\n<\/p>\n
When Tyler Bowyer logged on to Benny Johnson\u2019s X livestream on Thursday morning, pieces of tissue were stuck to the stubble on his unshaven face. Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, had clearly been crying. Just a few hours before, he\u2019d seen a video of his close friend and colleague Charlie Kirk being fatally shot in the neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he would want more than anything is for people to channel their anger into proper activism,\u201d Bowyer told Johnson, a few minutes later advising viewers: \u201cConsider yesterday that moment<\/em>\u2014that turning<\/em> point<\/em> for you\u2014of thinking about getting involved in your local community or running for office.\u201d Later, Andrew Kolvet, a longtime spokesperson for Kirk, joined the stream and echoed Bowyer. \u201cCharlie was not a revolutionary,\u201d Kolvet said. \u201cHe does not want to see the rage we\u2019re all feeling be misdirected to evil\u201d and would want \u201cmore speech, more freedom, less violence.\u201d<\/p>\n This was not a gathering of individuals known for levelheadedness. Johnson is widely regarded as a far-right provocateur, and Bowyer was one of 11 people charged in the 2020 fake-elector plot in Arizona (the case remains active but was sent back to a grand jury in May). But the explicit calls for nonviolence coming from some of those who were particularly close to Kirk is noteworthy and meaningful in a moment when others on the political right, including elected officials, are not being equally careful with their words. Asked on Fox News yesterday morning how to address political violence, President Donald Trump did not seize the chance to lower the temperature. \u201cThe radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don\u2019t want to see crime,\u201d he said. \u201cThe radicals on the left are the problem.\u201d \u201cDemocrats own what happened today,\u201d Representative Nancy Mace told reporters on Wednesday after the news of Kirk\u2019s shooting broke. On X, Elon Musk wrote, \u201cThe Left is the party of murder.\u201d<\/p>\n Other Kirk allies have similarly characterized this as a crucial moment for the country. \u201cAmerica now has a turning point,\u201d Jack Posobiec, the right-wing influencer and Turning Point contributor, said yesterday on The<\/em> Charlie<\/em> Kirk<\/em> Show<\/em>, which has been rechristened The<\/em> Charlie<\/em> Kirk<\/em> Memorial<\/em> Show<\/em>. He did not explain exactly what he meant. But how and who defines the phrase turning point will determine whether the next few weeks bring confrontation, deescalation, or something in between.<\/p>\n Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday at an event in Utah, launched Turning Point in 2012 to create a conservative youth movement in the United States. Following his death, figures from across his movement have called for greater political involvement. Students at Vanderbilt announced on Thursday that they\u2019re forming a new chapter of Turning Point. \u201cRest assured that TPUSA and the entire conservative movement just got bolder, stronger, and more effective than ever,\u201d Alex Clark, a Turning Point contributor and the host of the podcast Culture<\/em> Apothecary<\/em>, wrote on X. She later shared a link for starting a new chapter. “Charlie would want a million Charlie Kirks to run for office over the course of what would have been his normal lifetime,\u201d Bowyer told Johnson yesterday. \u201cAnd if we can do that, then we\u2019ve lived up to Charlie Kirk\u2019s name and his passion and his desire to save this republic.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of Kirk\u2019s allies are seeking to portray him as a Martin Luther King Jr.\u2013like avatar of nonviolence. Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, herself a former Turning Point organizer, has written a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson requesting that a statue of Kirk be installed in the U.S. Capitol. On social media, mourners, including Kolvet, have shared an illustration of Kirk standing alongside Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus. \u201cStop calling Charlie Kirk a \u2018conservative activist,\u2019\u201d the conservative commentator Glenn Beck wrote on X. \u201cHe was a civil rights leader.\u201d<\/p>\n Yesterday, with Posobiec hosting, The<\/em> Charlie<\/em> Kirk<\/em> Memorial<\/em> Show<\/em> opened with the kind of tribute usually afforded to former presidents and statesmen by major networks. It aired videos of impromptu vigils for Kirk held on college campuses across the country. Mike Johnson, who joined Posobiec on the show, said that members of Congress were already discussing ideas for memorializing him. Johnson seemed to be trying to avoid inflaming the calls for retribution that emerged quickly from some on the right, urging conservatives to carry on Kirk\u2019s fight \u201cnot timidly, but boldly,\u201d before quickly adding, \u201cBut in love.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, other Kirk allies have occasionally taken a more vengeful posture\u2014one that seems to support, if not violent reprisal, then some kind of crackdown on Kirk\u2019s ideological opponents. On Johnson\u2019s show on Thursday, Luna warned that \u201cthere are going to be examples made of people\u201d and added, \u201cEveryone who has been responsible for coordinating this, you basically just took on the entire U.S. government.\u201d In the Bible, Luna noted, \u201cit says you don\u2019t make peace with evil; you destroy it.\u201d Later, in an interview on Fox News, Posobiec suggested that action should be taken \u201cat the national and the federal level\u201d to \u201cstop the perpetuation\u201d of this violence.<\/p>\n \u201cGod, please heal this nation. Our society is sick,\u201d Riley Gaines, a Turning Point contributor, wrote Thursday on X. Yesterday morning, she sounded different. \u201cPublications like @nytimes,\u201d she wrote, \u201care the reason Charlie is dead.\u201d She followed up a few hours later with \u201cWednesday: disbelief. Thursday: sadness. Friday: anger.\u201d<\/p>\n As time passes, more news will emerge, and rhetoric may shift. So, too, might interpretations of this moment. Kirk\u2019s allies\u2014and especially Trump\u2014will play an outsize role in determining what happens next. In a press briefing yesterday in Salt Lake City, Utah Governor Spencer Cox appeared to understand the stakes quite well. \u201cHistory will dictate if this is a turning point for our country, but every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us,\u201d he said. \u201cI desperately call on every American\u2014Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative, MAGA, all of us\u2014to please, please follow what Charlie taught me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Tyler Bowyer logged on to Benny Johnson\u2019s X livestream on Thursday morning, pieces of tissue were stuck to the stubble on his unshaven face. Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, had clearly been crying. Just a few hours before, he\u2019d seen a video of his close friend and colleague Charlie Kirk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[6558,291],"class_list":{"0":"post-21036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-point","9":"tag-turning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}