Ian Linden: Charles James Kirk - Patriot, Pilgrim or Pariah?

Ian Linden

I was living in New York in Spring 1968 and recall the sense of threat that April on hearing the sound of police sirens going up to Harlem after Martin Luther King was shot, and then news of Robert Kennedy's killing just two months later. Assassinations lurk in America's DNA like a deadly mutant gene. It is hard to predict, or describe, their impact on a society.

Whatever anyone thinks of Charlie Kirk, patriot, pilgrim or pariah, he leaves a grieving wife, a mother and father and a fatherless young son and daughter. Along with a thousands of other families in the USA, bereaved because of the easy accessibility of guns, they deserve sympathy for their loss. Charlie Kirk's was a short but, what might be called, a 'consequential' life.

The tenets, themes and tropes of right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism range through the arguable to the offensive to the dangerous and morally abhorrent. During his last five years, Charlie Kirk deployed elements of the full range with great panache and significant effect, promoting lethal conspiracy theories, including an Islamic-Leftist threat to the West, modifying elements of his rhetoric keeping in step with Trump's xenophobia and racism. Kirk added to the smog that swirls through the politics of the USA today.

The key word in his obituaries is "dialogue". But he didn't always out-argue or outreason his opponents. Edited recordings of his debates which he broadcast widely omitted exchanges or moments in which he lost. Kirk was no Yankee Socrates. He just had a masterful grasp of political communication.

Unlike President Trump's ponderous ramblings and coarse abuse, Kirk was a smart, fast-talker who could and did direct Biblical references like a howitzer at his opponents. He built up his audience on social media such as Tik Tok into the tens of millions, worked through a variety of organisations, starring in campus debates, podcasts, talk radio, television shows, and rallies. His performances and preaching were exciting and attractive to youth, compelling for some, particularly young men, and particularly young men like himself who were without a college education. Into the bargain, he dovetailed Trump's version of American political discourse with evangelical Christianity and, for many, normalized it.

In his teens Kirk became a secular activist forming Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012, promoting the Republican Right in the educational sector with seed money from the Christian philanthropist, canny investor and Republican donor, Foster Friess. By 2016 TPUSA was compiling and publishing a Professor List of college teachers allegedly spreading leftist propaganda in the classroom, hoping either to get them removed or forced to repent and preach the far right Republican Gospel. To feature on the list being black helped. Kirk did not seem to find such witch-hunts incompatible with presenting free speech as his central political tenet.

By the end of the decade, Kirk had moved to more perilous ground. In 2020 he promised 80 bus-loads of students for the 6 January rally outside Congress, though it is not clear how many turned up. He was cleared of any complicity in the subsequent mayhem and deaths during the assault on the Capitol by the subsequent inquiry.

Kirk's eclectic religious beliefs are difficult to categorise but put him amongst a significant number of US conservative, mainly white, evangelical Christians. These beliefs included: Christian Zionism, expectation of a thousand year reign of Jesus from Jerusalem, heralded by the creation of the Jewish State; a final 'tribulation' in which the elect would be spared the world's destruction and miraculously saved; promoted by Trump's former spiritual adviser, Paula White, the 'Seven Mountains Mandate'- a 'revelation' to two evangelicals in the 1970s - that that Christians are mandated by the Bible to conquer seven social spheres from family life to government; hence the idea that a triumphant Trump was leading the take-over of a 'satanic' Federal Government.

Some of Kirk's reflections were less outlandish with wider appeal. He preached passionately on the importance of Sabbath rest in the frenetic pace of modern life - reportedly - honoured by himself on Saturday, the Jewish Shabbat. In Netanyahu's words, a "lion-hearted friend of Israel" who "fought the lies and stood tall for Judaeo-Christian civilization", he had because of Gaza, though, become more critical in his last months on moral grounds. He remarkably described the Virgin Mary in a recent broadcast as "a counter to so much of the toxicity of feminism in the modern era"- perhaps influenced by his wife, a fellow evangelical, who was brought up a Catholic.

How much the content of Kirk's messages mattered, or was it his charismatic personality, expressing a general anger at the Washington elite that resonated with his audiences, is hard to judge. Considering Trump's electoral appeal in the 2024 elections, exit polls suggest Kirk did draw in young men who subsequently voted Republican. Trump increased his share of young men's vote by 8% and took 57% of the votes of young men without a college education compared to the Democrats' 40%. In the five previous Federal Presidential elections the Democrats never won less than 60% of young people's vote. Kamala Harris did hold on to 60% of young women's votes. Kirk's views on 'toxic feminism' do seem to have been heard - by both sexes.

What next? The immediate response to Kirk's death from his religious constituency has been to declare him a martyr. If he died because of his religious beliefs, the term is at best understandable. But the political response from the White House - linking his assassination to a 'vast, domestic terrorist network' funded by liberal charities, before any objective evidence emerged as to the motive of Kirk's killing - is deeply worrying. The most hopeful interpretation is that much of the rhetoric coming out of the White House is merely performative. But much of it in Trump's second presidency clearly isn't.

Nonetheless, this assassination has provided a pretext for harassing those posting critical comment about Kirk. At Vice-President J.D. Vance's bidding, those expressing pleasure at Kirk's death on social media risk being denounced to their employers and some losing their jobs. This is the same J.D. Vance who on grounds of freedom of speech 'called out' the UK for prosecuting Hate crimes. In this worldview President Jo Biden and George Soros (the philanthropist and businessman who has given over $32 billion to his Open Society foundations dedicated to democracy and justice) were criminals who should be imprisoned.

At Kirk's Memorial in Phoenix, Arizona this Sunday, there will be abundant sympathy for his bereaved family and lavish praise bordering on beatification for Kirk himself . The populist Right in Europe are already using his death as a rallying cry against a sinister international 'Islamic-Leftist' threat. Condolence is an important expression of community and a shared humanity. But it should not be 'weaponised'. In a divided nation, the USA will be fortunate if this man's untimely death heralds a common understanding of patriotism, peace and unity.

Professor Ian Linden is Visiting Professor at St Mary's University, Strawberry Hill, London. A past director of the Catholic Institute for International Relations, he was awarded a CMG for his work for human rights in 2000. He has also been an adviser on Europe and Justice and Peace issues to the Department of International Affairs of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. Ian chairs a new charity for After-school schooling in Beirut for Syrian refugees and Lebanese kids in danger of dropping out partnering with CARITAS Lebanon and work on board of Las Casas Institute in Oxford with Richard Finn OP. His latest book was Global Catholicism published by Hurst in 2009.

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Ian Linden: www.ianlinden.com/latest-blogs/