Abstract
The killing of the American political activist and provocateur is analyzed through a cultural sociology lens, specifically the paradigm of cultural trauma and the model of social drama. According to cultural trauma theory, political violence of this type catalyzes a “meaning struggle” in its aftermath, where questions concerning what happened, who is responsible, and what is now to be done, are publicly debated. The discursive combat surrounding the meaning of Kirk’s death has produced two competing narrative frames, one calling Kirk’s killing an “assassination” that was aimed at the core of the American nation, and the other a political murder, carried out by a lone gunman without coherent political motivation. The difference is not trivial. Assassination implies an ideological motive, with the distinct possibility of coconspirators, while a murder may well have political consequences, but need not have a clear ideological basis or coconspirators. Framing the killing as an assassination multiplies the emotional impact and the significance of an incident, while calling it a murder can diffuse it. An assassination is more likely than a murder to trigger the “trauma drama” that is at the core of cultural trauma. In the case of the killing of Charlie Kirk, there was a clear attempt made to direct and promote the discourse around its meaning toward that end, to turn an incident of political violence into a matter of polarizing collective identification. At the same time, there was the attempt from the opposite side, to diffuse it, as yet another incident of the senseless violence that has a long history in American society.
Before he was killed in September 2025 most of the world had not heard of Charlie Kirk. This was also true of many Americans, where a generational divide was largely determinate. This would change dramatically in the weeks that followed. In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, American President Donald Trump ordered flags lowered to half-mast on government buildings; memorial displays were arranged in the capitol building in Washington DC, and, most spectacularly, a memorial service was held in a sports stadium in front of a live audience of more than 70,000, including a significant number of government officials and political celebrities. The event was broadcast live on cable and network television, featuring eulogies by the President and members of his cabinet. In some American states, it was declared a criminal offense to speak of Charlie Kirk and several persons lost their jobs for doing so. How and why this happened is the subject of this article.
Charlie Kirk was shot while engaged in an outdoor debate with a college student on the campus of Utah Valley University on 10 September 2025. There were thousands present at the event, and, as many of them used their cell phones and social media accounts to record and distribute images, it was instantly witnessed by a much greater number. 1 Kirk died in hospital the following day and the man accused of shooting him, Tyler Robinson, surrendered to local law enforcement that same evening. Robinson was formally charged with aggravated murder on 16 September. His trial remains in its early stages, though prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty.
From its inception in the mind of his killer, Kirk’s death was a media event (Dayan and Katz, 1992). 2 The idea for the killing was born online in social media conversation and the displays of mourning and veneration that followed where made for mass mediated consumption. As the killing occurred in the context of a polarized American polity, it became a resource for partisan mobilization, which had a determinative impact on how the killing was framed and narrated. This was apparent in its initial categorization, where competing accounts framed the killing as murder or assassination, and contested who, exactly, were the victim and perpetrator: disparate individuals linked in a murderous act or representative figures in some wider struggle. Kirk’s death occurred in the midst of America’s so-called culture wars, where incidents of violence can easily serve as flashpoints that encourage partisan interpretation and, as a consequence, further divide the polity (Beamish, 2024; Eyerman, 2023). These cultural wars intensified during the two presidencies of Donald Trump and are central to the political mobilization of his supporters in the populist Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. The discursive cultural wars have a violent undercurrent and in the past decade, the level of political violence in the United States reached that of the 1970s (Hoffman and Ware, 2025). Kirk’s death was one more spark in that incendiary situation, but much more than a statistic, it marks a turning point, a watershed moment in the contemporary political scene of the United States.
The framework of cultural trauma is applied to analyze the discursive struggle to define the meaning of the killing of Charlie Kirk in this polarized political context. Cultural trauma theory explores how individual suffering becomes socially meaningful when carrier groups succeed in framing and narrating it as collectively traumatic. In this framework, trauma is not an intrinsic property of a devastating incident, but rather a cultural construction in its aftermath (Alexander et al., 2004). Through narrative framing and symbolic performances, various actors attempt to establish that a collective, and not simply an individual, was deeply affected by a destabilizing occurrence. In the process, victims and perpetrators are demarcated with reference to wider collective identification, with the aim of securing and reaffirming group identification (Eyerman, 2011). This discursive process materialized through emotionally charged rituals and pedagogic practices, which embody and embrace collective memory and identification. In the case of Charlie Kirk, the attempts to construct collective trauma centered on claims about his significance as part of a religious group and political movement, as well as the circumstances of his death. Kirk was represented as a Christian martyr and a national hero; one of “us,” killed by “one of them.” Within such framing, the representation and symbolic elevation of victim and the demonization of the perpetrator were formative of the trauma construction and the collective identification it sought to enhance.
Central to the theory of cultural trauma is the role of carrier groups, actors with authoritative presence and access to media that articulate trauma claims in public discourse. Carrier groups formulate narratives and emotion-laden practices that specify what happened, who was responsible, and what should be done to repair the damage to ‘us.’ To the extent that repair is successful, collective identity is reshaped and strengthened. In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, carrier groups, most pointedly Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, and members of the American government, used all means available to articulate a trauma narrative that elevated his death to national significance and beyond. This involved the use of organizational power to reconstruct and strengthen an inclusive group identification through elevating an individual act of violence to transcendental significance; in the same process, the attempt was made to define who was included in the collective and who was not.
