What Charlie Kirk knew

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode Summary If you pay any attention at all to American politics, you have heard by now about the death of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist who was killed at one of his events. No one deserves to die for their political views, of course, but there is no question that Kirk was a complex figure and far from the saint that reactionary media and activists have been portraying him as.There is one thing, however, that everybody agrees on, and that is that Charlie Kirk had a phenomenal grasp of how to organize and fund-raise for his beliefs. He was able to turn his group Turning point USA into a political behemoth with tentacles that reach into all major political issues.For years here at Flux, we’ve been trying to warn people about what Kirk was up to and how he was growing his groups. And so I thought it would be good at this point to catch up with a friend of the show, Matthew Boedy, to do an update about his reporting on Turning Point and what he found out since he appeared on the show in 2022.Matthew is also out with a new book that describes the Christian supremacist movement that Kirk was part of called The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy, and it’s very much worth checking out.In our discussion, we talk about Kirk’s organizational prowess—and his split presentation to the public as a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist while also working tirelessly to censor and suppress the speech of people he didn’t like, including Matthew himself.We also talk about the future and what left-leaning people can learn from Kirk and the organizations that he created.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related Content—Christian nationalist author hails Charlie Kirk killing as opportunity to repress ‘evil presence’ of liberals—Charlie Kirk audience member once asked him: ‘When do we get to use the guns?’—How Evangelicals turned politics into a Bible action movie starring themselves—Turning Point USA is a religious cult, does anyone on the center-left care?—As Oklahoma’s schools flounder, state superintendent asks far-right video studio for teacher purity test—Far-right conferences are radicalizing millions, with almost no mainstream media coverage—How Pentecostalism is taking over American Christianity—Trump’s effort to rewrite history and censor opponents is exactly what reactionary Republicans have always wanted—Former Trump coup lawyer John Eastman and allies claim Satan is behind efforts to hold him accountable—“Jesus Camp,” free with ads on YouTubeAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:52 — The Seven Mountains Mandate explained09:56 — Kirk’s evolution from free speech to militancy11:20 — Democrats’ failure to respond to reactionary organizing14:05 — The power of events and community building17:20 — Evangelical zeal and political colonization19:25 — Kirk’s rivalry with Nick Fuentes22:46 — TPUSA’s “Professor Watch List” censorship and Kirk’s hypocrisy29:28 — Kirk as martyr, not thought leader34:48 — International expansion to South Korea and Japan36:33 — Kirk’s bizarre fear of imaginary witches43:57 — The irony of gun violence and asymmetrical rhetoric49:06 — The future of Turning Point and American politicsAudio TranscriptIn order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full transcript for this episode is available to paid subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. We need your help, so please support our efforts on either Patreon or Substack.