Charlie Kirk at WSU, April 2025 — picture from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA ED and conservative influencer, was assassinated yesterday, September 10, in Orem, Utah, while doing an event at Utah Valley University. There are lots better sources of Charlie’s life trajectory than this blog, and I’m not going to repeat all the various details of his activism, his life, nor his demise.

What was interesting about Charlie was that his events consisted of direct engagement with students. Opinions will differ on his intellectual veracity, or his demagoguery. I’m not really interested in that, either, because so much of one’s take on Charlie’s opinion directly depends on your own position in the v-Meme stack. But you cannot argue — there is simply too much evidence — of his relational style. He would get out there, meet people, and talk to them. It didn’t matter in the least what your title was, or what your take on an issue was either. He would debate you, bringing his perspective and facts, against your facts and arguments. Some might say it was his schtick — and maybe it was. But it was straightforward. It was how he built relationships.

If one were categorizing Charlie with my work, it would fall into someone passionately committed to independently generated, data-driven, trust-based relationships. He would look people in the eye, and construct his argument based on what you said. It is the way that empathetic relationships start, even if these conversations were only 5 minutes long. For those that need a translation, here’s the short version. He was interested in authentic friendships.

People are asking today “why Charlie?” I would argue that his relational construction mode made him a primary target in The Matrix. Whether you loved or hated his opinions, he was firmly on the side of rational, data-driven relationships. Yes, he did have status — he knew Presidents and such. But that was not the card he played. He leant heavily into his argument.

And that made him a key target in the Memetic War we find ourselves in. The vast majority of the population do not understand this, nor acknowledge it. The media prefers old labels — Left/Right, liberal/conservative. On and on. But that is really not what is going on. What is going on is a memetic conflict — two different primary pathways people’s brains work — belief vs. reason. And that is not so easily remediated. It is deeply structural, buried in our subconscious, both locally and across the Matrix. I discuss its downstream outcomes in this piece. It’s one of my best.

Rest in peace, Charlie. I appreciated what you were attempting to do. Let’s hope more folks wake up and realize that it’s not just the top level that matters. Independently generated, trust-based relationships built the world we enjoy today. You were a champion of this. The old externally defined, status-based relationships simply cannot maintain it. And we are, as a society, under massive attack from psychopaths and elites attempting to herd us back down that devolutionary trail. I weep for your children, who will never know you and your genius. And I am sorry you are gone.