In addition to analyzing the attempts by interested parties to affect the meaning of the incident, the symbolic terms that script it as social drama, what Alexander called the “trauma drama,” are specified and discussed (Alexander, 2004a: 227–228). In the case of the killing of Charlie Kirk these include “political violence,’ “assassination,” “terrorism,” “martyrdom,” “sacrifice,” “freedom of speech,” among others. Such scripts are not only framing devices, they also “offer up for consideration alternative readings and plot moves that may have been wittingly or unwittingly suppressed” (Wagner-Pacifici, 1986: 15).
As developed by Victor Turner, a social drama begins with the “breach of a norm, the infraction of a rule of morality, law, custom, or etiquette, in some public arena” (Turner, 1982: 150). The norm-shattering act can be deliberate or spontaneous but usually involves a highly visible or valued person to a social group. In our case, Charlie Kirk was a person both highly valued within an identifiable community and highly visible both before, during, and after his death. Kirk gained attention through his efforts as a provocateur, who practiced his skills on the public stage. He died in that very practice, sitting with a microphone in front of a large audience at a sponsored event. His death was recorded and instantaneously broadcast over private and public social media channels, with witnesses numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
The act of killing was a very public breach of the norms of free assembly and open discourse on a college campus that are a longstanding tradition in American society. At the same time, the murderous act occurred within a polarized polity, which intensified the discursive battle about its meaning, furthering polarization (Beamish, 2024). This follows Turner’s (1974: 35) stage model of social drama, namely, that the breach opens to the possibility of discursive combat, “that brings fundamental aspects of society [. . .] into frightening prominence.” As the cell phone images of the shooting swirled around the internet, the chaos depicted onscreen and online catalyzed an equally chaotic contest concerning its meaning, one that still continues.
This trauma drama clarified perpetrators and victim in a process that is both inherently political and a step toward wider crisis. As will be discussed later, along with the performance of authority, the role of mass media, in all its current forms, formed a central site of the drama. As Turner put it, these media help to “signalize” the specific occurrence as a breach, thus “prompting a wider public crisis” (Cottle, 2004: 72). The contours of this crisis depend on several factors, including the inflammatory versus the reconciliatory rhetoric in media responses and, very significantly, the role played by authoritative figures, such as political representatives and relatives of the victim in their public reactions (Eyerman, 2011). It is here, most especially that various carrier groups and their respective interests play a central role in the trauma drama.
Many previous studies using the cultural trauma framework have traced the process from breach to collective repair as a successful reintegration in the aftermath of foundational rupture (Alexander et al., 2004). This has followed a path from threatened disintegration to reintegration with the achievement of a stable consensus about what happened and who was responsible. Such consensus, always difficult to achieve, is made even more so in a polarized polity, such as the current United States. The trial and punishment of those deemed responsible and the memorial rituals commemorating victims are intended to aid consensus formation, but only if they are not perceived as polluted and partisan. Even the agreement to disagree, may not lead to any consensus about what is to be done in reparation.
The current study traces the attempt to construct and promote partisan trauma drama, to create and prolong a crisis not consensus, thus adding another important dimension to cultural trauma studies. This is not a case of failed consensus, but rather of a conscious tactic of excluding the other in that consensus, rather than attempting healing inclusion. The carrier groups promoting this exclusion sought to mobilize partisanship, to solidify a one-sided ‘we’ at the expense of others. In the short term, this helped solidify partisan group identification. The carefully choreographed main event in the aftermath of Kirk’s death, the globally televised memorial service, was a supercharged moment that projected unity to a global audience, suggesting a powerfully reinvigorated MAGA movement after the loss of one of its rising stars. Charlie Kirk was represented as a major cultural figurehead of a wider social movement, with his death characterized as service to its cause. Despite this display of unity and the publicly performed transition of organizational leadership, from one Kirk to another, the mediated moment of collective effervescence was short-lived. Unity soon fractured into infighting and the consensus of meaning into conspiracy theorizing and internal backbiting. Applying the language of emergency and sacrifice, the memorial service projected Charlie Kirk as a hero and martyr to the MAGA cause, clarifying what his death meant, but it failed in achieving a stable consensus about who was responsible and what should now be done to move collectively forward.
What Happened: Murder or Assassination
Like school shootings, the murder or attempted murder of public figures has become almost commonplace in the USA. To mention only a few examples: the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson and Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, the near killing of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, the several attempts on the life of Donald Trump. As in the case of Charlie Kirk, each of these was carried out by a lone perpetrator, unstable and perhaps fanatical, but alone and isolated. Analysts have characterized such “lone-actor terrorism” as a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, where internet recruitment and notoriety are determinant factors (Hoffman and Ware, 2025: 179). Were these political assassinations, deadly acts that operate through a political agenda and intended to produce political change? Alternatively, were they acts of violence where politics was peripheral to the intentions of the perpetrators? Are they murders or assassinations? The shooting that involved Congresswoman Gifford was designated a political
While formal procedures may refer to legal criteria in deciding between murder and assassination, the claim of cultural sociology is that calling the killing of a public figure a political assassination is not a merely a matter of formal criteria or legal adjudication (Eyerman, 2011). Nor is it simply a matter of the intentions of the perpetrator. From the perspective of cultural sociology, neither the actions nor the actors speak for themselves. Whether or not the killing of a public figure is an assassination is the result of a discursive process where contested interpretations of the act play out in public and private discourse in its aftermath. Unlike murders, political assassinations do not just happen; they must be designated, told, and established in a process that includes common as well as formal legal discourse. Designating a killing as an assassination is a call for enhanced attention, raising its significance, adding levels to its meaning. The intentions of the designators—why an authority, like the governor of Utah, would declare an act of killing an assassination—is as important to understand as the motives of the perpetrator. This is also true of those who through various forms of mass media use their position to make various claims about what happened and who is responsible.
