Charlie Kirk Made the Right Conspiratorial and Stupid

Thoughts on 2020 election denial ruining conservatism

Today is the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death, which I mark in a new article in UnHerd.

I have a good friend who is upset that I am critical of Kirk because he was in their mind a good person, but we all live our lives a certain way, and I consider his mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, tribalism, and white nationalism to be an important factor in making the modern right what it is. There’s no clearer, or more ironic, demonstration of this than his promotion of Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson, after all, was a regular guest at TPUSA events. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for TPUSA, relayed a hadith from the recently murdered Kirk: “Honestly, people telling me not to have Tucker makes me want to have Tucker” at the organization’s conferences. After Kirk’s death, Carlson guest-hosted an episode of the show alongside Neff and Kolvet, who would both later be hounded by conspiracy theorists. This was only two days before Carlson blamed “hummus eaters” for the assassination. Already at that point, Carlson had for years been pushing pro-Kremlin narratives and conspiracy theories like the claim that the Pentagon was operating secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine and the idea that Jan. 6 had been a false flag incited by federal agents….

Charlie Kirk spread election denial and other kinds of conspiracy theories for the same reasons that Owens and Carlson would later spread conspiracy theories about his death: money, relevance, and playing to the audience. It was only when his family and the remnants of TPUSA became the targets of the forces Kirk had helped unleash, that those left behind began denouncing others for taking advantage of the ignorant and the misinformed.

Read the whole thing here.

And if you don’t believe me, here’s Charlie Kirk yucking it up with Tucker, the guy who couldn’t even wait until his memorial was over to begin spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories about his death.

Looking back, I consider 2020 election denial to have been an important watershed in what happened to American conservatism. There have always been false narratives floating around, but the events of 2020-2021 meant that a conspiracy theory – one built around protecting the ego of and demonstrating loyalty to one man – regarding a plain historical fact became a litmus test in Republican politics. Nobody can say Biden was legitimately elected and also work in the administration or become a major conservative media figure, which is different from other conspiracy theories out there because this one requires regular affirmative support, along with a policy agenda that goes with it. This brought people who were most comfortable with an authoritarian cult of personality more into the Trump orbit, and destroyed the influence of the kinds of traditional Republicans who largely served in his first term, with Mike Pence being the most obvious example.

Before researching this article, I had forgotten what a key figure Kirk was in Stop the Steal. Subsequent events would show that he made the right bet for the sake of his own influence. Despite the tragic nature of his death, it’s important to say plainly that the moral and intellectual decline of the American Right is a direct result of choices Charlie Kirk made.

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