Charlie Kirk: When Political Power Wears the Clothing of Christianity
An Op-Ed on Money, Influence, Fear, Faith and the Moral Responsibility Behind a Movement
By Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler Founder & Founding Minister, Universal Rainbow Faith Church
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Dear God, we stand here before you naked, not as straight, gay, trans, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, male, female, intersex, not as any faith or religion. Simply as Human Beings, Spiritual Beings. Taking away all pretense, clothing, ideas, attitudes, as we stand simply as a human physical form, all equal, and we stand before you, asking that our bodies, minds and spirits be healed, we ask for forgiveness, for we have forgotten who we are and what we are. We are not these bodies or identities; we are not separate from each other and from you.
All are divine, we pray to be healed. We Thank You for this healing. Heal the division, shame, guilt, suffering, violence, hatred, oppression. It has no place here. We pray for the healing of the false teachings that Led Charlie Kirk and Followers and Many Evangelicals in the ideals of Turning Point USA and Project 2025. Many will not believe they are consumed in false teachings, that they are following toxic destructive leadership that is undermining all that is good in this world, please help them to see the truth. That Domination is not Love, it is not protection, that fear is not love, that supremacy is not Christian, that exclusion does not serve this world. Throughout History hundreds of Millions of people have been led to harm others, only later to regret their actions. Here are just a few
Adolf Hitler ā Nazi Germany:Ā Tens of millions of German citizens and soldiers actively supported or complied with the regime, leading to millions of civilian and military deaths.
Joseph Stalin ā Soviet Union:Ā More than 150 million people lived under Stalinās system, with millions imprisoned, deported, subjected to forced labor, famine, or killed.
Mao Zedong ā Communist China:Ā Hundreds of millions lived through and participated in mass political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths.
Pol Pot ā Khmer Rouge, Cambodia:Ā The Khmer Rouge regime killed or caused the deaths of roughly 1.5ā2 million people, while thousands of cadres participated in enforcing its radical political system.
It is hard to find the words, even when there is 10 Trillion to 150 trillion words on the internet, and 181 to 221 Zettabytes-taking up 6 billion to 7.4 billion high capacity 30-Terabyte enterprise hard drives, that is 4.6 to 5.7 square miles-roughly 2,200 to 2,700 football fields. They would stack like bricks to the size of the great pyramid of Giza. Needing 48 to 59.2 gigawatts of continuous electricity. that is 48 to 60 Nuclear power plants.
Imagine gathering every data center on Earth into one place. The buildings themselves could cover an area approaching the size of San Francisco. Add the power plants, electrical substations, cooling systems, generators, roads and infrastructure necessary to keep humanity's digital memory alive, and we could be imagining a technological city approaching the physical scale of Philadelphia or Chicago.
An entire city built to remember what humanity has said.
What if Tomorrow it was all gone, we would only have memories, stories, printed books, what if the internet vanished, what would become of us? Are we really fortunate to be living in the digital age? We have only been online as a general public since 1993. Since the late 1960's we had the ARPANET. We have had email since 1978 through CompuServe, but did not become mainstream until the 1990's. From the first email sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 to the creation of the @ symbol, here we are now 55 years later, look how far we have come.
What If Tomorrow It Were All Gone?
What if tomorrow...
it were all gone?
No Internet.
No email.
No Google.
No Facebook.
No Instagram.
No TikTok.
No YouTube.
No cloud.
No websites.
No digital photographs stored somewhere thousands of miles away.
No instant access to almost anything humanity has ever written, recorded, photographed or discovered.
What would remain?
Memories.
Stories.
Printed books.
Photographs we could actually hold in our hands.
Letters tucked away in drawers.
Records.
Newspapers.
Libraries.
And one another.
It is remarkable to realize just how recently this world arrived.
The technological ancestor of today's Internet, ARPANET, connected its first computers in 1969.Ā By the early 1970s, people had begun sending messages across computer networks. Ray Tomlinson is credited with pioneering networked email around 1971Ā and choosing the now-familiar @ symbolĀ to separate the name of the person from the computer receiving the message.
By 1979, CompuServe was offering electronic mail services to personal-computer users. Yet email would not become an ordinary part of everyday life for most Americans until many years later.
Then came the World Wide Web.
Tim Berners-Lee developed the foundations of the Web at CERN beginning in 1989 and 1990. The Web began spreading beyond CERN in 1991. Then, in 1993, the Mosaic browser helped make this strange new digital universe understandable to ordinary computer users.
And on April 30, 1993, CERN placed the World Wide Web technology into the public domain.
That decision helped change human civilization.
Think about that.
The world in which virtually every person can carry access to humanity's accumulated knowledge in the palm of their hand is barely more than three decades old.
And from Ray Tomlinson's early networked email to today, only about 55 years have passed.
Fifty-five years.
In the span of one human lifetime, we went from sending experimental messages between enormous computers...
to carrying computers in our pockets that can instantly communicate with billions of people around the planet.
We can see someone on the other side of the Earth in real time.
We can hear almost any song ever recorded.
We can retrieve books that once required journeys to distant libraries.
We can translate languages instantly.
We can preserve photographs by the millions.
We can broadcast our thoughts to the entire world.
We can pray together from different continents.
We can attend church without entering the building.
We can find communities we never would have known existed.
A frightened LGBTQ+ teenager in a small town can discover that somewhere in the world there are people who understand them.
A person questioning their faith can explore thousands of years of spiritual thought.
A grieving person can hear the voice of someone they lost.
A grandmother can see a grandchild thousands of miles away.
A human being who feels completely alone can type a few words into a machine and discover:
I am not the only one.
That is extraordinary.
Are We Fortunate to Be Living in the Digital Age?
I believe we are.
But perhaps we have become so accustomed to the miracle that we have forgotten that it isĀ a miracle.
For nearly the entirety of human history, information traveled at the speed of a walking person, a horse, a ship, a printing press, a railroad or eventually a telephone line.
Today a thought can circle the Earth almost instantly.
Yet this extraordinary gift has brought an extraordinary paradox.
We have become more connected technologically...
while sometimes becoming less connected humanly.
We have more ways to communicate than any civilization that has ever existed,
yet loneliness remains.
We have greater access to information than any generation before us,
yet misinformation flourishes.
We have billions of photographs,
yet sometimes forget to experience the moment being photographed.
We have thousands of online āfriends,ā
yet may not know the person living next door.
We can speak instantly,
but have we become better at listening?
We can transmit knowledge,
but have we increased wisdom?
We can broadcast opinions,
but have we learned understanding?
We can connect every computer on Earth...
but can we connect our hearts?
And then there is another uncomfortable question:
What If the Internet Disappeared?
Modern civilization has placed an enormous portion of its memory inside machines.
Our photographs.
Our correspondence.
Our financial records.
Our music.
Our films.
Our businesses.
Our medical information.
Our government records.
Our scientific research.
Our family histories.
Our art.
Our newspapers.
Our sermons.
Our arguments.
Our love letters.
Our grief.
Our celebrations.
Our identities.
Increasingly, we do not possess these things physically.
We possess accessĀ to them.
And access is not the same thing as possession.
If the Internet disappeared tomorrow, humanity would not disappear.
Civilization would continue.
But the disruption would be almost unimaginable.
Communication would slow.
Commerce would convulse.
Banks and financial markets would face enormous disruption.
Transportation and logistics would struggle.
Businesses dependent upon cloud computing could become inaccessible.
Social media would vanish instantly.
Streaming entertainment would disappear.
Many people would suddenly discover that photographs they believed they āownedā existed only somewhere in the cloud.
Millions of friendships maintained principally through digital communication would become difficult or impossible to maintain.
And something else would happen.
We would have to remember again.
We would tell stories.
We would write things down.
We would pick up telephones.
We would knock on doors.
We would print photographs.
We would preserve books.
We would gather.
We would sit together.
We would look one another in the eye.
Perhaps we would rediscover that humanity existed for thousands of years before Wi-Fi.
That love existed before email.
That friendship existed before Facebook.
That beauty existed before Instagram.
That music existed before Spotify.
That community existed before social media.
That prayer existed before livestreaming.
That truth existed before Google.
And that God...
did not require an Internet connection.
The Internet may be one of humanity's greatest creations.
But it is not humanity.
A computer can preserve our words.
It cannot give those words meaning.
A server can store a photograph.
It cannot experience the love inside it.
Artificial intelligence can process unimaginable quantities of language.
It cannot replace the sacred worth of the person whose life produced those words.
Perhaps the digital age is neither inherently a blessing nor a curse.
Perhaps, like every powerful human invention, it becomes what we choose to make of it.
And perhaps the question for our generation is not simply:
How much information can we preserve?
It is:
What is worth preserving?
If tomorrow every server went dark,
if every website disappeared,
if every social-media account vanished,
if every digital argument evaporated into silence...
what would remain of us?
Hopefully more than data.
Hopefully someone would remember that we loved.
That we helped.
That we forgave.
That we welcomed.
That we stood beside the frightened.
That we defended the vulnerable.
That we made somebody feel less alone.
Because perhaps the greatest legacy we leave behind will never be measured in zettabytes.
It will be measured in the lives we touched.
And unlike the Internet,
love does not require electricity to survive.
And among trillions upon trillions of words, we still struggle to remember two of the simplest: Love one another.
Before We Build the Statue
This article began with a statue.
On September 10, 2026, one year after Charlie Kirk was murdered, an eight-foot memorial statue was unveiled outside the Phoenix headquarters of Turning Point, the political movement he helped create.
Three days later, someone covered portions of it in red paint.
Let me make one distinction immediately and unequivocally:
I condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Political violence is not an acceptable response to speech, ideology or political disagreement. Charlie Kirk had a right to live, to speak, to advocate for his beliefs, to raise his children and to participate in the political life of this country.
But I do not place vandalism of a statue in the same moral category as violence against a human being.
A statue is not a person.
And this particular controversy raises a deeper question for me about where and how we memorialize controversial political figures.
Turning Point has every right to remember and honor its founder.