Also at this level, definitions of the situation are themselves couched in narrative form, structured stories about what is claimed to have occurred and who is affected. In the case of Kirk’s violent death, there emerged two meta-narrative frameworks competing to define the situation. One is that his death was an assassination intended to alter a political situation by removing a powerful personality. Here the killing is filtered through an ideological lens, which identifies and distinguished ‘them’ and ‘us.’ The second frames the act as a political murder, an attack on a powerful personality aimed at influencing political discourse, but not motivated by a clear ideological commitment or making an attempt to collectivize what happened. As will be discussed later, there are several strands in each of these alternatives. These alternative frames have been articulated by individuals and groups using the various means available to them in a contentious struggle for hegemony in defining the meaning of Kirk’s killing. Once established, these interested parties become carrier groups in the ongoing struggle to manage and control its meaning.
The Victim
Charles James Kirk was born in 1993 and was 31 years old when he died. While he was in high school, Kirk was already engaged in political campaigning, volunteering in the successful campaign of a Republican candidate for the US Senate. In 2012, Kirk joined forces with a former marketing executive and Tea Party activist to found Turning Point USA, a non-profit organization, with the aim of spreading conservative ideas to young voters. They envisioned Turning Point as a conservative answer to MoveOn.org a left-leaning grass roots organization. 4 Kirk dropped out of college to engage in full time activism.
The years that followed were very successful for the organization, including playing an important part in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Their main base of organizing was through establishing chapters on college campuses, which now number 1400, and speaking tours that were recruiting events. In 2020, Turning Point USA reported revenues of $39.2 million and Kirk’s salary at $325,000 (Burns, nd. In 2024, the organization’s revenues reached $85 million, and its CEO received a salary of $420, 709, while Kirk reported a salary of $285, 929. 5
Skillful with a microphone, hand held in front of a crowd or stationary in a studio, Kirk brought his brand of Christian conservatism to college campuses through this organizational structure, as its charismatic CEO. At first, his message was most prominently of the spiritual variety, but later Kirk turned to political advocacy in his live appearances. The college circuit provided a ready audience as he honed his message to address Christian self-help as an answer to alienation and a sense of powerlessness, especially among young men. Kirk offered not merely an uplifting message, but also an individual and collective identification as a white, conservative Christian. What this actually meant was at the heart of the discursive contest in the aftermath of his death.
When the COVID pandemic made such appearances difficult, Kirk, like many others, turned to podcasting, a form of mass communication that was fast replacing the radio talk show on the conservative circuit. Podcasts are particularly popular with younger audiences, as one could listen nearly anywhere and they offered an intellectual entertainment alternative to music. In addition to podcasts, Kirk’s growing organization produced streaming talk shows and an interactive website. His radio talk show was exceptionally popular; by 2024, “the show was being downloaded an astonishing 500,000 to 750,000 times each day” (Burns, nd). There was also more traditional print material, such as books aimed at articulating and spreading a conservative Christian ideology and the MAGA message. All served as tools in facilitating collective identification and political mobilization. 6
Who Was Responsible: The Perpetrator
Kirk’s killer was identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. Robinson is currently in police custody, having turned himself in two days after the shooting. He is being held without bail by law enforcement authorities in Utah under charges of “aggravated murder, obstruction of justice and the illegal discharge of a firearm.” These are state violations, with federal charges pending. It is noteworthy at this point that the term “assassination” has not been formally applied. Robinson was raised in a Mormon family in a conservative suburban community in Southern Utah. At the time of the shooting, he was enrolled in a local training school to become a certified electrician.
A key element in the contested meaning struggle after the shooting has been the perpetrator’s motivation; was this violent act intended to alter the American political landscape? While the perpetrator does not appear to be part of an organized group with a collective political ideology, analysis of his motivations tends toward interpreting his actions in that way given a polarized political context. Whatever the motivation, the killing was a highly symbolic act, having occurred at an outdoor rally where the victim was engaged in the very practice that had made him popular. This was a performative act carried out with multiple audiences in mind; the perpetrator’s rifle aimed not only at the body of the victim, but also at an audience through mediated imagery that would create as much chaos as the shot itself. The murder not only eliminated a representative figure, but also created a flow of information and a frantic search for meaning, which must be considered as part of the aim.
As an avid user of social media and the internet, the perpetrator could likely assume that most of those in the audience listening to Kirk would also be users, with cell phones ready at hand. He would have known that his action would lead to instantaneous online conversations and image sharing, creating what one commentator called online chaos (Broderick, 2025). Robinson likely also knew that his act would bring him instant recognition, place him at the center of attention and as the cause of internet chaos, which according to Broderick is a goal of many online users. Such mediated chaos is ripe for conspiracy theories offering quick and simple explanations with little need of evidence or proof beyond the circulating images. One such conspiracy theory that circulated involved the Israeli government in the murder. It became so popular that the Israeli Prime Minister felt compelled to debunk it. Other officials, like Utah governor Spenser Cox, argued that the perpetrator was motivated by “left wing ideology,” offering as proof inscriptions on the bullet casings left behind at the scene. This was also spread through social media where it was countered by the argument that such markings are popular as internet gaming subcultural memes; while others claimed their referent to be white nationalist ideology, and the extreme right. At the same time as Governor Cox was calling the killing an assassination carried out by the “left wing,” the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was pointing to a wider conspiracy. Using social media platforms, rather than the official law enforcement channels, Director Kash Patel pointed to secretive “hand signals” circulating in the attending audience, among other things pointing to wider responsibility (Fausset, 2025).
