It didn’t take long for the speculation to begin. In the hours after the shocking, livestreamed assassination of Charlie Kirk, the posts on social media came thick and fast.

“ANOTHER TRANSGENDER ANTIFA TERRORIST?” one person posted on X. “Willing to bet the shooter of Charlie Kirk was trans. Has to be,” another declared. Kirk had been answering a question about transgender people when he was shot, prompting feverish and baseless online speculation that a transgender militant cell had ordered his killing.

The viral frenzy grew the next morning, first from a right-wing influencer who posted a screenshot of a leaked internal message from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives alleging that law enforcement officials found gun cartridges at the scene engraved with “transgende

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