If his colleagues, supporters, friends and family find inspiration in his likeness, then place his statue inside Turning Point's headquarters, where the people who enter that space have chosen to participate in the organization and can appreciate the monument for what it represents to them.
But placing a heroic eight-foot likeness outside changes the meaning.
The monument enters a space where it is encountered not only by the people who loved Kirk or agreed with him, but also by people who may have been profoundly wounded by the ideas and rhetoric he helped popularize.
A transgender young person does not necessarily see the same statue his supporters see.
A Muslim American may not see the same statue.
An immigrant may not see the same statue.
A Black American troubled by Kirk's statements about the Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr. may not see the same statue.
A gay or lesbian person may not see the same statue.
For Kirk's admirers, the monument may represent courage, faith and conservative activism.
For some of the people who were the subjects of his rhetoric, it may represent something entirely different.
It may be a monument to a movement they experienced as demeaning their identity, questioning their equality or portraying people like them as a threat to America.
That doesn't establish a right to vandalize property. Vandalism remains unlawful, and whoever owns the statue has the right to repair and protect it.
But I am not going to pretend that red paint on bronze carries the same moral weight as blood spilled from a human being.
It does not.
And I am interested in something deeper than whether someone should have thrown paint.
Why did the statue provoke such an emotional response in the first place?
That is where this article really begins.
A Monument Is More Than a Memorial
A gravestone says:
This person lived.
A memorial can say:
This person mattered to us.
But a heroic statue communicates something more.
It says:
Look at this person.
Remember this person.
Honor what this person represented.
That is why statues have become such powerful cultural battlegrounds throughout history.
Societies have erected monuments to Confederate generals, segregationists, colonial rulers, dictators and political leaders whom one generation regarded as heroes and another generation came to understand very differently.
The controversy is rarely really about bronze.
It is about memory.
Who gets elevated?
Whose story gets told?
Whose suffering gets minimized?
And what values are we literally placing on a pedestal?
That is what struck me when I saw Charlie Kirk's statue.
My question was never:
Did Charlie Kirk deserve to die?
Absolutely not.
My question was:
What exactly are we being asked to honor?
What did Charlie Kirk actually accomplish?
What did he teach?
What did he say about Black Americans and the Civil Rights Act?
What did he say about Muslims?
What did he say about immigrants?
What did he say about gay and transgender people?
What did he say about women, abortion and guns?
What kind of Christianity did he present to millions of young Americans?
Who financed the extraordinary organization he built?
Why were enormously wealthy people willing to invest millions upon millions of dollars in that organization?
What political movement did it eventually serve?
And what happened when ideas cultivated through campuses, churches, social media and political conferences became connected to the actual machinery of government?
Those questions took me somewhere I did not initially expect.
They led from an eight-foot statue in Phoenix...
to an eighteen-year-old political activist,
to Tea Party organizers,
to billionaire philanthropists,
to hundreds of millions of dollars,
to Donald Trump,
to Christian political organizing,
to Turning Point Action,
to the 2024 presidential election,
and ultimately to the 922-page governing blueprint known as Project 2025.
And after following that trail, my question became much larger than Charlie Kirk.
It became a question about us.
Who are we turning into heroesāand what are we teaching the next generation to admire?
Courage?
Compassion?
Service?
Intellectual curiosity?
Love of neighbor?
Defense of human dignity?
The ability to disagree without dehumanizing another human being?
Or have we entered an era in which political effectiveness itself becomes heroicāwhere defeating opponents, winning arguments, accumulating followers, raising enormous amounts of money and acquiring political power are sufficient to put someone on a pedestal?
Because influence and goodness are not synonymous.
Power and righteousness are not synonymous.
Popularity and truth are not synonymous.
And martyrdom does not automatically sanctify every idea a person promoted while alive.
A person's murder can be profoundly wrong while that person's ideas can simultaneously deserve profound moral scrutiny.
Both things can be true.
And perhaps that is precisely why we should examine Charlie Kirk's statue rather than allowing the argument to stop with the vandalism.
Look at the statue.
Ask questions about it.
Study the man it depicts.
Examine his words.
Follow the money that financed his movement.
Study the political power that movement helped produce.
And then ask whether the values represented by that monument are values we want elevated before another generation.
Because perhaps the most important question raised by any monument isn't:
āWas this person important?ā
It is:
āWhat are we being asked to remember as worthy?ā
And because Charlie Kirk so explicitly connected his political movement with Christianity, Christians have an even older standard by which to examine that question.
Jesus gave us one:
āBy their fruits you will know them.ā ā Matthew 7:16
So before we decide what Charlie Kirk's statue represents, perhaps we should examine the fruit.
That is where this investigation begins.
Before We Call Something Christian
There is a difference between defending Christianity and actually living Christianity.
That distinction has been weighing heavily on me as I have examined the life, influence and legacy of Charlie Kirk.
Jesus never said, āBy how loudly they defend Christianity you will know them.ā
He said:
āBy their fruits you will know them.ā ā Matthew 7:16
And Scripture gives us another demanding measurement:
āWhoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.ā ā 1 John 4:8
Those words force Christiansāand anyone claiming Christian authorityāto ask difficult questions.
What are the fruits of our beliefs?
Do they produce compassion or contempt?
Do they heal division or monetize it?
Do they bring frightened people together or teach them whom they should fear?
Do they protect human dignity or require someone else's dignity to be diminished?
Do they make the stranger our neighborāor our enemy?
Those questions matter because Charlie Kirk did not merely advocate lower taxes, smaller government or conservative economic policy.
Over time, he increasingly presented his political worldview as a defense of Christianity itself.
And when politics claims the authority of God, I believe our responsibility to examine it becomes greaterānot smaller.
My questions about Charlie Kirk began rather simply.
What did he actually accomplish?
Then came another question: What was Turning Point USA?
Then: Was it a nonprofit?
Who belonged to it?
Who paid for it?
Who helped an 18-year-old young man, virtually unknown nationally, develop an organization that would eventually command tens of millions of dollars a year and influence young Americans on thousands of high-school and college campuses?
Following those questions took me somewhere much larger than Charlie Kirk.
It led me to the machinery behind a movement.
And ultimately it brought me to a spiritual question:
When does Christianity cease being Christianity and become political ideology dressed in Christian clothing?
The Making of Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk was unquestionably talented.
Whatever one thinks about his politics, dismissing his abilities would be intellectually dishonest. He was an extraordinarily effective communicator, fundraiser, organizer and political entrepreneur.
But the popular mythology of an 18-year-old kid who simply created a national movement through determination and charisma leaves out an important part of the story.
He had help.
A lot of it.
In 2012, Kirk met William āBillā Montgomery, a retired businessman, marketing entrepreneur and Tea Party activist. Montgomery heard Kirk speak and encouraged him to devote himself to political activism rather than follow the conventional college path.
Montgomery didn't merely offer encouragement.
He helped Kirk enter an existing conservative political network.
The two attended Tea Party events, where Montgomery helped get Kirk onto stages. Montgomery brought experience, connections and access to people capable of financing a movement.
At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Kirk met wealthy investment manager and Republican donor Foster Friess.
Kirk pitched him an idea: young Americans needed to hear the conservative message.
Friess gave the fledgling Turning Point USA $10,000.
That first check mattered.
Turning Point reported only about $79,000 during its first fiscal year.
But the money would eventually become a river.
According to a Forbes analysis of IRS records, Turning Point USA raised approximately $389 million from its founding through mid-2023.
Annual contributions eventually reached roughly $80 million.
Among the major identifiable foundation donors Forbes found were organizations associated with:
Wayne Duddlesten ā $13.1 million
Jack Roth ā $8.7 million
Bernie Marcus ā $7.1 million
Charles and Ann Johnson ā $4.6 million
William Dunn ā $4.5 million
Dean Buntrock ā $4.1 million
Other foundations associated with wealthy conservative donorsāincluding Richard Uihlein, Isaac Perlmutter and Darwin Deasonāalso supported Turning Point.
And even this doesn't tell us everything.
Because Turning Point USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the identities of individual contributors generally do not have to be publicly disclosed. Money also flowed through donor-advised organizations such as DonorsTrust, further obscuring the identities of some original contributors.
So Charlie Kirk's rise wasn't simply the spontaneous emergence of one charismatic teenager.
It was the intersection of a talented young political communicator with an already-existing network of wealthy conservative benefactors looking for something extremely valuable:
a way to reach the next generation.
Follow the Ideology Along With the Money
The ideology evolved.
Early Turning Point was considerably more focused on libertarian-style economic conservatism than the religious culture-war organization many Americans later knew.
Its message emphasized:
limited government,
free markets,
capitalism,
fiscal responsibility,
opposition to taxation and regulation,
and hostility toward what it considered excessive government.
One of its early viral campaigns was characteristically blunt:
āBig Government Sucks.ā
That wasn't primarily a religious message.
It was economic conservatism packaged for young people.
But Turning Point changed.
In 2016 came the Professor Watchlist, identifying professors TPUSA accused of discriminating against conservatives or advancing left-wing ideology. Academic organizations subsequently raised concerns that professors placed on the list experienced harassment and intimidation.
Then Donald Trump transformed Republican politics.
And Charlie Kirk transformed with it.
Turning Point increasingly became part of the MAGA political ecosystem.
Kirk became one of Donald Trump's most effective young surrogates. Turning Point mobilized young voters, Students for Trump worked toward Trump's reelection, and Kirk's proximity to Trump and his family became increasingly visible.
By the 2020 Republican National Convention, Kirk was describing Trump as the ābodyguard of Western civilization.ā
After Trump's 2020 defeat, Kirk promoted claims questioning the legitimacy of the election.
Meanwhile, the movement continued moving from economic conservatism toward cultural and religious warfare.
Turning Point launched a School Board Watchlist.
Then came TPUSA FaithĀ in 2021.
Turning Point Academy followed, declaring its desire to restore God as the foundation of education.
The progression is striking.
A movement originally selling young people free markets and limited government increasingly presented America as the battlefield in a struggle among Christianity, āwokeism,ā feminism, LGBTQ equality, transgender people, Islam, immigration, diversity initiatives and secular liberalism.
Who Was the Audience?
