Panic World - Charlie Kirk didn't matter

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Happy (?) Kirkaversary. One year ago today, Charlie Kirk was killed by someone the right-wing wasn’t able to effectively use for fearmongering. Ryan & Grant look back at what Kirk’s legacy is now — the martyr he wasn’t able to become, and the guy who’s instead trapped in memes and shitposts forever. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just five bucks a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The internet is unfortunately real life. It has completely transformed the way we interact, communicate, connect, understand the world. And those shifts now show up everywhere from our relationships to our beliefs. And we should talk about it somewhere that's not on the internet, which is why I have this podcast. I'm John Favreau, host of offline. Each week, I try to make sense of these forces shaping our lives. I talk to strategists, authors, and researchers who've stepped outside of our toxic online paradigm to help get a better understanding of what's actually going on.

New episodes drop every Saturday, listen wherever you get your podcast, or watch on YouTube. Hi, it is me. In your feed on a Thursday, not a Wednesday. We are so close to being back to regular scheduled programming. But we wanted to give you this conversation in full on this day of remembrance of the death of Charlie Kirk. To talk about why there's so little to say, except there's a lot to say about how little there is to say. So here is a conversation between me and Ryan. About one year of post-Charlie Kirk.

Stay locked in back to regular scheduled programming so soon. Episode go. Multiple choice for you, Ryan Broderick. Do you have a favorite Charlie Kirk meme? Or do you remember the first time you were like, oh shit, there's tons of these. This is taking over. It's probably like a day after he died.

As for a favorite, I have now many. So many that I can't, no. Can we do a different intro, please? I don't, I don't have any thoughts about Charlie Kirk, actually. I've decided. That is actually exactly what I want to talk about. I'll be honest, like I've been dreading the one-year anniversary because it's really hyped, and I don't really have any long, big thoughts about it.

him other than like he's a joke you know his death didn't mean anything you know that's actually exactly what i want to talk to you about this is panic world i'm gran irving joining me the number one ranked kirk chungis ryan broderick thanks for having me thank you for doing your show i i sincerely mean it this time it's been a year how would you say kirk has influenced or changed internet culture It's really complicated because I am cursed with as a job following how things happen. So like there's a lot of libs and leftists right now celebrating the fact that Charlie Kirk one year later is like a big joke. And I unfortunately know that they had nothing to do with that. Like they eventually like leftists, liberals, people on blue sky, people on X who are not.

right-wing maniacs, they eventually started making fun of Charlie Kirk. But they, like me, lived in fear of right-wing retribution against them for making fun of Charlie Kirk for days, if not weeks, if not months. The whole reason we are talking about Charlie Kirk as a meme is unfortunately a victory for the hardcore far-right. And that is something that is something I can't really square because we are having this conversation right now you and i grant because of nick puentes and his followers because they were the first ones to sort of cross the taboo of making fun of charlie kirk after he died this is a absolute classic ryan has i got nothing to say what do you want for me then you're dropping a complete thesis statement well i don't have anything to say

about it because like there is like the whole project the whole charlie kirk project had it is a failure. But it's also a failure for anyone that wanted to stand up to the, like, like, it's like a very sad statement on like the politics of America right now because like no one, no, no like ultra libs or whatever were standing up and making fun of Charlie Kirk. It started with like some of the most racist people I've ever seen on TikTok and X.com making fun of. because they thought he was too liberal. Like, that's the, that's the thing we're in right now. And I think I don't really want to talk about it because I don't think people are going to be happy or be interested in listening to this because there's going to be a lot of glad handing this week

about like, isn't it great that we've like trapped Charlie Kirk's soul in an AI data center? We did it. We defeated Trumpism. And it's like, no, you're following the leader. And the leader here is Nick Fuentes. So do you, I think that's. fascinating. And so maybe the better question than what I had

planned was, do you think that there was a turning point where broadly the left thought like started to claim this as their own victory? Yeah, they do it all the time. And it's, you know what? I got to be really

careful because I've, I keep seeing people talk about like the left and liberals and I don't think they're the same thing and I don't think they're the same people. Some of them use the same spaces. but the sort of like hardcore leftist shit posters who love to be dark woke or not PC or whatever, some of whom I consider my friends or at least like peers, they love to kind of swoop in and do this thing.

