by Tucker Hoffmann

 Tucker J. Hoffmann is a Graduate Student at the University of Georgia achieving his master’s degree in communication studies through the Rhetorical Studies program. Tucker started studying Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA, beginning in his undergraduate career at the University of Dayton under the tutelage of Dr. Susan Trollinger. With the guidance of Dr. Barbara Biesecker, Tucker is currently in the process of writing a thesis that analyzes Kirk’s book, The Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives can Win the Battle on Campus and Why it Matters. 

When asked to write a piece for rightingamerica about the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, my immediate internal reaction was to ask myself, “What more could be said? What more needs to be said?”  

As I come into my own as a rhetorical scholar at the University of Georgia with aspirations of achieving a doctoral degree and embarking on a successful career in higher education, I understand that my role is not to forecast the future. What invigorates and excites me about this discipline is understanding the process by which the spoken word invokes action. Put plainly; words matter, words (can) make things happen. That being said, by no means could I formulate a sound argument and analysis that somehow proves what is going to happen to Turning Point USA after their founder has been fatally shot. It is impossible to tell how the rhetorical maneuverings of the organization and its personnel are going to change, if at all. What I find most pressing, what I hope will bring insight to you as the reader, and the most I can say at a moment in time like this, is to offer a series of questions and comments I have as someone who has treated Turning Point USA as an object of study for quite some time.

Comment #1: “This is Not Who We Are” 

Like most young people, I’m sickened by the nation-altering events we have endured seemingly every week. As a 23-year-old, I fit in the generation that was born in the immediate wake of 9/11, was a child during the recession beginning in 2008, and began my young adult years as the world closed in 2020 (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of deaths that came with the virus). None of these struggles, however, mark my general age demographic more than ongoing rampant gun violence in schools and universities.  

In the discourse surrounding the fallout of Kirk’s assassination, the phrase “this is not who we are” is heard frequently. I find that increasingly hard to believe. The events of September 10^th encapsulate exactly who we are. We are the nation where a political leader will get shot, not because we do not value the sentiment of the “freedom in the marketplace of ideas” (whatever that means), but because we as a people have a proclivity to engage in violence of all stripes, and especially gun violence. Unfortunately, I believe that the precedent of simply “putting up” with swaths of people massacred by gun violence is solidified thanks to pro-gun lobbying groups. My pessimistic demeanor has led me to the conclusion encapsulated in social media posts made by the March For Our Lives movement on the day of Kirk’s death: “Gun Violence Spares No One,” even those who said that a “few” gun deaths are “worth it.”   

Question #1: In terms of leadership, what is next for Turning Point USA?

When CEOs or executives are indisposed and can no longer fulfill their duties to the organization or company they work for, there is a plan of succession. When dictators are in power, there is always someone “waiting in the wings” to take up power once the great leader falls. What I do not see, in my years of keeping up with TPUSA and its activities, is someone who is vying for power behind Charlie Kirk.

I believe this void of power will be filled by someone, eventually, at an extreme cost to those who oppose the organization and its views. Whether we like it or not, Charlie Kirk was an extremely charismatic, articulate, and punchy public speaker whose words traversed physical and digital spaces to “prove” that the way to right the wrongs of America as it stands today is through his organization. I fear that whoever steps into his role at TPUSA will try to replicate him, in the process amplifying the calls for violence in the name of Kirk’s martyrdom. As a critic of Kirk, I can safely say that he was extremely skilled in hiding the dangerous nature of his speech. What I cannot say for certain is that his successor can do the same. 

The alternative view, one that I find less reasonable of a conclusion based on the comments made by in large by his supporters, is that the organization will wither away. Without a leader, the organization fractures on a chapter-by-chapter basis, each claiming to be the truest interpretation of Kirk’s advocacy and the closest to carrying out his legacy. 