We should be careful here because Turning Point has not released a credible racial census of its membership.
Therefore, I cannot responsibly tell you that a specific percentage of TPUSA members were White.
What we do know is that Turning Point operated inside a Republican political coalition that has historically been considerably Whiter than the American electorate overall, while specifically attempting to recruit teenagers, college students and young adults.
It also created programs specifically aimed at Black and Latino conservatives.
And young men became particularly important to the Trump-era conservative coalition.
That makes the messaging worth examining.
Young men searching for identity, belonging, purpose and meaning can be presented two profoundly different spiritual messages.
One says:
Your life has value. Discover your gifts. Love your neighbor. Develop courage. Take responsibility. Build something. Serve humanity.
Another says:
Something that belongs to you is being taken away. Your culture is disappearing. Your religion is under attack. Immigrants are replacing you. Feminism has weakened society. LGBTQ people are corrupting children. Transgender people threaten civilization. Your enemies are destroying America.
Those messages do not produce the same human being.
Fear is an extraordinarily effective organizing tool.
Kirk's Books Tell the Story
His books provide something of a roadmap through his political development.
Time for a Turning PointĀ presented the basic case for limited government, free markets and conservative principles to younger Americans.
Campus BattlefieldĀ depicted American universities as ideological battlegrounds dominated by the political left.
The MAGA DoctrineĀ explicitly defended Donald Trump's political philosophy and presented Trump's movement as the means of restoring American greatness.
The College ScamĀ argued that universities were financially exploiting and ideologically ābrainwashingā young Americans.
And finally, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the WestĀ portrayed āwokeismā not simply as a political disagreement but as an existential threat to Western civilization.
Look at that progression.
Government is the problem.
Then:
Universities are the problem.
Then:
The Left is the problem.
Then:
Woke culture is destroying civilization.
Eventually political disagreement becomes existential warfare.
And when politics becomes existential warfare, your political opponent stops being your neighbor.
They become your enemy.
His Own Words Matter
We do not have to invent extreme statements and attribute them to Charlie Kirk.
His authenticated words are troubling enough.
Kirk said passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a āhuge mistake.ā
He described the law's legacy as an āanti-white weapon.ā
He attacked Martin Luther King Jr.'s character and rejected what he called the āMLK myth.ā
His rhetoric concerning Jewish donors also became controversial. Although Kirk was strongly supportive of Israel, he repeatedly argued that Jewish donors had disproportionately financed what he called ācultural Marxistā and āanti-whiteā institutions.
His rhetoric toward Islam became extraordinarily sweeping.
He described immigration from Muslim countries as ācivilizational suicide.ā
Shortly before his death, he wrote:
āIslam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.ā
He described large Muslim communities as threats to America and repeatedly portrayed Islam as fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization.
Regarding transgender people, Kirk advocated eliminating gender-affirming medical care and repeatedly portrayed transgender identity as part of a broader societal and spiritual collapse.
The statistical reality sometimes collided dramatically with that rhetoric.
Immediately before his death, when asked how many transgender Americans had committed mass shootings during the previous decade, Kirk answered:
āToo many.ā
Yet subsequent fact-checking found that transgender or nonbinary perpetrators represented a tiny fraction of American mass shootingsāless than one-tenth of one percent under one commonly cited dataset.
On abortion his position was equally uncompromising.
When asked whether he would make an exception if his hypothetical 10-year-old daughter became pregnant after being raped, Kirk answered that the child would carry the pregnancy:
āThe answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.ā
And then there were guns.
At a TPUSA Faith event shortly after the 2023 Nashville school shooting killed three children and three adults, Kirk defended an armed citizenry and acknowledged its human cost.
He said:
āI think it's worth it.ā
He went on to say that accepting āsome gun deaths every single yearāĀ was a reasonable price for preserving the Second Amendment.
These aren't descriptions invented by his enemies.
They are his words.
Context should always be included. For example, it would be inaccurate to claim that Kirk simply called for gay people to be executed. When discussing an LGBTQ-affirming interpretation of Scripture, he invoked the biblical death penalty in Leviticus; a widely circulated claim that he personally advocated executing gay people overstated what he actually said.
Accuracy mattersāeven when accuracy makes the underlying argument uncomfortable enough.
And Then There Is Christianity
This is where my objection becomes spiritual rather than partisan.
Charlie Kirk repeatedly identified his politics with Christianity.
But saying the word ChristianĀ does not transform an ideology into the teachings of Christ.
Christianity is not demonstrated through branding.
It is demonstrated through conduct.
Jesus gave us a remarkably difficult standard:
āLove your neighbor as yourself.ā ā Mark 12:31
And Jesus did not restrict āneighborā to people who worship, vote, love, look or live like us.
When challenged to define the neighbor, Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritanāa story in which the moral example is deliberately found in the person the religious establishment might have regarded as an outsider.
Christian Scripture goes further:
āI was a stranger and you welcomed me.ā ā Matthew 25:35
āBlessed are the peacemakers.ā ā Matthew 5:9
āDo to others as you would have them do to you.ā ā Luke 6:31
And perhaps most difficult of all:
āLove your enemies.ā ā Matthew 5:44
Love the stranger.
Care for the marginalized.
Bless those who curse you.
Feed the hungry.
Visit the prisoner.
Protect the vulnerable.
Forgive.
Show mercy.
I cannot reconcile those teachings with an ideology that continually requires another group of human beings to fear.
The immigrant.
The Muslim.
The transgender person.
The gay person.
The feminist.
The professor.
The liberal.
The secular American.
The person teaching uncomfortable racial history.
Again and again there must be a threatening āthem.ā
That is not spiritual liberation.
I believe it is spiritual illness.
What Universal Rainbow Faith Teaches Instead
This is also where I must speak from my own spiritual tradition.
I founded Universal Rainbow Faith ChurchĀ around a fundamentally different proposition:
Activating The Rainbow Light of Love.
We believe spiritual life should expand human dignity, not restrict it.
We are an LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual community, but our affirmation of LGBTQIA+ people does not require the rejection of heterosexual people.
Our affirmation of transgender people does not diminish cisgender people.
Our respect for other religions does not require Christians to surrender Christianity.
Our respect for agnostics and atheists does not require believers to surrender God.
Our celebration of racial and cultural diversity does not require White people to hate themselves.
There is room at the table.
That is the difference.
Universal Rainbow Faith teaches that every soul is sacred and every life has value.
Transgender.
Cisgender.
Gay.
Straight.
Bisexual.
Nonbinary.
Christian.
Jewish.
Muslim.
Hindu.
Buddhist.
Agnostic.
Atheist.
Conservative.
Liberal.
And everyone whose life cannot be contained neatly within one of those words.
Human dignity is not something Universal Rainbow Faith distributes according to agreement.
It is inherent.
Our spiritual teachings center on universal love, sacred inclusion, compassion, healing, diversity and collective awakening.
We consciously choose:
Love over fear.
Awareness over hatred.
Healing over division.
And that does not mean pretending differences don't exist.
It means refusing to turn difference into dehumanization.
That distinction matters enormously.
Inclusion Is Not Moral Relativism
There is a common accusation that an inclusive spiritual philosophy means believing that anything goes.
It does not.
Universal love is not the absence of moral standards.
Universal love demands moral standards.
We oppose cruelty precisely because we value human life.
We oppose discrimination because we value human dignity.
We oppose religious coercion because we value freedom of conscience.
We oppose racism because race does not determine the sacred worth of a human being.
We oppose antisemitism and Islamophobia for the same reason.
We oppose homophobia and transphobia because sexual orientation and gender identity do not cancel anyone's humanity.
We oppose political violence whether its victim is someone we admire or someone whose worldview we strongly reject.
And we can disagreeāeven profoundlyāwithout declaring another human being disposable.
That is not weakness.
That requires extraordinary spiritual strength.
Diversity Does Not Weaken Society
This is where I believe fear-based culture-war theology makes one of its greatest factual and spiritual mistakes.
It assumes social cohesion requires sameness.
History teaches something different.
Healthy pluralistic societies require people with profoundly different beliefs to learn how to live together.
A Christian does not lose religious liberty because a Muslim builds a mosque.
A Muslim does not lose dignity because a Christian builds a church.
A straight couple does not lose marriage because two gay people marry.
A cisgender person does not lose gender because a transgender person lives authentically.
A White child does not lose worth because a Black child learns the history of slavery.
A man does not become less valuable because a woman has equal authority.
Equality is not subtraction.
Dignity is not a finite resource.
Freedom is not something we preserve by denying it to somebody else.
The spiritual alternative to tribalism is not conformity.
It is relationship.
It is learning to look across the divisions humanity has created and recognize another sacred human life looking back.
Universal Rainbow Faith calls this The Rainbow Light of Love.
A rainbow does not become beautiful because every color becomes identical.
Its beauty exists because different colors remain different while belonging to one whole.
That is not merely an LGBTQ metaphor.
It is a model for humanity.
Unity does not require uniformity.
That principle can strengthen families, congregations, neighborhoods, schools and nations because it replaces the impossible demand that everyone become alike with the more difficult spiritual discipline of learning to live together.
Fear Is Not Faith
Fear tells us there isn't enough.
Fear tells us someone else's freedom diminishes ours.
Fear tells a straight person that gay marriage somehow threatens heterosexual marriage.
Fear tells a cisgender person that allowing a transgender person to exist authentically somehow diminishes their own identity.
Fear tells Christians that another person's mosque somehow diminishes their church.
Fear tells White Americans that racial equality somehow requires White diminishment.
Fear tells men that women's equality somehow requires men's humiliation.
Fear requires scarcity.
Love recognizes abundance.
A transgender person's freedom doesn't make anyone else transgender.
A gay person's marriage doesn't invalidate anyone else's marriage.
A Muslim family's religious liberty doesn't remove a Christian family's religious liberty.
A Black student's opportunity doesn't erase a White student's humanity.
Someone else's dignity is not stolen from mine.
That is the fundamental spiritual error in so much culture-war politics:
Human dignity is treated as though there is only a limited supply.
There isn't.
