The student activist who never studied prefers to proclaim his right-wing opinions in hostile territory

That Charlie Kirk had a construction for activism, discovered the right -wing right -wing activist in 2012, in the last year in high school in a suburb of Chicago. The canteen of Wheeling High School increased the price of cookies in one fell swoop from 25 to 50 cents and Kirk saw this as great injustice. “Cookies are the highlight of most school days and now they are doubled in price without consulting us? No! Enough of this manipulation,” wrote the eighteen -year -old on Facebook. “We have to compete together. Fight the power!”

His call to boycott the canteen, was followed wide. The school reversed the price increase – already complained Some students that the cookies were smaller and less tasteful afterwards.

This debut as an activist already betrayed a lot of Kirks talent for fierce polemics. In recent years he managed to grow into one of the most famous conservative activists in the US by traveling past campuses and debating for hours with often much left -wing students. On the left he became like this the man you love to hate: annoyingly bee, distributor of discriminatory hate speech, always a you-bin ready, rarely willing to agree with the other. Many right-wing Americans, on the other hand, saw him as the champion of freedom of expression, who bravely fought the stifling political correctness of academic left-left. Not as a key border knight, but on hostile terrain.

And so his life has now come to a violent end: after he set up his tent on a campus and under the motto ‘Prove me Wrong‘The debate started with dissenters. Also at Utah Valley University, his verbal duels were mainly concerned with the many well-known arguments from the American Cultural War on Wednesday: abortion, possession of weapons, translets, immigration, diversity policy, ethnic relationships, crime, police violence, and so on.

The last debate he had before he was hit with one deadly shot in his neck, for example About the alleged over-representation of transgender people such as perpetrators of school blood baths-a popular right-wing populist hobby horse. “Do you know how many trans Americans have been school shooters in the last ten years?” A person asked the audience. Kirk: “Too much.” To which the questioner continued: “Do you also know how many mass chutters have been in America in the last ten years?” Kirk: “Does your gang violence also count?”

This was Kirk. Instead of talking about school blood baths, which are usually caused by young white men, he comes with a ‘What-Aboutism’ about Bendegeweld, which is more often the work of peers of color. The deeper cause of both types of violence – the broad availability of firearms in the US, which Kirk is in favor of – then no longer has to go.

Sieved MBO’er

The fact that Kirk was able to grow into the country’s best -known ‘student activist’ was of a certain irony, because he himself did not follow higher education. Because “I was too stupid for a four -year course,” he once joked. Or, as he in 2015 in a lecture saidbecause his ‘dream number one’ as a child was to follow the prestigious officer training of West Point. However, the Military Academy would have rejected the former scout because his place “had to go to a less qualified person of a different gender and other orientation”.

The fact is that activism attracted him more than learning. He broke off the two-year MBO education that he followed after high school after a semester. “If you want to do better than others, don’t go to higher education,” he would often say about this later. “It worked out well for me.”

Kirk put resistance of left -wing students away as a lack of academic freedom and collection capacity

The hissed MBO student much preferred to travel endlessly along campuses as Marskramer in right -wing opinions. His successful struggle for affordable cookies quickly tasted like more. That same school year he would also publish an Essay submitted on the Alt-Rechtse Nieuwsblog Breitbart about alleged left-wing indoctrination through textbooks. This opinion piece earned him a TV performance on FOX News and other speaking engagements, after which he founded the Turning Point USA action group with the help of a Republican knowledge and starting capital of rich right-wing donors.

TPUSA had to become the right -wing counterpart of the progressive campaignhikel Moveon.org. This political online platform had played a crucial role in the previous years in the mobilization of especially young voters for Barack Obama in his successful throw to the White House, in 2008. Kirk had nothing to do with the election of the Afro-American senator from his home state of Illinois and had Tpusa ideological-fedish in the Excellent Rechtse.

The arrival from Turning Point to Campuses almost always led to protest and resistance of left -wing students and staff members in those first years. Kirk systematically put that resistance away as a lack of collection capacity and academic freedom. To illustrate that progressive hypersensitivity to deviating opinions, TPUSA activists once withdraws with incontinence diapers and weaning into the Kent State University, where they pushed out a ‘Safe Space for children’.

Trumpist youth movement

With his performances, Kirk managed to make the university campus a political battlefield. For example, TPUSA launched a blacklist online, the so -called ‘Professor Watch List’, where students could report teachers who would be left. And TPUSA managed to pull university councils ideologically to the right by recruiting and financing their own student candidates.

Kirk and his action group gained so much brand awareness that national Republican politicians and their donors soon invited and paid him to participate in their electoral campaigns. In election year 2016, Kirk initially gambled on Ted Cruz as a presidential candidate, but after Donald Trump bothered the Texan senator at the Republican primers, he completely supported the real estate boss. Kirk spoke at the Republican Convention and campaigned for Trump.

Kirk built up close friendships with Trumps oldest sons Don Jr. and Eric and during Trumps first presidency (2017-21) Tpusa became the informal Trumpist youth movement. During the Corona Pandemie and after Trumps subsequent election defeat, in November 2020, Kirk helped to distribute plenty of conspiracy theories and misinformation on virus, vaccines and polls.

Zoom in

As a media personality, with a much listened podcast and millions of followers on social media, he grew into one of the more influential Maga influencers in the following years. His line with Trump remained ultra -short. In 2024, for example, he would have convinced him to choose Senator JD Vance from Ohio, for whom he himself had a intensive campaign a few years earlier, as his vice presidential candidate. And this summer, after a call from Trump, Kirk suddenly decided that he no longer wanted to talk about the Dead Sedsleinquent Jeffrey Epstein – exactly as the president wishes.

Martyr for Maga

In Maga-Land, Kirk is now immediately a martyr, with a similar status as murdered civil rights activists from the last century. Several Republican leaders and members of Trumps Entourage said on Wednesday that he could have become president. And although nothing could be said about the shooter’s motive, they allocated the murder to the systematically ‘demonizing’ of dissenters by ‘radical left’. The fact that a political commentator said on a progressive TV channel like MSNBC said that Kirk could expect this “terrible act” did not help.

Calls for praying for Kirks survival, after the message of his death, quickly turned into finger methods and plea to avenge his death. For example, the conservative opinion maker Christian Rufo, who supported Kirks struggle with the left academy, wrote on X: “It is time to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest and lock up within legal frameworks, anyone responsible for this chaos.” Jack Posobiec, another Maga-influencer, threatened: “If you grab one of our friends, that asks for a response.”

In Maga-Land, Kirk is now immediately a martyr, with a similar status as murdered civil rights activists

In this explosive social climate, Americans do not have to count on their national politics for some moderation. For example, the House of Representatives did not succeed in holding silence in a minute on Wednesday. After a Republican delegate had called to think about Kirks’ death, Democrats shouted that they had to commemorate the victims of a school blood bath in Colorado, earlier in the day. Another Republican then shouted: “You caused this!” To which a Democrat shouted back: “Otherwise, implement weapons laws!”

The polemic debate style with which Kirk made a name for himself in life lives on in the parliament. Whether his violent death can still be freely debated on American campuses is doubtful.

Charlie Kirk was 31 years old and leaves two young children next to his wife Erika.

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