These are the kind of thoughts I have when I realize I've been staring at like systems and networks for too long because I start to see sort of like how like information travels and I start to feel kind of crazy. But like basically there's a group of leftist shit posters who are clearly seeing stuff on the far right and going like, how could I emulate this? And when they do, they scandalize like good liberals who then slowly kind of get pulled in that direction. It's sort of like laundering, you know, culture. and that is kind of the story of the Charlie Kirk memes, which is like we wrote about it at the time. They started with Groypers.

They started with the followers of Nick Fuentes, and then they traveled to leftist ship posters, and then they kind of became mainstream. And like some of the earliest examples of Charlie Kirk memes were people doing AI edits of Charlie Kirk to look like an Aryan with like blonde hair, and they would make like major league gaming style TikTok edits where Charlie Kirk would help the player get to Agartha,

the center of the world, which was like a concept from like fascist occultism of like the late 1800s. Like you start to sound crazy when you talk about this stuff. And then like you start to see waves of users like join in. But that was all after the ice had already kind of been broken. Because you got to think like all the way back in like, you know, September of last year, the kind of fear was like there was going to be this like insane authoritarian crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk. And it did happen.

Like people did lose their jobs. Flags did fly at half-mast. A lot of people won settlements for losing their jobs. But that wasn't for months and months and months later. And I've seen a lot of like a historical nonsense in the last week or so about people being like there was nothing to fear ever. this was all a big joke and it like it wasn't actually you know i just think that's important to hold on to you because there was a brief second where like this may have worked actually yeah yeah yeah so the question i planned to ask you today was can we identify the moment the mega coalition overplayed their

hand on turning this into their like trojan horse we're going to get everything we want to accomplish in the name of charlie kirk but i i now wonder if we should go through that timeline and also try to identify how much the Groyper's helped corrode that from being a possibility. The sort of story that I have in my head making sense of this, I think is fairly simple, which is Charlie Kirk dies and the only people who are immediately laughing about it are Groyper's who always hated him and have no trouble sort of pushing the boundaries of taste. That's like their whole deal. and once he dies, they start making fun of him, and they start, like, seeding really obscure,

kind of like dense, weird, fascist memes into places like TikTok and X, and I suspect they were using Discord and group DMs to do that. As that's happening, in the real world, Republicans sort of seize on this, like, this is their big moment. They almost, like, can't contain their glee about it. I think I wrote at the time, like, you know, Charlie Kirk has performed like the last thing he needs to do as an influencer, which is like give his body literally to the machine.

Although now I guess his soul has been given to the machine. Can you break that down for us a little bit more? I saw a really good YouTube video day talking about kind of like influencers and creators. And the guy was basically, he said this thing like, you know, being an influencer, being a creator, especially if you're not in a true position of power is really just a math equation of how much dignity are you willing to sell in exchange for fame.

That is the job of an influencer. Whether you are popular or not popular or whatever, how exposed do you want to live your life and how willing are you to do that to become famous? Have you asked yourself that question? I haven't had to think about it until we started to use cameras. And now I think about it all the time.

But yeah, I find the whole thing very distasteful. Like Charlie Kirk, like, as the influencer premiere of the Trump movement was always going to give his body, you know, and presence to the machine. And now, you know, his soul is basically trapped in a shitpost forever. But in September of last year, right when this is happening, like, everyone is taking this very seriously. There's like, there's Atlantic articles and New Yorker articles and Garbage Day articles. all being like, hey, like, this is really dangerous. Like, this could be sort of the Reichstag fire or whatever of the MAGA movement. And then they kind of overplay their hand almost immediately.

And it's something that I didn't kind of clock at the time. But now in retrospect is like clearly the true weakness of Trump 2.0. And it's very funny to say this. It's running events. They're really fucking bad at it. They can't do the UFC. They couldn't do the freedom game. or whatever the hell was called.

And they couldn't even do Charlie Kirk's funeral. The whole thing looked like a WWE match. And I think in retrospect, this sort of like complete inability to run an event. Like on a fundamental level actually is the real cause of all of this. That's when the Groyper stuff flips over into mainstream because everyone's like, oh, this is. a joke even to you guys. Like that's the start of the Erica Kirk stuff. All of it kind of starts with his funeral and how low rent and tacky it looked and felt. That was September 21st, so literally 11 days later. And my note in this outline is she came out to pyrotechnics.

