How Charlie Kirk Won Trump The Culture Wars

Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” in 2021. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore.

There is no question that one of, if not the main, goals of the Trump administration and MAGA movement is to win the culture war. We have seen it through pointed attacks on our universities, workplaces, and even the federal government itself. This swift rebrand to a time before “wokeness” and DEI is all part of a calculated gambit to dominate the political moment. One of the key architects of the MAGA culture war was right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk, and in the wake of his assassination, we now see the outcome of his decades-long project to reshape American political culture.

Kirk's assassination is just one in a series of politically violent acts that have taken place in the United States just this last year. But in the weeks that followed, it became clear that the martyrdom of the right's rising political star would not be without consequence. Five days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Vice President JD Vance claimed on Kirk’s show that his death was an organized plot by violent far-left organizations and retribution would be swiftly dealt through righteous anger.

The current conduit of the right’s anger is consequence culture. The target of this movement is individuals who have expressed political opinions that the sensibilities of the right view as insensitive, hateful, and intended to incite violence. Jimmy Kimmel’s show was temporarily canceled when he implied the right was aiming to gain political points from Kirk's death, while others have had visas revoked for criticizing Kirk's legacy. While these comments are protected by the First Amendment as relevant political discourse, no matter who they might offend, the consequences of these statements have been largely dealt with in private spaces in which the First Amendment has little to no reach. This has manifested in the form of mass firings, death threats, and people’s names being doxed on online watchlists for their speech about Charlie Kirk.

Consequence culture is, in its essence, counter to the spirit of the First Amendment, as it weaponizes angry mobs to silence the expression of certain ideas. It was not too long ago that the right championed themselves as free speech warriors, even chastising the “woke” left’s cancel culture. But this is not a left or right issue: policing the rhetoric of others and ostracizing those who disagree with us is a feature of contemporary American political culture. Many have been reported for statements made about Charlie Kirk's death on private Instagram stories or in the confidence of an employee breakroom. In other words, these individuals were reported by people they know and were often uploaded to large watchlists to be the target of the right's righteous indignation. 

The Trump administration benefits from consequence culture, and they encourage it as it allows them to shape the bounds of political expression in their image. In a presidential memorandum after Kirk's assassination, Trump created a task force to identify and go after far-left domestic terrorism groups like ANTIFA for their role in Kirk's death through their incendiary rhetoric. However, average Americans, not organized domestic terrorists, are facing the brunt of the right's anger, and little state action has actually been taken against private citizens' speech about Kirk. In other words, this narrative allows the government to indirectly dictate what expressions are permissible, legitimizing consequence culture as a means of combating the “violent” left while doing little to materially preempt violence where it might actually occur. 

While the Trump administration is surely inflaming political tensions with its rhetoric regarding the violent left, it is the public who are really taking charge of consequence culture and creating a culture of censorship. Speech, once a weapon wielded by the people against the government, is one that we aim at each other. 

In the wake of Kirk's death, both sides of the aisle praised him as the embodiment of the First Amendment, and his murder an act to silence his political speech. Yet Kirk himself was one of the pioneers of the consequence culture movement currently creating watchlists that seek to “unmask” or rather dox “radical” teachers and professors who act as conduits for “feminism,” “LGBTQ,” “DEI,” “climate alarmism,” or “terror support.” Now, some of Kirk's more fringe ideas have become mainstream, and the mere act of criticizing them has violated employee codes of conduct across the nation. Through his death, Charlie Kirk delivered Trump a major victory in the culture wars, and now we, the people, continue his legacy of policing speech. 

Cadence Gonzales (BC’26) is a Staff Writer for CPR from Santa Fe, New Mexico, studying political science. She can be reached at cag2272@barnard.edu