Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause, By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy by Ta-Nehisi Coates, September 16, 2025, Vanity Fair
Before he was killed last week, Charlie Kirk left a helpful compendium of words—ones that would greatly aid those who sought to understand his legacy and import. It is somewhat difficult to match these words with the manner in which Kirk is presently being memorialized in mainstream discourse. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein dubbed Kirk “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion” and a man who “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.” California governor Gavin Newsom hailed Kirk’s “passion and commitment to debate,” advising us to continue Kirk’s work by engaging “with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” Atlantic writer Sally Jenkins saluted Kirk, claiming he “argued with civility” and asserting that his death was “a significant loss for those who believe engagement can help bridge disagreements.”
The mentions of “debate” and “engagement” are references to Kirk’s campus tours, during which he visited various colleges to take on whoever come may. That this aspect of Kirk’s work would be so attractive to writers and politicians is understandable. There is, after all, a pervasive worry, among the political class, that college students, ensconced in their own bubbles, could use a bit of shock therapy from a man unconcerned with preferred pronouns, trigger warnings, and the humanity of Palestinians. But it also shows how the political class’s obsession with universities blinds it to everything else. And the everything-else of Kirk’s politics amounted to little more than a loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire.
It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life
it’s impossible to be pro life and pro kid killing by gun, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry. Indeed, claims of Kirk’s “civility” are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks” and referring to trans peoplewith the slur “tranny.” Faced with the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency, Kirk told his audience that the threat had to be averted because Harris wanted to “kidnap your child via the trans agenda.” Garden-variety transphobia is sadly unremarkable. But Kirk was a master of folding seemingly discordant bigotries into each other, as when he defined “the American way of life” as marriage, home ownership, and child-rearing free of “the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school,” adding that he did not want kids to “have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.” The American way of life was “Christendom,” Kirk claimed, and Islam—“the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”—was antithetical to that. Large “dedicated” Islamic areas were “a threat to America,” Kirk asserted, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a “Mohammedan,” with Kirk supposing that anyone trying to see “Mohammedism take over the West” would love to have New York—a “prior Anglo center”—“under Mohammedan rule.”
Kirk habitually railed against “Black crime,” claiming that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” He repeated the rape accusations against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilman, calling him a “disgusting pig” who had gotten away with “gang rape.” Whatever distaste Kirk held for Blacks was multiplied when he turned to those from Haiti. Haiti was, by Kirk’s lights, a country “infested with demonic voodoo,” whose migrants were “raping your women and hunting you down at night.” These Haitians, as well as undocumented immigrants from other countries, were “having a field day,” per Kirk, and “coming for your daughter next.” The only hope was Donald Trumpkid rapist is ok if he’s a Repuglican white man, or painted orange white man?, who had to prevail, lest Haitians “become your masters.”
The point of this so-called mastery was as familiar as it was conspiratorial—“great replacement.” There was an “anti-white agenda,” Kirk howled. One that sought to “make the country more like the Third World.” The southern border was “the dumping ground of the planet,” he claimed, and a magnet for “the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males.” “They’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries,” he said, “and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in…”
You can probably imagine where this line of thinking eventually went.
“Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
Kirk’s bigotry was not personal, but extended to the institution he founded, Turning Point USA. Crystal Clanton, the group’s former national field director, once texted a fellow Turning Point employee, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” One of the group’s advisers, Rip McIntosh, once published a newsletter featuring an essay from a pseudonymous writer that said Blacks had “become socially incompatible with other races” and that Black culture was an “un-fixable and crime-ridden mess.” In 2022, after three Black football players were killed at another college, Meg Miller, president of Turning Point’s chapter at the University of Missouri, joked (“joked”) in a social media message, “If they would have killed 4 more n-ggers we would have had the whole week off.”
Kirk subscribed to some of the most disreputable and harmful beliefs that this country has ever known. But it is still chilling to think that those beliefs would be silenced by a gunshot. The tragedy is personal—Kirk was robbed of his life, and his children and family will forever live with the knowledge that a visual record of that robbery is just an internet search away. And the tragedy is national. Political violence ends conversation and invites war; its rejection is paramount to a functioning democracy and a free society. “Political violence is a virus,” Klein noted. This assertion is true. It is also at odds with Kirk’s own words. It’s not that Kirk merely, as Klein put it, “defended the Second Amendment”—it’s that Kirk endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes.
In 2022, when Kirk was frustrated, for instance, by the presence of Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team, Kirk did not call for “spirited discourse.” Instead, while discussing a recent championship tournament, he said he would have liked to have seen a group of fathers descend from the stands, forming “a line in front of [Lia] Thomas and saying, ‘Hey, tough guy, you want to get in the pool? ’Cause you’re gonna have to come through us.” Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump’s deployment of federal troops to DC. “Shock and awe. Force,” he wrote. “We’re taking our country back from these cockroaches.” And in 2023, Kirk told his audience that then president Joe Biden was a “corrupt tyrant” who should be “put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”
What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.
