Bullets and Ballots: The Legacy of Charlie Kirk

What did Charlie Kirk mean to the Young Right?

I WILL NOT ATTEMPT to eulogize the martyr. Others have done this already—and done so with such skill that anything I write would not measure up.¹ I will do something else here: explain, in sober and measured language, the significance of Kirk’s life to the American right. Like most great men, Charlie Kirk symbolized something far larger than himself. You will not understand why his murder feels so cataclysmic to so many if you do not first understand what Kirk meant to millions of young Americans and to the movement they joined.

This understanding is rare outside the ranks of populist politicos. Only a portion of this blog’s readership comes from those ranks: many of you are not from the United States and thus do not have a native view of its politics. Many of you are nonpartisan types whose main passion is military or diplomatic affairs and therefore do not have a fine-grained understanding of conservative politics and its internal controversies. Many of you work in Silicon Valley and do your best to avoid anything political. Many of you are boomers and thus do not pay close attention to what young politicos are doing on the internet, or you are traditionalist conservatives who never “really understood the appeal” of Charlie Kirk.

If you fall into any of these categories, you probably think of Kirk as a YouTube shock jock eager to provoke his way into virality. If you know him only through the stray references made to him in the occasional New Yorker piece, you might assume he was a committed white nationalist egging the right toward authoritarianism.

Neither of those sentences accurately describes Kirk or his life’s project. Charlie Kirk was not just a piece of internet bombast; his main field of action, in fact, was not on the internet. Kirk was one of the most effective institution-builders and coalition-crafters in the United States. He was less an influencer than a power broker; everyone in MAGAland acknowledged the leadership role he played in building and holding together Trump’s coalition. No man save Trump himself did more to pioneer the electorally viable conservative populism that now defines the Republican Party—not just in terms of its ideas and aesthetic style, but also in terms of its institutions, leadership, money flows, and personnel networks. Kirk’s assassination was not just an attack on a certain point of view; it was an attack on a pillar of Republican power.

But Kirk did have views—views that he fiercely defended and tirelessly spread. How he chose to express these views, and where he chose to express them, gave them a special power. Charlie Kirk’s role as a living symbol starts here—and it is what distinguished him from talking heads like Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Steven Crowder, and other names you might recognize. There is a unique emotional weight to Kirk’s murder that I do not think would be felt if one of those other men had been assassinated in his stead. I will try to communicate the emotional weight of his loss as best I can.

My convictions here stem from the time I have spent over the last few weeks thinking about Kirk and his mass appeal. I began to study him with special care in August, when a producer for his show contacted me. Kirk had decided that his knowledge of China and Taiwan was insufficient and that he was looking for guests who could come onto the show to talk about those issues with him. His team reached out to me. I told his people that I would be glad to appear on the show—and I began to watch as many episodes as I could to prepare. I asked several fans of the show to explain what they loved about it and about Kirk. I viewed many of his other videos, especially the campus videos, which are extremely compelling and somewhat addictive.

All of this was done for the sake of an episode that will never be filmed. I never met Kirk. Now I never will. I thus cannot speak about Charlie Kirk as a friend, host, or family man. I can only speak of Charlie Kirk the coalition broker and Charlie Kirk the symbol—the two roles through which he had the greatest influence on the greatest number of my countrymen.

We can start with Kirk’s role as a coalition broker. Charlie Kirk had immense influence over the Republican Party and the conservative populist movement that animates it. His influence was derived from four sources of power. The first was the size of his audience. Kirk’s radio show had 500,000 monthly listeners; his YouTube channel has 4.3 million subscribers; his Twitter account, 5.3 million followers; and his TikTok, 7.8 million followers. Across platforms, his most popular video was viewed some two billion times. Few Americans have such a large megaphone at their disposal.

Kirk’s second source of power came from his leadership of Turning Point USA and its spin-off organizations involved in state politics and Christian ministries. Two years ago, I wrote an essay on the organizational genius of 19th-century Americans—in those days, the American nation built one mass-membership organization after another to accomplish various civic and political goals. Today’s civil society is different, dominated by expert-led NGOs with no mass component.² Kirk was a fantastically successful builder in the 19th-century pattern. TPUSA has some 850 chapters across the country. Turning Point Action mobilized tens of thousands of voters—Kirk claimed hundreds of thousands—and likely made the difference in several 2024 swing states, especially Arizona. He used this mobilizing power to primary half of the Arizona GOP—a strategy he was soon going to take to the rest of the nation.

