I first became familiar with Charlie Kirk as a college student in March 2023, when he visited my university as part of his “Live Free Tour.” His visit was sponsored by my school’s chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative youth advocacy group co-founded by Kirk and Bill Montgomery in 2012.

At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Turning Point had a reputation as a small but vocal group of students who regularly tabled along the campus’s main walkway, touting signs with messages like “Commies are clowns,” “Socialism SUCKS” and “Let’s get this bread — because in a socialist country, you can’t.” Now and then, they’d succeed in goading a disgruntled passerby into engaging with them. But for the most part, we simply ignored them.

Most students saw Turning Point less as a forum for genuine debate than as a hothouse for extremist right-wing ideology. The UC Santa Barbara chapter’s inaugural event in 2022 featured keynote speaker John Doyle — a white nationalist best known for his YouTube channel “Heck Off, Commie!” and his close professional relationship with fellow white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

In the weeks leading up to Kirk’s 2023 visit to UCSB, Turning Point distributed leaflets all over campus to promote the event, and, true to form, kicked up plenty of backlash in the process. Hundreds of students flocked to the event to protest Kirk’s presence on campus, condemning his politics and asserting that his and Turning Point’s views did not reflect the inclusive values of the UCSB community.

As protesters and counterprotesters shouted at each other from across a police barricade outside the venue, Kirk addressed his audience inside, reportedly telling them that “The people that are fascists are usually the ones that spend their evenings trying to prevent other people [from speaking].”

In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, I have been dismayed, although not entirely surprised, to see both elected officials and mainstream media figures— including anti-MAGA liberals— describe him as a “charismatic right-wing activist,” and Turning Point as a platform that fostered productive discourse across the political spectrum.

His murder is utterly contemptible, regardless of the views he espoused. But these characterizations of Kirk and his organization are simply inaccurate. Kirk was an openly racist Christian nationalist who lamented the passage of the Civil Rights Act; who labeled LGBTQ+ identity a “social contagion”; who called on women to “submit to your husband”; who said it “doesn’t feel right” for major Western cities to have Muslim mayors; who called for tear gas and “lethal force” to be used against immigrants; and who said that gun deaths were “worth it” to protect the Second Amendment.

Kirk fueled political division through lies, hatred and violent rhetoric masquerading as legitimate discourse. His so-called debates were not a genuine exchange of ideas; he was a provocateur, using the illusion of debate to question the legitimacy of certain people’s very existence and ultimately normalize white nationalism.

As we take a stand to unequivocally condemn political violence — including Kirk’s killing — we must also recognize that the rhetoric that Kirk and the MAGA movement have championed and profited from has exacerbated the violence woven into the fabric of American society. Kirk’s death was brutal and reprehensible, but to glorify him as a martyr for free speech and lionize his politics is contradictory and harmful. If we are to learn anything from this moment, we must confront the mechanisms that sustain political violence in the United States — including, the lasting impact of his political influence and the role that Kirk played in fostering the culture of violence that contributed to his own senseless killing.

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Caitlin Scialla is a proofreader and former intern at The Progressive magazine. She is currently interning at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

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