And Christianity itself gives us a warning about fear:
āThere is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.ā ā 1 John 4:18
That Scripture does not say perfect political power drives out fear.
It says loveĀ does.
Was Charlie Kirk an Organic Phenomenonāor a Political Investment?
This question deserves care.
There is no evidence that Charlie Kirk was literally manufactured or controlled by some secret organization.
He possessed genuine talent, ambition and political conviction.
But there is also no reason to pretend that hundreds of millions of dollars are incidental to this story.
An 18-year-old met an older Tea Party activist who recognized his potential.
That mentor connected him with political stages.
He reached the Republican National Convention.
A wealthy conservative donor supplied the first significant check.
More wealthy donors followed.
An organization developed.
Media infrastructure developed.
Campus infrastructure developed.
Conferences developed.
Watchlists developed.
Religious outreach developed.
Political organizing developed.
And eventually hundreds of millions of dollars had passed through the institution he created.
That isn't a conspiracy.
That is political infrastructure.
And perhaps we should ask why enormously wealthy people were willing to invest so much money in convincing teenagers and twenty-somethings that America was being destroyed by liberals, professors, immigrants, Muslims, feminism, LGBTQ people, transgender people and āwokeness.ā
Who benefited from that worldview?
And who paid the human cost?
The Greatest Moral Failure
Charlie Kirk's murder was wrong.
Nothing he said justified killing him.
Nothing written here celebrates his death.
Political assassination is itself a rejection of the democratic principle that ideas should be confronted with ideas rather than bullets.
And my own faith requires me to say something more:
Charlie Kirk's life possessed the same inherent sacred value that I insist belongs to every transgender person, every Muslim, every immigrant, every gay person and every human being he may have opposed politically.
Universal love cannot mean only loving people who agree with us.
Otherwise it isn't universal.
I can condemn his murder completely while still examining his legacy critically.
In fact, we must be able to do both.
Death should not transform a public figure into a saint.
Nor should disagreement transform that person into a monster.
Charlie Kirk was a human beingāa husband, father, son, extraordinarily gifted organizer and deeply consequential political activist.
But consequential does not necessarily mean righteous.
And influence does not necessarily mean wisdom.
My deepest concern is for the generations of young people taught to interpret difference as danger.
Because once I convince you that your neighbor represents an existential threat to your civilization, I no longer have to teach you to hate them.
Fear will eventually do that work for me.
By Their Fruits
Christian Scripture provides its own test:
āBy their fruits you will know them.ā ā Matthew 7:16
Not by their political party.
Not by the size of their organization.
Not by their donors.
Not by the number of followers.
Not by how frequently they say āGod.ā
By their fruits.
Does the message produce compassion?
Mercy?
Humility?
Peace?
Understanding?
Justice?
Love?
Or does it continually produce another enemy?
Another threat?
Another group to fear?
Another population supposedly destroying civilization?
That is the spiritual question I believe America must askānot only about Charlie Kirk, but about every religious political movement demanding our allegiance.
And it is the question every spiritual movementāincluding my ownāmust continually ask of itself.
What are our fruits?
Are people more whole because we were here?
Are frightened people safer?
Are lonely people less alone?
Do people who have been told they are mistakes discover that they possess sacred worth?
Do people of different religions learn to see one another as neighbors?
Do we leave our communities more compassionate than we found them?
That is the measure I want applied to Universal Rainbow Faith.
And it is the measure I believe Christianity itself asks us to apply to anyone claiming to speak in its name.
You can say JesusĀ a thousand times.
You can carry a Bible onto every political stage.
You can build organizations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
You can call your political agenda Christian.
But Christianity without love is branding.
Faith without compassion is ideology.
And words without corresponding action are merely words.
Paul gave Christianity perhaps its clearest warning about this nearly two thousand years ago:
āIf I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.ā ā 1 Corinthians 13:2
Nothing.
Not conservative.
Not liberal.
Not Republican.
Not Democrat.
Not gay.
Not straight.
Not transgender.
Not cisgender.
Before all those labels comes something infinitely more fundamental:
human.
And if our Christianity requires somebody else to become less free, less human, less welcome or less worthy so that we can feel righteous, perhaps the thing most desperately in need of salvation is not them.
Perhaps it is us.
Universal Rainbow Faith
Activating The Rainbow Light of Love
Every soul is sacred. Every life has value. Love remains the greatest force in the universe.
The Money Did Not Fund One OrganizationāIt Funded an Ecosystem
Following the money raises another question.
What, ultimately, was all this money helping to build?
Because Turning Point USA did not remain an isolated campus organization concerned primarily with taxes, capitalism and limited government.
Over time, the people, foundations and institutions surrounding Turning Point became part of a much larger conservative infrastructureāone that could recruit young people, shape political beliefs, mobilize voters, develop public policy, litigate cultural issues, train future government officials and ultimately help return Donald Trump to the White House.
This is where the story of Charlie Kirk intersects with Donald Trump's 2024 campaign and Project 2025.
And this connection is not merely ideological speculation.
Turning Point USA itself was an official coalition partner of Project 2025.
The Heritage Foundation identified Turning Point USA among the organizations participating in Project 2025's advisory coalition.
Project 2025 was not simply a book of conservative opinions.
It was an organized effort to prepare for the next conservative presidential administration.
Its components included:
policy recommendations,
a database of potential government personnel,
training for prospective administration officials,
and a plan for rapidly implementing conservative priorities after a new president assumed office.
Heritage described the effort as preparing an āarmy of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservativesāĀ ready to enter government.
Think about the progression.
Turning Point helped recruit and influence young conservatives.
Turning Point Action helped mobilize Republican voters.
TPUSA Faith organized conservative Christians.
Heritage and its Project 2025 partners developed policy.
Other conservative organizations developed litigation and legal strategies.
And wealthy donors helped finance organizations operating throughout this ecosystem.
These were different organizations with different legal structures and responsibilities.
But they increasingly occupied the same political universe.
Turning Point Action and the Election of Donald Trump
Charlie Kirk's involvement in Donald Trump's political movement eventually went far beyond endorsing a candidate.
Turning Point Action, the separate 501(c)(4) political advocacy organization founded by Kirk, developed a major voter-mobilization operation for the 2024 election.
Its āChase the VoteāĀ program concentrated on six crucial battleground states:
Arizona,
Nevada,
Georgia,
Wisconsin,
Michigan,
and Pennsylvania.
The strategy involved identifying Republican voters, registering potential voters, developing relationships with them, tracking ballots and encouraging targeted voters to actually cast them.
In other words, Kirk's movement was no longer simply trying to persuade young Americans to become conservative.
It was helping construct the electoral machinery necessary to convert those beliefs into political power.
Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
And Turning Point Action emerged from that election claiming significant success for its voter-mobilization strategy.
That distinction matters.
Turning Point USA helped build the audience.
Turning Point Action helped mobilize the electorate.
And organizations associated with Project 2025 were simultaneously preparing ideas, personnel and policies for what could happen if conservatives regained control of the executive branch.
Some of the Same Money Appears Across the Ecosystem
The overlap becomes even more significant when we return to the donor network.
Not every Turning Point donor supported Donald Trump.
Not every Turning Point donor financed Project 2025.
And donating to one organization does not mean a donor endorsed every position held by every other organization.
Those distinctions are essential.
But several major conservative benefactors and philanthropic networks supported multiple institutions operating within this broader movement.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein became two of America's most consequential conservative political donors.
Foundations associated with the Uihlein family supported Turning Point USA.
Richard Uihlein's publicly expressed priorities have included limited government, free enterprise, gun rights and what he describes as the sanctity of life.
The Uihleins also became major financial supporters of conservative candidates and organizations.
During the 2024 presidential election, after initially supporting Ron DeSantis, they moved behind Donald Trump.
Their political giving helped support Trump and Republican electoral efforts.
Their philanthropic network also provided millions of dollars to organizations associated with the Project 2025 coalition.
Among those organizations were groups advocating conservative policies involving government regulation, abortion, election administration and executive authority.
So in the Uihlein network we can document an important convergence:
support for Turning Point,
support for Republican and Trump electoral politics,
and
support for organizations participating in the Project 2025 ecosystem.
That does not prove a secret coordinated scheme.
It demonstrates something much less mysterious:
a sophisticated political funding network.
Isaac and Laura Perlmutter
Former Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac āIkeā PerlmutterĀ and his wife Laura also became significant supporters within the Trump political world.
Foundations associated with the Perlmutters contributed to Turning Point.
The couple were longtime Trump supporters.
During the 2024 election cycle they contributed millions of dollars to Right for America, a super PAC created to support Trump's return to the presidency.
Again, the documented connection should not be exaggerated.
Evidence of funding Turning Point and Trump's electoral movement does not automatically establish that the Perlmutters personally financed Project 2025.
But it demonstrates another bridge between the financial world supporting Charlie Kirk's organization and the financial world supporting Donald Trump's return to power.
Bernie Marcus
Home Depot co-founder Bernie MarcusĀ provides another striking example.
Foundations associated with Marcus contributed approximately $7.1 millionĀ to Turning Point USA according to an analysis of nonprofit records.
Marcus was also an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump.
During the 2024 election cycle he contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc., the principal super PAC supporting Trump's presidential campaign, and participated in fundraising for Trump.
Marcus had long championed capitalism, deregulation, lower taxation and conservative economic principles.
Those were also among the foundational ideas promoted by early Turning Point USA.
Once again we see the bridge:
conservative philanthropy ā Turning Point ā Trump-era political power.
The Bradley Network
Perhaps one of the most revealing institutional connections is the Bradley philanthropic network.
The Bradley Impact Fund became an enormous supporter of Turning Point USA.
Public nonprofit records show tens of millions of dollars flowing from Bradley-associated philanthropy to Turning Point.
But Bradley's funding did not stop there.
Money also went to other conservative organizations operating in law, public policy, education and government.
Among them was America First Legal, founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
America First Legal itself participated in the Project 2025 coalition.
This illustrates something fundamental about modern political philanthropy.
A wealthy donor does not necessarily have to build one enormous organization capable of doing everything.
