Death of a Troll

It was possibly the lamest iteration of the music festival: Lollapalooza for people who think arguing with Charlie Kirk is a good way to spend an unseasonably warm fall afternoon. The American Comeback Tour was a series of campus events hosted by Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, where students were invited to debate him on a variety of political and cultural issues, primarily for the purpose of creating viral content for his social media operation. As much as people like to call Charlie Kirk a “conservative activist,” he is better described as an influencer and a troll, a human 4chan in a tight suit.

Clips are now circulating of Kirk declaring that gun deaths are “worth it” compared to the alternative of a slightly pared back Second Amendment. “You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death,” he told a crowd of the faithful in 2023. “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year.”

Yesterday, while Kirk held court in a tent on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, an audience member asked: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”

“Too many,” Kirk replied.

“Five” was the correct answer. The next question: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” 

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked. 

These were his last words. 

Charlie Kirk died as he lived — making very little sense.

Kirk was 18 years old when he cofounded TPUSA in 2012 after deciding that his high school teachers were all rabid Marxists. By 2016, the group had raised $4.3 million; by 2020, $39.8 million. The business model was elegant in its cynicism: Set up a table on campus. Put up a sign: “Men Cannot Get Pregnant” or “Build the Wall,” something calculated to draw a crowd. Wait for someone to get angry. Film them getting angry. Post the video: WOKE MOB ATTACKS CONSERVATIVE STUDENT. Then watch the donations roll in. Buy more tables, find more people to sit at them. Repeat. The exercise wasn’t about building bridges or winning converts, but whipping up hostility for tax-exempt donations.

Kirk understood something about the attention economy that the traditional conservatives missed: moderation is expensive. It requires explanation, nuance, the kind of careful thinking that makes terrible video content. But advocating violence against trans people — that goes viral. It encourages the worst of us to break out our checkbooks.

TPUSA was largely bankrolled by stunts calculated to inject chaos into the system, increasing the possibility of violence. Its School Board Watchlist published names, affiliations and crimes against conservative thought, leading to death threats, which Charlie dismissed as the cost of doing business. “We’re at war,” he often said. 

There had been violence, of course. At the University of California, Davis in March 2023, windows were smashed, an officer was injured and two people were arressted. The protesters tried to shut Kirk down, Kirk’s cameras catching every broken pane. At California State University, Northridge in the same year, a crowd swarmed Kirk’s tent, someone threw punches, a deaf student tried to ask a question and Kirk accused the sign language interpreter of “being a jerk.” It was all great content. And all of it confirmed the narrative: We are under attack.

The Great Replacement theory made regular appearances at Kirk’s events. “We native-born Americans are being replaced by foreigners,” Kirk said while stumping for Donald Trump, warning about “the enemy occupation of the foreigner hordes.” This is the same white nationalist conspiracy theory that has appeared in countless manifestos. But Kirk was too smart to write one; manifestos were for losers who shot up Walmarts. Kirk was building something more durable: an infrastructure of rage that would outlast any single act of violence.

Jan. 6 should have been the end of it. (It should have been the end of a lot of things.) Turning Point Action — the organization’s political arm — boasted of sending “80-plus buses full of patriots” to Washington. At least, that’s what Kirk tweeted before deleting it, before the windows of the Capitol started breaking. But it wasn’t the end. Nothing ever is anymore. The donations kept coming. The tours continued. The machine ground on.

I heard the news about Charlie Kirk on TMZ. Harvey Levin looked absolutely shocked — like he was having a panic attack on the livestream. Meanwhile, some conservative Gen Z member of the newsroom kept repeating TPUSA talking points about civilians having the right to possess assault rifles. It was chaos. They kept cutting the sound, then it would come back on 10 seconds later. Levin recalled witnessing RFK’s assassination in Los Angeles in 1968, and how he thought America could never get worse than that night.

My thoughts upon hearing the news turned to a different assassination, that of George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi Party founder who was shot by a fellow racist at a laundromat in Arlington, Virginia, in 1967. The bullet caught him in the chest while he was holding laundry detergent and a copy of the New York Daily News. The party had expelled the assassin, John Patler, for his Greek heritage. But while he may not have been Nordic enough for the ANP purists, Patler possessed other key requisites.

Like Kirk, Rockwell had devoted his life to hate speech, until hate fired a gun in his direction.