On September 10, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on the campus of Utah Valley University at an event hosted by the organization he founded at 18 years old, Turning Point USA. At the time of this writing, a man identified as Tyler Robinson has been arrested as the prime suspect.
Kirk’s violent death is the most prominent political assassination of a non-office holder in the United States since Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted the next year. (The Colorado radio host Alan Berg, murdered by white supremacists in 1984, did not have King or Kirk’s national profile.)
On first impression, these two public figures could not be farther apart.
Martin Luther King Jr. can comfortably be identified as a social democrat—if not outright democratic socialist—whose career was spent demonstrating and organizing on behalf of racial integration, social welfare programs, affirmative action, anti-imperialism, and political non-violence.
Charlie Kirk was a vocal conservative in the “Make America Great Again” mold whose core issues included the rights of the unborn, opposition to transgender ideology, a vigorous defense of capitalism, and displays of free and open public debate. (In fact, Kirk was highly critical of King’s legacy and conduct.)
But these two men have much more in common than their unjust passing at the youthful ages of 39 and 31, respectively. And maybe through fleshing out those similarities, both the left and the right can come to a better, more respectful understanding of these figures and their significance to their respective movements.
After leading the Montgomery bus boycott protesting racial segregation in public transit in Alabama’s capital city, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the age of twenty-eight. He would go on to lead boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and other forms of non-violent but direct action in cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, St. Augustine, Selma, and Chicago to bring attention to the plight of blacks under Jim Crow.
Shortly after its founding, Turning Point USA experienced accelerated growth to become one of the dominant conservative youth organizations on college campuses, surpassing even the College Republicans, with the group’s conventions dwarfing the once inimitable CPAC in size and influence. This was due, in large part, to Charlie Kirk’s personal affability and fundraising abilities. Encouraging students to resist domination by a hostile and leftwing academia, the organization created public registries of ideologically opposed professors and school board members. More than any other figure, Kirk’s name and face was synonymous for Generation Z with conservative advocacy.
These national youth organizers, unequaled in their time, both took their largest inspiration for their platforms and messaging from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Both men counselled the presidents of their respective parties, Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump, and pushed for action on their agendas in the Oval Office. If Martin Luther King Jr.’s influence helped place Hubert Humphrey on the 1964 Democratic ticket, Charlie Kirk’s lobbying helped do the same for J.D. Vance in 2024.
Kirk’s notoriety became synonymous with his challenge to opponents to “Prove Me Wrong.” He would set up shop on campuses or other venues underneath banners with that slogan, inviting disagreement and verbal challenge from students and members of the public to debate him. As of this writing, the guilt of Tyler Robinson and his precise motive are a matter of speculation. But what we do know is that Kirk was shot, not while giving a speech, but during a respectful back and forth debate with an opposition audience member in front of a crowd of thousands.
Contrary to myth-making in the aftermath of his death, Kirk was a committed Zionist, a reliable defender of the Israeli state who denied the genocide in Gaza. But he did choose to platform and host debates with critics of Israel like Dave Smith and Saagar Enjeti because his most fundamental value remained the importance of open dialogue on these public issues.
No matter what information is revealed going forward, it’s inarguable that Kirk was killed over his speech—and his upholding civil debate in the public square, I believe, will be the keystone of his legacy.
As with any historical comparison between men in different centuries and with different politics there are differences great and small.
By all accounts, Kirk upheld a commendable personal life, and leaves behind a widow and two small children. King also left behind a widow (who continued his advocacy) and four children, but his personal conduct was marred, the public later learned, with serial adultery and conduct contrary to the Christian standards he professed.
Kirk briefly attended community college but left without earning a degree. King received his PhD in systemic theology from Boston University in 1955, but an academic inquiry decades later concluded he had plagiarized several portions of his dissertation.
I don’t believe anyone would object to the statement that King endured far more hardship than Kirk on the path to prominence. While the latter was assaulted and threatened, the former was beaten, stabbed, bombed, surveilled and persecuted by his government. But their equal demise should demonstrate that both men put their physical bodies on the line for their respective causes.
Disturbingly, some outlets are hesitant to acknowledge that fact. Wikipedia, for instance, credits King’s death to “assassination by gunshot,” while Kirk’s currently is just “gunshot wound.” There is a page titled “Assassinaton of Martin Luther King Jr.” but only “Killing of Charlie Kirk.”
A significant difference is the terms these men ended on with the presidents whom they had coupled their movements to.
The final, significant act of King’s career was his vehement and public break with the Johnson administration over the Vietnam War. The administration that had passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, that had launched the social programs of the Great Society and initiated affirmative action could no longer be stomached by King due to the violence, the dishonesty, and the exploitation of Johnson’s war in southeast Asia.
“And I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government,” King said, in what was arguably his bravest and most controversial speech, one that earned him banishment from the corridors of power in Washington for the remaining year of his life.
On the other hand, Kirk, when pressed on controversial matters over the summer of 2025 like the Trump administration’s bombing of Iran and its continued cover-up of the extent of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, tried to straddle the fence and act as a mediator between a White House and a party base that appear increasingly out of sync. He remained a stalwart bodyguard of Donald Trump’s administration until his end.
The decision to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday in 1983 was controversial and opposed by a significant number of conservative Republicans (primarily over King’s ties to the Communist Party).
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This week, Trump White House announced all American flags would be flown at half-mast in memorial, and the president is going to posthumously award Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If a future administration, perhaps under Kirk’s friend and confidant J.D. Vance, tries to honor the young conservative leader with a similar national holiday (October 14), I fear the liberal opposition would be as angry and militant in opposition as the one King faced down on Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Americans of all stripes do need heroes—and in death as in life, Charlie Kirk has become one for half the country. Maybe someday, in a kinder and more understanding future, Kirk, like King, will inspire both halves.
