Charlie Kirk Will Not Become a Martyr

Charlie Kirk’s assassination is tragic, but the attempt to sanctify him as a martyr is doomed. In America’s relentless news cycle, even the loudest voices fade to silence.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Editorial credit: Sua Sponte Photography / Shutterstock.com

Charlie Kirk will not become a martyr. Let me say that again because the noise machine is working overtime: he will not become a martyr. His death was brutal, tragic, unjustified—and, let’s be clear, unacceptable. A political assassination is never justified. Not by ideology, not by anger, not by some twisted belief that violence will silence or elevate ideas. That’s not America. What makes this country America is the one thing Kirk and I actually agreed on, though from very different vantage points: free speech.

But free speech comes with an unspoken truth: words live or die by whether they resonate. Kirk built a movement, yes. He founded Turning Point when he was just eighteen, and for over a decade he worked to reshape the conversation on college campuses. He created a juggernaut of conservative activism that could pack auditoriums, churn out memes, and train young loyalists to parrot talking points. For a while, it worked. He had Trump’s ear, Fox News airtime, and the cult of personality that kept him trending.

And now? He’s gone.

Already, the machinery of myth-making is underway. President Trump took to Truth Social, declaring him “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.” I’ve been around Trump long enough to recognize the pattern. Words like “legendary” get thrown around until they lose meaning. A casket will be paraded, cameras will linger, hashtags will trend. For a few weeks, his name will be spoken in reverence by those who believe martyrdom can be manufactured. Statues may rise, tributes may pour in, and headlines will call him “the voice of the youth.”

But give it two weeks. I’ve heard Trump say it a thousand times in the backrooms of power: “Let’s see what happens in two weeks.” He wasn’t wrong. Outrage has a shelf life in America. The mass shootings keep coming, the scandals keep multiplying, the news cycle spins so fast we barely remember what we were mad about yesterday.

Kirk’s death will not defy that cycle.

Part of the reason is the uncomfortable truth no one in the conservative echo chamber wants to admit: Charlie Kirk did not speak for a generation. He tried. He shouted. He provoked. But he never truly connected. Gen Z is not Turning Point USA. Look at Utah Valley University: 45,000 students on campus, 4,000 in attendance, and many there to challenge him, not to cheer him. That is not the making of a cultural revolution. That’s the math of a movement hitting a wall.

And let’s not sanitize who Charlie Kirk was. He compared abortion to the Holocaust. He declared that gun deaths were “worth it” to preserve the Second Amendment. He demeaned women who pursued careers, sneered at birth control, and suggested women over thirty had expired in the dating market. He trafficked in the “great replacement” conspiracy, mocked Juneteenth, and derided LGBTQ people with phrases like “sexual anarchy.” He once admitted, without shame, that if he saw a Black pilot, he would hope “he’s qualified.”

These are not ideas that endure. They shock. They rile up donors. They get clipped for podcasts. But they don’t resonate with a generation that sees through fearmongering and demands more than recycled talking points.

Turning Point USA was Charlie Kirk, and only Charlie Kirk. There is no successor. His name may echo in speeches for a season or two, but movements built on personality fade when the personality is gone. His friends and family will grieve forever, as they should. But America? America will move on, because that is what we do.

And that, ironically, is what free speech demands. You can say whatever you want in this country: build a career on provocation, ride the coattails of power, and bask in the glow of outrage. But once your words stop resonating, they die. No amount of bloodshed can change that equation. Assassination does not sanctify. Death does not transform controversial into eternal. It simply freezes a person in time, flaws and all.

So let’s set the record straight. Mourning Charlie Kirk’s death does not mean rewriting his life. He was a political provocateur, a loyal soldier to Trump, a man who stirred up as much division as devotion. His loss is a tragedy because every life taken by violence is a tragedy. But martyrdom? That crown will not fit.

We honor free speech not by silencing those we oppose, nor by canonizing them in death, but by recognizing that ideas must stand or fall on their own merit. Kirk’s words are all still here. They can be read, quoted, challenged, or dismissed. That’s his legacy—whatever power it holds, whatever flaws it reveals.

And in the end, history is crueler than any assassin. It forgets. The trending topic disappears. The speeches fade. The statue collects dust. Only the ideas that truly speak to a generation endure.

Charlie Kirk’s will not.

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