These various interpretations have their root cause in the polarized cultural politics of contemporary American society. Whatever viewpoint one takes, one can interpret the entire discussion through the lens of the perpetrator’s attempt to influence, clarify, or confuse the meaning struggle he most likely assumed would occur in the aftermath. Given the apparent infighting within various factions of the larger right-wing movement in the United States that followed Kirk’s death, his killer appears to have succeed in this aim.
Other Key Players
Erika Kirk (aged 36) the widow of Charlie Kirk and now the CEO of Turning Point USA was born Erika Fransve in Ohio in 1988. Raised by her mother, Erika attended Catholic schools before studying political science and international relations at Arizona State University. After changing religious faith, she furthered her education at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian institution. As of 2025, Erika Kirk was enrolled there in a religious studies doctoral program. In her teens and twenties, she competed in beauty pageants and was crowned Miss Arizona in 2012. She met Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point USA event in 2018. He later interviewed her for a position in the organization while in New York City where Erika worked for a real estate firm. At the time, Erika was also marketing a line of “Christian-themed” clothing. They were married in 2021 and she embraced the role of Christian homemaker, raising their two children.
Erika Kirk announced her new position as CEO of Turning Point USA in her eulogy at the memorial ceremony for her dead husband. She is well prepared for the role; already as a teenager she founded Everyday Heroes Like You, a 501 (C) (3), tax exempt non-profit organization like Turning Point. In 2019, Erika Kirk began a podcast to promote an evangelical lifestyle and promote her clothing brand for the same purpose. She is skilled at marketing a brand of Christianity or Christianity as a brand. Through various interviews after Charlie Kirk’s death, Erika Kirk made it clear that she understands her husband’s death in Evangelical terms as part of “God’s plan,” thus dismissing any conspiracy behind the murder. Part of that plan was for her husband to achieve martyrdom as “a young prophet whose fleeting life has achieved lasting resonance after his martyrdom.” “I’m a strong believer that this was God’s plan [. . .] and it’s so clear-cut. It couldn’t be more Charlie” (Draper, 2025).
Mise en Scene
The shooting occurred outdoors, in an open courtyard on the campus of Utah Valley University (UVU), where the victim was seated behind a table filled with campaign merchandise. The university is one of the largest in the Utah state system of higher education. On that day, there were between 2000 and 3000 in attendance; a petition circulated days earlier calling for Kirk to be banned from the campus was signed by 7000 people. The event was meant to be the opening round of a tour of colleges around the country, now an annual occurrence. The victim was wearing one of the t-shirts on display for sale, white with the phrase Freedom in black letters across the chest. The logo represented one of the key themes of the tour, freedom of expression. As merchandise, wearing it implied sympathy and support for Kirk and his organization and many in the audience wore it and it remains a popular symbol of association.
From a rooftop less than 200 yards from his target, the perpetrator fired one round from a bolt-action hunting rifle, hitting the victim in the neck. Kirk died in hospital approximately two and a half hours later. 7 The shooter was able to descend from the rooftop and flee in the chaos, as the crowd scrambled to safety. Along the way, he discarded the weapon, the used shell casing, and three live bullets. Many of his movements, before and after the shooting, were caught on security cameras and private cell phones, to later spread through all forms of mass media. While driving the 200 miles to his home in southern Utah, Robinson posted a text where he expressed regret at having left his rifle behind. The weapon was a Second World War relic of German manufacture, belonging to his grandfather. He wrote, “I’m worried what my old man would do if I don’t bring back grandpa’s rifle. IDK (I don’t know) if it has a serial number but it wouldn’t trace back to me. I’m worried about prints.” This clearly indicates that his actions were premeditated and planned. After conversations with his parents and online contacts, Robinson turned himself over to local law enforcement officers. His mother had apparently recognized her son in the televised images of the suspected killer and had made the initial contact with law enforcement authorities. A phone conversation with his father reportedly convinced him to confess and face the consequences, rather than take his own life.
From the location, the shooting itself, the various pieces of evidence gathered, and subsequent arrest, one can compose an ideal plot from the perpetrator’s perspective. The location was chosen after information about Charlie Kirk’s speaking engagement was confirmed, and the site itself canvased for accessibility and escape. The campus location and the victim’s performance were exemplary from the perpetrator’s perspective. As Robinson apparently told his parents, his aim was to address the ‘hate’ in American society; Kirk was his target because he spread a “hateful message” through public performances such as this one. Charlie Kirk was thus killed while performing what was an offensive act from the perpetrator’s perspective. The killing was retribution, not murder in his eyes. The weapon was chosen as much for its symbolism as for its technical value as a highly accurate weapon for just this type of shooting. The Mauser model 98.30-06 caliber bolt-action rifle was a standard weapon of the Germany military during both World Wars and is a collector’s item as representative of that use. It was in other words, used in defense of fascism. On the bullet casings law enforcement officers found inscribed messages that also require interpretation for symbolic meaning. On one there were up and down arrow symbols, as on a computer keyboard or a video game, on another there were the words “Bella ciao” which suggests reference to an Italian antifascist song and on a third “Hey fascist, catch.” These have led commentators to claim clear reference to “leftist’ political motivation or, contrarily, to the insider jokes and references of the gaming community. If they were indicative of an anti-fascist motivation, this would make the choice of weapon deliberate or at least paradoxical.
