The Gospel of Power: How MAGA Turned Charlie Kirk’s Death Into a National Loyalty Test

Sep 18

Written By Allie

Introduction

Charlie Kirk is dead, and America is watching his corpse be transformed into a relic of authoritarian worship. He was no soldier, no statesman, no public servant who laid down his life for country or community. He was a talker, a provocateur, a well-paid megaphone for Trump’s culture wars. Yet in the days since his death, the United States government commandeered by Trump’s second regime and its loyal shock troops has twisted this man’s passing into a national spectacle of loyalty oaths and scapegoating.

This is not mourning. This is mobilization.

When an ordinary American dies, even one killed in shocking circumstances, the president does not rush to weaponize their death. The commander-in-chief does not order the flags of a nation lowered in their honor. The vice president does not dispatch government aircraft, funded by taxpayers, to ferry their remains. Congress does not rush to criminalize speech about them. And federal law enforcement does not blur the line between investigation and public eulogy.

But Charlie Kirk was not an ordinary American. He was the chosen prophet of a movement that has made grievance its gospel, cruelty its communion, and sycophancy its sacrament. And so, with his sudden death, Trump and his acolytes did what they always do: they seized the moment, distorted the facts, and demanded the country kneel.

The authoritarian impulse here is not subtle. It is not hidden behind ceremony or sanitized by careful language. It is on full display, raw, shameless, unrepentant. And it shows us exactly where we stand in Trump’s America: a land where power is hoarded for the loyal few, rights are conditional on obedience, and even death becomes a stage for state-sponsored propaganda.

The Script Was Written Before the Body Was Cold

The news of Kirk’s murder had barely broken before Trump lunged for a microphone. And what came out of his mouth was not grief, not caution, not the sober voice of a leader calling for unity in the face of violence. No; it was the same bile-soaked script we’ve heard for nearly a decade: blame the left, blame the marginalized, blame the enemies list.

Facts didn’t matter; they never do. Within hours, Trump thundered about “radical left terrorists,” casting a net so wide it included millions of Americans whose only crime is opposing him. And woven into that reflexive accusation was the now-familiar undercurrent: the implication that the trans community, the most convenient scapegoat of MAGA’s current crusade, was to blame.

This is the new normal under Trump: to turn every crime, every tragedy, into a cudgel against the people his movement already hates. The evidence can be absent, the narrative nonsensical, but the conclusion is preordained. It doesn’t matter who the shooter is, or what the circumstances reveal. The story is written in advance: if there is blood on the ground, then the left is guilty.

We’ve seen this play out again and again. When a shooting erupts, MAGA influencers swarm to social media with accusations that the killer must be trans, must be queer, must be an immigrant. Sometimes they fixate on old photos, doctored images, or random people with vaguely similar names. They are never concerned about accuracy; they are concerned about utility. If the accusation can stir fear, then it is useful. If it can harden hatred, then it is truth enough for their purposes.

And so, when Kirk’s life was cut short, the gears of this propaganda machine whirred into motion with mechanical precision. By the time the first news conference even began, trans people across the country were already being smeared as killers, again. A whole community was once more placed in the crosshairs of suspicion, not because of evidence but because scapegoating is MAGA’s default setting.

But here is the brutal irony: the suspect in custody fits not the fantasy villain MAGA conjures, but the very real, very consistent profile of mass shooters in this country. Young. Male. White. Raised in a conservative household. Steeped in gun culture. By all accounts, a “law-abiding” citizen, until the day he wasn’t.

This is the profile we have seen again and again, from Columbine to Uvalde to Buffalo. It is the profile of nearly every mass shooter in the modern American era. And yet, somehow, this truth remains taboo in the halls of power. Because to acknowledge it would mean confronting uncomfortable realities: that violence in America is not primarily the product of marginalized communities, but of the so-called “backbone of America” that Trump praises at every rally.

Trump’s baseless accusations in the hours after Kirk’s murder were not just a moment of grief-stricken misjudgment. They were the logical extension of a politics built on projection and scapegoating. For years he has told his followers that trans people are violent predators, that queer activists are existential threats, that immigrants are criminals waiting to strike. He has blurred every individual case into a generalized indictment. Now, in the moment when the evidence points squarely back toward his own base, he doubled down.

This is how authoritarian propaganda works: first the narrative, then the facts. The truth is not discovered; it is imposed. The death of Charlie Kirk was not a tragedy to be understood, it was a stage to be used. And the message was clear: loyalty means repeating the lie, and dissent means siding with the enemy.

