The Difference Between Movements

Charlie Kirk Is a Martyr. George Floyd Is a Utensil

Singular people can start movements. MLK, Gandhi, and others throughout human history started movements that created change. They sustain on their own. They spread. People can easily understand why there is a movement. They can grasp it.

The movement isn’t forced. There is no cadre of minders or secret police to enforce the movement. Its sustenance is organic.

Great movements have underpinnings that are hardwired into the human DNA. The beautiful thing about Martin Luther King was that the things he spoke about were hardwired into everyone. The people who were enforcing Jim Crow were going against their own hardwired DNA. In their heart of hearts, they knew what they were doing was against human nature.

The only way they didn’t was if they dehumanized the people they sought to dominate.

Looking at two specific movements that have been thrust upon us in the last five years, George Floyd and BLM, contrasted with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point.

Floyd was no hero. He was a drug addict and a convicted criminal. He didn’t even die at the hands of the police officer, but died of a drug overdose. However, people saw him as a tool. A centralized group took that tool and made a lot of money from it. Others used it politically against their rivals.

George Floyd was a convenient utensil. People used him to make money for themselves. They didn’t care about George Floyd. If it hadn’t been Floyd, it would have been someone else. You saw them try several times before, but because their entire movement is based on a lie, it couldn’t get going. You might remember Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, but I will also tell you to look up Tawana Brawley. Al Sharpton would be a nobody without her. She was his utensil. There are plenty of others.

Does the BLM movement sustain even today? No. It’s bankrupt. The leaders got their cash and checked out. Victim politics existed prior to Floyd and BLM. They survive only because there is so much free taxpayer money at stake to be redistributed by the government.

The only thing we know for sure is that some enterprising ambulance chaser will try to seize the next media storm to turn it into cash or power for themselves. It will be made to be about someone else, but the reality is it is about their bank account.

What about Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA?

Kirk’s message was about freedom for all and the pursuit of God. He believed strongly in the nuclear family. He took on all comers. He didn’t discriminate. He wasn’t in the game for the money. He was in the game to change lives, hearts, and minds. He was not hateful or spiteful. If you watch videos of him taking questions on college campuses, he is patient and kind. He’s empathetic. He listens. No doubt, he parries and he makes his points strongly. He’s not afraid to tell people they are incorrect. After all, the theme of his tours was “Prove me wrong”.

He also wasn’t fake. He was authentic. That’s what made him powerful. He didn’t have to remember what he said when because he spoke extemporaneously and used the same message over and over again. He had original texts and original principles that he could rely on to figure things out.

The movement Charlie started is directly coded in human DNA. It’s also got a great foundation. Classical Western Civilization. Socrates, Plato, JS Mill, Adam Smith, David Hume, and, of course, the American Founders who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Do you think it will sustain?

The reason his movement was so novel was that from Kindergarten to college graduation, students are being indoctrinated, not taught. My good friend Laura Hollis is a Professor of Law at Notre Dame. She has noticed the far leftward shift and change in academia over her career. I love this article she wrote about the polarization of America. If you know Laura, she is like Charlie. Absolutely genuine.

The reason his movement will sustain is that when you drink from the fountain of freedom and realize everything you have been taught is wrong, you change. You focus. You become enlightened, and you thirst for more.

I know people who were never exposed to the Economist Thomas Sowell their entire lives. Once exposed, they couldn’t get enough of him. It’s like when people from communist countries used to enter an American grocery store. They couldn’t believe it.

My friend Eli Steele wrote this on X:

Hours after the shooting of Charlie Kirk yesterday, I had a moment of realization. Nearly everyone I know—family, friends, colleagues—has had their lives affected by the Left. I saw it firsthand in the late 1980s, when my father, Shelby Steele, was called a race traitor for his views on race. Soon after, I met Thomas Sowell, who had faced similar attacks years earlier, before cancellation was even a term.

I experienced it myself at college (@CMCnews). I was ostracized for not joining the black student union and engaging in reductive black politics. As I got older, my father and I thought that exposing the truth would lead to change.

But the Left grew stronger and took control of most American institutions. It changed our moral code from individual character to immutable traits like race. We met more people harmed by this—whites who lost jobs over diversity policies, Asians discriminated for being successful, and many others shunned for speaking freely.

We kept hoping our work would make the Left see their mistakes. Instead, the Left ushered in the era of re-racialization with Trayvon Martin's death. My father fought back, denying systemic racism and defending America.

I made a documentary exposing identity politics. Then we went to Ferguson to expose the truth about the Michael Brown shooting. Our film reached across the political divide and woke some people up. But more stayed quiet, their fears real after seeing what happens to those who speak out.

Now we live in a Leftist America reshaped after George Floyd.

Through it all, Charlie Kirk spoke out bravely. His death made me reflect on my life, and that's when I saw it: nearly everyone I know has been harmed by the Left. But none of these people pitied themselves. Rather, they just shrugged at their fate and kept smiling.

Even my father, when he should be enjoying retirement, continues to work every day as he has since seventh grade. So, that moment of reflection gave me the time to draw strength from each one of those souls. They continue to fight because they refuse to give up the hope that a better America is within their reach. The death of Charlie has only made them more determined.

One of my favorite videos I have ever seen of Kirk is when a Black girl confronts him. She asks him if he thinks there is “white privilege”. He responds not with an answer, but a question. “Is there anything I can do that you can’t do?” She says, “No.” He says, “Then there must be no white privilege.” She is left changed, thinking, agrees, and walks away.

I look at younger people today and see them embracing socialism. I think I know the reason. It’s because there are so many victim classes, with more and more being created each day. Even if I am born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I figure out a way to become part of a victim class. This is one reason for the rise in “transgender” besides the economics.

Younger people also have been sold a bill of goods. Go to college and get a degree. You will be fine. What’s unsaid is that you have to learn something. Anything useful. Once you do, you have to work for it. Nothing is on a silver platter, and not everyone gets a trophy.

Younger people are coached to get credentials. They feed the poor and clothe the homeless for a day and then put it on their college entrance form. They take test prep, maybe go see a psychologist to get extra time on a standardized test. They ask their teachers for a “regrade” to get a higher mark. They get their first credential. Admittance to a prestigious university. Next, internship. Everyone is so proud. They can do no wrong. Life’s great. Study abroad is next. Then, graduation.

That’s when real life hits them in the face. They sour. Everything they have been told doesn’t come true. The game must be rigged because they are too smart.

That’s why socialism has such a siren call. Everything is rigged.

Trump said something the other day that was correct. When everyone feels like they have a chance and everyone gets a shot at success, or feels successful, we win. For a variety of reasons, people don’t necessarily feel that way. In many cases, it’s their own persona standing in front of their own progress.

Charlie showed that the world wasn’t rigged. Charlie showed that victim classes didn’t matter. It was the individual. Charlie encouraged people to form families and find God. Everything he advocated for is hardwired into human DNA. It’s also why he found so much opposition. Because his opponents’ ideas of society aren’t hardwired into human DNA and can only be enforced by an overpowering government.

If I had to make a bet in Vegas, BLM goes away. Charlie’s movement doesn’t. When Charlie wins, America wins. Not one segment of America…..all of America.

That’s the difference.