It is very unfortunate that any 31-year-old man already have a legacy–because that means he is dead. One of my friends, an academic who teaches political studies, described Charlie Kirk’s legacy as complex. Elizabeth Spiers, writing for The Nation magazine, shares a blunter view of Kirk’s legacy that has already exposed her to hateful responses and threats online. I subscribe more to Spiers' view. I do not find Charlie Kirk’s legacy complex at all.

Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist subjected numerous academics and their institutions to harassment and death threats. This Baltimore Banner piece published in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s murder touches on just a few of the professors at universities in my state negatively impacted by Kirk’s watchlist.

He consistently used his charisma and rhetorical skills to denigrate the intelligence of black people—especially black women—far more academically accomplished than himself. Like many conservatives, he also opposed the LGBT community having legal protections (marriage, gender-affirming care, becoming parents via adoption, military service, etc) and abortion. He was one conservative voice among many who pushed falsehoods about COVID-19 (complications of which would kill the co-founder of Turning Point USA in 2020). Kirk’s rhetoric helped amplify and spread the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which as of 2022 had inspired mass shootings in Christchurch (51 dead while worshiping in their mosque), El Paso (23 dead), Pittsburgh (11 dead while worshiping in their synagogue), and Buffalo (10 dead). Many of Kirk’s publicly-stated views are accurately described as hate speech. This fact did not prevent Matthew Dowd from being fired.

Kirk’s comments regarding the Second Amendment valued it ahead of the lives of children dead due to gun violence in their schools, and most recently in Minnesota their churches. It seems the state of Utah may share those values as well. Per the law in Utah as of 2021, open and concealed carry of guns was already legal. Nor does Utah have extreme risk protection orders (colloquially known as red-flag laws). Just last month, Utah extended gun rights even further by passing a law legalizing open carry on college campuses. Literally a minute after Kirk was shot, first responders were called to another school shooting in a school in Colorado.

To the extent that any complexity exists in the Kirk legacy, it exists because our media landscape is so fractured that there are probably as many people completely unaware of the hate speech he regularly engaged in as there are people who know it well–if not having been directly targeted by it.

Kirk’s legacy is his worldview being enacted as policy by Donald Trump and his appointees. Kirk’s brief life is an unfortunate and sad example of the words of Proverbs 18:21: Death and life are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat its fruit.