Air Force Two, for a Partisan Court Jester

In a democracy, symbols matter. And there is no symbol more glaring, no spectacle more absurd, than the sight of Air Force Two ferrying home the remains of a partisan sycophant. Charlie Kirk was not a general returning from a battlefield. He was not a fallen president, senator, or Supreme Court justice. He was not even an elected official. He was a propagandist, a glorified podcaster whose entire career was built on flattering Trump and spitting venom at Trump’s enemies.

Yet there it was: Air Force Two, the vice president’s official jet, dispatched at taxpayer expense to carry his body home. The same aircraft meant to serve the nation’s second-in-command, repurposed to honor the corpse of a man whose highest achievement was inventing new ways to sneer at marginalized people.

We are told this was a gesture of respect. Respect for whom? Respect for what? If Air Force Two is the chariot for partisan mouthpieces, then what does that say about the value system of this administration? It says loyalty to Trump buys you honors normally reserved for heroes. It says sycophancy outweighs service. It says that in the Trump regime, bending the knee earns you the kind of privileges that ordinary citizens, the people who actually keep this country running, could never dream of.

This has no precedent. Soldiers killed in action have been flown home quietly, without the pomp of government jets. Civil rights leaders and community builders have been mourned without official aircraft deployed. Even Rush Limbaugh, Trump’s favorite radio blowhard, did not receive this kind of military-grade transport. Why? Because until now, America understood there was a line between personal loyalty and public honor. That line is gone.

Make no mistake: this was not a decision made to comfort Kirk’s family. It was a decision made to broadcast a message. It was propaganda with wings. Trump and his court wanted the world to see the state’s full power wrapped around the body of a man whose only qualification was servitude to MAGA. It was a performance of loyalty, not a gesture of grief.

And the message to the rest of us could not be clearer: If you flatter the throne, the throne will bend the nation’s resources to serve you. If you oppose it, you can rot in anonymity. Air Force Two is no longer a plane, it’s a reward. A loyalty perk. A platinum card for the MAGA elite.

Legislating Loyalty

Even before Kirk’s body had cooled, MAGA members of Congress were scrambling to turn his death into law. Their proposal? A grotesque piece of legislative theater: to permanently ban anyone from social media who dared to “praise” Kirk’s death. Not to punish threats, not to sanction incitement, but to criminalize dissent itself.

Think about that. The American right, which has spent years howling about “cancel culture” and “free speech,” now proposes to erase people from the digital public square for the crime of failing to worship their fallen comrade. They want permanent exile from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, not because someone made threats, but because they expressed the wrong opinion.

This is not lawmaking. This is loyalty enforcement.

And it is naked hypocrisy. These are the same voices who insisted that it was their right to mock George Floyd, to sneer at dead immigrants, to celebrate the deaths of their political opponents. They claimed their “First Amendment rights” when they posted memes about Paul Pelosi’s assault. They laughed when trans people were murdered. They shrugged when women seeking abortions were attacked. Free speech for them has always meant free cruelty. But now, the minute someone dares to mock the death of one of their own, they want lifetime bans.

We need to call this what it is: authoritarian creep. The idea that government officials would move to regulate what private citizens can say about a partisan figure’s death is not democracy. It is not liberty. It is state-sponsored idolatry. It is the erection of a cult, codified into law.

And we should be very clear: this is not where it ends. Today it is Kirk. Tomorrow it is Trump. The groundwork is being laid for laws that criminalize mockery of the regime, laws that punish dissent as treason, laws that turn satire into sedition. The bill floated this week is a test balloon, a loyalty oath disguised as legislation. And if the country does not recoil in disgust, more will follow.

The First Amendment for MAGA, Silence for the Rest

The United States Constitution is supposed to be a shield, a guarantee that every citizen, no matter how small, no matter how powerless, has the right to speak without government reprisal. But under Trump’s regime, that shield has become conditional. The First Amendment is alive and well if you are praising Charlie Kirk, if you are worshipping the MAGA gospel, if you are chanting the party line. For everyone else? Silence, punishment, surveillance.

Consider Florida. Within hours of Kirk’s death, the state’s education commissioner blasted teachers who posted irreverent comments online. Some educators were suspended, threatened with termination, or warned that their licenses could be stripped. Their crime was not violence. Their crime was not incitement. Their crime was failing to cry the right kind of tears.

And then there’s the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood before cameras and declared that the military would be “monitoring” service members’ online activity for anything mocking Kirk’s death. “We will not tolerate it,” he thundered, as if free speech for soldiers and civilians alike were privileges to be revoked by decree. In truth, the First Amendment has always been more limited for those in uniform, but this wasn’t about military discipline. This was about political loyalty. It was about telling every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine that their freedom of conscience ended where MAGA’s grief began.

This is authoritarian logic in its purest form: the idea that rights are not universal, but contingent. That they apply to some but not others. That they can be toggled on or off depending on whether you flatter the throne.