Kirk’s third source of power came from his role as the central node in a network of the talented and the powerful. TPUSA was a leadership incubator for a generation of conservative activists. His success with TPUSA made him a favorite of the Republican donor class. His show gave him a ready excuse to interview politicians, think tankers, and media personalities across the right. All of this gave Kirk an impeccable Rolodex—he had access to a vast network of conservatives who mattered and an unerring eye for up-and-comers who should matter. He was constantly connecting politicians with donors, statesmen with staffers, and media outfits with the next brilliant young producer or marketer. There are a good four dozen people in the Trump administration who owe their appointments to an introduction Kirk made on their behalf—and this was true not only of the Trump administration, but also across Congress, in state governments, and in news agencies like Fox News.

The final source of Kirk’s power was his relationship with the president. Because of his loyalty to Trump, the resources he could mobilize, and the wisdom he gleaned from constant interaction with ordinary Americans on campuses across the United States, Charlie Kirk was a valued political advisor to the president. He had a direct line to President Trump and a host of other prominent leaders: the Vice President, many cabinet officials, a dozen senators, and several governors as well.

All of this explains, in part, the reaction to Kirk’s assassination. He personally assisted an entire generation of young leaders and staffers on their journey into power. Many powerful and influential figures are thankful to him for connecting them to important donors or feeding them worthy staffers. Many received his aid before their political ascent. Many of the individuals now leading the U.S. government—including the president himself—are where they are today because of Charlie Kirk’s labors on their behalf. For the populist right, he was the indispensable man. Behind the scenes, he was constantly building bridges, brokering peace, and greasing the wheels of the MAGA political machine.

It will be very hard to replace him.

However, all of that is only half the story. The emotional impact of Kirk’s murder has less to do with his position in the structure of American power and more to do with what he symbolized in the eyes of so many of his followers—and his critics—on the right.

To understand these emotions, you must first understand what the young Republican on campus was feeling at the height of the Great Awokening.

The young Republican felt afraid.

The young man who believed that a transgender woman is not a woman, or that white privilege is not a national crisis, or that Donald Trump should be president, was a young man who lived in fear. He feared what would happen if he expressed his beliefs. He feared humiliation. He feared that his classmates would blackball, bully, or haze him. He feared becoming the subject of a viral wave of hate. He feared having advisors and professors turn on him, damaging his grades or sabotaging his future career. (While I have used “he” here, all of this was even more true for the conservative young woman, who faced even greater social pressures to conform and more vicious tactics when she did not.)

These young conservatives feared because they took the rhetoric of their professors and classmates seriously. They expected to be treated with the same grace, respect, and friendship that the median progressive reserved for the Ku Klux Klan. Time and again they were told that their beliefs were the functional equivalent of a Klansman’s. In this environment, only the most disagreeable or the most courageous were willing to stand up for their beliefs.

It was in this air of fear that Turning Point USA began to rise. For years progressives have looked at Charlie Kirk’s campus events and lampooned him for spending so much time debating 18-year-olds. They missed the point of these events. By walking onto hostile campuses and planting TPUSA chapters, Kirk showed young conservatives that they were not alone. By arguing with anyone willing to stand in line—professor or protester, heckler or hanger-on—Kirk was demonstrating that conservative beliefs could withstand the scrutiny and social pressure of the college environment. Their creed could take the blows and keep its shape. Every clip he uploaded was evidence that a man who openly championed this creed could walk away looking better and wiser than the progressives who attacked him—no matter how many of these attackers there were. Kirk cut against the spirit of the age. He was no anon. He did not hide behind a handle or bury his convictions in the darker corners of Discord. Every time Kirk or his proxies praised Trump or made some inflammatory declaration, they were showing young conservatives that they could not be silenced.

Behind all of this was one overarching message: Do not fear. You have truth behind you. An entire fellowship of young conservatives stands behind you too. Charlie is here today to show you that conservatives like you can stand tall in hostile spaces. You can also do this. You should also do this. They do not own the public square. You do not need to be afraid.

That was the message of the man who was murdered this week.

This message had an obvious corollary: if we show up, then we will win. Recall that Trump did not win the 2016 popular vote. This caused a lot of nihilism among young conservatives. Many believed that the American people were too corrupted for a conservative movement to win majority support. Others thought that the American power structure—the en vogue term was “the cathedral”—would never allow a fair fight and would grind actual resistance to dust. He who believes thus either retreats from the public entirely or looks to less democratic solutions to the nation’s problems.

Charlie Kirk thought otherwise. He insisted that conservative populists could win the fight for the public square even if that fight was rigged against them. This faith was the foundation of his public persona and the engine that propelled the organizations he led. Kirk went out of his way to debate his ideas openly with opponents from the other camp. As a true populist leader should, he moved among the people, constantly talking with ordinary citizens of all persuasions. Kirk thought in terms of ballots, not bullets. When many to his right fantasized about Caesar and Sulla, he chased votes. He did not think nationalists needed to adopt extreme measures to win. Persuasion and mobilization—the traditional tools of self-government—would be enough.