From one perspective, Robinson’s aim was that his actions would put an end to the “hateful” actions of a significant public figure, important for what he expressed but also for the organization he represented and symbolized. Viewing the victim as a representative figure, whose speech and actions embodied “hate” instead of “love,” one could view the perpetrator’s motivation as avenging a betrayal of Christian values, making it a cultural as well as a political murder. Robinson was raised in a Mormon household in a very conservative and Christian region of the country. Kirk and his organization professed to being part of an American Evangelical movement, and his campus tours sought to activate and recruit new members on this “spiritual” basis. It was this claim that the perpetrator might have viewed as hypocrisy and betrayal. Whether or not he could justify the use of violence to combat such a betrayal of Christian values is a question to ponder. From this perspective, escape from the crime scene would not necessarily mean seeking to avoid responsibility or punishment. Robinson did confess to his parents and turn himself in to the authorities. If the killing was done from the perspective of betrayed Christian principles, then accepting responsibility and punishment would be part of his motivation. In fact, public trial would offer the possibility to articulate those principles, just as many other ideologically motivated political murderers have done. The forthcoming trial should reveal more on this question.
A circulating alternative view is that Robinson was an internet-obsessed gamer, driven by alienation, isolation, and a need for recognition. From this perspective, the spectacle itself could be an end in itself. In addition to his other habits, Robinson was a well-trained gun owner and hunter, a prerequisite for the skillful shot he made. Described as a loner, he spent many hours online interacting with gaming communities. This anonymous presence, according to this view, played an important role in Robinson’s self-identification, and grounded his violent act. Through the act of killing, he was made visible both inside and outside the shuttered walls of online spaces, where “memes, attitudes, copycatting, in-jokes, and irony” dominate the conversation, more than coherent political ideas or ideologies (Rufo, 2025). As noted, sometimes the spectacle is the thing. From this perspective, Charlie Kirk’s killer acted alone yet was part of a largely anonymous and imagined online community. This was not, however, a political community in the sense of having a rooted ideological basis. Even if such online groups never meet face to face, they can influence the behavior of participants to the extent they become self-conscious communities, as online interactions are ritualized, producing “moments of shared attention and emotion” (Tornberg and Tornberg, 2024). Out of such ritualized interaction, a sense of collective identity and purpose can evolve. At this point, one cannot say that this is the case in the murder of Charlie Kirk, but clearly, the temptation to place both victim and perpetrator on one side or the other in the left–right political divide is central to the meaning struggle in the aftermath, as is the categorization murder or political assassination.
Memorial: Social Power Displayed and Embodied
As in many cases involving the death of a popular figure, relatively spontaneous “memorials” occurred across the country and in places around the world in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing. One in central London attracted about 2000. Others occurred in major European cities like Madrid and Berlin. There were also memorial displays and ceremonies as far away as South Korea and Australia. On American college campuses, especially those where there existed a local chapter of Turning Point USA, groups gathered to celebrate and honor Charlie Kirk. Many of these attracted media attention and were recorded and circulated through social media. Turning Point USA produced a YouTube distributed video on 11 September, the day following his death. It was titled “A Life of Faith, A Legacy that Endures: Remembering Charlie Kirk,” and was viewed by close to 2 million people.
The official memorial ceremony occurred on Sunday 21 September 2025 at State Farm stadium, Glendale Arizona, home of a professional football team. The stadium has place for 70,000 and together with a nearby overflow venue, a crowd of nearly 100,000 was reported present. The entire five-hour ceremony was televised on Fox News, which reported a viewership of 4.8 million during the event. Partial coverage was offered on the major networks and reported in mass media across the globe. From a social performance perspective (Alexander, 2004b), social power refers to the ability of authoritative actors to control a performance in the attempt to manage its meaning to an audience. The official memorial service organized to commemorate Charlie Kirk was not only a media event designed to attract and influence a multi-layered massive audience, but also ritual practices intended to impose its meaning on those present, virtually and in real time. As such, it was a central site in the meaning struggle surrounding the death of Charlie Kirk, where various interpretations were competing for hegemony. On display was the attempt by powerful actors to manage, control, and impose interpretation of the meaning of a violent incident, offering, in addition, an example of how violent deaths can become culturally productive events. 8 This was an occasion made for media and mass distribution, and with one of the sponsoring agencies being the American government, aimed at constructing and re-presenting a national hero. The event was a rally as much as a memorial, a point articulated and emphasized by many of the speakers, including the President of the United States. Those performing would address those present, but also the millions tuned in live and also those out of time on the internet.
Attendees were encouraged to wear ‘patriotic’ clothing, not the traditional black of mourning. To most of the crowd, this meant ordinary clothes, rather than dress up. Everyday patriotism combined with everyday dress in the flag-drenched décor of the stage and surroundings. The event was staged to emphasize the national and political dimensions of the occasion. The victim had been transported from Utah to Arizona on Air Force Two, the official aircraft of the office of the vice president. Attending the body in flight were Vice President Vance and his wife, along with the widow. The trip and the landing ceremony were modeled on the transport of the slain JF Kennedy after his assassination in 1963. National collective memory was thus evoked to enhance the meaning of the moment and the person. The intention was to mark a decisive, and to judge by some of the speakers, a divisive moment in the nation’s history. To emphasize its national character, there was, in addition, a candlelit memorial in the Capitol building in Washington DC, something unprecedented for an ordinary citizen. Flags flew at half-mast in government buildings there and in Arizona. In addition, moments of silence were ordered across the nation, including at sporting events.
