Charlie Kirk obituary: activist who mobilised the youth vote for Trump

Charlie Kirk, the political activist who was assassinated on a university campus in Utah last week, grew up in a moderate conservative household in an affluent suburb of Chicago. His father was an architect, his mother a mental health counsellor. But in his teens, he started to listen to the right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, and was captivated by his reactionary tirades, said The Telegraph.

Before leaving school, he had had an opinion piece published by the right-wing news site Breitbart, deploring the focus on left-wing views in school economics textbooks (he had himself been devouring the works of Milton Friedman), which led to appearances on Fox News and meetings with high-profile Republicans.

‘Prove me wrong’

He was only 18 when he dropped out of community college and co-founded Turning Point USA, a movement to combat the dominant liberal culture on US campuses. Touring colleges across the US, Kirk would invite all-comers to debate with him at “prove me wrong” events. A fluent speaker, who was formidably well read and blessed with a prodigious memory for facts, figures and arguments, he would often “win” these encounters. But his real influence came from his online presence: video clips of his campus events racked up millions of views on social media. Turning Point’s revenues started to rise (to $82 million in 2023), and Donald Trump Jr hired him as a media adviser for his father’s campaign in 2016.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Kirk became close to Donald Trump and kept backing him following his defeat in 2020 – promoting the conspiracy theory that the election had been “stolen”. Ahead of the 2024 election, he mobilised Turning Point’s many supporters to get out the youth vote in key states, and held huge right-wing conventions with light shows, music and pyrotechnics that drew tens of thousands of young people.

Standard bearer of Christian right

Seen as a standard bearer of religious values by many on the Christian nationalist right, he was anti-abortion and pro-gun ownership. Over time, his views on a range of issues seemed to become more extreme, said The Times. He urged students to monitor and expose lecturers who advanced “Leftist propaganda”; he promoted unscientific Covid treatments during the pandemic; he claimed that George Floyd had died of a drug overdose, not as a result of having his neck compressed by the police officer kneeling on it; and he accused liberal “Jewish communities” of “pushing hatred against whites”. Recently, he’d greeted the news of the singer Taylor Swift’s engagement by telling her: “Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”

He is survived by his wife Erika, a former Miss Arizona, and their two young children.