The Dangerous Normalization of Charlie Kirk

Be careful mentioning Charlie Kirk's own words. A mob of his supporters might try to destroy you.

It’s been almost a week since political activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a college campus. We still don’t know that much about the shooter, twenty-two year old Tyler Robinson, who was apprehended on Friday. Utah governor Spencer Cox, who’s become a national figure in the wake of the shooting, was quick to claim that Robinson espoused leftist ideology and was in a relationship with a “transgender” roommate in multiple Sunday show appearances.

Right-wing media jumped at the accusation that Tyler Robinson himself was transgender on the day of the shooting. A day after the shooting, before Robinson was identified, The Wall Street Journal put out a story speculating that casings found had transgender messages on them. The Journal put out a retraction the following day (Friday). The messages on the bullet casings were later revealed to be mostly memes and video game references to anti-fascism, nothing to do with trans people.

The gender identity of the roommate, a person named Lance Twiggs, is also quite unclear. I first took an interest in Twiggs while watching Governor Cox on television. Cox referenced that Twiggs was transitioning from male to female, but used only male pronouns when referring to Twiggs. One could chalk that up to carelessness, or the Republican Party’s predisposition toward misgendering, but there’s also another question at play. What do we know about Lance Twiggs?

We know that Twiggs was a gamer. Twiggs wore a onesie known as a kigurumi. We know that Twiggs once used an anime filter to look feminine, something that happens on social media every day. That’s about it. You’re not transgender just because you’ve used an Instagram filter.

We also know that two other people lived in the house as Robinson and Twiggs. Hardly a lover’s paradise. As a trans woman who kept her birth name, I caution against questioning someone else’s gender identity based on name alone, but it’s unusual for trans femmes to not change our names. Lance’s transness is very much an open question, despite Governor Cox’s best intentions to have it at the forefront of his political messaging.

The lack of concrete information wouldn’t be such a big deal if there was some consistency to it. There has been some evidence to link Robinson to the “Groyper” movement led by far-right extremist Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who ate dinner with Donald Trump back in 2022. Groypers are followers of Fuentes, who don’t believe that Trump is sufficiently far-right, who stress the need for violence in their messaging. Fuentes had a special hatred for Kirk, and urged his followers to target Kirk’s Turning Point USA events, leading to a fracture in the far-right called the “Groyper War of 2019.”

Was Tyler Robinson a Groyper? He clearly spoke Groyper, something I doubt many people reading this column can say. Robinson once included a green-skinned Trump as part of his Halloween costume. The green skin is likely a reference to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that was co-opted by the far-right.

Governor Spencer Cox went on national TV to talk about Robinson’s “leftist ideology.” If he knows more than he’s letting on, he should share his information. From what the public knows, Robinson is clearly more aligned with the far-right than anything on the left. The evidence that Robinson was part of the far-right is much stronger than any evidence we’ve seen that his roommate was transgender.

Cox repeated his claims about the roommate on multiple Sunday shows. Does it really matter if Robinson’s roommate was transgender? When has the media ever brought up the subject of a shooter’s roommate before? Isn’t this kind of weird?

The mainstream media often struggles with nuance. Meet the Press is not exactly the best outlet to try and explain the difference between Charlie Kirk’s version of far-right extremism and why that was unappealing to Nick Fuentes’ more extreme version, to the point where he instructed his own supporters to disrupt Kirk’s events more than six years ago. This is all very confusing. It’s much easier to simply point the finger at trans people.

Another cornerstone of Cox’s recent media blitz is his anger at social media for the rise of polarization. Cox has referred to social media as poison. Cox also called out those who profit from algorithms designed to polarize us as “conflict entrepreneurs.”

On that subject, he’s right. Social media has a lot of bad-faith actors who make their living off of playing to people’s extremes. People who know how to manipulate their messaging into ten or fifteen second reels on sites like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are rewarded with top positions in the algorithm.

Few people knew how to manipulate the algorithm better than Charlie Kirk. Just look at his headlines.

Charlie Kirk is not the first conservative activist to weaponize college campuses. The YouTube clips with the flamboyant headlines aren’t original either. He’s basically a frat boy version of Ben Shapiro or Glenn Beck with a clever hook. Ben Shapiro speaks on college campuses like a normal conservative, taking questions from a podium up on a stage. Charlie Kirk sits in a tent, outside, surrounded by chaos like a gladiator pit.

You’re supposed to think he’s tough, because people are generally predisposed to sympathize with people who frame themselves as the underdog. It’s not particularly brave or daring for a 31-year-old man to “debate” college students, but Kirk’s brand of right-wing agitation earned him a powerful following. Gavin Newsom’s own thirteen-year-old son idealized Charlie Kirk.

Of course, many of us could dunk on random college students if that’s what we decided to spend our time doing. Kirk often fared much worse against people who came prepared, like this video on gay marriage.

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South Park recently parodied Kirk’s style in the second episode of their twenty-seventh season, which is currently still airing. The episode, “Got a Nut” lampoons conservative media’s debating style.

Figures in the media have praised Charlie Kirk as a figure who encouraged “respectful debate.” His actual words paint a very different picture. The Guardian put together an excellent compilation of some of Kirk’s most heinous words.

