By Scott Howard
Sunday, August 06, 2023
He hosts a radio show with more than 500,000 monthly listeners. The organization he founded at age 18 and still heads today commanded $55 million in revenue last year. That group is, by its own description, the “largest and fastest growing youth organization in the United States” with a presence on more than 3,500 college and high-school campuses.
In only twelve years, Charlie Kirk has established himself as a rising star in the world of right-wing politics. Turning Point USA, founded in 2012 to promote free speech on campuses, has become a mainstay of campus conservative politics. His meteoric rise as Donald Trump’s youth voice shows no signs of stopping given the GOP’s infatuation with the former president. The energy of young conservatives is squarely behind the combative nature of politics that Kirk endorses. The face of youth conservatism is Kirk’s, and that seems unlikely to change. As a young conservative myself, I would find it easy to jump on his bandwagon. The political winds are at his back, and it would be pragmatic to align with him. It is also true that in a world where the young Americans who aren’t already on the left are decidedly unengaged, Turning Point proves that it is possible to get college students invested in right-wing politics. It is tempting to look at Kirk and the circumstances that have put air beneath his wings and conclude that such a man should be welcomed as a representative of American conservatism broadly.
Such an acquiescence to Kirk’s prominence would be wrong, however. He engages in reckless rhetoric that disgraces the conservative cause. He indulges people who would otherwise be left to the fringe of American politics. He parrots the worst lies perpetuated by his patron in Mar-a-Lago and thereby does immense damage to the conservative movement among younger Americans.
This is not the first time I have written about the dangers of Charlie Kirk. Last November, I pointed out a number of troubling things he does:
Kirk associates with stop-the-steal types and gives a platform to conspiracy theorists. On October 31, he called for an “amazing Patriot” to bail out Paul Pelosi’s attacker so that conservatives could “ask him some questions” about his actions. His podcast has welcomed Dinesh D’Souza twice, allowing D’Souza to air his fraudulent claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
A reminder: Paul Pelosi was violently assaulted in his home. The man who assaulted him faces state and federal charges for his actions. Kirk doesn’t do conservatism any favors when he insinuates some staged plot behind the assault.
The irresponsible rhetoric has continued since then. In March, Kirk responded to news that the IRS had sent an agent to journalist Matt Taibbi’s house by saying that “we [conservatives] are living in an enemy-occupied country. They have taken over the government and we have to think as dissidents.” It is one thing to disparage the IRS for visiting a reporter’s house conspicuously on the day said reporter testified before Congress. It is entirely different to proclaim that the government has been captured by enemies who lack a rightful claim to the country. It is simply untrue that the U.S. government is “occupied” to the point that American conservatives must begin thinking like dissidents.
On July 24, Kirk provided further proof of his unreliability. In a conversation about Kamala Harris’s nascent authoritarianism, Charlie gave us the following doozy:
Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer’s corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.
Joe Biden’s failures as president deserve condemnation, and his failing mental faculties should concern both his party and the country at large. But Biden does not deserve the death penalty for his actions as president. No leader of the conservative movement should be calling for the death of the sitting U.S. president. These are the kinds of comments you cringe at when your friend posts them on Facebook. For a rising voice in right-wing politics to suggest this so flippantly is inexcusable.
On July 28 Kirk again showcased his conspiratorial tendencies:
Welcome back. Did January 6 make the left more powerful? Yes. . . . Do you think they want another January 6? Yes. They have been preempting us and preconditioning us with domestic violent extremism and right-wing violence.
He went on to describe how if he “were a very evil person,” he would go about orchestrating another January 6, as if the Left were responsible for what happened that day or would want it to happen again. Neither of these things are true. If January 6 made the Left more powerful (and there’s a case that it did), it did so only because Donald Trump summoned a mob — one that Kirk’s own organization assisted in assembling — and then set it on the U.S. Capitol. It was not a false-flag operation, as friends of the Charlie Kirk Show have claimed. January 6 was a crime. Charlie Kirk has spent the last two and a half years running cover for the man responsible for that crime.
Turning Point may provide lessons for how the conservative movement can engage college students. Its membership includes some of the most enthusiastic young conservatives today. But there are, as there have always been, bounds to the dictum that anyone to our right is our ally. Charlie Kirk has, through his own excess of zeal, intemperance, and imprudence, degraded the youth conservative movement. His position atop TPUSA tarnishes the whole organization. Which is deeply unfortunate: There is much work to do on America’s campuses and among its youth, and Turning Point is well positioned to do it. But only if it turns away from the siren song of Charlie Kirk. He has inspired in many young Americans the spirit of patriotism; that same spirit now calls for rejecting his false counsels.
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