More than a century and a half ago, this country ignored the explicit words of men who sought to raise an empire of slavery. It subsequently transformed those men into gallant knights who sought only to preserve their beloved Camelot. There was a fatigue, in certain quarters, with Reconstruction—which is to say, multiracial democracy—and a desire for reunion, to make America great again. Thus, in the late 19th century and much of the 20th, this country’s most storied intellectuals transfigured hate-mongers into heroes and ignored their words—just as, right now, some are ignoring Kirk’s.
Words are not violence, nor are they powerless. Burying the truth of the Confederacy, rewriting its aims and ideas, and ignoring its animating words allowed for the terrorization of the Black population, the imposition of apartheid, and the destruction of democracy. The rewriting and the ignoring were done not just by Confederates, but also by putative allies for whom the reduction of Black people to serfdom was the unfortunate price of white unity. The import of this history has never been clearer than in this moment when the hard question must be asked: If you would look away from the words of Charlie Kirk, from what else would you look away?
An open letter addressing this growing Alberta political trend of Americanization by canbeanburrito, Edmonton, Se[pt 17, 2025This is an excellent letter, beautifully written. Thank you.
Open Letter to MP Kelly McCauley
Dear Mr. McCauley,
I took the time to read through the Hansard record of September 15th so I could understand the full context of Rachel Thomas’s tribute to Charlie Kirk. Imagine my disgust in discovering not only that Ms. Thomas chose to honour an American partisan agitator (of which in her speech she acknowledged as such) in Canada’s House of Commons, but that she did so wildly out of context.
Immediately before her, the Honourable Helena Jaczek spoke about a nine year old constituent who has been raising money through a charity event they came up with all on their own for Markham Stouffville Hospital. Immediately after her, the Honourable Mona Fortier delivered a heartfelt tribute to the late Ken Dryden, a Canadian whose lifetime of contributions made a tangible impact on our country.
Sandwiched between was Ms. Thomas’s decision to glorify an American with no connection to Canada. It was tone-deaf, unnecessary, and an insult to the dignity of Parliament. Charles James Kirk was neither a constituent of hers, nor is he even Canadian.
Worse, her speech illustrates a troubling trend I have noticed growing among Alberta politicians, both federally and provincially: the confabulation of American politics and American laws with Canadian realities. Canadian MPs and MLAs are not elected to recycle talking points from south of the border. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our Constitution, and our parliamentary system are distinct.
Yet once again, Albertans get to experience national embarrassment as another Alberta Conservative politician tried to graft U.S. culture wars onto Canadian soil. It’s almost as though importing division is more important than solving problems at home. Worse still, this showcases as another example of an elected Alberta official attempting to apply American legal principles to Canadian laws, as if Canada is nothing more than a northern echo of someone else’s constitution.
Canadians have no “First Amendment right.” Our first constitutional amendment came in 1871 and dealt only with the power of Parliament to create new provinces and govern territories.
It has nothing to do with speech. Our Charter protects libertas loquendi, freedom of expression, something of which is subject to reasonable limitations to protect against principles like licentia dicendi.
This cannot continue. Canada’s Parliament is meant to serve Canadians, not be used as a stage for tributes to provocative, foreign ideologues or as a vessel for importing American constitutional debates. Doing so wastes parliamentary time, undermines public trust, and raises legitimate concerns regarding Ms. Thomas advancing foreign influence inside our Parliament from the only country that has actively threatened Canadians and their sovereignty as a nation and calls into question where her loyalties truly lie.
Charlie Kirk stood opposition of topics and issues that Canada has long considered to be basic human rights. Topics such as abortion and same sex marriage are non-politicized areas in which even your own party’s leader, Pierre Poilievre, stated are closed debates.
Parliament is not a circus. It is not a place to import American extremism. It must remain a serious Canadian institution devoted to Canadian priorities and it should not take a 33 year old, non parliamentarian to call out behaviour that every elected MP ought to already know better than to engage in.
If you joined in, you betrayed the responsibility of your office. By failing to object what happened, complacency is simply another form of complicity and you and your colleagues send a message that you are more invested in theatre than in governance which simply is unacceptable.
I call on you to denounce this conduct openly and unequivocally. Canadians elect leaders with the expectation that they who know the difference between U.S. political battles and Canadian responsibilities, and who act accordingly. Anything less is unworthy of the office you received the privilege to hold.
