https://theintercept.com/2026/09/07/charlie-kirk-internet-meme/
They tried to make Charlie Kirk a saint. They made him a meme.
By elevating Kirk to a martyr and clamping down on free speech, the right assured that he would be ridiculed even in death.
In the year since he was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University, the Turning Point USA founder has gone from a man cut down in his prime to a recurring internet meme, complete with an AI-generated song, “We Are Charlie Kirk,” which hit No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 U.S. ranking. Audio of his killing became a TikTok sound for girlie outfit transformation videos; he’s been inserted into movies like “Avatar” and “The Odyssey”; he’s been AI’d into Studio Ghibli-style art, the final scene of “The Sopranos,” and the video game “Grand Theft Auto.” Even the moment of his death has gotten the meme treatment, with parodies depicting him with Jeffrey Epstein and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ridicule comes as a product of the American right’s insistence that Kirk’s violent death be taken seriously. They fought back hard against the meme-making and serious critique alike, weaponizing the conservative college-whisperer’s death to broadly crack down on free speech.
President Trump and his allies almost immediately blamed Democrats and “the radical left,” without evidence, for Kirk’s assassination. At the Department of Defense, Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to investigate whether members of the armed forces were inadequately mournful and terminate them. The State Department revoked visas of noncitizens who “celebrated” Kirk’s death. Local cops got in on the civil rights-bashing fun, too: A Tennessee man was arrested for posting a meme in the wake of Kirk’s death, amid a wave of firings in the state on similarly unstable grounds.
No sector of society was untouched by the rising tides of brain-dead McCarthyism: Dozens of educators were terminated for having their say about the killing; an MSNBC political analyst as well as a Washington Post columnist were fired (an arbitrator has since ordered the latter be rehired); workers at Office Depot, the major airlines, and a prominent law firm were axed; ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for his on-air remarks.
Kirk’s legacy has also been consecrated in the public square. An artist plans to unveil a busted statue of the TPUSA founder in New York City’s Times Square on the anniversary of his death. His legacy of ire for basically any oppressed group you can name has been enshrined by changing the names of roads to “Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway” in Naples, Florida, and outside Nashville — displacing Vietnam Veterans Boulevard — and “Charlie Kirk Way” in the red part of California. As I was writing this, a pickup truck with a sticker that reads “In Loving Memory of Charlie Kirk” passed me on the highway outside Chappaqua, New York.
All of these efforts have failed spectacularly. One year after Kirk’s killing, the conservative movement has descended into in-fighting, and although Kirk’s wife, Erika, took the reins at Turning Point, there is no heir apparent to energizing young conservatives (although the antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes would like to throw his hat in the ring). Rifts have quite publicly opened between some of the movement’s most recognizable figures — Ben Shapiro, Candice Owens, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson among them.
Many of Kirk’s disciples have descended into the realm of conspiracy theory, variously blaming Israel, the left, or even Erika for his demise instead of Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old suspect who will soon stand trial for his killing. Owens, who by all appearances actually was close friends with Kirk, has actively stoked these flames of division, pushing the conspiracy theory that Israel had him killed while waging open war on his widow.
MAGA conservatives expected Kirk’s death to be a kind of Reichstag fire that would galvanize and consolidate the right to move against the supposed threat of an organized — and politically violent — left. But to stick with Germany, Kirk is no Horst Wessel, and by insisting on total deference to the notion that the “Change My Mind” guy was a sainted national hero, they’ve given up the game entirely and opened themselves up to be relentlessly mocked.
When you center your political movement on cruelty and your online presence on dunking on the most vulnerable, your critics will respond by delighting in your misfortunes.
Conservatives routinely post their pleasure at videos of families being torn apart by ICE agents. When Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in cold blood by Trump’s occupying immigration forces in Minneapolis, conservatives celebrated and blamed the victims — for driving a car and carrying a legal firearm, respectively — to defend the deportation regime. They got many, many months of mileage out of laughing at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband nearly being bludgeoned to death with a hammer in their San Francisco home, and everyone from Elon Musk to the president himself stirred up innuendo about the true motive behind the attack — because it certainly couldn’t be the case that the suspect was radicalized by the far-right internet.
Conservatives still, in the year 2026, deploy their “no angels” line to defend the police killings of George Floyd — who, they claim, was killed by a fentanyl overdose — and Trayvon Martin, who they argue shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood in the first place.
By elevating Kirk to a martyr beyond criticism or reproach, with serious personal and professional consequences enforced by the state, you make getting off a snarky tweet or a video dancing to a sappy AI song a logical reaction to repression. You transform the death of a man, one you claim to have loved very much, into a blinking red button that your enemies are itching to press.
The first rule of the internet holds that the second you get mad or declare a sentiment out of bounds, you’ll get laughed at to hell and back. In effect, conservatives have turned their own departed hero into a laughingstock and, worse, a meme.
Kirk is no longer able to spread his gospel on campuses across the country, but his image — of his life and of his death — will reign forever, filtered through a heavy layer of internet-infused irony
tl;dr: When "Private Eye" magazine made jokes about infinitely more important politicians when they were dead: and the only place the 1st Amendment exists is within the boundary of the US Embassy in London, yet nobody in Britain complains about such: not unless they in turn open themselves up for ridicule in a place where Satire & Cynicism is hardwired into the DNA of people in my country, so much for Charlie K-urk and...!
(Contd. P94) (He's fired - Ed)
Also, something else the likes of the OP should remember, certainly consider, next time they put ol’ Chucko up on a pedestal for worship, just as he made himself a target:
The only way to combat ridiculous propositions is through mockery
In making that prescient quote, re. the reasons why the above article proves that Kirk was kack at his so-called ‘job’, question o OP:
Was Thomas Jefferson wrong…?!
You know what you’ll be admitting if you give a certain answer, that with egg on your face.
Charlie Kirk had more than just a facial omelette when he was destroyed by Cambridge University’s Debating Society here in Britain.
Cynicism being a religion in my country, and all that pomposity-bursting jazz…!