WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 was another day of great significance for the United States primarily and the world in general on account of the gruesome murder of Charles James Kirk, a rising star, campaigner and role model for the youth. Married to Erika Frantzve, and known for his unapologetic opinions, he has won many followers within and outside his home base in the US. His death raised fundamental issues in politics and faith in a postmodern society. Born October 14, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, U.S, and aged just about 32 at his death on September 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah, Charles Kirk was an American conservative political activist, author, youth organiser and media personality who first rose to prominence in the U.S.
A growing influence within the youth cohort, locally and internationally, Kirk was killed both for what he had to say and because the young ones were listening to him. He and Bill Montgomery co-founded the student organisation Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012. He was its executive director and later the chief executive officer of Turning Point Action and a member of the Council for National Policy. In his later years, he was one of the most prominent voices of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement in the Republican Party.
TPUSA, based outside of Chicago, has been described as an American nonprofit organisation that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses. Its affiliate groups include Turning Point Endowment, Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. Definitions of TPUSA could vary depending on the ideological leaning or bias of who is defining it. While the December 21, 2017 edition of the New Yorker described it as a group that “casts itself as a grassroots response to what it perceives as liberal intolerance on college campuses, another source described it as a right-wing nonprofit with the stated mission “to identify, educate, train, and organise students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”
Kirk called college campuses “islands of totalitarianism.” He vowed to fight back on behalf of what he called his “Team Right.” Turning Point’s aim, according to the New Yorker, is to “foment a political revolution on America’s college campuses, in part by funnelling money into student government elections across the country to elect right-leaning candidates.” Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, may indeed have been living up to its name in terms of its growing influence. For instance, the online followers of Kirk have only just exploded within days. Kirk’s accounts across the internet gained millions of followers in the three days since his death, according to data compiled by CNN. Three days after his death, his online followers have grown in number from 3.81 million followers on September 9 to 3.92 million the following day. His Instagram account has also gained another 3.5 million followers since the assassination. His podcast’s TikTok account has reportedly gained more than 1.5 million followers; and his main Facebook page has added more than 2.3 million followers. His followers before his death have risen to over 11 million followers thereafter and growing.
The interpretation of turning point and Kirk’s activities by many has shown how the world has been sharply divided along ideological lines. Some called him racist, white supremacist or dogmatic. His views were simple: about the role that the absence of black fathers in black communities play in the disproportionate rise in bLack violence when compared with the predominantly white communities. He has also delved into the issues of black opportunities and gun control. Together, these have social and economic outcomes. His faith and religious leaning is either downplayed or misconstrued by many analysts. For instance, it has been reported that Turning Point maintains the Professor Watchlist, with claims that the purpose of the watchlist is to identify
professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom,” but most entries are not about instances of discrimination or propagandising in the classroom.
Until recently, the ideological left has brazenly promoted what is now generally referred to as the “woke” agenda on a broad number of issues such as gender, pro-choice stance, LGBTQ, boundaries to the freedom of self-expression. What may not be denied is that Turning Point has organised campus opposition to calls for schools to divest from fossil-fuel companies. If TPUSA is accused of embarking upon a “stealth plan for political influence,” what then are the liberal campaigners doing?
The world obviously needs open platforms for interplay of ideas and tolerance to allow sometimes conflicting ideas to coexist while people are allowed to be free to make informed choices. One of the best places ever to make impacts on impressionable minds is the academic community. In the US, Turning Point reportedly has “over 300 chapters on college campuses across the country.”