Edit/note from OP: Thank you for all the positive comments and compliments. For me, it is embarrassing enough that our Premier is a voluntary MAGA bootlicker. But to now have that bootlicking be demonstrated by a federal-level politician is next level. As fed up Albertans, we need to be more outraged.
While writing to our MPs likely will fall on deaf ears, not writing to them guarantees it. I wrote this intending for it to be easily copy and pasteable for anyone wishing to send to their own MP if they so wish. Official MP email addresses will always end with @parl.gc.ca, with usually your MP’s first and last name (separated by . in between the two names) preceded directly before the @ sign. You can also use the directory on https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/search if you’re unsure or would prefer to call and need their phone number.
Edit 2: as a few have pointed out and will likely continue to point out that there were in fact Liberal MPs who stood as well. Again, I am not absolving the Liberal MPs of displaying the same atrocious misbehaviour and they deserve to be rightfully called out as well. However, that said, if I’m to be realistic, my MP is a Conservative MP, of which I cannot fairly expect him to have any real say of the actions of members outside of his party. Had my MP been Liberal, then I would have called out the Liberal Party instead.
Edit 3: I noticed at the bottom of the autoreplied email I received, there is an email listed at the bottom to contact “directly for immediate assistance with a Federal Department.” I’m considering emailing this email address as well.
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Sorry Charlie: Why Charlie Kirk’s ANTI-CHRISTIAN Words and Work Will Be His Lasting Legacy by The Benjamin Dixon Show, Sept 14, 2025
@satevo462:
As a straight white man that has lived in the south my entire life, the is no greater hell on Earth I can imagine than a white, Christian theocracy.
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onehumanityonemind:
Americans are spending millions to pump propaganda and to organize separatist and anti-Canadian movements and organizations in Alberta and Canada wide. Danielle smith is bought and paid for by Trump. It’s all in an effort to turn Canada into the 51st state. And conservative Canadians are the easy target.
[–]canbeanburrito:
This is exactly why I included the singular worded references aimed at our provincial leaders guilty of this. I figured if I included anything more, then my letter kinda loses it’s primary value and relevance which makes it easier to dismiss (not like it won’t anyway)
phm522:
Why does Alberta feel the need to publicly prove over and over again that they are the asshole of our country? because many Albertans, notably in the oil and gas industry, are American Repuglicans and the industry ensures shit education for the masses, heaps of corruption in our politicos, and unfortunately, the bible runs much of the people enshittifying the already shitty education.We get it.
FourthLvlSpicyMeme:
Cuz it’s where the crude comes out. Makes sense.
IrishFire122:
Yeah, Alberta would be the prime target. Free stuff always makes American corporations salivate, and the thought of free oil has them positively gushing.
onehumanityonemind:
It’s a nation wide problem and probable incursion on sovereignty. America is well known for doing this globally.
Puzzled_Sundae_3850:
As a American I can tell you there is no way in hell a Republican Senate would want a bunch liberal Canadians turned into Americans tipping the scales in any election.Trump hates Trudeau for mocking him and wanted to twist Canada”s tail and get your guts in a knot you’re never going to be part of the United States .Trump is laughing his ass off watching everybody in Canada going nuts over something that will never happen. Repiblicans have spent years gerrymandering states to get control of the Senate and Supreme court. Trump only has 3 more years . Republicans will not let him fuck up their long term plans by bringing you guys on board. I understand you being royally pissed at him but stop letting him get in your head.
I think it’s more because Melania has/had obvious crush on Justin, driving the ugly stupid orange blob child mad with jealousy, like so many men in rural Alberta, furiously jealous of Justin, but won’t ever admit it.
Mother-Thumb-1895:
Thank you for your contribution. Your observation is correct. Most Albertans on the right have not thought through the practicalities of a proposed separation as they openly salivate at the prosect. Like you, I do not lose sleep at night over this nonsense.
TinyBaaarb:
It is the uncertainty, the discord, that this whole movement brings. That is the point. That is what external powers want. That has real economic and societal impacts that weakens us all.
MetalMoneky:
Alberta would be Puerto Rico del Norte.
MikeHawkSlapsHard:
I am starting to believe this too. The US has so much to gain by trying to pull Alberta out of Canada.
gastrodonfan2k07:
They were going to try and do the same thing in Greenland but thankfully the Danes caught the spy’s red handed
FormalWare:
Kudos. A standing ovation in Canada’s Parliament for a speech praising a deceased, American, white nationalist lay-minister is Bizarro World stuff.
Every MP who enthusiastically applauded that speech brought shame upon the House.
canbeanburritoEdmonton:
It’s just so tone-deaf and performative. Like if we were American, sure I guess, but typically most Canadians are smarter than the average above-average American. It’s just gross behaviour that needs to be called out. No I will not send Charlie‘s wife and family my thoughts and prayers thanks. He wasn’t some Christian apostale. He was a 31 year old mouth piece who deliberately debated with individuals significantly younger than him. That’s it. Did he deserve to die because of his views? I don’t think so, but if you could ask him he did.
