Charlie Kirk is now a Meme

Fascist in life, disrespected in death

Charlie Kirk’s face is everywhere. You can’t open any social media app without seeing him. Kirk has been transposed onto every meme, his mug has been inserted into countless music videos and viral videos, and a man who was supposed to be a fascist martyr has become one of the most absurd running jokes in living memory.

None of this happened in a coordinated fashion. While the initial push to lionize Charlie Kirk was an obvious, top-down affair, this meme-ification happened as many ‘viral trends’ do. A few people started photoshopping his distinctive face onto celebrities, and before you know it the thing spread like wildfire. In the blink of an eye you couldn’t get on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok without seeing his face. Those of you who don’t use these platforms are even more fortunate than you know.

This whole thing is wildly disrespectful, yes, but that element alone doesn’t explain how thousands of apolitical people started inserting Charlie Kirk’s face into every meme on earth. My belief is that it all started with the forced martyrdom of a man who was, in reality, a fascist and racist, and who in no way merited a national celebration of his life.

From the moment Kirk was killed the Trump administration and the larger MAGA apparatus ran to turn him into a hero, ran to lie about and sanitize his legacy, and tried to force a moment of national mourning for a man most people hadn’t even heard of until he died. For the apolitical it must’ve been extremely odd to see nearly every NFL team have a moment to honor this guy they knew nothing about. Then, before long, they started to learn who he really was. And when people learned about Charlie Kirk, they realized they were being told to mourn a racist, transphobic fascist whose mission was not simply “debate,” but far-right propaganda and organizing.

So, the backlash began. This country has numerous flaws, many of which run right down to the core. But one tendency I’ve often admired, when it rears its head in the right ways and moments, is the instinctive distrust of authority, the instinctive reaction against being told what to do. And I’m convinced that the MAGA attempt to force a martyr onto all of us, especially a guy who was ultimately a generic racist bigot, is what backfired so spectacularly. For a lot of people Kirk is now more synonymous with this meme trend than anything he stood for, young people in particular might now be more familiar with pictures being “Kirkified” than they are with anything he ever said.

And this rejection of authority, this instinctive rebellion against being told what to do, this distrust of the status quo is something a lot of political pundits and analysts seem to only have a faint grasp of. When Trump won the election last year, one media outlet after another published pieces about young people, and young men in particular, turning right. And young men did swing more Republican — bad news that helped Trump immensely. But when we look at the two party system and filter the entirety of our political understanding through that lens, we miss the bigger picture.

A fuller understanding of American politics is incomplete without seeing that an anti-establishment ethos has risen rapidly, and is as defining an element as there is to be had in our politics right now. People are fed up. Yes, grifters have taken advantage of this reality and led a bunch of young men to the right. But right now Trump has a net approval rating of around -50 with voters under 30. He’s now in the negative with men as a whole, as he is with nearly every demographic.

More than turning right, young men, young people, and the US population in general are pissed off at the status quo. In polling and in voting that fact typically comes across as disapproval of those in power, and an openness to replacing them with the other party. But that see-sawing back and forth doesn’t capture our outrage. The electoral system doesn’t give people an option that aligns with their rage at the establishment. At least, not most of the time.

The Zohran campaign does give us a hint of what happens when an alternative emerges. Love him or hate him, it’s impossible not to see that a candidate who runs against the establishment, who offers real proposals that mainstream Democrats and Republicans both oppose—namely around making life more affordable—will not only win but will do so with a different sort of coalition. Zohran was supported by young men, he was supported by women, by people of color and even by some Trump voters. Because there are a whole lot of people who generally vote against the incumbent, or against the system, and who, when they see a candidate actually trying to fight the establishment and do good for the people, will support that option.

Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

You probably know by now that I don’t see elections as the sum total of our politics. Far from it. I see politics as something we must incorporate into our every day. I think that ideally we’d all be community organizers, we’d all be workplace organizers. Ideally we’d all see our daily lives as places to exercise power and build power with the people around us. At the moment, that’s still pretty rare. We’re used to feeling disempowered and not fully believing we have the agency and ability to affect change.

In these conditions some people despair, some people lash out, and some people make memes. It’s been odd to see Charlie Kirk’s face everywhere, and like all internet trends its lifespan will probably be pretty short. While it lasts some people will say how rude it is, others will observe that it’s a tough way to go out, your face and legacy smeared and tarnished and abused. And all of that is, on the surface, correct. I certainly don’t want to be edited into music videos when I die.

But I won’t be. And you won’t be. Because we’re not dedicating our lives to the fascist movement. Despite the shock of seeing a dead man’s face transposed onto one meme after another, this viral trend is, in its way, an indicator that the kids are alright. They’re rejecting the idea that they have to respect a fascist propagandist. The MAGA movement tried to shove Kirk on all of us, tried to make a hero out a man whose last words were one final racist quip. And the youth rejected the effort, rejected it so forcefully that they mock the fallen fascist daily.

It’s not pretty, none of it is. And Kirk certainly wasn’t. But this ugly sort of internet rebuke is one of the ways we win. The kids mocking a fascist icon, taking their hero and rendering him a joke, is one small step on the path towards channeling our anger at the system into real change, instead of into the fascist approach to the system that pretends to attack to status quo but instead reinforces it with violence. We need real answers, real solutions, and we’re building them as we speak. The left is working to build the real systemic change we need, and young people are seeing that by the millions. The kids are alright, and together we’ll get through this mess and create something better. - JP