The setting was a playing field, with a raised stage at one end, like a half-time show at American football’s Super Bowl. The general aesthetics of a mega church, with pyrotechnics, flashing lights and huge surround sound, including an invisible God-like master of ceremonies whose amplified male voice introduced each person with “Please welcome to the stage,” dominated the scene (on the material aesthetics of the mega church see, Loveland and Wheelers, 2003). The numerous speakers were interspersed with recorded and live music performed by bands and singers in the contemporary Christian music (CCM) and worship music genres, those favored by white American evangelicals. Like many mega church services, the atmosphere was a blend of spiritual revival and campaign rally. The staging area was ringed by circulating neon signs flashing the logo of Turning Point USA, with giant images of Charlie Kirk dotting the stage alongside the American flag. All these sights and sounds would have been familiar to most of those in attendance, and they responded accordingly, waving arms and voicing religious phrases and prayers. There was much individual and collective emotion on display, a definitional example of collective effervescence.
Two conflicting themes marked the presentations. The first focused on Kirk’s Christian spirituality, a theme evoked and expressed most pointedly by his widow and the many evangelical preachers in attendance. As the penultimate speaker, Erika Kirk highlighted her husband’s adherence to what she identified as Christian values. Speaking behind a podium embossed with the American presidential logo and encased in bulletproof glass, she called her husband a Christian martyr and his death an assassination, while at the same time reminding the audience that Kirk was against violence and wanted to save souls, most particularly those of young men. 9 Nearing the end of her 30-minute address, in a very dramatic, whispering voice, Erika Kirk called upon the words of Jesus Christ and the meaning of forgiveness; with her face contorted with emotion and her voice cracking she said, “that young man, that young man, I forgive him” before breaking down in tears. It was a startling moment. Many in the crowd stood and applauded, tears running down their cheeks. This expression of forgiveness may or may not have been spontaneous or even surprising, but it was clearly performative.
As a former beauty pageant contestant and marketing consultant, Erika Kirk was well schooled in the presentation of self and the representation of identity-related objects. The self she presented at the memorial was that of the grieving widow, but one ready to take on a transcending mission. Like the photographs of the widow embracing her husband’s coffin she posted on the internet, this was a stylized performance, from the silver Christian cross prominent around her neck, to the sniffles and constant dabbing of her heavily made up eyes and raspy voice. While it seems disrespectful to question the authenticity of the emotions displayed, she was after all a young widow with two small children to care for, her entire presentation was scripted and as carefully staged as the event itself. The pace and pauses of her presentation, as well as the words spoken, were arranged for maximum affect. Erika Kirk’s emotions were surely deeply felt, but to reveal them in this manner, in this setting, was planned and purposeful. She would later claim however that her plea to forgive her husband’s killer was unscripted and left open until the act itself. Nevertheless, everything was calculated to move an audience, not merely to recognize and remember an individual, but also to gain support for the organization he represented and that she now would inherit. As she proclaimed during her address after announcing her new role as CEO, “America needs Turning Point USA” and by implication Erika Kirk to run it.
Like the victim and the perpetrator, Erika Kirk is part of a generation raised on the internet and suffused with social media; she is used to sharing emotions online. The boundary between the public and private has almost disappeared for this online generation. Everything is for public consumption, from religion to sex to grief and everything has a marketing potential. While not a gamer, she too was an ‘influencer’, a role that is itself entirely rooted in the internet and related social media. 10 Kirk had a podcast, a line of merchandise, and a following. She and her late husband were in their distinctive ways influencers. While Charlie Kirk targeted young men alienated from the liberal values and liberal females they found there, his widow now embodied an evangelical Christian alternative. Her self-presentation at the memorial was meant to convey her determination to continue his mission. 11
In calling Charlie Kirk a “martyr” and his death a “sacrifice,” Erika Kirk highlighted a religious framing that attributed profound meaning to the death of her husband and the act of his killing. 12 It was not merely the perpetrator who pulled the trigger, but a divine force that willed it. In such a framework, the terms “assassination” and “terror” have little significance, as the singular motivations of perpetrators are irrelevant to supernatural will. There is no one to blame or punish in a martyr’s death. In the process, individuals disappear into the collective, at the same time as insiders and outsiders are identified and noted, a division clearly noted in the speeches made by others and that would soon follow.
The next and final speaker, introduced in dramatic fashion as the 45th and 47th President of the United States, was Donald Trump, who then articulated the second defining theme of the occasion: retribution. Previous speakers, such as Donald Trump, Jr. and members of the Trump administration, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and, most emphatically, chief advisor Stephan Miller had already voiced this theme, calling out those deemed responsible for the death of Charlie Kirk. In Miller’s words: “We stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble [. . .] for those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us. What do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing.”
