After clinching the title of top conservative podcast in the United States in March, Charlie Kirk said: “We’re not just talking. We’re activating a revolution.”
In the hours after his killing at age 31 on the first stop of a buzzy college campus tour, the right-wing activist’s words echoed through young conservative circles.
Social media eulogies rolled in, with users reposting clips of Kirk with his wife and children. Parents of teens wrote on X of learning about Kirk’s death through their children. “My 17 year old is bumming. Told me he plays Charlie in the background on his computer when he’s on it,” the conservative radio host Jesse Kelly wrote on X.
[ Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling blacks’ and his views on gun controlOpens in new window ]
A key figure in Donald Trump’s success, Kirk galvanised college-aged conservatives who moved in a different ecosystem from traditional media. The decade or so between Kirk’s beginnings as a teen activist and the shooting saw the rise of Maga politics alongside the shake-up of the conventional media landscape, with Kirk playing a crucial role in both.
Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 with a clear goal of making Barack Obama era-style youth outreach work for the right, and even those who didn’t agree with his values could not deny his ubiquity on the political scene.
For the young Americans who grew up watching Kirk on their screens, he was a savant at YouTube, Twitter and later X, TikTok and live events.
Kirk’s ideology was caustic; he espoused openly homophobic, racist, sexist, Islamophobic and Christian nationalist views while uplifting misinformation and conspiracy theories. He also campaigned on issues that mattered to young Americans, engaging directly with them – no matter how virulently – on hot-button topics such as abortion, transgender rights, race and Palestinian solidarity.
Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University who studies politics and education, describes Kirk’s values as “insurgency conservatism” that was “designed to get attention”.
It worked: TikTok users under 30 who voted for Trump in 2024 said they trusted Kirk more than any other individual, according to a New York Times profile, despite the fact that he never held office or a role in the White House. That election saw male voters aged 18-29 swing hard to the right; Trump also made inroads with Gen Z women. Earlier this year Trump praised Kirk for “what he’s done with the young people”.
Kirk appeared equally at ease chumming it up with high-powered donors as he did debating 20-year-olds in sweatpants. Kirk sparred directly with young people through video templates such as “prove me wrong” (a one-on-one debate, where students could wait in line to ask him a question), and he was an early guest on the YouTube series Surrounded, where he sat in a room with 25 liberals and goaded them with statements such as “abortion is murder and should be illegal” and “trans women are not women”.
Turning Point USA raked in funding – the New York Times estimated a $92.4 million revenue in 2023 – while advancing campus culture wars. Kirk’s content brought classic and extreme rightwing ideals to young people’s media feeds; he looked like both an old-school, suited conservative in the style of a Fox News host, and a social media-savvy man of the times.
With his wife, Erika, owner of a faith-based fashion brand and a former Miss Arizona USA, Kirk softened his image, presenting himself as devoted husband, father and a bit of a lifestyle influencer.
For 10 years Turning Point USA hosted a “women’s summit”, where Kirk and others like Clark and Cooper encouraged those attending to focus on finding husbands. Evie, the conservative women’s magazine, published an obituary that called Kirk a “loving father, patriot, and husband”.
“I think it’s undeniable to say that Kirk was one of the first and most prominent people to shape what it means to be young and on the right in the US,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of communications at American University who studies extremism.
After Kirk’s death, Braddock said he had seen “individuals calling this an inflection point, or a turning point where the left can no longer be tolerated”. Right-wing pundits have been eager to blame the left for the shooting.
Adam Pennings (25) is the executive director of Run Gen Z, a non-profit that supports young Republican candidates. “He’s always just been such an important part” of the young conservative party, Pennings said of Kirk. “He was everywhere.”
Pennings knew Kirk through his work, but the two were not close. Still, Pennings said, due to Kirk’s omnipresence: “I feel like I lost a friend.” – the Guardian
