The conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of right-wing student organization Turning Point USA, was assassinated Wednesday as he spoke before a crowd at Utah Valley University on the first stop of a fall campus tour. Kirk was 31 years old and founded Turning Point when he was just 18. A major cheerleader for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, he was killed by a single shot fired from a roof as he was responding to a question from an audience member about mass shootings. No suspect has been identified. Kirk transformed politics in the U.S., says journalist Jeff Sharlet, by organizing conservative youth around cultural issues including opposition to immigration and civil rights for LGBTQ people, people of color and women. Sharlet, who has written extensively about right-wing and white nationalist movements in the United States, says Kirk’s “big issue was singular: It was whiteness.” He discusses Kirk’s legacy and the implications of this latest high-profile instance of political violence.

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