Kirk was seen as a polarising figure, who often relished confrontation, staging his “Prove me wrong” debates under a tent in the heart of university campuses. To many, his politics were abrasive or even offensive. But he presented himself for argument, asking to be met with words, and he did so respectfully. And universities, if they stand for anything, should be the safest spaces for such behaviour. But, as it turned out, Charlie was shot dead on a university campus. That fact alone should alarm everyone. According to The Guardian of the UK, Kirk directed most of his rhetoric at the US political scene, but he also strayed into foreign affairs, drawing both favourable and critical comparisons between life in the US and in other countries on his shows and doing the occasional speaking tour. The fire ignited by Turning Point has thus extended to Europe. In May 2025, Kirk visited the UK, debating against students at Oxford and Cambridge universities and appearing on the conservative GB News channel. Whether you agreed with him or not, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was killed because some people didn’t like what he had to say. Days before he was fatally shot in Utah he took his message to relatively new audiences on a tour to South Korea and Japan. He addressed like-minded politicians and activists at a symposium in Tokyo organised by Sanseito, a rightwing party that shook up the political establishment in upper house elections this summer. Kirk described Sanseito, which ran in July’s elections on a “Japanese first” platform, as “all about kicking foreigners out of Japan,” where the foreign population has risen to about 3.8 million out of a total of 124 million.
The reality of migrations and what to expect in coming years are encapsulated in the statement attributed to Kirk on his Japan trip wherein he reportedly said foreign residents and supporters of mass migration were “very quietly and secretly funnelling themselves into Japanese life. They want to erase, replace and eradicate Japan by bringing in Indonesians, by bringing in Arabs, by bringing in Muslims.” His criticisms of women who choose not to have children also echoed the views of his host in Japan, the Sanseito leader, Sohei Kamiya. He addressed more than 2,000 supporters in Seoul, at the Build Up Korea 2025 event, to predominantly young Christians and students from evangelical schools. It is clear that those who strongly disagree with Kirk’s political and ideological views don’t understand the right perspectives in the real trends and realities in global politics.
It takes a rational thinker to agree with Kirk in most cases of his work at Turning Point. In debates across the US, on college campuses, podcasts and on social media, Kirk seemed to enjoy confrontation, even though he wanted to be seen as a champion of free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Although his rhetoric often involved anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant comments, engendering strong feelings, many of his views on trans rights and LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, affirmative action and gun control not only reflected today’s mainstream Republican Party, they are turning out to becoming eye-openers for the liberal ideologues who are beginning to realise that they are being rug pulled by immigrants and may be displaced sooner than later. For instance, it is now becoming an issue in Europe that immigrants are using their religion to destroy some countries and that this may soon happen in America. Kirk’s death has already succeeded in waking the West out of slumber on matters of demographics, marriage, child bearing, displacement or replacement of local populations by immigrants and the need to halt the trend. In this, Kirk has become a force to reckon with.
Beyond individuals’ sentiments, and in reality, political policy should not be determined by force and political disagreements should not be settled through homicidal violence. This is a baseline precondition of not just a democratic form of government, but of any functional society. Kirk’s death has woken up the sleeping West. Their reactions to issues raised by Kirk may be swift or slow, but will definitely be decisive. African countries that take solace in migration to Western countries now have reason to rethink and reexamine the situations leading to massive and desperate migrations as the entry into those countries may now be increasingly more difficult than before. It is easy to envisage that, in coming years, many immigrants will face large scale deportations in Europe and North America. These are reasons why Africa needs to get its own house in order and care less about rhetoric being erroneously promoted by the Western liberal media that tend to show spurious compassion and empathy for migrants, particularly illegal migrants, that have altered the perception of immigrants and made immigration to become a hot button political issue. The problem is not Charlie Kirk but ultimately that of Africa and other less developed countries or continents from where the critical mass of migrants emanate. These are the places where the real causes of mass migration need to be tackled and lasting solutions found.
Dr. Olukayode Oyeleye, Business a.m.’s Editorial Advisor, who graduated in veterinary medicine from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, before establishing himself in science and public policy journalism and communication, also has a postgraduate diploma in public administration, and is a former special adviser to two former Nigerian ministers of agriculture. He specialises in development and policy issues in the areas of food, trade and competition, security, governance, environment and innovation, politics and emerging economies.