Do you think respectful debate involves questioning whether black women have the “brain power” to serve on the Supreme Court? According to Kirk, the only way for people of color to advance in this country is to steal white people’s jobs. Isn’t it pretty racist to look at a black pilot and immediately question their qualifications? This is the same man who championed The Great Replacement Theory, which suggests that Democrats only want immigrants to come into America to overwhelm white voters.

Kirk had plenty of egregious things to say about transgender people. He called for “Nuremberg-style trials” for every doctor who administers gender-affirming care. He said that trans people are an “abomination to God.”

Kirk also called for violence against trans people. On the subject of trans people in women’s locker rooms, he suggested that “someone should have just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s.” For the right, violence is never okay, unless it’s directed at someone they don’t like.

Stephen King recently apologized for claiming that Charlie Kirk supported the stoning of gays. The claim is not exactly false. Charlie Kirk cited Leviticus 18:22, calling it, “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters. Historians are divided as to whether or not that part of the Bible is actually anti-gay, or merely interpreting it that way. The outrage against King is fairly laughable.

According to liberal commentator Ezra Klein, Charlie Kirk was practicing politics “the right way.” Really? Telling black people they don’t have the brain power to earn their success is the right way? Calling for trans people to be lynched for using the bathroom is the right way?

We’re so used to hearing politicians talk about the importance of rigorous debate. Variations of “I disagree with you, but I’ll fight for your right to free speech,” permeate our culture. In an abstract notion, this is all true. If your ideas are good, you should be able to defend them against people who disagree.

But how do you have a debate with someone who looks at someone like Taylor Swift and demands that she “submit to her husband.” What good is going to come out of telling someone like Kirk that, hey, maybe you shouldn’t beat up trans people who are trying to use the bathroom? The mainstream media has been dealing with this issue for years, particularly in the wake of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in which Charlie Kirk and his nemesis Nick Fuentes were both deeply involved.

Charlie Kirk was also not the free speech absolutist he claimed to be. Through Turning Point USA, Kirk established a “Professor Watchlist,” which tracked teachers who taught subjects that conservatives didn’t like. Kirk often encouraged his supporters to flood their employers with complaints, occasionally causing their termination. Professors who were on the list have described the horrors of being on the wrong end of a social media beatdown. I made a post about Professor Watchlist on my Facebook page last week.

Democrats have long lamented the absence of a Joe Rogan or a Charlie Kirk-type figure on the left. Kirk was instrumental in delivering the 2024 election to Trump, particularly through Turning Point USA’s voter registration efforts and his mobilization of young men. Kirk was a gifted speaker, but it’s a little extreme to suggest that he had some sort of Midas touch.

There’s always going to be an industry for men who are unafraid to tell other men that the problems of the world are all because masculinity is dead. Charlie Kirk made his living trafficking in the same kind of “conflict entrepreneurism" that Governor Cox railed against. A common critique of the right is their obsession with trans people, who represent 1% of the population but seem to attract 99% of Republicans’ meager attention spans.

There is nobody on the left telling you to go into a locker room to beat up somebody you don’t like. Democrats want to stop gun violence. People like Charlie Kirk see it as a necessary evil. That’s a big part of why this current push for depolarization will undoubtedly go nowhere. When you say that both sides are “equally” to blame, you toss out basic reality. Political violence is a cornerstone of the modern Republican Party. Look no further than January 6th.

Kirk and his buddies in the right-wing podcast space make “cancel culture” a bit part of their programming, when they’re not busy demonizing trans people. The same people who brought you Professor Watchlist have been trying to get anyone fired who said anything remotely negative in the wake of Kirk’s death. What is this, if not textbook cancel culture?

The New York Yankees recently honored Charlie Kirk with a moment of silence. Maybe they were facing pressure from Donald Trump, who attended a game the following day. It’s hard not to think about Trump’s open hostility toward the mainstream media, suing many for their coverage, when looking at all the fawning praise for Kirk. The message is clear: cheer Kirk, or else.

Charlie Kirk had no problem with violence when it came to others. After Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was brutally attacked with a hammer, Kirk referred to the assailant as a “patriot,” and suggested that someone should pay his bail. Apparently, this is the kind of behavior that gets you a moment of silence at Yankee Stadium.

Political violence has no place in American discourse. It is, unfortunately, part of modern American life. Nobody knew that more than Charlie Kirk, who once said, “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment.”

As I said on my Facebook page the day of Charlie’s death, we’re living in the world that Republicans created. They’re the ones standing in the way of meaningful action on gun violence. This weekly cycle of “thoughts and prayers” is their doing.

I could tell you that I don’t know how we fix this, but that’s not really true. The rhetoric needs to be toned down. Our national discourse is not improved by suggesting that trans people should be beaten or that black people aren’t smart enough to fly planes.

It’s also not improved by pretending that Charlie Kirk was something that he wasn’t. He wasn’t a champion of civil discourse, free speech, or meaningful debate. He was a skilled practitioner of the right-wing outrage complex, among the best of the best.

The mainstream media is weirdly afraid of this basic reality. An MSNBC commentator was fired for pointing out that Charlie Kirk was a polarizing and divisive figure, both objectively true. Trump’s post-truth world has no space for that kind of simple acknowledgement.

If that’s too tall an order for our media and our elected officials, we should stop pretending like anything is going to change. We’re living in the world that Donald Trump created. If the emperor is wearing no clothes, you'd better not bring that up. A legion of his supporters will be standing by, ready to destroy you. That reality, above all else, is Charlie Kirk’s legacy.