And let’s be honest, we’ve seen this pattern before. The same politicians who howl about “cancel culture” when their own speech draws criticism are the first to demand firings, suspensions, and bans when it is their turn to feel mocked. They insist that conservative speech must be in schools, but liberal teachers can be silenced. They demand that their rallies be covered on social media, but dissenters must be censored. Theirs is not a philosophy of free speech. It is a philosophy of conditional speech. Speech for me, silence for thee.

The hypocrisy is galling, but the danger is worse. Because once the state begins enforcing reverence, there is no natural stopping point. Today it is Kirk. Tomorrow it is Trump. Next week it is “the regime.” And soon enough, a citizen’s silence is no longer enough, they must actively perform loyalty. They must not only refrain from mockery, but participate in praise.

That is how authoritarianism metastasizes. Not through sudden silencing, but through the slow conditioning of a nation to equate obedience with patriotism. And make no mistake: that is the conditioning on display now. If you’re not praising Kirk, you’re suspect. If you’re not posting the right memes, you’re an enemy.

The First Amendment was written precisely to prevent this, to protect the irreverent, the mocking, the unpopular voice. But under Trump, it is being rewritten by precedent: rights exist only if they serve the cult.

Saints, Sycophants, and Scripture

If there is one thing more grotesque than the political theater of Charlie Kirk’s death, it is the religious theater. Evangelical leaders who spent years nodding along as Kirk vilified immigrants, demonized queer people, and belittled women are now draping him in sainthood.

In sermons across the country, he has been called a “martyr for truth,” a “modern apostle,” even “the Lord’s servant struck down by evil.” Worship services that once read the Beatitudes now treat Kirk’s podcast soundbites like holy scripture. Pastors preach that his death is proof of Christian persecution, that mocking him is mocking God himself.

This is not Christianity. This is idolatry.

Let’s be blunt: Charlie Kirk was no saint. He was a man who trafficked in cruelty. He mocked the marginalized. He sneered at the oppressed. He made a career out of bastardizing scripture, twisting Christ’s message of compassion into a cudgel of exclusion. And now, in death, those same distortions are multiplying.

What does it say about evangelical America that they have chosen Kirk as their martyr? It says that their faith is not in Christ, but in grievance. It says their gospel is not about love, but about domination. It says their scripture is not the Bible, but the party line.

And the danger is not just theological. It is political. Because when religion baptizes authoritarianism, it gives it divine cover. When pastors preach that Kirk was struck down by “the enemies of God,” they are not just mourning. They are declaring war. They are telling their congregations that political dissenters are not fellow citizens but heretics, that resisting Trump is resisting heaven itself.

We’ve seen this fusion of church and state before, and it never ends well. In fascist Italy, Mussolini wrapped his dictatorship in Catholic ritual. In Nazi Germany, pastors preached Hitler as God’s chosen vessel. In Franco’s Spain, the cross and the sword marched hand in hand. Now, in America, we are watching the same marriage of convenience: Trump provides the power, and the evangelical establishment provides the sanctification.

Charlie Kirk is their bridge. He is their saint of spite, their martyr of meanness. And in sanctifying him, they sanctify Trump’s entire project.

The blasphemy here is staggering. Jesus spent his life with the marginalized, the poor, the outcast. He washed the feet of prostitutes, healed the sick, welcomed the stranger. Kirk spent his life doing the opposite: excluding, mocking, ridiculing. To equate the two is not just bad theology, it is sacrilege.

But that is the heart of this new evangelicalism: to take the radical compassion of Christ and invert it into the radical cruelty of MAGA. And in the process, to drag millions of Christians into a faith that worships grievance more than God.

Kash Patel, Judge and Mourner

If there was ever a moment that crystallized just how far the lines have blurred between justice and loyalty in Trump’s America, it came at the press conference announcing the arrest of a suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder.

There stood Kash Patel, not just the FBI Director, but one of Trump’s most trusted fixers, a man whose career has been built on service to the regime rather than to the rule of law. This was supposed to be a sober announcement, the kind of briefing where facts are delivered with precision and care. Instead, Patel turned the podium into a pulpit, and the presser into a eulogy.

He didn’t just announce an arrest. He praised Kirk as “my brother,” called him a warrior, and closed with the chilling line: “See you in Valhalla.” This wasn’t justice speaking. This was allegiance. It was a man entrusted with the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency using that moment to broadcast his personal devotion to the deceased.

And then came the admission: Patel was not just the nation’s top investigator in this case, he was Kirk’s personal friend. By every standard of ethics, this is a conflict of interest screaming for recusal. No prosecutor, no judge, no investigator with an ounce of integrity would stand in front of cameras and declare friendship with a victim while still running the investigation. But Patel is not in the business of integrity. He is in the business of loyalty.