Instead, money can support an entire network:
one organization communicates with young people;
another litigates;
another develops public policy;
another trains activists;
another mobilizes voters;
another works through churches;
another prepares people to enter government.
The result is an ecosystem.
Project 2025 and Charlie Kirk's Later Worldview
Charlie Kirk did not write Project 2025.
He did not invent it.
And it would be misleading to attribute every recommendation contained in its roughly 900-page policy blueprint to him personally.
But the organization he founded was an official participant in the Project 2025 coalition, and many of the project's major cultural themes substantially overlapped with Kirk's later politics.
Among Project 2025's priorities were proposals involving:
dramatic restructuring of the federal administrative state,
expanding presidential authority,
major changes to the Department of Education,
eliminating federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,
restricting abortion-related policies,
rolling back LGBTQ and transgender protections,
expanding immigration enforcement,
and embedding a socially conservative understanding of sex, gender and family into federal policy.
Compare that with Kirk's later message.
Opposition to DEI.
Opposition to transgender recognition and gender-affirming healthcare.
Aggressive opposition to abortion.
Attacks on progressive education.
Hostility toward what he called āwokeā universities.
Hard-line immigration rhetoric.
Increasingly explicit Christian political organizing.
And the belief that American institutions needed to be reclaimed from a hostile cultural left.
The ideological overlap is impossible to ignore.
Trump Distanced HimselfāThen Governed With Project 2025 Figures
During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025.
That fact belongs in any fair account.
Project 2025 was not technically Trump's campaign platform, and Trump said he disagreed with portions of it.
But what happened after the election is equally important.
Trump subsequently selected multiple people associated with Project 2025 or its policy network for important positions in his administration.
One of the most significant was Russell Vought, Trump's formerāand subsequently returningādirector of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought contributed to Project 2025 and became one of the leading advocates for dramatically increasing presidential control over the executive branch and dismantling portions of what conservatives call the administrative state.
Other individuals associated with Project 2025's policy world also entered the second Trump administration.
Therefore, two things can simultaneously be true:
Project 2025 was not Donald Trump's official 2024 campaign platform.
And:
people, organizations and policies associated with Project 2025 became important within the administration that followed Trump's victory.
Political reality is often more complicated than campaign slogans.
Recruitment, Elections, Policy and Power
Put these pieces together and the structure becomes easier to see.
Turning Point USA Recruit young people. Shape political identity. Build conservative campus communities.
TPUSA Faith Bring conservative political organizing into churches and Christian communities.
Turning Point Action Register, identify and mobilize Republican voters.
Conservative legal organizations Challenge government policies and progressive legislation through litigation.
Think tanks such as Heritage Develop conservative policy.
Project 2025Prepare policy, personnel and administrative plans for a future conservative presidency.
Major political donors and super PACs Finance elections necessary to place sympathetic political leaders into power.
These organizations are legally distinct.
They are not controlled by one central command.
Their donors are not identical.
Their objectives are not always identical.
And none of that requires a conspiracy theory.
This is how political movements actually build power.
Ideas require messengers.
Messengers require platforms.
Platforms require money.
Political ideas require voters.
Election victories require organization.
And once an election is won, governing requires policies and personnel.
Charlie Kirk occupied an extraordinarily important position within that chain.
He helped provide something the conservative movement desperately wanted:
young people.
The Spiritual Question Behind the Political Machine
And this returns me to the reason I began asking these questions.
Imagine what hundreds of millions of dollars could do if invested in convincing young people that their neighbors were worth understanding rather than fearing.
Imagine a national network teaching teenagers:
how to resolve conflict,
how to recognize misinformation,
how to understand people from different religions,
how to build healthy relationships,
how to serve their communities,
how to disagree without dehumanizing,
how to recognize their own inherent worth,
and how to recognize that same sacred worth in somebody completely different from themselves.
Imagine sending thousands of young people onto high-school and college campuses carrying that message.
You belong.
Your neighbor belongs.
Difference is not danger.
Another person's dignity does not diminish yours.
You do not have to hate somebody in order to disagree with them.
What kind of generation might that create?
Instead, enormous resources were invested in a political ecosystem in which young Americans were repeatedly warned that their civilization, Christianity, masculinity, families, universities, borders and country were under attack.
And once people believe civilization itself is at stake, compromise begins to look like surrender.
Political opponents become enemies.
Neighbors become threats.
Difference becomes danger.
Fear becomes identity.
And eventually politics becomes something resembling religious warfare.
That is where my concern goes beyond Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, Turning Point or Project 2025.
It becomes spiritual.
Because fear can mobilize people extraordinarily effectively.
But fear cannot heal them.
Fear can win elections.
Fear can raise money.
Fear can fill auditoriums.
Fear can generate millions of social-media views.
Fear can even build political movements.
But fear cannot do what love does.
Universal Rainbow Faith teaches another possibility:
Activating The Rainbow Light of Love.
Not because everyone must believe the same thing.
Precisely because we do not.
The measure of a healthy society is not whether everyone becomes Christian, conservative, liberal, gay, straight, transgender, cisgender, Muslim, Jewish, atheist or anything else.
The measure is whether all of those people can inhabit the same society while recognizing one another's humanity.
Unity does not require uniformity.
And perhaps that is ultimately the choice before us.
We can spend fortunes teaching another generation whom to fear.
Or we can invest ourselves in teaching them how to love.
The warning from history is not that America in 2026 has become Nazi Germany. It has not. The warning is that some of the political mechanisms that historians recognize from authoritarian movementsānational decline narratives, internal enemies, dehumanizing language, attacks on pluralism, politicization of institutions, concentration of executive authority, restrictions on minority rights and the fusion of religious certainty with political powerāare visible enough that Americans should take them seriously before asking how far they might go.
You don't wait for concentration camps before becoming concerned about dehumanization.
History's usefulness lies precisely in recognizing processes before they reach their worst possible conclusion.
And Now Another Statue Has Been Marked
And now Charlie Kirk's statue joins a long and complicated history of monuments that became contested after the people beneath them came to represent something profoundly different to different parts of society.
The red paint did not appear in a vacuum. It appeared on a monument to a man whose words and movement had deeply affected the national conversation about race, immigration, Islam, LGBTQ people, transgender people, women, education, Christianity and who belongs in America. His supporters see a martyr, a Christian conservative leader and a champion of their political movement. Others experienced his rhetoric and the political machinery surrounding it as dehumanizing, divisive and harmfulāparticularly when entire groups of human beings were repeatedly discussed as threats to children, Christianity, Western civilization or America itself.
That does not make Charlie Kirk Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein or any of the other figures whose monuments history has removed. The histories, actions and magnitude of harm are profoundly different.Ā But his damaged monument now raises the same fundamental question that contested statues have raised generation after generation: When does remembrance become glorification, and who gets to decide what deserves a pedestal?
Perhaps the mistake was not remembering Charlie Kirk. History should remember him. His supporters have every right to memorialize him, and Turning Point has every right to preserve his likeness within the institution he created. But placing an enormous heroic statue where the wider public encounters it asks something more of society. It asks people not merely to remember the man, but to confront an image of honorāincluding people who believe that his words and the movement he helped build contributed to their marginalization.
That is why I believe the statue belongs inside Turning Point, among the people who choose to enter that institution and who understand it as a symbol of their values. Outside, it inevitably speaks to everyoneāincluding people for whom those values represent something very different.
History has repeatedly taught us that removing someone from a pedestal does not erase them from history. Hitler remains one of the most studied human beings of the twentieth century without statues honoring him throughout Germany. Stalin remains in every history book despite thousands of his monuments coming down. Edward Colston's toppled statue now tells a more complicated story in a museum than it ever did standing unquestioned above Bristol.
Perhaps Charlie Kirk's statue will ultimately tell a complicated story too.
The vandalism itself should not become the whole story. The more important question is why the statue became contested at all.
A monument can tell us what one group wishes to honor.
A contested monument can tell us that another group remembers something very different.
And sometimes the most important history begins when a society finally asks why the person standing on the pedestal was placed there in the first place.
The Numerology of 2025: An Ominous Spiritual Warning
There is another dimension to this story that I cannot ignore because numerology has long been part of my own spiritual practice.
I do not offer numerology as scientific proof or claim that numbers mechanically determine historical events.
I understand numbers as symbolsāarchetypal mirrors through which we sometimes recognize patterns that become visible only after events unfold.
And the numbers surrounding Project 2025 and Charlie Kirk are extraordinary.
2025 is a Universal 9 Year.
2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9.
Nine represents completion.
Endings.
Reckoning.
Release.
The completion of one cycle before another begins.
At its highest vibration, 9 is one of humanity's most compassionate numbers. It asks us to transcend tribalism, develop wisdom, serve humanity and release what no longer contributes to the greater good.
But the shadow of 9 can become something very different.
It can become destruction disguised as purification.
Martyrdom.
Fanaticism.
The belief that an old worldāor certain people within itāmust disappear before some imagined better world can emerge.
And so I cannot help asking:
What exactly were we being asked to end in 2025?
Project 2025 itself carries another remarkable vibration.
Using traditional Pythagorean numerology, the letters in the word PROJECTĀ total 33.
Thirty-three is one of numerology's great Master Numbers.
It is traditionally called the Master Teacher.
At its highest level, 33 represents compassion, healing, spiritual responsibility and service to humanity.
But master numbers possess shadows equal to their potential.
The shadow of 33 appears when spiritual certainty becomes spiritual superiority.
When teaching becomes indoctrination.
When service becomes control.
When someone becomes so convinced that they possess God's truth that they begin believing they have the authority to impose that truth upon everyone else.
Add PROJECT's 33 to the 9 vibration of 2025:
33 + 9 = 42.
4 + 2 = 6.
Six is the number of family.
Home.
Responsibility.
Community.
Protection.
Morality.
Care.
But the dark side of 6 is control disguised as protection.
It is deciding that because we know what a family should look like, we may define everybody else's family.
Because we believe we understand morality, we may legislate everybody else's morality.
Because we believe we are protecting children, we may decide which identities children are permitted to possess.
Because we believe we are defending marriage, we may decide whose marriages are legitimate.
