Kirk appealed to conservative Christians who feared the growing acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in the US. He was critical of gay and transgender rights and the separation of church and state.
He encouraged students and parents to report professors whom they suspected of embracing what some on the right refer to as gender ideology.
In 2021, he founded TPUSA Faith, which “exists to unite the church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit”, according to its website.
Gun control
Kirk was a strong supporter of gun rights.
At a 2023 event by TPUSA Faith, a division of Turning Point USA, he defended the US Second Amendment as a critical means to “defend yourself against a tyrannical government”.
He said it would be impossible to avoid gun deaths in a society with an armed citizenry, but he believed the benefits of gun rights outweighed the costs.
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said.
Kirk said the way to reduce gun violence was simple: Put guns into the hands of more Americans.
“If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don’t our children?” he asked.
Climate change
Kirk frequently dismissed concerns about climate change, even as polling showed that young conservative voters prioritise the issue. He said incorrectly that there was no scientific consensus on global warming.
He also rejected the idea that climate change posed an existential threat to humanity, describing it as “complete gibberish, nonsense and balderdash” in December 2024 to members of Turning Point UK, the British offshoot of Turning Point USA.
Last month, Kirk’s podcast featured Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has called global warming “not incredibly important”.
Free speech
Kirk was a self-declared supporter of free speech, and Turning Point USA was known for its free speech advocacy.
The group was known for placing giant rubber beach balls on campuses and invited students to write comments on the balls in a symbolic way of exercising their free speech rights. Kirk also invited students to debate him, supporting “reasonable disagreements”.
In several instances, Kirk has used the US First Amendment to sue universities that tried to block his presence.
Critics have argued that Kirk’s promotion of free speech was tinged with hypocrisy, pointing to Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist”, in which students were asked to list professors with leftist positions.
Race
Kirk believed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a destructive force in American politics, calling its passage a “mistake” that he said has been turned into “an anti-white weapon”.
He also blamed the Rev. Martin Luther King jnr for the law and was highly critical of the slain civil rights leader, calling him an “awful” person.
Kirk said he desired a colour-blind society but blamed the veneration of King for what he saw as America’s fixation on race.
Kirk was also a staunch opponent of affirmative action and was highly critical of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, calling her a “diversity hire” who wasn’t qualified to serve on the highest court.
In 2021, while delivering a speech in Mankato, Minnesota, Kirk called George Floyd — the black man whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 provoked a broad racial justice movement — a “scumbag” who wasn’t worthy of the attention.
Anti-Semitism
Kirk was repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism, including by fellow conservatives like Benjamin Domenech and Erick Erickson.
He was a proponent of “replacement theory”, a once-fringe conspiracy theory positing that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants. That ideology motivated the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
Kirk also accused Jewish philanthropists of fomenting anti-whiteness by supporting liberal anti-racism causes like the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country,” he said on his show in 2023.
Not long afterwards, he accused Jews of controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the non-profits; it’s the movies; it’s Hollywood; it’s all of it”.
Allies of Kirk often sought to defend him against accusations of anti-Semitism by citing his support for Israel.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ashley Ahn and Maxine Joselow
Photograph by: Veasey Conway
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
