Charlie Kirk considered himself a defender of Jews and Israel

JTA -Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist murdered while speaking at a Utah university on 10 September, frequently characterised himself as a defender of the Jews and Israel, even as he faced criticism from across the spectrum over his comments about Jews and from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and others over his role in the mainstreaming of the far-right.

Politically conservative Jewish groups mourned Kirk’s death. Kirk was the chief executive and co-founder of Turning Point USA, an influential youth organisation in conservative politics. He played a crucial role in galvanising youth support for United States President Donald Trump, and came to represent a vanguard of Christian nationalism in the US.

“Charlie has been a shining light in these troubled times for the American Jewish community, and we are deeply saddened at his passing,” the Republican Jewish Coalition said. “All people of good will must condemn this horrific murder and demand justice for Charlie.”

Morton Klein, the chief executive of the Zionist Organization of America, said Kirk had recently accepted an invitation to speak at the group’s national gala later this year.

“Charlie Kirk was a great man, a personal friend and an ally who loved Israel and the Jewish people,” Klein said. “I had the pleasure of walking all over Jerusalem with him and sitting for an incredible interview with him on his radio show where for over an hour, Charlie asked great questions to better understand the Arab-Islamist war against Israel, the Jewish people, and the West.”

Among the first global leaders to send their prayers following reports that Kirk had been shot was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kirk was a vocal backer of Israel, visiting the country multiple times and more recently staunchly supporting its war in Gaza amid mounting headwinds from an isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

After visiting Israel in May 2018 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the US Embassy in Jerusalem and again in 2019, Kirk described his visits to the country as eye-opening.

He told a crowd at a Jerusalem bar during his second trip, “I’m very pro-Israel. I’m an evangelical Christian, I’m a conservative, I’m a Trump supporter, I’m a Republican, and my whole life, I have defended Israel.”

Kirk at times drew criticism for veering into antisemitism as he discussed matters related to Israel and other topics. In October 2023, just days after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, Kirk drew controversy after he derided Jewish philanthropy to American universities for “subsidising your own demise by supporting institutions that breed antisemites and endorse genocidal killers”.

Weeks later on The Charlie Kirk Show, he also said that Jewish people control “not just the colleges; it’s the nonprofits; it’s the movies; it’s Hollywood; it’s all of it”.

Some conservatives decried his comments. Erick Erickson, a Christian radio host, posted on X that Turning Point USA was “looking like not just a grifting operation, but an antisemitic grifting operation”. Ben Domenech, the editor of The Spectator, wrote that if Kirk remained the head of his organisation, “the right has an antisemite problem that will follow them into the coming elections”.

The next month, Kirk defended Elon Musk on his show after the technology mogul responded, “You have said the actual truth” to a user who had posted a reference to the “Great replacement” theory, writing that Jews were “coming to the disturbing realisation” that immigrants to the US “don’t exactly like them too much”.

“Now I don’t like generalisations. Not every Jewish person believes that, but it’s true the Anti-Defamation League was part and parcel with Black Lives Matter,” said Kirk on his show, later adding that, “It’s true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing, anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.”

Kirk’s concerns about the erosion of status for white Americans were central to his politics, and he also railed against what he called “Marxism” efforts to curtail gun rights, and transgender people, about whom he was answering a question when he was shot.

In April 2024, as pro-Palestinian protests spread through American campuses, Kirk backed Republican crackdowns and urged them also to confront what he called “institutional hatred of white people”.

“I’m loving all the GOP [Grand Old Party] unity against Jew hatred. It has no place in America,” wrote Kirk. “Can we get the same unity about the institutional hatred of white people on campus? It’s even more embedded than the antisemitism.”

After Kirk was given a prime time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention, the Democratic Majority for Israel launched a petition calling on it to rescind its pick over what it called Kirk’s “long record of antisemitic statements”.

In a backgrounder about Turning Point USA from the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL accused Kirk of creating a “vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists” and promoting “Christian nationalism”.

Rejecting the criticism, Kirk long framed himself as a defender of the Jews.

“No non-Jewish person my age has a longer or clearer record of support for Israel, sympathy with the Jewish people, or opposition to antisemitism than I do,” he posted on X in April as part of a critique of David Friedman, the former US ambassador to Israel, challenging his view of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. He said he rejected the idea of punishing people for their speech.

“Once ‘antisemitism’ becomes valid grounds to censor or even imprison somebody, there will be frantic efforts to label all kinds of speech as antisemitic, the same way the left labelled all kinds of statements as ‘racist’ to justify silencing their opposition,” he said. “Not only that, but all of this won’t even work.”

In a post on X in August, Kirk called on his supporters to reject antisemitism. “Jew hate has no place in civil society. It rots the brain, reject it,” he said.

Kirk has also frequently defended Israel in its prosecution of the war in Gaza. In July, he posted a segment from his show on X in which he defended the country against allegations that it was starving Palestinians.

Last month, he hosted a discussion with Gen Z Turning Point USA students in which they talked about waning support for Israel among Republicans and rampant antisemitism in the United States.

“As you’ll see, they don’t hate Israel or Jewish people, but they are sceptical about the state of America’s current relationship with the country, and they want to be confident America’s leaders are putting their own country first,” wrote Kirk in a post on X about the discussion. “I have been working hard to help conservative politicians, donors, and friends of Israel better understand this dynamic.”

Kirk is survived by his wife and two young children.