How Charlie Kirk mobilised Gen Z conservatives and shaped the MAGA movement

Key topics:Charlie Kirk, Trump ally and conservative leader, fatally shot in UtahKirk led Turning Point USA, mobilising youth for MAGA and conservative causesHis death sparks national mourning and debate over rising political violence.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Josh Wingrove, Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Gabriel Baumgaertner.In the weeks after his election victory last year, Donald Trump held court with future cabinet nominees at Mar-a-Lago, flew to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame, met the Prince of Wales and visited the New York Stock Exchange. But amid the mad dash to organise his second term, Trump also made a pilgrimage to Arizona. It was, he said, a favour to a political leader whose organisational skills and resonance among the burgeoning conservative youth movement proved essential to returning him to the White House. That leader was Charlie Kirk.“I had to do it for Charlie,” Trump said after taking the stage at that time. “Because he’s special.”On Wednesday, Kirk was shot dead in Utah, shocking the political world and beyond. He was one of the country’s most prominent conservative figures and had flourished using a brash approach to politics. Trump himself was among the first to confirm the death and ordered flags across the country to half-staff for several days.Kirk, 31, is survived by his wife, Erika, and their two children. The shooter in what Utah Governor Spencer Cox described as a political assassination is believed to be at large, with the FBI saying it interrogated and released a “subject.”.Read more:.FT: Maga Inc. – how Donald Trump’s allies stand to gain from ‘anti-woke’ resurgence.A firebrand, Kirk led Turning Point USA and its sprawling mission of advancing conservative activism, youth engagement and voter turnout efforts. But he was perhaps best known as an online champion of Trump and his MAGA movement, a provocateur and campaign trail fixture with close ties across the White House and Trump administration.Kirk’s death drew statements of mourning from throughout the political spectrum, including Democrats he frequently criticised. He was a “beacon for millions of young Americans,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, with GOP lawmaker Elise Stefanik calling his death an “irreplaceable loss.”“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form,” California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who hosted Kirk as the first guest on his own podcast, said in a post.Rapid RiseKirk rose from a teenage political activist to a conservative influencer and standard bearer for MAGA youth, his surge in popularity intertwined with Trump’s political fortunes. At just 18, he co-founded Turning Point USA, which aimed to combat liberal ideology on college campuses and propel conservatism. Under his leadership, the group relentlessly challenged what it decried as “leftist propaganda” — as well as the professors Turning Point accused of promoting it in college classrooms.After grossing just $78,890 in its inaugural year, Turning Point USA became one of the most powerful conservative lobbying networks in the country. In 2024, it grossed nearly $85 million in revenue and had chapters on over 3,300 college and high school campuses, according to its 2024 tax filing.Kirk’s pugnacious approach — he relished verbal jousting with his ideological foes — helped lure support from right-leaning donors and deepened his appeal among young conservatives, galvanizing them as a political force. It also helped launch Kirk as a political leader. After endorsing Trump in 2016, he made his Republican National Convention debut, speaking on its opening day in Cleveland. He would be back again speaking at the conventions in 2020 and 2024.Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, praised Kirk for “building and fostering the MAGA movement” during the 2016 campaign. “When I was in the White House, established organizations often complained that we kept doing events with Charlie, to which I would reply ‘he comes with big ideas, is easy to work with and always overdelivers,’” Kushner said in a social media post..Kirk’s loyalty to Trump extended beyond the president’s 2020 electoral defeat, and he quickly embraced false claims that former President Joe Biden had stolen that election. In 2022, Kirk was subpoenaed to testify before the January 6th Committee after an organiser of the “Stop the Steal” movement claimed that Turning Point Action, the advocacy group’s political action committee, financed $1.25 million for buses to take attendees. Kirk invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in response to over 70 questions, and a spokesperson from Turning Point Action claimed it sent just seven buses for only 350 college students.And while Kirk was often described as more refined than other conservative provocateurs, a litany of other false claims and questionable remarks — from criticising Martin Luther King Jr. to stoking theories about Covid-19 to accusing Jewish communities of “hatred against whites” — at times threatened his standing.Still, as Trump entered political exile, Kirk remained by his side, helping to chart his return to power. He held political events that felt more like rock concerts, with slick lighting and pyrotechnics helping amplify the calls for action. And Kirk is credited with helping channel conservative donations into a genuine grassroots operation, helping Trump flip Arizona in 2024.“The Democrats and the media said that Turning Point could never run a ground game. They weren’t experienced. They didn’t know Charlie, right?” Trump said in his December speech. .A Pew Research Center analysis released earlier this year concluded that Millennial and Generation-Z voters born in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s became more likely to favour Trump between 2020 and 2024, right as Kirk’s Turning Point USA was holding get-out-the-vote events in battleground states.Trump himself credited Kirk. “Charlie Kirk will tell you TikTok helped,” Trump said in a May Oval Office event. “But Charlie Kirk helped also.”.Read more:.How MAGA's whataboutism defends Trump’s troubling Intel deal - Ivo Vegter.While Kirk was amassing bigger and bigger crowds with touring events on college campuses, he leaned into culture wars far from academia, driving an America-first agenda, attacking critical race theory and levelling fierce criticism at George Floyd, the man whose 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police ignited nationwide protests. Kirk cultivated a vast social media following — with millions of followers and a popular podcast.Still, Kirk found some of his strongest traction by debating politics with his critics, the type of forum he was attending Wednesday.The killing is the latest in a harrowing string of American political violence in recent years — including the shooting of Trump himself in Butler, Pennsylvania, during last year’s campaign, and a second attempted shooting. Earlier this year, a pair of Minnesota Democratic lawmakers were shot, one fatally. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home was lit on fire in an arson case. Others include the violent 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the 2021 storming of the Capitol by pro-Trump protesters; the foiled 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; the 2017 shooting of Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise, who survived; and the 2011 shooting of Arizona Democrat Gabby Giffords, who survived and has since become a staunch advocate of gun control laws. .Within hours of Kirk’s death, some conservatives were invoking Kirk as a rallying cry for the movement and blaming rivals for stoking violence.Elon Musk said in a post that “The Left is the party of murder,” while Trump himself blamed the “radical left” — though it’s not yet clear who the shooter was — and hinted he planned to respond in sprawling fashion.“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it,” Trump said in a video tribute posted Wednesday night. That rallying cry is in line with Kirk’s own approach — one of his last posts called for conservatives to “politicise the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska,” the Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death in North Carolina, to drive change in sentencing standards for repeat offenders.“He’s a martyr for truth and freedom,” Trump said in his Wednesday video statement that mentioned violence targeting Republicans but not incidents against Democrats. “This is a dark moment for America.”.© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

How Charlie Kirk mobilised Gen Z conservatives and shaped the MAGA movement

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