He hosts a radio show with more than 500,000 monthly listeners. The organization he founded at age 18 and still heads today commanded $55 million in revenue last year. That group is, by its own description, the “largest and fastest growing youth organization in the United States” with a presence on more than 3,500 college and high-school campuses.
In only twelve years, Charlie Kirk has established himself as a rising star in the world of right-wing politics. Turning Point USA, founded in 2012 to promote free speech on campuses, has become a mainstay of campus conservative politics. His meteoric rise as Donald Trump’s youth voice shows no signs of stopping given the GOP’s infatuation with the former president. The energy of young conservatives is squarely behind the combative nature of politics that Kirk endorses. The face of youth conservatism is Kirk’s, and that seems unlikely to change. As a young conservative myself, I would find it easy to jump on his bandwagon. The political winds are at his back, and it would be pragmatic to align with him. It is also true that in a world where the young Americans who aren’t already on the left are decidedly unengaged, Turning Point proves that it is possible to get college students invested in right-wing politics. It is tempting to look at Kirk and the circumstances that have put air beneath his wings and conclude that such a man should be welcomed as a representative of American conservatism broadly.
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