The American people should see this for what it is: the justice system itself bent into the service of one man’s cult. If Trump demands loyalty above all, then Patel is his perfect enforcer, a lawman who makes clear that his allegiance is not to impartial truth, but to the tribe.

And think about the precedent this sets. If the FBI director can mourn a personal friend on national television while announcing charges, what confidence can any of us have in the fairness of the process? What happens when the next suspect claims bias, when the next defense attorney points out the obvious conflict? What happens when dissenters are targeted, and the line between justice and politics has been completely erased?

The answer is simple: the system collapses. Justice becomes performance. Law becomes theater. And the stage is always rigged to flatter the regime.

The Suspect and the Real Profile of Violence

For all the noise about trans scapegoats and “radical left terrorists,” the suspect in custody tells a far more familiar story. He is not the caricature MAGA conjured in the hours after the murder. He is not a trans woman with a grudge, not an immigrant sneaking across the border, not a queer activist radicalized by drag shows. He is, in fact, the same type of man who has been pulling triggers in this country for decades.

Young. Male. White. Raised in a conservative household. Steeped in gun culture. By all accounts, a “law-abiding” citizen, until the day he wasn’t.

For twenty years, America’s epidemic of mass shootings has followed this pattern. The killers are overwhelmingly men. Overwhelmingly young. Overwhelmingly drawn from conservative communities where guns are not just tools, but talismans of identity. And when the blood dries, the same politicians who loosened gun laws, who fanned the flames of grievance, who wrapped masculinity around the barrel of a rifle, are the first to find scapegoats elsewhere.

So it was with Kirk’s murder. Before a single fact emerged, the regime rushed to pin the blame on trans people. And when the truth became undeniable, when the suspect’s profile fit the same tired, tragic mold, there was no apology. No correction. No reflection. Just silence.

Charlie Kirk’s death could have been a moment to confront these realities. To acknowledge the true profile of American violence. To look squarely at the culture that breeds shooters and say, “Enough.” Instead, it became just another excuse to double down on lies, to smear the marginalized, to protect the myth that MAGA is innocent of the violence it inspires.

Conclusion – A Nation on Its Knees

Let me be clear: I rebuke the shooter. I rebuke the violence. I rebuke the lies that fuel it. There is no glory in murder, no justification for blood. But what makes this tragedy even more unbearable is the way it has been weaponized.

Charlie Kirk is dead, and I will not pretend to mourn him. I cannot. This was a man who spent his life trying to make queer people, and especially trans people, guilty without charges. He sought to convict us in the court of public opinion without evidence, without process, without truth. Again and again he smeared us as predators, as criminals, as threats to national security. He wielded words like a club, swinging at anyone who dared to live authentically outside his narrow vision of America.

And now, in death, the regime has made him into something more dangerous than he ever was in life: a martyr, a saint of grievance, a rallying cry for authoritarian consolidation. His voice is silenced, yes, but the machinery he helped build roars louder than ever, grinding down truth, rights, and dissent under the weight of its propaganda.

I do not mourn his death. I will not miss his voice. But I do mourn this nation. I mourn the America that once dared to call itself a beacon of hope, a land that welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I mourn the Constitution that once promised that no matter how powerful the rulers, the people had the right to speak, to mock, to dissent. I mourn the churches that once claimed to follow Christ but now worship grievance and power instead.

Because what we are left with today is not that America. We are left with a nation where loyalty to one man outweighs loyalty to the truth. Where flags are lowered for sycophants, but rights are stripped from citizens. Where taxpayer planes become chariots for propagandists, but ordinary people are told to shut up and obey. Where evangelicals call a political operative a martyr while mocking the very teachings of the Christ they claim to follow.

This is not the America the world once looked to. This is not the America my grandparents believed in. This is a country twisted by fear and by power, a place where the message from the top is clear: conform to authority, or get the hell out.

And so yes, I weep, not for Charlie Kirk, not for the cult of loyalty that now parades his corpse as a holy relic, but for the America that has been lost. I weep for the communities who will again pay the price of scapegoating. I weep for the trans kids who will see their identities linked to violence they had nothing to do with. I weep for the immigrants and women and queer people who will be blamed, policed, and silenced to prop up a myth.

What we are witnessing is not grief. It is not mourning. It is mobilization. A government in thrall to authoritarianism is using death as theater, loyalty as law, and propaganda as scripture. And until we name it, rebuke it, and resist it, America will continue to fall further from the ideals it once claimed to hold.

The shooter has been caught. The bullets have stopped. But the violence of the lie, that endless, corrosive violence of propaganda and scapegoating, continues. And unless we end that, too, we will find that Kirk’s death was not the tragedy. The tragedy will be what his death allowed this country to become.

Allie