Charlie Kirk | Death of a culture crusader

Charles James Kirk, 31, a high- profile conservative activist who was an ally of Donald Trump, was shot dead during a university event in Utah on September 10. The suspected shooter, identified as Tyler Robinson, 22, has been taken into custody.

Although Kirk has never held an official position in either the government or in the Republican Party, his killing has reverberated beyond the U.S. Calling him a “giant of his generation”, Mr. Trump announced that Kirk would posthumously be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the country’s highest civilian honour. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, praised him as a “lion-hearted friend of Israel”, who “stood tall for Judaeo-Christian civilisation”. Luminaries of Europe’s far-right, from Alice Weidel of Germany’s neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Jordan Bardella of France’s National Rally have lionised Kirk, describing him as a champion of free speech and liberty.

Also read | Death of Charlie Kirk lays bare deep U.S. political divisions 

It is unusual for the passing of a political organiser little known outside the U.S. to trigger such an outpouring of tributes from across the Western world. What made Kirk so special?

Political entrepreneur

At the time of his death, Kirk’s net worth was $12 million. His journey to the summit of wealth and power has many parallels with the stereotypical journeys of Silicon Valley tycoons, starting with the trope of quitting college to set up their own outfit. Kirk was a political entrepreneur, and a genius at raising money, especially from ageing Conservatives who instantly took a shine to him.

He was raised in Prospect Heights, Illinois, and his father was an architect whose firm designed the Trump Tower in New York. His mother was a mental health counsellor. In high school, he spent his lunch breaks listening to the talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. Hypnotised by the right-wing commentator, he dreamed of emulating him. In addition to Mr. Limbaugh’s anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism, he also embraced Conservative author Christopher Caldwell’s notion that the Civil Rights Act upended the Constitution by instituting a regime of racial preference. To these, he added a layer of Biblical obscurantism that added a Christian nationalist ‘finish’ to his political ideas.

In April 2012, Kirk wrote an essay for Breitbart News, the influential far-right website, alleging “liberal bias” in high school economics textbooks. It earned him an appearance on Fox News which, in turn, fetched him an audience with Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery, a man half a century his senior. Mr. Montgomery, and subsequently, conservative investment manager Foster Friess, 81, became Kirk’s early donors and mentors.

In July 2012, at the age of 18, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA, a non-profit focused on advocating conservative politics on college and university campuses. This was a field dominated by the likes of Young America’s Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty, whose primary mode of advocacy was to get celebrated right-wing provocateurs to give talks on campus. Kirk, according to the New York Times journalist Robert Draper, took the game to another level — by training and funding student-government candidates, acting “as a kind of PAC for youngsters”. He also set up the notorious ‘Professor Watchlist’, which sought to red flag academics who espoused views contrary to Turning Point’s, especially on LGBTQ persons and race. Scholars on the watch list were subjected to relentless attacks by right-wing trolls who also pressured their employers to fire them.

On university campuses where liberal progressives were part of the establishment, Kirk presented conservative politics as a ‘cool’ space for youthful rebellion, particularly among youngsters who saw themselves as non-ideological. At the same time, he promoted conservatism in a Trumpist avatar, creating a heady cocktail of MAGA populism and Christian nationalism which he showcased through public debates with campus liberals.

Kirk’s penchant for these ‘open debates’ is often invoked by those who present him as a champion of free speech. But these were less ‘debates’ and more performative spectacles where oppositional voices were a structural requirement — they were needed for Kirk to put on an exhibition of verbal combat whose terms he controlled. He recorded these exchanges and posted them on social media where they went viral.

As Kirk flew from campus to campus on a private jet sponsored by his donors, his growing mass of young supporters helped him raise more funds for Turning Point. Kirk leveraged his youth base and access to old conservative donors to obtain access to the higher levels of the Republican Party. Once he had impressed Donald Trump Jr. by streamlining his social media strategy, it was a matter of time before he caught the eye of the senior Trump, who anointed him as the ‘youth guy’ of the GOP.

There is no doubt Kirk was instrumental in delivering the youth vote to the Trump campaign. It is a direct outcome of his sustained engagement with college students through Turning Point USA, which quickly amassed 250,000 members and chapters in over 850 colleges. In addition to his college tours, Kirk used his podcasts, TV appearances, and high-decibel social media presence to fashion himself as a diehard Trump loyalist with a powerful yet credible voice in the MAGA ecosystem. 

Popularity of polarisation

But it was a popularity of its time – forged in a polarised society through bigotry, racism, and hate speech that deepened the fault lines. In a culture that censures speaking ill of the dead, it is easy to miss the fact that Kirk was an unapologetic White supremacist who believed that the “Civil Rights Act was a mistake”, that Martin Luther King Jr. “was not a good person” and that Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously”. He believed that Palestine is not a place that exists, that Muslims planned to “conquer Europe by demographic replacement”, and Jewish donors are the “number one funding mechanism” of “quasi-Marxist policies”.

He described transgender people as “an abomination to God”. He despised feminism, famously telling Taylor Swift, “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband. You’re not in charge.” He opposed empathy on principle, stating that “empathy is a made-up new-age term that does a lot of damage”. On guns, Kirk’s views tracked those of the National Rifle Association, as he held that it was worth “the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment”. 

In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum have bemoaned the rise of ‘political violence’ in America. Sadly, Kirk’s most ardent followers are the least likely to acknowledge that the fires lit by political hate speech demonising the ‘other’ may one day consume the self too.

Published – September 14, 2025 02:20 am IST