This left President Trump to make the definitive summation. Walking slowly to the podium to the strains of “Proud to be an American” performed live by country singer Lee Greenwood, Trump was dressed in his signature blue suit, oversized red tie and American flag pin on his lapel. After commenting on Greenwood’s vocal talents and his loyalty, Trump proclaimed the nation to be in shock and mourning over Kirk’s death, again highlighting the significance of the occasion and its meaning. He called Kirk one of the leaders of his generation and his killer, “a radicalized, cold blooded, monster.” This drew a stark contrast between the good of the victim and the evil of the perpetrator. Trump called the death an assassination, one that occurred during the exercise of the right to speak freely and because of it. The victim was “a martyr for American freedom.” The killing was here again given enhanced significance, wrapped in the nation’s flag and set within a trauma narrative of collective grief and suffering. The killing of Charlie Kirk in this telling tore at the fabric of a collective identity, as it named who was responsible, and the retribution that should follow in repair.
In the established pattern of the occasion, half-way through his approximately 45-minute eulogy. Trump recounted the many protests against Kirk’s campus appearances and the number of death threats he had received. Those responsible for this were the “Left,” “Antifa radicals” that would be punished. 13 What had been a eulogy became a political speech, where those responsible, the perpetrators, were enemies not merely of Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump, but the American nation. “Charlie’s murder was not just an attack on one man, it was an attack on our nation.” “The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us.” Trump announced he would award Kirk the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, before returning to an aggressive mode. 14 He said, “I want to bring religion back into America, bring God back into the USA. We want God back! We will fight, fight, fight,” baring his teeth as he spat out these words. Trump then called Erika Kirk back to the stage while “America the Beautiful” played over the sound system.
For his actions in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, American President Donald Trump must be included as key player. First for his role in the meaning struggle to define the situation and then, after declaring the killing an attack on the nation itself, using the power of his office to seek out and punish those deemed responsible. Defining the situation as a political assassination authorizes the arrest of the perpetrator, but also signals potential conspirators, including related organizations, groups, or institutions that might produce or encourage them. Trump and members of his administration, most strategically those in law enforcement, like the Attorney General and head of the FBI, have formidable resources to investigate and prosecute those suspected of complicity in the affair. This suggests that the legal framing of the case against the perpetrator was influenced by a partisan view in the wider polarized political context. Naming the act of killing an assassination was the first step in a trauma drama that would reach beyond partisan groups to the level of national identification.
Carrier Groups
Carrier groups are those individuals and organizations that take it upon themselves to keep the memory of the victim and a particular understanding of his death alive over time and space. They help shape and extend the power of the emotions aroused by the violent incident through constructing and disseminating narratives that frame it as collectively traumatic. Their success in part depends upon maintaining the emotive power of that framing and their own position/organizational strength regarding the means of communication. Carrier groups help transform strongly felt emotion into words and images that can be dispersed and reimagined. This process is enhanced when the images are couched within a trauma narrative, an emotional story about victim and perpetrator that can be told and retold in various formats.
In the case of Charlie Kirk, beyond the organization he founded the central force here was the President of the United States, an authority with enormous resources and access to multiple means of communication and distribution. These were applied in full force to transform his killing into a matter of national significance through a narrative scripting and ritual practice that elevated the victim to heroic martyrdom in the nation’s name. In the polarized political context in which this occurred, those who did not accept this framing were, by implication, outside the collective, its enemies.
From the speeches at the memorial service, one can identify two emergent and potentially divergent narrative streams; the first is that of Christian martyrdom and his death a catalyst to redemptive spiritual awakening of a demarcated religious grouping. This was articulated by Erika Kirk, with her references to “God’s Plan” and her husband’s deeply rooted “spirituality.” In this telling, “assassination” and the punishment of the perpetrator is not essential; what is essential is reference to a higher order of meaning that includes proscribed collective identification. The second is that of political retribution. Here “assassination” is essential, as it identifies a political motive and the possibility of collective responsibility at the same time as it distinguishes victim and perpetrator and demarcates insiders and outsiders. This was a trauma narrative most forcefully articulated by Donald Trump and members of his administration. The two streams are not necessarily mutually exclusive as there is room for retribution within the Christian tradition as well; there is however a potential tension between them that could contribute to an eventual fracturing. During the memorial service however, the two strands, as represented by Donald Trump and Erika Kirk, projected a united front, a team with common goals.
This relates directly to the third carrier group, the MAGA movement itself, where the importance of Kirk’s death for mobilization and collective identification is key. 15 To the extent MAGA is a movement with broad appeal beyond Donald Trump and the Republican Party, the significance of Kirk’s death lies in its continued ability to foster collective identification and political mobilization between coalescing groups. While alive, Kirk was a voice that forged a coalition within the movement between Christian identity politics and right-wing populism (Chitwood, 2025). For this to continue, his death would have to be represented as more than martyrdom to Christianity, a new link would have to be drawn that mobilized a wider range of MAGA adherents and potential supporters to whatever causes this movement identifies as its own. The term “assassination” appears important here, where the motivations of the perpetrator and the symbolic identification of the victim are of central importance. With reference to Kirk’s killing, the danger to a wider coalition would be competing claims about why Kirk was assassinated and by whom. This is the province of conspiracy theory and there are now several circulating within the fracturing MAGA world.
