very flashy. Look at Charlie Kirk's final moments. I mean, it looked almost like he was running for president. It looked like a Trump rally and look at the amount of… he had enormous amounts of former Navy Seals and special forces guys around him like executive security.
You have to have a lot of money for that.
So, you already had the money, but he was at the at risk of losing much of it. And Netanyahu comes in and says basically, come to the dark side, stop talking about this, and we will take care of you. I will call my cutouts, and they'll have everything handled.
And Charlie Kirk refused. And what I'm learning is that was not the first time he refused someone close to Netanyahu in recent months, and it left him feeling cold and anxious, and even —in the words of the friend— frightened.
This is something that many… I've had some conversations with other influential people in the right-wing influencer world, since my piece came out, and basically, what they want me to know is that this is something they're all facing at all of the major right-wing media organizations associated with Trump that there is no space for them to criticize Israel. And… yeah, one figure I could point to, I've actually been on his podcast, he's one of the top right-wing podcasters. Like if you go to Rumble, which is sort of the YouTube alternative, because so many right-wing voices were being banned there, and even us, Chris, like more on the left, we get like demonetized, left and right, and suppressed.
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