Because we believe we are defending women, we may decide what women are allowed to do with their own bodies.
Because we believe we are defending Christianity, we may decide whose religion deserves equal standing.
The healthy 6 says:
āI will care for my family.ā
The shadow 6 says:
āI will decide what your family is allowed to be.ā
And then there is Charlie Kirk himself.
Using the same numerological system:
CHARLIE = 11.
KIRK = 22.
Two Master Numbers.
Eleven is traditionally the Messenger.
Twenty-two is the Master Builder.
And whether one agrees with Charlie Kirk or strongly opposes his worldview, those symbols describe his historical role with remarkable precision.
He was a messenger.
And he was a builder.
He communicated a worldview to millions of young people.
And then he helped build an enormous institutional structure capable of carrying that worldview into schools, colleges, churches, elections and ultimately the machinery of government.
The messenger.
The builder.
Together:
Charlie Kirk = 60 ā 6.
And once again we arrive at 6.
The same fundamental vibration produced by PROJECT 2025.
Family.
Morality.
Responsibility.
Authority.
And in its shadow:
Control.
Judgment.
Paternalism.
The conviction that one's personal moral framework should govern everyone else's life.
Then came September 10, 2025.
The day Charlie Kirk died.
9 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 19.
1 + 9 = 10.
1 + 0 = 1.
In some numerological traditions, 19/1 is regarded as a karmic number dealing with the responsible use of individual power.
Its lesson is humility.
Its warning concerns ego, domination, isolation and the misuse of influence.
And the number 1 itself signifies a beginning.
So we encounter an extraordinary symbolic paradox:
Charlie Kirk died during a Universal 9 Yearāthe number of endingsāon a date that reduces to 1āthe number of beginnings.
An ending that became a beginning.
The man died.
The movement did not.
The individual became a symbol.
The speaker became a martyr to millions.
The organization continued.
The political infrastructure remained.
And eventually a statue appeared.
Perhaps that is where the spiritual warning lies.
Not in believing that numbers magically predicted an assassination.
But in recognizing what happens when an ideology becomes larger than the human being who carried it.
People die.
Movements continue.
Messengers disappear.
Machines remain.
And sometimes death itself gives an ideology greater symbolic power than its messenger possessed while alive.
That is why I see the numerology surrounding 2025 not as a prediction of doom, but as an ominous spiritual warning.
Nine asks humanity what must end.
One asks what we intend to begin.
Six asks how we will use responsibility and authority.
Eleven asks what message we will carry.
Twenty-two asks what we will build.
And thirty-three asks perhaps the most difficult question of all:
Will our spiritual power be used to heal humanityāor to control it?
That is the prophecy I see here.
Not a prophecy declaring what must happen.
A prophecy in the oldest spiritual sense:
a warning about what may happen if humanity refuses to change direction.
Numbers do not absolve us of responsibility.
They invite us to examine it.
And perhaps 2025 was asking America a question that remains unanswered:
When one cycle ends, what kind of world will we choose to build next?
One ruled by fear?
Or one transformed by love?
And Then There Is Turning Point Itself
The numerical symbolism does not end with Charlie Kirk's name.
When we calculate the organization he created using the same traditional Pythagorean system, another remarkable pattern appears.
TURNING POINT USA = 74.
7 + 4 = 11.
Again we encounter a Master Number.
11.
The same number produced by CHARLIE.
In numerological tradition, 11 is associated with the messenger, inspiration, heightened influence, illumination and the ability to awaken people to an idea.
At its highest expression, 11 can inspire people toward greater consciousness.
But its shadow can become polarization, nervous collective energy, ideological intensity, fanaticism and the ability of a powerful message to overwhelm reflection.
That creates a remarkable symbolic correspondence:
CHARLIE = 11.
TURNING POINT USA = 11.
The messenger and the movement carrying the same vibration.
Whether one regards that as spiritually significant or simply an intriguing coincidence, the symbolism is difficult for me to overlook.
Charlie Kirk became the messenger.
Turning Point became the amplifier.
And millions of young Americans became the audience.
But then something else happened.
The movement developed another organization:
TURNING POINT ACTION.
And its number is different.
TURNING POINT ACTION totals 95.
9 + 5 = 14.
1 + 4 = 5.
In several numerological traditions, 14/5Ā is regarded as a karmic-debt number.
And its symbolism is especially interesting in the context of political power.
Five is the number of:
freedom.
Movement.
Change.
Communication.
Individual liberty.
Rebellion.
Breaking restrictions.
Political and social transformation.
At its highest vibration, 5 refuses oppression.
It explores.
It questions authority.
It protects individual freedom.
But the shadow of 5 can become something very different:
chaos.
Excess.
Instability.
Manipulation.
Impulsiveness.
Freedom without responsibility.
Constant agitation.
And the use of communication to keep people perpetually stimulated, frightened or angry.
The traditional lesson associated with 14/5Ā is particularly striking:
Freedom requires responsibility.
Freedom cannot simply mean freedom for me.
Freedom cannot mean that my liberty permits me to remove yours.
Freedom cannot mean that my religion deserves protection while yours deserves suspicion.
Freedom cannot mean that my family deserves recognition while yours may be erased.
Freedom cannot mean that my body belongs to me while government controls yours.
Freedom cannot mean that my speech deserves protection while your identity becomes something government declares illegitimate.
That is the spiritual test of 14/5.
And notice what happens symbolically when the organization changes from USAĀ to ACTION.
TURNING POINT USA = 11.
The Messenger.
The message.
The awakening.
The communication.
But:
TURNING POINT ACTION = 14/5.
Movement.
Change.
Political activity.
Freedom.
Power put into motion.
That mirrors the actual distinction between the organizations in an almost uncanny way.
Turning Point USA developed the audience, the message, the conferences, the campus presence, the cultural identity and the young conservative community.
Turning Point Action took political energy and directed it toward electoral activity and voter mobilization.
Symbolically:
11 speaks.
5 moves.
The message becomes action.
The idea becomes political activity.
The audience becomes an electorate.
And this brings us back to Charlie Kirk himself.
CHARLIE = 11.
KIRK = 22.
TURNING POINT USA = 11.
TURNING POINT ACTION = 14/5.
Charlie contains the archetypes of both the MessengerĀ and the Master Builder.
Turning Point USA carries the MessengerĀ vibration.
Turning Point Action carries the vibration of movement, freedom and change.
And Project 2025 carries 6āfamily, morality and responsibility, but in its shadow, control.
The symbolic sequence becomes:
11 ā THE MESSAGE
22 ā THE BUILDER
11 ā THE MOVEMENT'S VOICE
14/5 ā THE ACTION
6 ā THE GOVERNING ORDER
And then comes:
19/1 ā THE DEATH DATE
An ending that becomes another beginning.
None of this proves that the numbers caused these events.
That is not what I believe numerology is for.
Numbers do not assassinate people.
Numbers do not elect presidents.
Numbers do not write legislation.
Human beings do those things.
But numbers can become mirrors through which we contemplate the spiritual meaning of what human beings are creating.
And when I place these numbers beside one another, I see an extraordinary symbolic progression:
A messenger appeared.
A builder constructed a movement.
The movement amplified the message.
The message became action.
The action sought political power.
Political power became a governing program.
And then the messenger diedābut the machinery continued.
That is where the numerology becomes an ominous spiritual warning for me.
Because the question is no longer merely:
Who was Charlie Kirk?
The question becomes:
What did we build around himāand what will that machinery build after him?
2025 = 9Ā ā completion/reckoning
PROJECT = 33/6Ā ā Master Teacher ā responsibility/control
PROJECT 2025 = 6Ā ā family/morality/service ā shadow paternalism/control
CHARLIE = 11Ā ā Master Messenger
KIRK = 22Ā ā Master Builder
CHARLIE KIRK = 6Ā ā responsibility/morality ā shadow control
TURNING POINT USA = 11/2Ā ā message/influence ā shadow polarization
TURNING POINT ACTION = 14/5Ā ā freedom/action/change ā shadow excess/instability
September 10, 2025 = 19/1Ā ā individual power, karmic responsibility, ending becoming beginning
Research Shows...
Human history contains repeated examples, across monarchies, fascist states, communist states, colonial empires, military dictatorships, religiously infused regimes and nationalist movements. No single ideology has a monopoly on human cruelty.Ā The recurring danger is what happens when concentrated power combines with dehumanization, fear, unquestioning loyalty and the conviction that some group of human beings stands in the way of national salvation.
There is no defensible single numberĀ of āevil leadersā across history. If we use a more objective standardāleaders strongly associated with genocide, mass atrocity, ethnic cleansing, systematic political killing, or wars accompanied by extraordinary civilian destructionāthe list quickly reaches dozens of major figures, and hundreds if we include subordinate commanders and regional rulers.
Also, āgenocideā is a modern legal term, coined during World War II and defined internationally in 1948. So for antiquity and the Middle Ages, it is usually better to say massacre, exterminatory warfare, mass enslavement, or destruction of populationsĀ rather than retroactively applying the legal label.
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Ashurnasirpal II ā Assyrian Empire, 9th century BCE:Ā Assyrian royal warfare deliberately used terror, mass execution, mutilation and deportation to intimidate conquered populations.
Alexander the Great ā Macedonian Empire, 4th century BCE:Ā Created an enormous empire through conquest; episodes such as the destruction of Thebes and siege of Tyre involved substantial killing and enslavement. He is not normally classed with modern genocidal dictators, but his wars were extraordinarily violent.
Qin Shi Huang ā Qin China, 3rd century BCE:Ā Unified China through warfare and subsequently imposed severe authoritarian rule, enormous forced-labor projects and political repression.
Julius Caesar ā Roman Republic, 1st century BCE:Ā His conquest of Gaul involved massive warfare, enslavement and destruction of communities. Ancient numerical claims are uncertain.
Genghis Khan ā Mongol Empire, c. 1162ā1227:Ā Mongol conquests destroyed numerous cities and massacred populations that resisted. Contemporary death totals are often wildly exaggerated, but historians agree that the destruction was enormous.