The reason I say this is somewhat unreasonable is the strength of network between chapters. To the best of my knowledge, Turning Point has a network of regional personnel that hierarchically mediate and assist chapter activity with the national organization. I thus find it hard to believe that there would be an intra-organizational schism. Also, I believe that a TPUSA schism is unreasonable because of the organization’s top-down programming. Because all the pamphlets, stickers, posters, buttons, and even chapter bylaws and constitution (as outlined in the official TPUSA chapter handbook) come from the national headquarters, it would be extremely hard for a single chapter to go rogue.   

Comment #2: “You Can’t Compromise with Evil.” 

During the prayer vigil for Kirk in Washington D.C., Trump Senior Advisor Kari Lake pleaded with the parents of the crowd to “not send their children to these indoctrination camps” – referring to colleges – and boldly proclaimed that her audience of conservative pundits, congresspeople, and activists “can’t compromise with evil” when it comes to advancing their political goals. 

What I hope comes to light for those concerned with democratic governance is the lengths to which the ever-increasingly right will go in describing their condition. For them, as Mother Jones Magazine and NBC News report, what is happening in the United States is nothing less than an all-out holy war. Even the widowed Mrs. Kirk stated in her eulogy to her husband 

“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country. In this world, you have no idea. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”  

For the academy and the concerned citizens of our pluralistic society to be responsive to the times we find ourselves in, we have to take the words of Mrs. Erika Kirk and others not as metaphors, but as very real calls for action.   

Question #2: What is Happening to the Far-Right? What does this mean for American Evangelical Christianity?  

While the immediate response of many pundits and talking heads was to blame the “radical-left” for the shooting of Kirk, it has come to light that the 22-year-old assassin may not have been the radical leftist that he was proclaimed to be; instead, it seems he was a young man who found himself chronically online in deep echo chambers of the internet. Regardless of the assassin’s motives or ideological commitments, I do believe there is something rupturing within the American far-right. On one side, a highly antisemitic lobby that collapses Jewish identity into the state of Israel, and on the other, a lobby in lock step with the US foreign policy of ever-ongoing support of the state of Israel. What I find more startling than this inter-ideological fighting is what binds the two groups: their commitment to their interpretation of the Word and, more obviously, the role/figure of Christ in their ongoing holy war.

As some may find it hard to believe, there are pockets of people (usually organized online) that have ideological commitments further right than the ones held by the late Charlie Kirk. In these areas, you’ll find fully fledged neo-Nazis and overt white supremacist operatives. They go by many names, but the most prevalent one is the term “groyper”, a term used to describe the Christian nationalist fanbase of conservative commentator Nicholas J. Fuentes. On his daily broadcast via Rumble, Fuentes commented: 

I didn’t like him, he didn’t like me. We had a lot of differences ideologically, politically, and we fought viciously. He did a lot to stifle my career and suppressed me in many ways. And I antagonized him a lot and mocked him and ridiculed him and attacked his credibility. He was my opponent, but I would never wish death upon him or anything like that. And Charlie Kirk never had a kind word to say about me in his life. Now that he has died, I’ll say some kind words about him. 

Where Fuentes and Kirk agreed, however, was “abortion…[and] feminism. We agreed about many of the other moral social ills of the country.” He goes on to praise Kirk for his life spent proclaiming the life and gospel of Jesus Christ and, for Fuentes, “that is why he was killed. Everyone will be persecuted for the sake of Jesus Christ. Anyone, everyone fighting and winning that spiritual battle for Christ and for his kingdom will be persecuted for his sake. And I don’t believe Charlie Kirk was any different.” 

The reason I say all this is because I want to illuminate the startling realization that the spheres of theological discourse and political discourse are, in my opinion, collapsing into one another. If they were ever distinct in the first place would require a dissertation-amount of writing and research to be done. What I can say for now, however, is that in the case of Kirk’s death we are hearing political speech from the pulpit and a homily of retribution from the campaign trail. I fear for what is to come when we consider the impact of this type of speech when it comes to our own subjectivity as Christians of every denomination, and on Americans who are not affiliated with Christianity at all. 

While I can’t forecast the future, I can say that it does not look good.