Excellent_Mud_172:
WTF is wrong with all our politicians? Standing ovation for that racist cockroach Charlie Kirk? Stupid uninformed overpaid assholes one and all.
QuietKanuk:
Thank you for your well written letter. It is important to remain on guard and to push back against fifth column tactics.
I still hear people claim that the current political climate in the US is no big deal. I say – when they tell you to your face that they want to take Canada, why in the world would you not believe them?
Do not mistake being naive with being disingenuous.
Goozump:
Thanks for your analysis. It was good that the member of the Conservative Party of Canada MP stood up and displayed the biases of what now stands for conservative thought in Canada. The more these people display their extremist philosophy the more they will alienate the average Canadian whose views are much more likely to be centrist. Charlie Kirk certainly didn’t deserve to be shot for his opinions but that doesn’t deify him or make his opinions into something more than the arguments of a well spoken MAGA Trump disciple.
y_r_u_so_stoopid:
This is a fabulous letter but I feel it’s wasted if it’s only sent this to Alberta MPs. They are all brainwashed and unreachable and they will circle the wagons around their own.
Having said that, I do feel this is a letter that’s quite appropriate for the new speaker of the house, one Francis Scarpaleggia, since he’s the one responsible for decorum. I’m guessing that praising a hateful american ideologue doesn’t seem to meet the standards we expect and I would demand answers.
And it wasn’t just conservatives, liberals were also giving this guy an ovation. Like we don’t have to celebrate his death but we don’t have to put him on a pedestal either. Are these folks worried about “cancel culture”? Which is hilarious when you think about it that people are getting cancelled for not appropriately grieving a bad guy but everyone can say the R word now. I guess this is progress in conservative circles?
Anyways, this letter should get into the hands of the speaker even if just to draw his attention to what is being perceived by the public because this is a spot on analysis.
smoke52:
2 things.
You should mention Kirk said himself we should be annexed
There are shadow ministers you can CC in the email too so it cant be ignored.rice_noode_gnocchi:
Kirk was a piece of shit who straight out said some gun deaths were unfortunate but necessary to protect their 2nd amendment rights.
Realistic_Present119:
This province is hardly real, its 3 american oil companies in a trenchcoat.
Wastelander42:
This really is all a part of the trumplicans wanting to annex Canada. Even calling it the 51st state is a way to desensitize people to the concept.Israel is USA’s 51st state or perhaps more accurately, it’s the 1st USA state. If the Zionist fake christian Evangelicals take Canada, we’ll have to be the 52nd state. I will leave Canada if that happens. Never will I support USA Nazi-genocidal gun-loving abusive shit and never will I be American.
Willi_Pheeler:
Well said! The amount of American boot licking and pretending we’re somehow American or aligned with their SICK politics is NAUSEATING and needs to stop. If you don’t love the things that make Canada unique and distinct, then get the Hell out and don’t take any maple syrup with you.
Financial-Savings-91Calgary:
You have to understand to Alberta conservatives, Canada is the 51st state. The CPC and UCP are connected to the GOP on a very deep level. We’re talking about the same people who work for the GOP and campaign for GOP candidates in the US are the same people who campaign for the CPC and UCP in Canada.
The Canadian media has been pretty woeful in pointing out some pretty blatant financial connections, for instance Postmedia, the largest print media company in the nation is directly owned and gets it’s editorial mandate set by a company with direct ties to the GOP, Chatham Asset Management. Not only that, they’ve used media they own in the US to try and manipulate public opinion, something they were convicted of in 2019 for their actions in support of Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Postmedia has been mandated by this company to support UCP/CPC since 2019, and have IMHO been the single biggest landing pad for the MAGA cult in Canada.
If you want to UCP to listen you need to get to their rural base, the people they keep in these information bubbles like a cult, to keep them from understanding or accepting what the government is actually doing at this very moment.
Thom-jeremy:
Why the hell do we care about an American death? He spoke about American politics, American religion, and American values, and history. It has nothing to do with us in canada. I’m so sick of hearing about this guy. He did nothing for us except for divide American politics and now it’s coming to canada. It’s utter b* and I want to stop hearing about this CK guy.
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Rep. Ronny Jackson (AHOLE-POS-TX) told Newsmax that transgender people need to be placed in institutions and barred from the internet. “We have to do something about this. We have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet.” talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-c…
@aliensevinho.bsky.social:
This is Evil in its purest form .
Kirk worshipped Trump, a kid rapist. Did Kirk also rape kids?