Tag: assassination

  • Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Through the Lens of Collins and Hoffer (Glen McGhee and Dahn Shaulis)

    Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Through the Lens of Collins and Hoffer (Glen McGhee and Dahn Shaulis)

    The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, offers a stark illustration of how violent acts against movement leaders can reconfigure political energy on U.S. campuses. Kirk was the leader of Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action (formerly Students for Trump), and Turning Point Faith. He was also the creator of the Professor Watchlist and the School Board Watchlist. 

    Far from diminishing conservative student mobilization, Kirk’s death appears to have amplified it—at least in the short term. Randall Collins’ sociology of interaction ritual chains and Eric Hoffer’s classic analysis of mass movements provide a useful lens for understanding both the surge and the likely limits of this moment.

    Collins’ Emotional Energy Framework Applied to Kirk’s Death

    Collins identifies four outcomes of successful ritual gatherings: group solidarity, emotional energy, sacred symbols, and moral righteousness. In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, conservative students and evangelical leaders have experienced all four in compressed, amplified form.

    Pastors quickly declared Kirk a “Christian martyr.” Rob McCoy invoked biblical precedent, while Jackson Lahmeyer described the murder as “spiritual in nature and an attack on the very institution of the church.” This religious framing elevates Kirk from activist to sacred symbol.

    The immediate response has been extraordinary. Turning Point USA claims more than 32,000 requests for new chapters in the 48 hours following his death. Collins would interpret this as emotional energy seeking new ritual outlets. In this sense, Kirk’s martyrdom has become not just a grievance but a generator of collective action.

    The memorial scheduled for September 21 at State Farm Stadium—with capacity for more than 60,000 and featuring Donald Trump—is set to be the largest ritual gathering in the history of conservative student politics. Collins would predict this to be a high-intensity moment of “collective effervescence,” the kind of event that extends emotional energy for months if not years.

    Hoffer’s Mass Movement Dynamics and Conservative Student Mobilization

    Hoffer’s The True Believer provides a complementary angle. He argued that mass movements thrive on frustration, doctrine, and the presence of either a leader or a transcendent cause. Kirk’s assassination intensified frustration while transforming him into a more powerful symbolic figure than he was in life.

    Student conservatives now have all three: grievance (left-wing violence), a sacred cause (free speech framed as religious duty), and a heroic narrative (following a martyred leader). In Hoffer’s words, martyrdom provides both “grievance and transcendent meaning.”

    The shift from Kirk as a living leader to Kirk as martyr reflects Hoffer’s principle of substitutability. Loyalty has already migrated from the man himself to the mythology of his sacrifice. College Republicans chairman William Donahue compared the killing to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, framing it as a watershed for the movement.

    Sustainability and the Ritual Problem

    The paradox is that Kirk’s most important contribution—the high-energy confrontational rituals of his “Prove Me Wrong” campus debates—cannot be replicated without him. These events generated viral spectacle, solidified conservative identity, and created sacred moments of confrontation. They were, in Collins’ terms, engines of emotional energy.

    The September 21 memorial may provide a one-time boost, but Collins emphasizes that emotional energy must be renewed through repeated rituals. Without Kirk’s charisma and willingness to create confrontational spaces, conservative students risk energy dissipation. Already some students report greater enthusiasm for activism, while others express fear of being targeted themselves.

    The dilemma is clear: the rituals that generated the most energy (public confrontations) are the very ones most likely to invite violence. This tension may limit the sustainability of the movement’s current surge.

    The Profit Motive: Martyrdom as Marketplace

    Beyond the sociology of solidarity lies a material reality: martyrdom is also a business model. Conservative organizations are already converting Kirk’s death into a revenue stream. Within hours of the assassination, Turning Point USA launched fundraising appeals invoking Kirk’s “sacrifice,” while conservative merchandisers began selling commemorative t-shirts, hats, and wristbands emblazoned with slogans like “Martyr for Freedom” and “Charlie Lives.”

    Publishing houses are reportedly fast-tracking hagiographic biographies, while streaming platforms are negotiating for documentaries. Memorial events, livestreams, and “Martyrdom Tours” are being packaged as both spiritual rituals and ticketed spectacles. Kirk’s death, in other words, is generating not only emotional energy but also financial capital.

    This profit motive raises questions about the sincerity of the rhetoric surrounding Kirk’s martyrdom. While Collins and Hoffer help explain the emotional pull, the commodification of grief ensures that the “sacred symbol” is also a lucrative brand. Conservative student organizing may thus be sustained less by spontaneous devotion than by a well-financed industry of grievance, merchandise, and media spectacle.

    Indicators to Watch

    Several markers will reveal whether Kirk’s martyrdom produces lasting transformation or burns out in ritual dissipation:

    • Memorial impact: Attendance and intensity at the September 21 gathering will test whether Kirk’s death can generate lasting solidarity.