Hulagu Khan ā Mongol Ilkhanate, 13th century:Ā His forces destroyed Baghdad in 1258 and conducted mass slaughter during Mongol expansion; medieval numerical estimates are especially uncertain.
Timur / Tamerlane ā Timurid Empire, 14thā15th centuries:Ā His campaigns across Central Asia, Persia, India and the Middle East became notorious for massacres and deliberate terror, including reputed towers of severed heads.
Vlad III āthe Impalerā ā Wallachia, 15th century:Ā Became notorious for mass executionāparticularly impalementāas both punishment and psychological warfare.
Early-modern rulers and colonial violence
Ivan IV āIvan the Terribleā ā Russia:Ā Used political terror, executions and the Oprichnina against perceived enemies; the massacre of Novgorod became one of the best-known episodes of his reign.
Leopold II ā Congo Free State:Ā His personal colonial regime imposed forced labor, hostage-taking, beatings, mutilations and widespread killing in the Congo. Estimates of the resulting population loss vary enormously, so very precise death totals should be treated cautiously.
Lothar von Trotha ā German South West Africa:Ā German commander responsible for the extermination order against the Herero during the Herero and Nama genocide. He was a military commander rather than a sovereign ruler, but belongs in any historical atrocity catalog.
Abdul Hamid II ā Ottoman Empire:Ā His reign included the Hamidian massacres of Armenians and other Christians in the 1890s, although responsibility involved wider imperial institutions.
World War I era and interwar mass atrocities
TalĆ¢t Pasha ā Ottoman Empire:Ā A central CUP leader in the Armenian genocide; Ottoman records and other contemporary evidence show that the highest CUP leadership intentionally targeted Armenians.
Enver Pasha ā Ottoman Empire:Ā War minister and another senior member of the ruling CUP circle associated with the Armenian genocide.
Djemal Pasha ā Ottoman Empire:Ā Third member of the ruling Ottoman triumvirate; associated with wartime deportation, repression and mass violence.
Benito Mussolini ā Fascist Italy:Ā His regime invaded Ethiopia, established colonial rule through severe repression and authorized chemical warfare; Italian forces committed numerous atrocities.
Joseph Stalin ā Soviet Union:Ā Forced collectivization cost millions of lives; Stalin also presided over purges, executions, deportations and the Gulag system, with millions imprisoned, exiled or killed.
Nazi Germany and allied regimes
Adolf Hitler ā Nazi Germany:Ā Principal political architect of a regime responsible for the Holocaustāthe genocide of six million Jewsāas well as the mass murder and persecution of Roma, disabled people, Poles, Soviet POWs and numerous other groups.
Heinrich Himmler ā Nazi Germany:Ā Head of the SS and one of the central organizers of the Holocaust and Nazi mass murder.
Reinhard Heydrich ā Nazi Germany:Ā Senior SS leader centrally involved in coordinating the āFinal Solution.ā
Ante PaveliÄ ā Independent State of Croatia:Ā Led the UstaÅ”e regime, which conducted genocidal persecution and mass killing of Serbs, Jews and Roma.
Ion Antonescu ā Romania:Ā His regime participated in the Holocaust and mass killing and deportation of Jews and Roma.
Ferenc SzĆ”lasi ā Hungary:Ā Arrow Cross leader whose regime participated in the murder and deportation of Hungarian Jews.
Imperial Japan
Hideki Tojo ā Japan:Ā Prime minister during much of the Pacific War; convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for aggressive war and responsibility connected to wartime atrocities.
Emperor Hirohito ā Japan:Ā Imperial forces committed enormous atrocities during his reign, but historians continue to debate the precise degree of his personal decision-making responsibility; unlike Tojo, he was not prosecuted after the war.
Postwar Communist dictatorships
Mao Zedong ā China:Ā The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution produced mass famine, political persecution, execution and social upheaval on an enormous scale. Death estimates vary greatly, especially in distinguishing deliberate killing from famine caused by policy.
Kim Il Sung ā North Korea:Ā Established the highly repressive hereditary North Korean state, political prison system and personality cult.
Kim Jong Il ā North Korea:Ā Continued the dictatorship and prison-camp system while catastrophic famine killed enormous numbers.
Pol Pot ā Cambodia:Ā Khmer Rouge rule subjected Cambodia to forced labor, starvation, persecution and execution; nearly two million people died between 1975 and 1979.
Mengistu Haile Mariam ā Ethiopia:Ā His Derg regime conducted the Red Terror, mass imprisonment, executions and violent political repression.
African dictators and atrocity regimes
Idi Amin ā Uganda:Ā His dictatorship used mass execution, torture and disappearance; estimates commonly place deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
Francisco MacĆas Nguema ā Equatorial Guinea:Ā Established one of postcolonial Africa's most violent dictatorships, with executions, persecution and mass flight from the country.
Jean-BĆ©del Bokassa ā Central African Republic:Ā His dictatorship became notorious for political killings and extreme personal brutality.
HissĆØne HabrĆ© ā Chad:Ā Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture and sexual violence; investigators estimated around 40,000 political killings under his rule.
Siad Barre ā Somalia:Ā His regime's campaign against the Isaaq population involved mass killing, bombardment and destruction; it is frequently described by scholars and human-rights investigators as genocidal.
Omar al-Bashir ā Sudan:Ā The ICC issued warrants charging him with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes connected with Darfur. Those remain charges rather than a conviction because he has not been tried by the ICC.
Robert Mugabe ā Zimbabwe:Ā His government's Gukurahundi campaign killed thousands of civilians in Matabeleland; his rule also involved serious political repression.
Middle East
Saddam Hussein ā Iraq:Ā His regime conducted mass executions, repression, the Anfal campaign against Kurdish communities, chemical attacks including Halabja, and wars against Iran and Kuwait.
Hafez al-Assad ā Syria:Ā His government used extreme repression, most famously the 1982 Hama assault that killed large numbers of civilians.
Bashar al-Assad ā Syria:Ā His government was responsible for extensive attacks on civilians, detention, torture and other alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Syrian civil war.
Muammar Gaddafi ā Libya:Ā His dictatorship used executions, disappearances and repression against political opposition, though its killing scale should not simply be equated with Hitler, Stalin or Mao.
Southeast Asia
Suharto ā Indonesia:Ā His rise to power accompanied the 1965ā66 anti-communist mass killings; later Indonesian rule in East Timor was marked by severe atrocities and enormous civilian mortality.
Yahya Khan ā Pakistan:Ā Pakistan's 1971 military campaign in East Pakistan involved mass killing, rape and displacement; many scholars and Bangladesh characterize the campaign as genocide.
Min Aung Hlaing ā Myanmar:Ā Senior military commander associated with the military campaign against the Rohingya and, later, brutal repression following the 2021 coup.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Rafael Trujillo ā Dominican Republic:Ā His dictatorship murdered and tortured opponents and carried out the 1937 Parsley Massacre targeting Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
FranƧois āPapa Docā Duvalier ā Haiti:Ā His regime used the Tonton Macoute to terrorize, torture, disappear and murder opponents.
Augusto Pinochet ā Chile:Ā His dictatorship conducted systematic political imprisonment, torture, disappearance and execution following the 1973 coup.
Jorge Rafael Videla ā Argentina:Ā Led the military dictatorship during the āDirty War,ā involving disappearance, torture and murder of thousands.
EfraĆn RĆos Montt ā Guatemala:Ā A Guatemalan court found him guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity against Maya Ixil communities, although the conviction was later annulled on procedural grounds and a retrial was never completed before his death. The finding remains historically important but its unusual legal history should always be explained.
Rwanda and former Yugoslavia
Jean Kambanda ā Rwanda:Ā Prime minister during the 1994 genocide and the first head of government to plead guilty before an international tribunal to genocide.
ThĆ©oneste Bagosora ā Rwanda:Ā Senior military figure regarded as one of the principal organizers of the 1994 genocide. As many as one million people, overwhelmingly Tutsi along with moderate Hutu, were murdered in roughly 100 days.
Jean-Paul Akayesu ā Rwanda:Ā Local political leader whose international conviction became the first genocide conviction by an international court.
Slobodan MiloÅ”eviÄ ā Serbia/Yugoslavia:Ā Prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes arising from the Balkan wars, but died before his trial produced a verdict. He therefore should notĀ be described as convicted of genocide.
Radovan KaradžiÄ ā Bosnian Serb leadership:Ā Convicted of genocide and other crimes associated particularly with Srebrenica.
Ratko MladiÄ ā Bosnian Serb military:Ā Commanded forces responsible for the Srebrenica genocide and other atrocities; about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered at Srebrenica.
So just from this relatively conservative survey we already have roughly 45ā50 major rulers and senior leaders. If we included every senior architect, commander and regional perpetratorāfor example the many Nazi SS commanders, Khmer Rouge leaders, Rwandan officials and militia leaders, Japanese commanders, Stalinist secret-police chiefs and perpetrators of colonial massacresāthe list would easily run into the hundreds. Nazi Germany alone required a huge network of officials, police, military personnel and collaborators to execute mass murder.
The Real Terrosists, and now those who did not carry out the atrocities but encourged, & developed the mechanisms and got others to do it for them!
History teaches us that the most dangerous person in a system is not always the person holding the weapon. Sometimes it is the person who teaches others whom to fear, writes the policy, builds the institution, creates the list, controls the message, provides the money, or convinces ordinary people that cruelty is necessary.
Yes. This is an important second category: the architects, propagandists, bureaucrats, organizers, ideologues, and administrators who may not personally have pulled a trigger, but created the beliefs, laws, institutions, logistics, and permission structures that enabled others to commit atrocities.
In fact, the Holocaust Museum stresses that genocide on the scale of the Holocaust required not just killers, but government ministries, police, railways, military bureaucracies, professionals, businesses, propagandists, and ordinary institutions.
Here are some of the clearest historical examples:
Joseph Goebbels ā Nazi Germany:Ā Built and directed the Nazi propaganda system, using radio, film, newspapers, rallies and mass messaging to cultivate Hitler worship, antisemitism, war fever and public tolerance for persecution. Nazi propaganda helped create the climate in which increasingly radical violence became acceptable.