Regarding the meaning and memory of the killing of Charlie Kirk, the carrier group most directly affected is the organization he founded, Turning Point USA, now under Erika Kirk’s leadership. The organization has coordinated its own memorial ceremonies, most of them on college campuses where it maintains local chapters. Like the main event in Arizona, these smaller ceremonies moved between memorializing Kirk and recruiting new members. The organization claims 1400 college chapters and over 3000 high school clubs around the country and hopes that these will continue to function after their charismatic leader’s death. 16 Erika Kirk has promised to carry on her husband’s regular tours and appearances on this circuit. Several celebrity figures, including Vice President Vance and right-wing podcasters Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck have participated in these tours, but this projected unity has fractured. The circumstances of Kirk’s death, whether it was an assassination or a murder will most likely not be a significant factor in the narrative that is constructed to give a common identity and mobilizing cause for this organization. More important will be Kirk’s photogenic image and voice, recalling in the collective imagination a charismatic founder who died young and under tragic circumstances, a missionary who founded an organization that embodies his spirit.
Conclusion
The killing of a public figure can arouse feelings of identification, empathy, and loss among groups of people, even if they are not part of any political constituency in the narrow sense. As opposed to murders, political assassinations are more likely to engage communities, affecting and including some while excluding others. Such a killing can create a community, at least in the associative sense, as much as it can threaten to destroy one. At the very least, incidents of targeted yet unexpected violence trigger a search for meaning and understanding, as much as the search for those responsible. What I have called the meaning struggle in the aftermath of such violence can be seen as part of a community building process, to attract supporters to one interpretation of the incident at the expense of others. This can be understood as one of the aims of any perpetrator carrying out a targeted killing, to fracture the community that their victim is imagined to represent, while carrier groups aim at repairing or reforming those communities in the aftermath.
The meaning of such a performative act, however, is not determined by the intentions of the actors, perpetrators, or carrier groups, no matter how much social power they may have at their disposal. Because they involve multi-layered audiences, the meaning of such an incident is an outcome of an attribution contest that is difficult to manage or predict. In the discursive combat following a targeted killing, representing the significance of the victim, who they are, what they represent, and the motivations of the perpetrator, are central aspects of this meaning struggle. The reactions of authorities are crucial in this process, especially as their social positions command access to mass media, which can then be used to calm and diffuse or inflame the powerful emotions evoked by the incident. With the rise of internet-based social media, the spaces where this meaning struggle is carried out has expanded to include a more personalized discursive space, where networks of anonymous individuals can debate the meaning of the act at the same time as influential persons may use their authority to manage and influence that process.
To his killer, Kirk was a representative figure, sponsoring what he deemed a ‘hateful’ program to a large and familiar campus-based and online following. The act of killing was in that sense a targeted and premeditated attempt to influence a community. Kirk’s death set off not only a meaning struggle, but also a power struggle that eventually fractured rather than solidified the community Kirk considered himself part of. This was most likely an unintended consequence of the murderous act. The ultimate outcome of the meaning struggle in the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk remains uncertain, but the unity that was apparent at the memorial celebration proved short-lived. Even as a media event with a potential global following, there was never an attempt to extend the boundaries of the community far beyond the MAGA movement, but rather to solidify that community through the exclusion of others. That consensus building within an established coalition did not last long. It soon fractured into a power struggle to fill the vacuum that opened in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. This fractional meaning struggle has featured conspiratorial theories about what happened and who was responsible for his killing that are still ongoing.
The majority of studies using the cultural trauma framework have traced the trauma drama from breach to collective repair as successful reintegration through the establishment of a consensus about the meaning of the initial rupture. Always difficult to achieve, such consensus is even more difficult to achieve in a polarized national polity. Though we still await the trial and punishment of the perpetrator and the commemoratory rituals for the victim, these are likely to reinforce an interpretative divide rather than secure a wider consensus. What we have studied here is the attempt to construct and promote trauma drama, to create a crisis and internal unity but not consensus.
While this study was framed and analyzed through cultural trauma theory, political assassination has long been a topic of scholarly interest, including by cultural sociologists who characterized it as a form of symbolic violence (Eyerman, 2011). There are two clear points of reference that help contextualize Kirk’s killing in this regard. The first concerns statistical data that reveal the increase in political violence in the USA over the last decades, where the numbers have reached levels not seen since the 1970s (Perlinger, 2015). Several factors explain this development, including increased political polarization and growing ideological extremism, the weakening of trust in mediating institutions, and “the erosion of traditional gatekeeping mechanisms such as mainstream media and political parties” (Alexander, 2025). We have discussed some of this in the preceding sections. A second point of reference concerns a noted shift in motivations for political murder and, relatedly, an expanded range of potential targets, to include “mid-level politicians, local government officials, journalists, activists, and even influencers with large public followings [. . .] reflecting the broader diffusion of political power in the digital age, where individuals outside the highest echelons of government can shape discourse and become targets as a result” (Alexander, 2025). Charlie Kirk’s killing fits clearly in this pattern.
At least since the 1990s, one can note a dramatic shift in the actions and motivations for what authorities in the United States have labeled “domestic terrorism,” including political murder. In previous decades, such actions were most often carried out through ideological frameworks rooted in extremist organizations and groups. Since the turn of the 21st century, a shift has occurred to lone wolf actions carried out by individuals whose radicalization occurred within online communities (Hoffman and Ware, 2025). The development of decentralized, leaderless cells, rather than the formal, hierarchical organizational structures that characterized the ideological driven political murders of the 1970s, now underpins mass shootings and related forms of political murder. Combined with social media broadcasting and the live streaming of violent acts, this has fundamentally altered the actors and actions of contemporary political violence. Further research could very well expand on the analysis provided here to include the wider consideration of these factors with regard to the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
