Russia and China are using the assassination of Charlie Kirk to deepen division and sow chaos among Americans, Politico reported September 17.

The Russians and Chinese accomplish this partly by paying professional and amateur writers and graphic designers working for a range of outlets, including some in the West. Their articles and posts include false information about the assassin’s identity, motivation and backing. Among the lies widely pushed about the Charlie Kirk tragedy are claims that the assassin had donated to President Donald Trump’s campaign, that Israel’s secret service was behind the shooting, and that Ukraine was secretly responsible.

“The more confusion and mistrust they can inject right after a breaking news event, the harder it becomes for people to know what’s true and who to trust,” said McKenzie Sadeghi, editor of AI and foreign influence at NewsGuard. “If people doubt law enforcement, journalists or democratic institutions, it weakens those institutions’ ability to act and communicate in a crisis.”

Russia and China also employ armies of full-time trolls to promote misleading articles and post endless comments on news sites and platforms such as Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, X, YouTube and Tinder. These individuals often masquerade as American leftists, celebrating the assassination. Or they pretend to be right-wing Americans, spewing racist comments and calling for Democratic blood.

They also tap into the power of automation, using hundreds of thousands of bots to post, like, retweet and otherwise amplify the messages of the trolls. The nonstop frenzy makes platform algorithms designate false information as relevant and push it to a broader audience. This manipulates social media and search engine rankings.

“These hostile actors see this as an opportunity and they will weigh in, not only on one side,” said Thomas Warrick of the Atlantic Council think tank.

The opportunity they see is to stir the pot, inflame tensions and either radicalize or increase radicalization among Americans.

The claims of their articles and posts have little or no evidence to support them, and often contradict each other. But the Russians and Chinese don’t care. Their aim is for the people of America to throw up their hands in despair, feeling that the only thing they know for sure is that the other side is evil beyond redemption. From there, the Russians and Chinese hope these Americans will take up arms against each other.

“Their goal is not just to get people to consume that content, but also act on it,” said former Department of Homeland Security official John Cohen.

Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox agrees that this is the motive of those trying to poison the public discourse. At a September 11 press conference on Kirk’s killing, he said: “There is a tremendous amount of disinformation we are tracking. What we are seeing is our adversaries want violence. We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence.”

Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker discussed this trend in 2018 when it was more of a strictly Russian campaign, and he placed it in the broader context of spiritual war:

The Russians don’t take sides. They don’t care which side is right or wrong, who wins an election, who is president and who is the opposition—as long as America loses. …

Studying the Russians’ divide-and-conquer tactics … gives tremendous insight into the way the devil works. He is actively destroying this country. He is using every trick, tool and weapon he can to isolate us, break us and shatter us into rivalries. He plays no favorites: He takes every side and no side. Revelation 12:10 calls him “the accuser”; he accuses, maligns and scorns people “day and night.” He intermingles shards of truth and lies to create suspicion and fear, turning people against one another. He stirs us to cast reason aside and act out of pure, baseless emotion, passion and hatred.

This attack on our hearts and minds is raging even more powerfully today. But it can help to remember that while there certainly are plenty of real radicals and extremists in the U.S., many of the hate-spewing accounts we encounter are not our fellow Americans. They are paid peddlers of black propaganda or mindless bots, actively working to leave us angry and hopeless. And we don’t have to play our role in this dark charade. We can stop doom-scrolling, unplug the computer, and put the phone down. We can go for a walk, spend time with loved ones, or read a good book. That is better for us and worse for these nations working toward America’s destruction and for the malignant force behind them.

For a good book that explains the Russian and Chinese rage against America in the context of Bible prophecy, where it is leading, and the hope that is tied into these developments, order your free copy of Russia and China in Prophecy.