Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot at a US university today, was the eloquent spokesman for a younger generation of Donald Trump’s hard-right Republican movement.
The 31-year-old boasted millions of followers on social media who delighted at his whip-smart edits and provocative takedowns of hecklers and ideological challengers.
Kirk’s conservative ideology was closely aligned with Trump: he backed the US President’s false claims of fraud when he lost the 2020 presidential election and used his heavyweight influence to lash out at migrants and transgender people.
In speaking gigs at American universities, he invited students to debate with him in quick-fire exchanges that often went viral online – especially those with progressives opposed to his views.
During one of these events in Utah today he was shot in the neck in a moment of violence that was swiftly condemned on both sides of the political aisle.
Trump himself announced that Kirk died from his wounds.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
When Kirk addressed a university crowd in Nevada last October, some in the audience told AFP he was a breath of fresh air on campuses that the political right complains are dominated by liberal ideology.
“He brings different ideas to the table,” said Eric Hansen, 22. “Ideas that some of us believe in, but are sometimes afraid” to voice.
Not everyone was full of praise for Kirk.
“Charlie Kirk is a charismatic Christian nationalist, who essentially acts as a spokesperson for Trumpism and extremist ideas,” said Kyle Spencer, author of a book that examines the birth of Turning Point USA, a youth movement Kirk helped found when he was just 18.
In a little over a decade, it became the largest group of young conservatives in the United States.
It nurtured an army of enthusiastic activists, some of whom were bussed to Washington on January 6, 2021, for a rally that turned into a mob invasion of the Capitol with the goal of stopping certification of Trump’s election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
In addition to Turning Point USA, Kirk ran Turning Point Action, one of the main organisations that Trump entrusted with his door-to-door voter drives last year.
Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Kirk did not graduate from university but began dedicating himself to activism as a teenager. His strengths soon made him a go-to figure in Republican circles and by 2016 he was serving as a personal assistant to Trump’s son, Donald Trump jnr.
His pugnacious oratory led to regular spots on frequently right-wing Fox News, and later to the helm of The Charlie Kirk Show, one of the most popular podcasts in the country.
There, he fed listeners an unmediated diet of half-truths and conspiracies, boosting Trump’s “stolen election” claims and riffing on Covid-19 theories that struck a chord with many on the right.
His conspiracy theories sometimes percolated right to the top. For example, in September 2024, Kirk was among the first to share allegations that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Ohio.
Days later Trump repeated the claim – for which there was never any proof – during his televised presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris.
In an interview with AFP last year, Kirk brushed aside questions about his veracity.
“I say we spread the truth,” he said.
- Agence France-Presse