    • Chapter formation: The real test of Turning Point USA’s 32,000 claims will be functioning chapters in six months.

    • Leadership succession: Hoffer reminds us that movements need charismatic leaders. At present, Trump appears to be monopolizing the emotional energy, raising doubts about the rise of new student leaders.

    • Counter-mobilization: Collins’ conflict theory suggests left-wing backlash could shape whether conservative students double down or retreat.

    The Probable Trajectory

    For the next 6–18 months, conservative student mobilization is likely to grow. The movement now has the grievance, sacred symbolism, and transcendent narrative that both Collins and Hoffer identify as powerful motivators.

    But sustaining this surge will be difficult without Kirk’s unique talent for generating high-energy campus rituals. Unless new leaders emerge who can replicate or reimagine those ritual forms, the emotional energy of martyrdom may eventually dissipate.

    At the same time, the financial infrastructure now growing around Kirk’s death suggests the movement has a fallback strategy: keep the martyrdom alive as long as it remains profitable. In this way, Kirk’s assassination may prove to be not just a sociological event but also a business opportunity—one that reveals the convergence of politics, religion, and profit in contemporary conservative student life.

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  • In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, colleges must not burden speaking events

    In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, colleges must not burden speaking events

    Last week, an assassin silenced speech on a college campus. A family lost a father and a husband. As we have said without equivocation, political violence is never an acceptable response to free speech.

    Appropriately, we can expect colleges and universities to place even greater emphasis on safety and security ahead of outside speakers arriving on campus moving forward. They have a moral and legal obligation to redouble their efforts to protect free speech as well as their campus community. However, administrators must not pass those security costs along to speakers or use security concerns as pretext to cancel a speaker’s appearance. Rewarding threats of violence by taxing speech or silencing speakers will only invite more threats and more violence.

    Just as there is undeniable risk in hosting controversial speakers, there is infinite risk in surrendering the marketplace of ideas to the heckler’s veto.

    In Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992), the Supreme Court determined that government actors — like public college or university administrators — may not lawfully impose security fees based on their own subjective judgments about “the amount of hostility likely to be created by the speech based on its content.” Such fees amount to a tax on speech an administrator subjectively dislikes, or subjectively believes is likely to cause disruption or violence.

    “Speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob,” the Forsyth Court wrote, noting that “[t]hose wishing to express views unpopular with bottle throwers, for example, may have to pay more for their permit.”

    Over the years, FIRE has tracked far too many instances of campuses burdening controversial speech with hefty security fees. Some have resulted in First Amendment lawsuits, resulting in costly settlements for the institutions involved. FIRE has also often seen institutions use security concerns — without legitimate evidence — to silence expression on campus.

    Violence must never be a response to speech

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    Imposing exorbitant security fees due to the controversial nature of an event effectuates a heckler’s veto, as it allows an audience’s reaction to dictate the price a student group must pay to hold an event. This means that a student group could be priced out of holding a controversial event if the audience reaction is anticipated to be too disruptive. Just as there is undeniable risk in hosting controversial speakers, there is infinite risk in surrendering the marketplace of ideas to the heckler’s veto.

    So what should colleges do in the face of this challenge?

    First, they need to adopt and publish viewpoint- and content-neutral regulations on events. As we wrote in a 2022 letter to Pennsylvania State University, “Any administrative imposition of security fees on a student group must be guided by narrowly drawn, viewpoint- and content-neutral, reasonable, definite, and clearly communicated standards in order to comply with [the university’s]…obligations under the First Amendment.” FIRE’s Model Speech Policies for College Campuses include a security fee policy that other colleges can emulate to set themselves up for success.

    When universities silence controversy they silence opportunity — the opportunity to test ideas, sharpen arguments, and confront uncomfortable topics.

    Second, colleges must apply those regulations to make decisions about security measures on the basis of verified, specific safety concerns, rather than speculative assumptions on the basis of the speaker’s message or experiences at past events. And every effort should be made to ensure events that do present concerns are able to continue. Such strategies as increasing security, using metal detectors, and moving events online should be applied before cancellation.

    Third, colleges need to train staff to apply these standards properly to meet their dual obligations to ensure safety of attendees and the speaker during the event, and to uphold the ability of attendees to hear the speaker’s message. FIRE’s First Amendment Lessons for College Administrators can be a useful starting point for this work.

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    At the same time, colleges should educate students on freedom of speech: both its limits and its importance in our democracy. FIRE encourages colleges to begin this education on day one at orientation, guided by our Free Speech at Freshman Orientation programming. These lessons should provide students with better options for responding to disfavored speech than shoutdowns or violence. They should also reinforce why we’ve chosen in America to meet speech with which we disagree with more speech.

    When universities silence controversy they silence opportunity — the opportunity to test ideas, sharpen arguments, and confront uncomfortable topics. They must meet this challenging moment not with censorship but with empowerment of free expression.

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