OPINION: What I learnt from Charlie Kirk

I never expected to find myself at a conservative conference, surrounded by 15,000 people in MAGA caps and cowboy hats. Yet there I was last year at the Turning Point USA convention in Phoenix, Arizona, representing 7 October war hero Nimrod Palmach from Israel. As a British ex-pat who still finds America’s political landscape completely bewildering, I was decidedly not among my people.

The three-day experience proved to be one of the most enlightening and challenging encounters of my life. I am writing in the wake of his death, but as my friends know, I have talked about what I learnt there often since. Now with the tragic loss of Charlie Kirk, it feels more significant than ever.

I went to Phoenix with a specific mission: to share the “Survived to Tell” virtual reality experience of 7 October survivors, which I had helped produce. Our small booth, sponsored by Texans for Israel, was one of only two Jewish organisations among thousands of exhibitors at one of the most influential conservative conferences in the country. This under-representation troubled me, but it also made our presence there more necessary.

I noticed immediately that I was comfortable taking down the giant “Trump 2024” posters that festooned our booth. I replaced them with two large Israeli flags, as the project I was representing was from ISRAEL – a small Israeli non-profit. As I put up the Israeli flags, I wondered if I would be able to do that at a progressive rally. It was a teachable moment. I felt safer among people I had nothing in common with and with whom I largely disagreed.

Turning Point organiser Charlie Kirk had just turned 31 years old. I genuinely could not believe what I saw before my eyes. This dynamic young leader had created something extraordinary from nothing. Like it or not, I instantly admired him – not for anything he said, but for everything about what he did, how he did it, and how he composed himself. I watched him speak half a dozen times from several yards away during the convention, witnessing his eloquence, his intelligence, his persuasive power, and his demeanour up close. He moved through the massive convention centre like a whirlwind, surrounded by aides, somehow managing to appear at every scheduled event every few moments at the mega conference he had built.

Kirk embodied what I can only describe as a driven social and political entrepreneur. Whether you agreed with his politics or not—and I certainly didn’t—I had to respect what he had accomplished. He had found and galvanised an audience with a worldview that, over time, I began to appreciate for its nuance, complexity, and genuine conviction.

The convention floor buzzed with energy as conservative luminaries like Stephen Bannon, Candace Owen, and Tucker Carlson produced their podcasts and TV shows right in front of my eyes. The crowd awaiting the appearance of President-elect Donald Trump were in a near frenzy. It was political theatre, but beyond the razzmatazz I observed something more authentic—a community gathering around shared beliefs and values.

Over three days, I engaged in countless conversations with delegates whose views differed drastically from mine on politics, healthcare, gender, race, religion, and other social issues. Some of what I heard disturbed me greatly, particularly the discrimination against transgender Americans and the dismissive attitudes toward public health. The triumphalist rhetoric following Trump’s electoral victory felt like a political jamboree, epitomised by the stage-stomping, high-decibel enthusiasm of Donald Trump Jr.

Yet the more I talked with attendees, the more I understood them. Many possessed clear moral, religious, and philosophical frameworks that guided their conservative beliefs. They weren’t the caricatures I might have imagined but thoughtful people with genuine convictions about America’s future. These conversations became learning moments that reinforced one of my core principles as an educator: the critical importance of learning about others whose views you don’t share and trying to understand their universe of thinking.

This is where Charlie Kirk’s true genius lay—not just in his political acumen, but in creating a space where such perspectives could be shared. My turning point at Turning Point was the opportunity to engage respectfully with people across my ideological divide. The fact that I could attend that convention, disagree with much of what I heard, discuss different perspectives with hundreds of attendees, and come away personally, politically, and intellectually enriched speaks to something powerful about both Kirk’s leadership and American democracy itself.

The loss of Charlie Kirk represents another blow to our democratic discourse. While I shared virtually nothing in common with his worldview, he taught me something vital about the power of political literacy. In an era of increasing polarisation, he held his point of view but was not a polarising person. He died doing what he loved to do most—debating the issues with persuasiveness and conviction in public—one of the most powerful aspects of American society.

The death of Charlie Kirk highlights in the most final way possible the need for the type of political debate Kirk believed in—the opportunity to vigorously stand up for our beliefs and points of view. Kirk had originally created Turning Point as a youth convention (although I saw very few 16-year-olds on my visit). His point is that the political future is with our young people. If we take him seriously, and we should, we must teach our children to know what they believe, debate vigorously, disagree respectfully, and move forward together—without resorting to violence.

As I watched Charlie Kirk run back and forth across the convention floor, I had a sense I was looking at a figure that would dominate the political landscape of my children’s children. Alas, they will not get to know or respectfully disagree with him, because the more I listened, the more I knew I disagreed with him on most things. Charlie Kirk had an outsized impact on American politics for a man of his age, and so the least I can do in his honour is to fight for the system he believed in. Our democracy depends on it if today is not to be the beginning of the end of democracy itself.

• Stephen Smith is a storyteller, speaker and founder of Memory Workers, and Executive Director Emeritus of the USC Shoah Foundation