Skip to main content

The Manufactured Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk

Figure 1: In Aotearoa New Zealand, the far-right Destiny Church memorializing Kirk

The killing of Charlie Kirk has quickly become more than a personal tragedy. For the American far right, it is an opportunity: a way to reframe Kirk as a conservative and free speech martyr. 

It is not sorrow—it is tactics. Tactics to accelerate the communicative inversion that constructs free speech as an instrument of authoritarian control.

And it is measurably dangerous to democracy.

By placing Kirk in the category of a fallen hero, the far-right discursive infrastructure is attempting to whitewash his record and conceal the truth regarding the ideas for which he advocated. The communicative construction of Kirk as a free speech hero is an instrument for mainstreaming the deplorable hate-filled white supremacist ideology of the far-right.

To accept that account without challenge is to make extremism more mainstream and perhaps sow it more firmly in our political culture.

The Reality of Kirk's Rhetoric

Kirk was no victim of censorship. He was no free-speech champion smeared by his critics. He was among the most vocal advocates of the "great replacement theory"—a white nationalist conspiracy that has inspired violence from Christchurch to Buffalo.

This was not lofty discourse. This was "incitement," disguised as commentary. In tandem with it, Kirk consistently gravitated towards "Christian nationalism," portraying American identity as an exclusive white Christian heritage. Immigrants, Black communities, LGBTQ+ people—he painted them all as existential threats to the nation.

This is not the legacy of a democratic thinker. It is the legacy of someone who mainstreamed hate and gave conspiracy a platform in the mainstream.

The Politics of Memorialization

The rush to canonize Kirk is not spontaneous grief but rather politicized. Framing him as a martyr does three things:

  • It validates extremism. Conspiracies presented as the opinions of a slain "truth-teller" assume a spurious look of principle.
  • It incites grievance. Martyrdom converts political loss into public outrage, galvanizing a base in collective victimhood.
  • It silences opposition. Criticism of Charlie Kirk's ideology can now be characterized as an assault against a deceased individual—a moral bludgeon meant to chill out dissent.
For the far right, it is an opportunity for recruitment and further radicalization.

Democracy's Line in the Sand

The actual danger is not Kirk himself, but the ideology which he introduced into the mainstream of politics. 

Whenever politicians, journalists, or institutions introduce his thoughts as part of ordinary democratic discussion, they shift the limits of the possible. Extremism is not legitimized by intermittent upsurges but by creeping assimilation.

We must rescue democracy by establishing a clear line. That is:

  • Calling the "great replacement theory" and Christian nationalism by their true names: white supremacist and anti-democratic.
  • Not indulging the fantasy of Kirk as a free-speech martyr. His legacy is not liberty, but exclusion.
  • Amplifying the voices of those who were his targets, ensuring that they—and not his myth—and set the public memory.

The fight for Charlie Kirk's legacy is not a fight about one man. It is a fight about whether or not democracy will succumb to the politics of hate framed as victimhood. To sanctify his record is to jeopardize the democratic project.

Popular posts from this blog

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde   Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation.  These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South.  The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...
Read more

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more