Mr Trump himself said the moment marked a “revival” for the conservative movement.
Coupled with his tete-a-tete with frenemy billionaire Elon Musk and a discernible quieting of other internal tensions – including rancour over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation – the assassination has coalesced the party in a way nothing had since the start of Trump 2.0.
One attendee, Ms Cindy Warford, a 62-year-old grandmother of two ardent teenage Kirk fans, told Reuters the moment was “this generation’s Martin Luther King or JFK, or even 9/11”. These sentiments, seen across reporting on the memorial in Mr Kirk’s adopted home state of Arizona, cannot be written off as hyperbole; they surely reflect the mood across America’s conservative spectrum.
For those of us looking in from outside, the more striking development is not the domestic martyrisation of Mr Kirk, but the speed with which his death became a cross-border rallying cry for kindred movements.
The resonance was clear across continents, with eulogies from high-profile right-wing leaders flowing in from South Africa to Latin America, and here, in this region, from South Korea and Japan.
To use the words of Hong Kong-based scholar Alejandro Reyes in a Sept 17 commentary in the Foreign Policy magazine, Mr Kirk’s “canonisation after death revealed the consolidation of a right-wing international”, recalling the Communist International or Comintern led by the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.
Mr Reyes suggested Mr Kirk – young, telegenic and digitally fluent – united otherwise disparate right-wing actors by championing common opposition to pluralism, gender equality and secular cosmopolitanism.
His death “made him into a martyr around whom illiberal forces could rally, regardless of creed or colour”. Indeed, the globalisation of Mr Kirk’s message is no happenstance.
In his visits to Japan and South Korea, days before his assassination, he indicated his desire to help defeat a “globalist menace”. The outpouring of solidarity from both countries – each with formidable conservative forces – was Asia’s loudest.
Mr Sohei Kamiya, leader of Japan’s Sanseito party that made major gains in the recent Upper House election with an anti-immigration, “Japan first” platform, wrote on X that Mr Kirk was a “comrade committed to building the future with us” and “though his life was taken, no one can take his convictions or silence the message he carried”.
Around the world, conservative leaders of various stripes, who might never have found common cause otherwise, struck similar notes, using the moment to skewer their ideological opponents.
The Belgian far-right activist Dries Van Langenhove declared: “Charlie Kirk was shot for having far more moderate opinions on almost every issue than all of us here. If they will kill him, they want to kill us too, and they will – if we let this continue.”
A force for good?
If this movement is taking shape – not just having a “moment” that will fizzle out – the natural question must be: What does it mean to have this congealing of a global right? And what does it mean that Mr Kirk’s messages unite such disparate groups?
To answer this requires going beyond the reams of commentary celebrating Mr Kirk’s status as a poster boy for civil disagreement.
Indeed he was – even his ideological opponents conceded they wished they had his communication skill and charisma to connect with young people, especially young men, who make up the majority driving the right’s resurgence.
But given the rawness of his killing, there has been little discussion of Mr Kirk’s actual ideas, little examination of whether the globalisation of his views – of him as the millennial Pied Piper of right-wingism – is a force for good.
Even disregarding the arguments of his most dogmatic left-wing opponents, one arrives at their conclusion: that however decent his engagement methods, there is dark insidiousness in two pillars of his thought now going global – extreme anti-immigration fervour that “others” non-natives of any country, and a world view, coloured by Mr Kirk’s strand of evangelism, that positions Islam as a nefarious faith of conquest rather than peace.
On both counts, assessed from a place like Singapore, where multiculturalism and openness to immigration are existential, the only conclusion is a hope that the tide he has posthumously unleashed never entrenches itself on our shores.
Mr Kirk’s arguments are beguiling and dangerous.
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Consider his common cause with Sanseito in vilifying non-native residents.
At a Tokyo event with members of the party, he claimed foreigners and immigrants were “secretly funnelling themselves into Japanese life”. He declared: “They want to erase, replace and eradicate Japan by bringing in Indonesians, by bringing in Arabs, by bringing in Muslims.”
This, bear in mind, about a society with one of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s lowest foreign-born populations – standing at just 3 per cent.
On the Islamophobic strand Mr Kirk represented, his own words are equally damning. In April, he declared: “Islam has conquest values. They seek to take over land and territory, and Europe is now a conquered continent.”
This thinking has found resonance elsewhere, and in how some of the most extreme figures in world politics see opportunity in Mr Kirk’s martyrdom to advance their own agendas.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, notorious for his strident opposition to a future Palestinian state, posted on X: “The collusion between the global left and radical Islam is the greatest danger to humanity today. Charlie Kirk saw the danger and warned about it.”
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders went further, declaring: “I repeat (Kirk’s) true words that are valid for Europe as well: ‘Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of Europe.’”
By any reasonable measure, an individual who inspires such divisive thinking would be persona non grata in a multicultural society. What response, then, but alarm when his martyrdom now galvanises a global movement built on these very foundations?
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Defence against the dark arts
What are the inoculations to keep the tide out – or at least at bay?
It may seem trite, having been repeated across the world’s democracies since Mr Trump’s first election win in 2016, but it bears re-articulating.
First, the counterforces aiming to neutralise the ascendant right wing – not just the left, but the majority whose political views are middle-of-the-road, including those on the right – must meet young men gravitating towards extreme positions where they are: on podcasts, in online spaces, not just on formal political stages or only during election campaigns.
Equally important is addressing the core issues driving young men rightward. The consensus points to three factors: economic displacement, a crisis of belonging and precipitous loss of trust in institutions.
Speaking about Singapore’s post-election political landscape in Parliament this week, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Ong Ye Kung touched on these core issues, noting that “populism does not appear out of nowhere”.
It arises from genuine, understandable concerns – over inequality, or excessive competition for jobs and space from foreigners. It is a challenge that political moderates must meet.
A final consideration for the rest of the world: In the US, even Mr Kirk’s arch-critics like Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid argue that Mr Kirk “had bad ideas, but the right to have and promote bad ideas without fear of punishment or persecution is core to the American project – and core to any democracy that hopes to survive.”
With greatest respect to the American project, the rest of the world – mindful of the vicious messages this rising right-wing international carries, however civilly packaged – need not accept that premise.
Mr Kirk’s assassination is abhorrent, and political violence must be condemned in the strongest terms. Yet sympathy for a victim of violence need not mean embracing the world view he championed.
In our interest, we can and should openly declare that toxic ideas seeking to divide are unwelcome in our societies.
Bhavan Jaipragas is deputy Opinion editor and a columnist at The Straits Times.
