See Charlie Kirk’s legacy as a voice of young people’s magazine
USA Today’s Will Carless reflects on the legacy of Charlie Kirk as the voice of Maga on university campus.
Throughout the middle school cafeteria, high school corridors and college campuses, the death of Charlie Kirk called the phone. Students passed the video, glimpsed through the photos, and looked at close-ups, reviewing every angle of the moment he was shot.
“I can’t get away with that,” says 20-year-old Chandler Crump of the post surrounding Kirk’s murder. “All the platforms I’m open now have discourses about it. Groups that have absolutely nothing to do with politics are referring to it because of Charlie’s influence.”
His image of violent death was a graphic invasion, but Kirk himself was not a new presence in their feed.
Their parents may not have known who Kirk was, but they did.
Maybe they were sucked in when they saw him arguing for Kamala Harris supporters in Tiktok. Perhaps what he said about the marriage caused them to respond. Perhaps his loud and proud brand of politics gave them confidence, no matter how controversial it may have.
Charlie Kirk was a symbol of many in the under-25 crowd. Characteristics of young political organizations in the Internet age. Someone they respected or gave a bit of a splash. Now he has left and was fatally shot on the University of Utah campus on September 10th.
For many Republicans, he was a cultural warrior capable of breaking in with young voters. For many Democrats, he was a microcosm of Trump’s brand of struggle conservatism. Beyond the political spectrum, the young people are taking into consideration what his death means to their generation and working on how they feel about it.
Charlie Kirk’s rise in fame, activism in the Internet age
Kirk was 18 years old, but founded Turning Point USA to introduce conservative ideals across the university campus, and saw liberal bias. The organization has gained national prominence within the Republican Party and has since grown into the largest conservative student movement with chapters of over 800 universities.
Kirk’s popularity surged through the organization’s college campus tour, where he attracted a large number of supporters and fierce opponents trying to debate him.
Crump was one of those people who grew up in Kirk’s movements. He first met political commentators at Turning Point USA’s Young Black Leadership Summit in October 2018. He was 14 at the time and says Kirk urged him to start an X-handle and build an online platform. Over the years, they kept in touch, and Crump continued to go to the Turning Point Summit, and eventually rose to a rank enough to become a speaker at the event.
“He told me, it doesn’t matter if I’m black or white, and it doesn’t matter if I’m young or older, I can hear my voice about what I believe,” Crump says. For Crump, Kirk was an inspiration. The other young men did not see him that way – but they saw him.
Kirk’s rise coincided with the Internet age, as many young people saw social media as a major news source. According to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center, almost half of teens say they are always online, with 72% of teens saying they sometimes check notifications as soon as they wake up. As such, young people who live in mobile phones may feel a distinctive connection to someone like Kirk.
Scrolling through Zers Gen socials, Kirk was easy to overlook. Clips of his arguments with college students lined up in the crowd to argue with him will accumulate horizons of tens of millions. He also had millions of followers on his X, his Instagram, the Tiktok handle, and his YouTube channel and podcasts.
“One of the things that Charlie Kirk was killed is that we’ve seen him, whether we like him or not, whether he was part of our reality,” says Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins. “His murder may in some ways hit us hard, just because it cannot be abstracted.
The same viral nature of the internet led to his death being spreading graphic videos of the film, showing up on people’s feeds with little or no warning.
As a determined supporter of gun reform, 23-year-old Jacob Dolyn is leaving Americans further out of gun violence as he worries about the spread of social media of lightning in the shooting video. He was also disappointed that he didn’t pay much attention to the shootings at Colorado High School.
Binder says violent videos and images can hurt their mental health. For generations grown up with active school shooter drills and news alerts on mass shooting news, desensitization to violence can be more pronounced.
For a young conservative athletic man, Kirk was a role model
Perhaps Kirk’s most successful invasion was made with young male voters. Young men graduated from college at a lower fee than women, struggling with loneliness and social isolation, and Kirk’s “prefeminist, Matismo” brand resonated with many.
“We have to do so much with the fact that young men are not doing well in America today,” says Levant. “People like Charlie Kirk offer things to blame, “this feminist movement,” “liberals,” “democrats.” ”
For some young Republicans, Kirk, a respectful evangelical Christian with two young children and wife, was a picture of success.
“For me and many other generations of Z men, we want to be Charlie,” says Crump. “I definitely register more with the concept and idea that my main goals are to have children and get married.”
Gen Z navigates partisan disparities between men and women, which are greater than any other age group. Asking Gen Z about priorities The recent NBC News Decision Desk Poll found that men who voted for Trump ranked having children as the most important aspect of their definition of success.
Kirk took advantage of the growing gap to position himself as a conservative cultural authority on traditional values and religion. He spoke out loud about prioritizing having children over their careers, and advocated for the revival of the university as a place for a “Mr. degree.”
Is this a Gen Z calculation moment?
The USA Today young people said they viewed Kirk’s death as a calculation moment, but they disagree about what the moment meant. Some have cemented the need for gun reform in their minds, while others have seen it as a confirmation of the growth of America’s political extremism.
Online, young people on both ends of the political spectrum responded immediately. Several posts criticized the comments Kirk made about race, gender and LGBTQ+ people during his career. However, many left-leaning democratic youth activists, including those who challenged Kirk to debate, expressed their sadness.
Left-leaning live streamer Dean Wizards, 21, who built a platform for conservative debate, shed tears in his stream as he learns of Kirk’s death.
“If you want to end gun violence, it’s something you can never celebrate,” Wizards says. “When you say you think Charlie Kirk is a bad person, you shouldn’t be shocked… but does that mean you think he deserves to lose his life? No.”
Reuben Berkowitz, 20, says he “hate” Kirk’s brand of “toxic” and “harmful” masculinity, but he thinks it’s important to understand what he’s done.
“It cannot be ignored that he had a huge foundation for young men of my age. “I think it needs to be addressed to take into account the modern crisis of masculinity.”
Beyond the spectrum, the youngster agreed that if he lived, Kirk would have been willing to influence the political system.
“He was able to blend social media with his beliefs to support young individuals with traditional conservative values,” Dolin says. “I definitely saw him as the one who shapes how our generation saw politics.”
Rachel Hale’s role in covering youth mental health at USA Today is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editor input.
Contact her at rhale@usatoday.com and @rachelleighhale.