Heinrich Himmler ā Nazi Germany:Ā Constructed the SS and police apparatus that transformed racial ideology into an administrative system of surveillance, imprisonment, deportation and mass murder. He delegated enormous authority to subordinates while overseeing the machinery of the āFinal Solution.ā
Reinhard Heydrich ā Nazi Germany:Ā One of the principal architects of the Final Solution. He headed the Reich Security Main Office and coordinated agencies responsible for turning Hitlerās racial objectives into an organized European-wide program of deportation and extermination.
Adolf Eichmann ā Nazi Germany:Ā A bureaucratic organizer rather than a battlefield commander. He built and managed the administrative and transportation network that deported more than 1.5 million Jews to killing centers and killing sites.
Hermann Gƶring ā Nazi Germany:Ā Helped dismantle democratic institutions, empowered the Gestapo, organized repression of political opponents and formally authorized Heydrich to prepare the administrative implementation of the āFinal Solution.ā
Alfred Rosenberg ā Nazi Germany:Ā Nazi racial theorist whose writings helped provide an intellectual framework for antisemitism, racial hierarchy and conquest in Eastern Europe. His role illustrates how ideology can precede and legitimize state violence.
Julius Streicher ā Nazi Germany:Ā Publisher of the antisemitic newspaper Der StĆ¼rmer. He did not command extermination camps, but relentlessly encouraged hatred and dehumanization of Jews and was convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against humanity for his incitement.
Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl ā Nazi Germany:Ā Senior military administrators whose orders helped turn the invasion of the Soviet Union into a war in which ordinary protections of the laws of war were deliberately abandoned. The Wehrmacht issued criminal orders encouraging executions and atrocities.
Lavrentiy Beria ā Soviet Union:Ā Head of Stalinās security apparatus. He administered arrests, deportations, executions, forced-labor systems and secret-police repression. Stalin established the political objectives; Beria helped create and operate the machinery capable of carrying them out.
Vyacheslav Molotov ā Soviet Union:Ā Senior Stalinist official who helped implement state policies including purges, forced collectivization and deportations through governmental and party structures, even though he was not personally performing the killings.
Nikolai Yezhov ā Soviet Union:Ā Directed the NKVD during the height of Stalinās Great Terror and created quotas, procedures and administrative systems through which hundreds of thousands were arrested and executed.
Mikhail Suslov and other Soviet ideological officials:Ā Helped maintain systems of censorship, propaganda and ideological conformity that justified repression and portrayed perceived political enemies as threats to the state.
Kang Sheng ā Maoist China:Ā Senior Communist security and intelligence official associated with political purges, surveillance and persecution. He helped develop mechanisms for identifying and destroying supposed ideological enemies.
Chen Boda ā Maoist China:Ā Maoās political theorist and propagandist, influential in developing the ideological framework of the Cultural Revolution and the cult surrounding Mao.
Jiang Qing and the Cultural Revolution leadership ā China:Ā Helped encourage radicalization, ideological purification and attacks against alleged ācounterrevolutionaries,ā intellectuals and perceived enemies, while much of the physical violence was carried out by Red Guards and other followers.
Nuon Chea ā Khmer Rouge Cambodia:Ā Often called āBrother Number Two,ā he was a senior ideologue and policymaker behind the Khmer Rouge system of forced labor, persecution and killing rather than merely an individual executioner.
Khieu Samphan ā Khmer Rouge Cambodia:Ā Senior political leader whose authority helped sustain and legitimize the Khmer Rouge state while the killing apparatus operated throughout Cambodia.
Kaing Guek Eav (āDuchā) ā Cambodia:Ā Managed the S-21 security prison system, creating bureaucratic procedures of interrogation, forced confession and execution. His role demonstrates how mass killing can become routinized paperwork.
ThĆ©oneste Bagosora ā Rwanda:Ā Senior military official involved in organizing the structures that facilitated the 1994 genocide, including coordination among military and militia forces.
Ferdinand Nahimana ā Rwanda:Ā Historian and media executive associated with RTLM radio, whose broadcasts helped spread extremist propaganda and encourage persecution during the genocide.
Hassan Ngeze ā Rwanda:Ā Newspaper publisher whose extremist publication KanguraĀ helped promote anti-Tutsi hatred and dehumanization before the genocide.
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza ā Rwanda:Ā Political and media figure associated with RTLM and extremist organizations that helped establish the ideological environment for genocide.
Radovan KaradžiÄ ā Bosnia:Ā Political leader who formulated and promoted policies of ethnic separation while military forces under others carried out killings, expulsions and the Srebrenica genocide.
Slobodan MiloÅ”eviÄ ā Serbia/Yugoslavia:Ā Used nationalism, state media, political institutions and security structures in ways that helped fuel the Yugoslav wars. He was prosecuted internationally but died before judgment, so he should not be described as convicted.
Joseph Kony's senior commanders and propagandists ā Lordās Resistance Army:Ā Helped build systems of indoctrination in which abducted children were compelled to become soldiers and commit atrocities.
TalĆ¢t Pasha ā Ottoman Empire:Ā As interior minister, used administrative orders, deportation policies and state bureaucracy to organize the removal of Armenians. The genocide depended heavily upon orders transmitted through civilian administration rather than violence committed personally by top officials.
Theoneste-type propagandists across genocides generally:Ā Radio broadcasters, newspaper editors, clergy, teachers, party officials and political organizers have repeatedly served as the bridge between ideology and violence by redefining neighbors as vermin, traitors, invaders or existential enemies.
The pattern is extremely important:
The person who commits the final violent act is often near the end of a much longer chain.
Before the gun comes:
the idea.
Then the slogan.
Then the enemy.
Then the propaganda.
Then the law.
Then the bureaucracy.
Then the list.
Then the institution.
Then the order.
Then someone else is told to carry it out.
That is why historians pay so much attention to propagandists, bureaucrats and institutional architects, not merely dictators and executioners. The Holocaust, for example, depended on railroads to transport victims, ministries to identify them, police to arrest them, civil servants to process records, military units to provide logistical support, and propaganda to make persecution tolerable to a wider public.
History teaches us that the most dangerous person in a system is not always the person holding the weapon. Sometimes it is the person who teaches others whom to fear, writes the policy, builds the institution, creates the list, controls the message, provides the money, or convinces ordinary people that cruelty is necessary.
Modern-Day Examples in the United States
We have seen many examples throughout history, and now, in the United States, we see Donald Trump; members of Trumpās Cabinet and administration; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; Hegsethās pastor, Brooks Potteiger, of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship and now Christ Church D.C.; the religious network associated with Doug Wilson and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC); Paula White-Cain and the White House Faith Office; much of the present-day GOP; and the architects and organizations behind Project 2025.
These relationships are not imaginary. Hegseth has been associated with Pastor Brooks Potteiger and the CREC religious network connected with Doug Wilson, while Paula White-Cain serves officially as Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office. Project 2025, meanwhile, explicitly created not only a policy agenda but a personnel database, training program and implementation plans for placing aligned conservatives throughout the federal government. Turning Point USA was one of Project 2025ās listed coalition partners.
We also see government policies directly affecting immigrants, transgender and LGBTQIA+ Americans, racial and ethnic minorities, children, women, Muslims, religious minorities and other communities whose civil rights and place in American society have become subjects of an increasingly intense political and religious struggle.Ā Immigration enforcement has expanded dramatically, while other administration actions involving immigration, transgender rights, DEI and federal civil-rights policy have generated major legal and constitutional disputes.
Muslim Americans have increasingly become targets of political rhetoric as well. In 2026, Republican political figures including Vice President JD Vance, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Tommy TubervilleĀ made Islam or Muslim political participation prominent campaign issues. Their supporters characterize these arguments in terms of national security, extremism and American law; critics describe them as fear-mongering and anti-Muslim prejudice.
Outside government, America has also witnessed extremist organizations and movements including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and explicitly white-supremacist groups. These organizations should not simply be equated with MAGA, the Republican Party or evangelical Christianity; they are distinct movements with different memberships and ideologies. But their existence forces us to confront what can happen when nationalism, grievance, fear, religious certainty and political identity become increasingly intertwined.
And within parts of contemporary Christianity, we see an ideology that I describe as fanatical Christianityāa form of religious certainty that believes its interpretation of Christianity should determine not merely how its followers live, but how everybody else must live.
Todayās most extreme evangelical and Christian nationalist movements harken back, for me, to the days of the Spanish Inquisition, Puritan religious rule, the Salem witch trials, and other periods in history when religious authority attempted to force its will upon people who believed differently.
Different centuries.
Different circumstances.
Different degrees of violence.
But the recurring danger is the same:
When religious conviction becomes the belief that we possess the authority to control somebody elseās conscience, body, family, identity, healthcare, marriage, education, religion or freedom.
And on this list, for me, is Charlie Kirkānot as someone who personally committed atrocities, because he did not, but as a messenger, organizer and recruiter who devoted extraordinary energy to influencing the young people of the United States.
Through Turning Point USA, Kirk helped build a national political infrastructure directed particularly toward high-school and college-age Americans. The organization he founded was also officially listed among the coalition partners of Project 2025.
In my spiritual judgment, Charlie Kirk helped lead too many young Americans into darknessĀ by teaching them to see other human beingsāimmigrants, Muslims, LGBTQIA+ people, transgender people, feminists, liberals, professors and othersāas symbols of a civilization supposedly under attack.
His supporters will understandably describe his legacy very differently: as encouraging young Americans to embrace conservative principles, Christianity, patriotism and political participation.
That disagreement itself belongs in the historical record.
But it also brings me back to the warning running throughout this article:
The person who ultimately commits an act of hatred or violence is not always where the story begins.
Sometimes it begins with an idea.
Then a messenger.
Then an audience.
Then a movement.
Then money.
Then political organization.
Then an enemy.
Then fear.
Then policy.
Then governmental power.
And eventually, somewhere down that chain, another human being experiences the consequences.
That is why we must pay attention long before history tells us how the story ends.
God Save us from ourselves. And so it is Amen.
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