During the summer of 2020, when protests convulsed cities around the world, one of the most striking scenes took place outside a library in a wealthy Maryland suburb. Eight days after George Floyd was killed, hundreds of white people—masked yet packed together—assembled in Bethesda with banners that read I can’t breathe. Then they thrust their hands to the sky and prayed, vowing to renounce the “white privilege” that marked them like original sin.
The gathering was a microcosm of the quasi-religious fervor that spread across America five years ago. In Washington, D.C., Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer draped themselves in kente cloth and took a knee in the Capitol. In Texas, Floyd was buried in a gold-plated casket befitting a pharaoh. In Minnesota, pilgrims still journey to the site of Floyd’s death, outside a convenience store that came to bear his name.
For many on the left, Floyd’s asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world’s failings and, in so doing, cleared a path to fix them. In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd’s death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk’s name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents. In death, Kirk has become a cudgel.
Some on the right had already been searching for a figure like Floyd. In August, an appalling killing nearly provided one. On a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, a Black man repeatedly stabbed the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, whose death prompted outrage (and ample racism), particularly among conservatives. One Donald Trump–supporting tech CEO pledged $500,000 for artists to paint murals of Zarutska in cities across the country. Elon Musk immediately offered another $1 million.
They sought to make her image as ubiquitous as Floyd’s was in 2020, when murals proliferated without help from Silicon Valley. It might have worked, but hours after Musk’s announcement, Kirk was shot, and a different canonization began. Trump ordered flags at half-staff. Congress enacted a “National Day of Remembrance” for Kirk. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan compared him to Saint Paul. According to a Turning Point USA spokesperson, the fact that the high-caliber bullet didn’t exit the activist’s body and strike any bystanders was a “miracle.”
Merely invoking Kirk’s memory has been sufficient for conservatives to purge their opponents from schools and workplaces. The week after the assassination, Vice President J. D. Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s popular podcast and encouraged listeners to snitch on anyone who profaned the dead. Other Republicans followed suit. “If you are aware of anyone in the 6th District of Florida—or heck, anywhere in the state—who works at any level of government, works for an entity that gets money from government (health care, university), or holds a professional license (lawyer, medical professional, teacher) that is publicly celebrating the violence, please contact my office,” U.S. Representative Randy Fine posted on X. “I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation.” Sure enough, dozens of professors, teachers, and other school employees in Florida and beyond have been fired or put on leave over alleged comments they had made about Kirk.
The interventions of Vance, Fine, and Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, point to an important distinction between today and 2020. Back then, criticizing Floyd or the movement he spawned posed grave social and professional risks, but social-media mobs were the main censors. Now blasphemy has once again become an offense—only this time, it is being punished by the government.
As with Floyd’s death, Kirk’s has prompted a campaign to influence schoolchildren. Last week, Ryan Walters, then the superintendent of Oklahoma public schools, announced a plan to establish a Turning Point USA chapter in every high school in the state. Walters resigned this week, leaving the plan’s fate uncertain. But it was reminiscent of the curriculum associated with The New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which many public-school systems adopted after Floyd’s death despite its apparent ideological bias and blatant inaccuracies.
Today, like five years ago, a controversial man has been transformed overnight into a one-dimensional saint, marshaled in a culture war that precludes measured thought. Once again, Americans are being asked to genuflect before an idol.
In becoming a martyr, Kirk has been reduced to slogans and half-truths that obscure the real tragedy of his death. But if Americans are to learn anything valuable from the deceased, both sides will need to find the courage to reject such opportunistic cant.
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