Charlie Kirk was murdered on a college campus one year ago today. A fixture of the MAGA Right, one of its most prominent and well-funded operatives and influencers, Kirk’s death was a shocking act of political violence that rattled all Americans to some degree. But Trump World’s grief was raw and vengeful.
I wrote this right after Kirk’s death last year and, forgive me for the self-quote, but I still think it describes MAGA’s response well:
Before we knew anything about Charlie Kirk’s shooter, before Kirk’s body was cold, the Trump Regime went to work canonizing him and turning him into a martyr. As NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny reports, Kirk devoted his own life to creating and amplifying false conspiracies and alternate narratives. She writes, “It is fitting, maybe, that so many conspiracy theories have engulfed Kirk upon his death.”
I obviously didn’t know Kirk personally, but it does seem that this is precisely what he would have wanted. To become a martyr via viral content. For the people Kirk devoted his life to put into power, using every privilege available to them to exploit his tragic death as a way to crush dissent and punish MAGA’s perceived enemies. An army of online trolls avenging Kirk’s death by doxing and harassing anyone who has negative things to say about him. To cause further harm to already vulnerable communities and individuals. More incitement leading to more violence. All in service of MAGA.
Of course they were helped along by legacy media and other influentials who either didn’t know what Charlie Kirk’s work actually was or saw themselves in Kirk once he became a casualty of political violence. I won’t relitigate it all here; if you remember the headline “Charlie Kirk was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” you’ve got the gist.
A ridiculous number of people, more than 600 that we know of, lost their jobs or faced retribution for saying negative things about Kirk or simply for pointing out what his beliefs actually were and the harm he’d caused. And of course there was the repeated online harassment and threats of violence that followed. Some of those folks sued their former employers and won, most notably former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah. But not everyone will be vindicated, and even those who are will still have residual trauma from the experience.
And yet, now, when I look at the result of MAGA’s attempts to canonize Charlie Kirk, it’s hard not to view their efforts as a failure. Kirk was supposed to become a martyr but quickly became a meme. Less than a month after his killing, “Kirkified” memes of his face were swapped onto any and every image. Thanks to AI, meme makers flooded the internet with face-swapped images. Kirk also rapidly became Gen Z slang, as Jada King notes in an opinion column, explaining to us older Americans that “People adding “Kirk” to a sentence is increasingly common among Gen Z, and it’s being used as an intensifier— the same way “ass” can be used to increase the severity of the original sentence.”
Mainstream culture turned on Kirk’s legacy pretty much immediately. The outcry over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and Disney’s rapid reversal of it was an early sign that MAGA was failing and flailing. Many of us knew exactly who Charlie Kirk was and weren’t going to let his life and the harm caused be whitewashed. Even the MAGA Right seems to have moved on. Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded and now led by his widow, is floundering. Erika Kirk’s Trad Wife CEO routine is falling flat, and Charlie Kirk’s former colleagues are plagued by infighting.
A year later, Kirification is still going strong. And I’d imagine many of those who keep sharing them online have no idea who Charlie Kirk was or how the memes came about. It’s taken on a life of its own. Even this week, as I put together notes for this article, I randomly encountered a few of the memes in the wild.
You could argue that in our culture today, anything and everything can become a meme, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The speed and intensity with which Kirkified memes took over online spaces was unusual. The only thing I can think of that it compares to is Harambe the Gorilla memes, which spread like wildfire after staff at the Cincinnati Zoo killed Harambe when a child got in his enclosure. Kirkified memes are what happens when grief, outrage, and a society in crisis all meet online. It’s a toxic legacy, but in this case it feels earned.
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Kirk reaped the very whirlwind of bigotry, intolerance, and hatred that he so ruthlessly—and gleefully—promulgated.
Moreover, his claim of being "Christian" was out-and-out blasphemy—for the literal meaning of the word is "Christ-like"; to wit, a Christian is one who asks, "What would Jesus do?" and then acts accordingly. Period and full stop.