Charlie Kirk, A Year Later: JUST WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
I’ve been working on this piece for a year now. Every time I think the moment has passed, something else happens … and the I try tweaking it … but things shift again and the moment passes. Maybe it did have to wait a year for the anniversary …
Last September, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood in broad daylight in the midst of one of his signature rallies on the campus of Utah Valley University. The reaction from national Republican leadership was as excessive as it was effusive. Kirk was not an elected official … held no formal public role … was even not a candidate for any office … was not a universally beloved celebrity. And yet, the news – from the shooting to the death to the very public memorial rally – was stop-the-presses, full bold headline, push alerts, the works. The Vice President flew to retrieve Kirk’s body. The President gave a national address and ordered flags lowered to half-staff. The hunt for the suspect, the vigil in the performing arts center at the US Capitol, the memorial service at a packed NFL stadium weeks later all dominated the news cycle for weeks … until the cycle turned to other things … as it always does.
The story has continued to return prominence now and then … a December 13th town hall broadcast on CBS with Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk and new head of Turning Point USA … the annual Turning Point event … then America Fest, a few days later, with a who’s-who of officials in the current national administration – including the President and the Vice President … a tour of college campuses this spring in preparation for the primaries and mid-terms … more recently, the final preliminary hearing for Robinson, a week or two before the one-year anniversary of the crime. At every turn, the central focus is how righteous Kirk was, how bold, how courageously he crusaded for the one and only absolute truth.
Because this seems to need saying repeatedly: Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be murdered – as if it were even possible for anyone to ever deserve such a fate – period. full. stop. Nothing the man said or did – or any other person says or does – justifies or excuses being killed. There is no justification, no excuse that will make this wrong action to be a right one.
It is well established that Tyler Robinson fully intended to shoot and kill Charlie Kirk; however, his own motives are far from clear. A number of his actions suggest the “terminally online” gamer subculture had some influence … and his relationship with his roommate may have been a factor as well. Despite being quickly obscured soon after his arrest, there are also indications that Robinson had been, at least initially, a supporter of Republicans and perhaps even somewhat sympathetic to movements like Turning Point USA. But something changed for him and a switch flipped from supporter to opponent and that opposition turned almost as rapidly to violence. (How and why this happens has yet to be explored at any length or depth – but it is happening.)
In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, a number of people called for cooling the highly inflamed state of what currently passes for political discourse. It is true that neither political side has a lock on virtue and goodness to the exclusion of the other and both sides have engaged in absolutism around “we’re right and our opponents are wrong … bad … evil.” Although there was some introspection on the left that perhaps things had gone too far, become too hurtful, there has been no such introspection by those on the right about their own role in the overheated rhetorical violence. Any suggestion that Kirk actively contributed to this dynamic through his own comments about those whom he opposed was immediately shutdown.
Two examples of occurred on NPR’s Morning Edition the day after Kirk was killed. In both cases, very skilled interviewers, keenly aware they were speaking to grieving people, sought to gently widen the scope of demonizing rhetoric to suggest that the right also needed to dial things back. Both attempts were met with immediate denials of “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and suggestions that the interviewer was blaming Kirk for his own murder.
Soon after, at least one state government sought to establishing Turning Points USA chapters in all high schools and colleges within that state. Debate clubs were being organized, or re-organized, to promote Charlie Kirk’s ideas and methods. These are often presented and defended as ways to “prevent further indoctrination of our young people,” which is what Kirk and is supporters insisted has really been happening in the schools under the guise of education. Kirk’s death has been used as an excuse or a cause to promote this
Education, however, is inherently a liberalizing activity: learning how one thinks, how we know what we know, how to evaluate facts and weigh differing evidence for or against something, to apply reason and logic, to consider alternate explanations or viewpoints … all of this is part of the educational process. To give only one account or one version, to exclude contrary facts or alternative viewpoints, to emphasize retention of what one has been told over application of what one has learned — this is indoctrination. It is a refusal to consider alternate viewpoints as having any validity that Charlie Kirk advanced with his watch-list of professors and demonstrated Kirk was the actual promoter of indoctrination in the guise of education rather than an advocate of real education.
Consider what Parker Palmer wrote on education in Healing the Heart of Democracy:
“If the teacher does little more than dictate that information and then demand that students memorize and parrot it on tests, … [the students] are learning to survive as subjects of an autocracy: keep you head down, your mouth shut, and repeat the party line whether or not you understand or believe it.” (pp 132-33)
Who are those actually advocating for this approach to education that Palmer describes and who are the ones actually encouraging curiosity, open inquiry, and independent thinking?
