Gareth EvansWashington DC

When the right-wing American activist and influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead aged 31, he was speaking at the kind of university event that helped propel him to social media stardom.

Kirk was just 18 when he co-founded Turning Point USA, a student organisation focused on spreading conservative ideas on college campuses. As he was killed with a single bullet, he was speaking under a sign that read: ‘Prove me wrong’.

At these events, Kirk became known for his combative style, inviting students to step up to the microphone and challenge his right-wing Christian worldview in front of a baying audience.

Clips of these exchanges built him a huge following – more than 5m followers on X and 7m on TikTok – that helped him mobilise the youth vote for President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly praised Kirk for inspiring a generation of young conservative activists.

“He’s got this army of young people,” Trump told the Turning Point Action Conference last year. “These are young patriots. We thank you, Charlie.”

After Kirk’s death on 10 September, Trump said he had once told him he could become president one day.

Born in 1993, to an architect father and stock trader mother, Kirk grew up in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights. He attended an Illinois community college briefly, before dropping out to devote himself to political activism.

He also applied unsuccessfully to West Point, the elite US military academy. Kirk often referred tongue-in-cheek to his lack of a college degree when debating students and academics, revelling in his reputation as a deft public speaker and fluent debater.

During his rapid ascent in public life, Kirk, who was always willing to say things that could rouse his supporters and offend his critics, used YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram to spread his message and build his audience.

He was one of the youngest speakers when he appeared aged 22 at the Republican National Convention in 2016 and his platform grew further when his hugely successful podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, began in 2019.

Julia Pierce, a member of Turning Point USA for more than a decade, said he would be remembered for giving young conservatives in America the confidence to be themselves.

“It used to be that for young people it was cool to be a Democrat. But he made it cool to be a Trump supporter and to wear the MAGA hat and live your life with traditional family values,” she told the BBC after his death.

Kirk’s de facto role as communicator – and defender – in chief for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement on college campuses distinguished him from other right-wing activists because of his willingness to take his fight into conventionally hostile settings.

“When you pierce the liberal echo chamber, minds are changed… millions of them in fact,” he wrote in one X post. “The campus left is threatened by debate, dialogue, discussion, and differing ideas,” he said in another.

Kirk was holding a “Prove me Wrong” debate at Utah Valley University when he was killed, the latest stop in a tour of colleges around the country. This summer, he also visited the UK and debated students at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

His team would record all of them, posting short clips of the most heated exchanges online, and they followed a similar model to the “You’re Being Brainwashed” tour he held across campuses in the run-up to the 2024 election.

On stage, in TV appearances and on his podcast, he would often defend the right-wing populist and nationalist thinking that is central to the MAGA movement.

Kirk would invite students to challenge him directly on these views, and his stances on issues such as immigration, transgender rights, abortion, diversity programmes and climate change often provoked the fiercest exchanges and loudest criticism.

On an episode of the online show “Surrounded”, for example, Kirk was asked if he had a 10-year-old daughter who was raped and became pregnant whether he would want her to have the baby.

“The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered,” Kirk said.

Comments from Kirk on race and crime prompted an angry liberal backlash on numerous occasions. In 2020, he called George Floyd, a black man whose murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer sparked nationwide protests, a “scumbag”.

When discussing crime on his podcast in 2023, he said “prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people”. Referring to his opposition to affirmative action and hiring practices to boost diversity, he said on the same podcast a year later: “If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”

When a student accused him of racism in one recent campus debate, Kirk replied: “What have I ever said that’s racist? What have I ever said that’s hateful? He can’t say anything I’ve ever said that’s racist, because I’ve never said anything that’s racist.”

Kirk would often cite his Christian faith when explaining his positions on issues including Islam, gender and abortion.

“The West is the best because of Christianity. We must seek Christ first, and our national and cultural resurgence will naturally follow. For America to be great, we must remain majority Christian,” he said.

He was also accused of antisemitism in 2023, when he said on his podcast that “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”. He added: “It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing, anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.”

Kirk’s evangelical Christianity and his young family were front and centre in his politics. He married Erika Kirk, a businesswoman and former Miss Arizona, in May 2021 and they had two children together.

According to her website, Erika Kirk is the founder of Proclaim, a faith-based clothing line, a podcast host and the founder of two non-profit organisations.

She also frequently appeared by Kirk’s side at public engagements. The couple regularly posted on Instagram about their family life, but kept their children’s identities private.

In August, Kirk posted a photo of himself at the beach as they celebrated his daughter’s third birthday.

Erika Kirk has been appointed CEO of Turning Point USA, after the death of her husband.

In a livestream she aired after his death, she directly addressed “evil-doers”: “You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.

“They should all know this: if you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before you have no idea, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

Kirk’s impact on the conservative movement – and the high regard with which he was held by Trump’s inner circle – will be reflected at Sunday’s memorial service at 60,000-seat stadium in Arizona. Every senior official from the administration will be in attendance.

Over the years Kirk became an increasingly loyal and vocal supporter of the president. The relationship between the pair grew more close after he supported Trump’s 2016 campaign, with Kirk attending his most recent inauguration in January in Washington DC. He was a regular visitor at the White House during both Trump terms in office.

He remained loyal to the president even when some other MAGA stalwarts were critical of him, such as when Trump approved striking Iran in June. “With the weight of the world on his shoulders, President Trump acted for the betterment of humanity,” he said at the time.

“He cannot be replaced by any one person,” Trump’s chief-of-staff Susie Wiles said last week of Kirk when Vice-President JD Vance hosted the first episode of the slain activist’s podcast after the shooting.

“He’s got to be replaced by you, by Don Trump, by so many others.”

With additional reporting by Tiffany Wertheimer and Gabriela Pomeroy