Kirk saw America as he saw college campuses: the problem was not that America lacked conservatives or populists, but that too many of the conservatives it had were inexperienced, apathetic, or afraid. All they needed was an invitation to show up. The organizations Kirk built did this inviting.

These were the methods of the man who was murdered this week.

Not everyone on the right, especially the young right, shared Kirk’s faith in constitutional liberties, popular mandates, and retail politics. Many of these young men were animated by a hatred for modernity that Kirk believed was spiritually destructive. He was convinced that one of his missions was to steer these young men to straighter paths. Here is how he described that mission in the last interview he ever gave:

“My job every single day is actively trying to stop a revolution,” Kirk said. “This is where you have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent, and I’m trying to paint a picture of virtue, of lifting people up, not just staying angry.” ³

That was the mission of the man who was murdered this week.

Kirk often expressed his opinions in intentionally inflammatory ways (though you will notice that this was usually on his show; when he engaged with leftists in person—even those extremely hostile toward him—he did so politely and sometimes with great compassion). He and his lieutenants could be merciless on the attack, never more so than when targeting anti-Trump elements in their own party. It would be silly to pretend otherwise.

But nothing in that last paragraph captures what Charlie Kirk represented to the young right. He was the living symbol of a certain mode of politics. In his world, conservatives would win. They would win through courage, personal virtue, and constant contact with the American people. The central task was gathering and training a leadership cadre that might fan across the country. They would persuade the hesitant, cheer the weary, stiffen the spines of those inclined to silence. This sort of persuasion and mobilization has been core to the American political tradition since the 19th century. Charlie Kirk’s life work was evidence that this tradition was not dead. He told the rising tide of the young right that they were the heirs to that tradition. He told them they were strong. He told them that they did not need to fear.

And now he is dead.

I do not think liberals, progressives, or even older conservatives understood the amount of slime thrown at Kirk by those to his right. His eagerness to work with the new establishment inside established political forms, his program for the right’s spiritual renewal, and his generally pro-Israel line made him a constant target of Nick Fuentes and the “Fuentards” who follow him. His commitment to populist coalition-building made him an enemy of people like Laura Loomer, who described Kirk as “a political charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next” just a few weeks ago. While they were happy to show up on his show, many figures on the dissident right—who, as a rule, are not fond of populism and do not have faith in the American people—were privately derisive of Kirk’s project. Their anon counterparts constantly attacked him for not “knowing what time it is,” for not understanding that the left speaks the language of bullets, not ballots.

The man who assassinated Charlie Kirk was not speaking the language of ballots.

The poasters feel vindicated. They have not been shy in stating their vindication. Some have done so in very ugly ways that I will not link to. The more restrained version looks like this:

None of these responses are worse than the TikToker who celebrated his death with the exclamation, “The best part of this is he is not even martyr material!,” but they stir anger nonetheless. I only have so much tolerance for anonymous posters who have made nothing of their lives trying to convince us that Charlie Kirk accomplished nothing with his.

Kirk’s legacy is real. TPUSA lives on. The Arizona GOP has been remade in his image. Donald Trump won the popular vote. His administration is staffed by dozens of men Kirk handpicked. Tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of young Republicans have the courage to be young Republicans because of him. The Republican Party is now a populist, nationalist institution. Save for the life and labors of Charlie Kirk, none of this would have happened.

A reckoning is due. Justice must be served. But we should not forget why Charlie Kirk was assassinated: he figured out how to make conservative populism work. His conviction that nationalist populism could win in America has been vindicated by events. His strategy proved so powerful that his enemies were left with no recourse but to murder him. It is up to us to decide whether the victory-path Kirk cleared dies with him.

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If you found this post worth reading, you might find some of my other essays on politics and history worth your time. For a meditation on the role that violence has played in American history and politics, read “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire,” “On Days of Disorder,” and “ Scrap the Myth of Panic,” For a discussion of various intellectual currents and controversies on the right, you might consider “The Eight Tribes of Trump and China,” “The Problem of the New Right” and “Further Notes on the New Right.” For my takes on the sort of organization building and campaigning Kirk engaged in, see “Lessons From the 19th Century” and “Culture Wars are Long Wars”, To get updates on new posts published at the Scholar’s Stage, you can join the Scholar’s Stage Substack mailing list, follow my twitter feed, or support my writing through Patreon. Your support makes this blog possible.

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1. See especially Joshua Trevino, “Charlie Kirk, Maytr,” American Mind (11 September 2025).

2. See Tanner Greer, “Lessons of the 19th Century,” Scholar’s Stage (3 April 2023) and “A School of Strength and Character,” Palladium (30 March 2023).

3. Brigham Tomco, “How Charlie Kirk became ‘too big to ignore’,” Deseret News , 7 September 2025.