Reno (United States) (AFP) – Charlie Kirk has a question for the excited, youthful crowd he’s speaking to: “Are you ready to get Donald Trump back in the White House?” Somewhere between a preacher, a politician and a rock star — if rock stars had neatly coiffed hair — Kirk is the supremely eloquent spokesman for a younger generation of hard-right MAGA Republicans. Just 31 years old, he came of age with social media and has millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube, who delight at his whip-smart edits and his provocative takedowns of hecklers and ideological challengers.
At a rally on a university campus in the southwestern city of Reno this month — part of his “You are being brainwashed” tour — he offered more fodder for his feeds, telling those gathered he wanted an end to “all abortions,” which he called “the Holocaust of our time.” Like Donald Trump, the man he is relentlessly stumping for, Kirk frequently lashes out in colorful ways at migration. He also frequently invokes his religion — which he assumes his audience shares — as a justification for political stances. “Civil disobedience, or defiance to tyranny, can be biblical,” he told the crowd in Reno.
For some in the audience, he’s a breath of fresh air on campuses that the American 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 is quite so complimentary. “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 has become the largest group of young conservatives in the United States. It nurtures an army of enthusiastic activists, some of whom were bussed to Washington on January 6, 2021, for what became an invasion of the Capitol.
Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Kirk did not graduate university, but began dedicating himself to activism as a teenager. With a voracious appetite for reading and a lawyer’s ability to synthesize arguments, he quickly nurtured relationships with key Republicans. By 2016 he was at the heart of the Trump family orbit, serving as personal assistant to Donald Trump Jr. His pugnacious oratory led to regular spots on Fox News, and later to the helm of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” one of the most popular podcasts in the country.
There, he feeds listeners an unmediated diet of half-truths and conspiracies, boosting Trump’s “stolen election” claims and riffing on Covid-19 theories that are popular with the angry American right. It’s a two-way street, and Kirk’s untruths sometimes end up getting repeated by the man holding the party’s banner. In 2018, he falsely said some protesters chanted “We want Trump” during France’s Yellow Vest movement, a claim eagerly repeated by the then-president. In September, he 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 debate with Kamala Harris.
Kirk brushes aside AFP’s questions about his dubious statements during an interview on the sidelines of a recent rally. “I say we spread the truth,” he smiles. In addition to Turning Point USA, Kirk runs Turning Point Action, one of the main organizations that Donald Trump has entrusted with his door-to-door operations in 2024. The group has raised more than $100 million and says it is deploying thousands of people in key states to convince conservatives to vote early.
The message requires a little bit of doublethink on the part of Kirk and his fellow travelers: Trump and his supporters have spent years railing against mail-in and early voting, claiming it has corrupted US elections and allowed the Democratic Party to “cheat.” “There’s some skepticism,” acknowledges Kirk. “But I’ll tell you, a lot of people are starting to get on the belief system that voting early is the optimal way of voting.”
While some in the Republican sphere — especially the old guard — view Kirk with a degree of skepticism, Spencer says he’s here to stay — even if Trump loses. “Whatever happens, Charlie Kirk will most definitely continue to grow his influence in the rightwing ecosystem,” she said. “He’ll survive a world post-Trump.”
© 2024 AFP