Although Charlie Kirk was shot under his trademark canopy emblazoned with “Prove Me Wrong,” he was never open to being proven wrong. What he actually did was invite all comers to step up and allow him, perhaps gently and patiently, but certainly most pointedly, to prove them wrong … and so provide content fodder for his larger operation. His public discussions or debates were not really about an open exchange of ideas in an effort to find mutual understanding or possible common ground for a way forward. Instead, these were opportunities for him to demonstrate the use of right-wing talking points. On the rare occasion when someone presented an issue or a point for which he didn’t have a ready refutation, he would use that as an opportunity to perfect his counterattack for the next time.
Days after Charlie Kirk’s death, Politico published an interview with Hasan Piker, Kirk’s most frequent public form debate partner. Much like Kirk, Piker is a very popular on-line content creator – but very liberal whereas Kirk was an arch-conservative. (In fact, Piker was online, reacting in real-time as news of the shooting broke and the announcement of Kirk’s death.) This interview is quite revealing. In it, Piker states that he had very little idea what Kirk was actually seeking from, or even thinking at, their joint appearances. Clearly. Piker and Kirk never talked when off the set, never bantered in the prep area, never went for dinner before or drinks after their events. There were no interactions beyond what took place in front of the audiences. Piker agreed to these events in hopes of connecting with the “maybe 20%” of the audience that was somewhat persuadable. However, he had no illusions of persuading Kirk of anything because Kirk was never open to any possible points the “other side” might have to offer.
If Kirk had been truly open to dialog and debate, then he would have welcomed open conversations in which each can concede and appreciate the other’s perspective, listen and engage to find a common ground. There would have been acknowledgments of the strengths and valid points in the other’s perspective, acknowledgement and acceptance of the blind spots and flaws in his own. But this never happened in any of Kirk’s events. Although presented as being about education and debate, his events were designed for indoctrination is his particular beliefs.
Charlie Kirk was following the familiar playbook of the right-wing echo chamber. For decades now, the plot line has been: “We are on the right … therefore, we are in the right … we are absolutely correct in all things; any deviation from this correctness is, by definition, wrong.” With this reliance on indoctrination, political positions have taken on religious aspects such as moral absolutes, the mutually exclusive categories of good and evil, and even claims that the declared position is aligned with God’s will. Whatever faith Kirk may have proclaimed, it was far more aligned with American Christian Nationalism than the ways of Jesus as demonstrated in the gospel
I’ve previously written on the subject of the theological distortions and nationalism in the American Christian context. Many others have written much more. These American heresies that have longed plagued us: America as the new chosen nation, God as the supporter of the imperial state, and the complete separation of this world from a spiritual afterlife. Among other problems, this mash-up has produced the solely personal “Jesus and me!” kind of faith that Charlie Kirk expressed. Kirk said a number of hateful, hurtful, vicious, blatantly racist and sexist things about any number of human beings (also made in the image of and beloved by God) for the sole reason that these others held positions and publicly advocated for things Kirk opposed. Apparently, according to Kirk’s beliefs, one can be as mean and nasty as one desires to enemies … to people who differ in some way … to any human being considered less than oneself … you can do whatever you want so long as you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior so as to go to heaven when you die … because that is the only thing that matters to God – not how one treats other human beings … not how one tries to live according to the way of Jesus in this life in this world.
This is garbage theology; it is NOT the gospel. I think Charlie Kirk and all others who share in this form of christianism are wrong. This is not Christianity. It uses Christian language and some of the concepts, but it has nothing to do with living in the way that Jesus taught and expected disciples/students to learn and follow. I don’t have much use for a faith that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to living in this world right now. And as an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I say with all the authority of that calling – and my knowledge and understanding and faith – that God has no use for this belief system either.
How do public acts of cruelty like the various immigration enforcement activities demonstrate the concern for the strangers and struggling that Jesus expected those would follow this Way to provide? Who would Jesus starve? Who would Jesus send away rather than care for them? Who would Jesus demand live with chronic insecurity about housing … food … warmth/shelter from the heat? Whose homes would Jesus destroy? Whose boats would Jesus bomb? What wars would Jesus initiate? Which children are okay to kill? Jesus did not suffer and die because suffering is inherently beneficial … somehow. Jesus suffered and died for the sake of a radical love that was out to change the world – and the resurrection is the starting point for that change.
What good is it, my friends, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If another person is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them “go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? James 2:14-16
This is a mockery of the God I love and I’m tired of being called anything other than the mockery it is. With the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s murder and the impending trial of his killer, can we be honest about indoctrination into a nationalistic christianism and how one-time supporters flip to violent rejection? That will be more helpful than further unwarranted hagiography of someone who was faithful only to a political ideology.