The W.W.E. Pyrotechnics too, that she would then use in December that would be made fun of later. But like, no one thought like, this isn't bad taste this time. There's not that level of detail. No, and like, look, you know, I'm not going to say that there weren't any memes and no one's sort of making fun of Charlie Kirk before his funeral. But I will say that the sort of popular conception of Charlie Kirk as a meme as a joke in death, I think is paused by that. Like if they had been able, if they had gone the opposite direction, instead of channeling like a chicken fried kid rock concert, WWE gauge match, thing and gone like hardcore scary like 19th century fascist everyone in black stuff like starship troopers you know like that kind of vibe and then like been able to figure out how to channel that into state violence immediately because like that's the other thing the charlie kirk assassination i think i'm hoping

that i don't sound silly in five years talking about this i i'm hoping that in five years talking about this i i'm hoping that in five years, this is an example of how like Trumpism kind of died with Charlie Kirk. But the fact the government was set up to do state violence against immigrants, but Charlie Kirk was not assassinated by an immigrant, meant that they were totally unable to connect his death to their broader campaign of terror. And if it had gone differently, I think we would be having a very different conversation right now. But because it was a white guy who had written memes on the bullets and had like extensive relationships, I guess we could say, with trans people who may or may not be furries and sort of

came from this online world that was totally inscrutable, the government could not immediately crack down the way that I think they would have liked to. So it left the whole thing, you know, I think it left everyone kind of going like, why are we talking about any of this? Who was Charlie Kirk? And we could talk about who I think Charlie Kirk was in the grand scheme of things if you want. But like that's that's where I would sort of say everything fell apart was his funeral. Let's get there in a moment. The funeral was the 21st. And then on the 22nd, Trump signs the executive order naming Antifa as a terrorist organization, which feels like it could have been tied in to Tyler Robinson and used as the death.

Let's stop there. because for my advantage point, I would think, oh, shit, they got, like, they got the villain that they wanted, which is, like, left scum that they can say are violent terrorists. And, like, anyone who's ever posted a shitty thing, we got to go after them now because they're also violent. Yeah, and I'm not downplaying that. I'm not downplaying the dangers of NS, NSPM 7 or whatever it's called. Don't flex. Keep going. Hey, I got it right. I'm not downplaying the seriousness of that or the danger of that.

And they're, you know, the, weren't like a whole bunch of activists just sent to jail for like a hundred thousand years in Texas. The major problem with taking Charlie Kirk's death and immediately turning it into state violence is that the infrastructure wasn't there.

ICE is not something that just sort of appeared out of nowhere. ICE is a, at this point, 25 year political projects, you know, after 9-11, all of the infrastructure is there to allow something like what happened in Minneapolis to happen.

That is not true for countering, leftist terrorism, which is also so amorphous and confusing that the average person can't really wrap their heads around it. I also think, like, there's something very funny about Fox News's refusal to call Antifa anti-fascist. So Antifa is like a silly name. Like, it's just silly. And it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't make sense. Like I said, like, if Charlie Kirk had been killed by someone who was not from this country, and if you listen to Candace Owens, he may have been, I think that would have resulted in like a much more ferocious crackdown, but they don't, they weren't able to spin up a machine, you know, fast enough to go after people posting online. Also, like, this sounds kind of corny, but I do think the First Amendment is sort of this load-bearing thing in this country that for all the kind of fretting about it allows you to get a half a million dollar settlement when you're fired for posting about Charlie Kirk on Facebook.

Yes, it is really annoying and it is scary how fast the government tried to sort of make me, you know, making fun of Charlie Kirk into a crime. but it is extremely wonderful a year later, you know, to look back and be like, it didn't work. For the most part, it didn't work. And I want to hit on how much of that was because of the Groypers or like what happened there in a second. But I want to pause on what you just said. What we saw in Minneapolis and how that all played out was a bunch of normal-ass people being like, you are breaking too many norms. You cannot convince us they are criminals.

like this is this is too upsetting en masse to a populace the way you're doing it like we don't want this guy in this Nazi color trench coat on our streets the cosplay went too far in breaking everyone's norms that people were upset and that even though a lot of megaism is is is high on their own supply of like deep online shit the act of having to like explain antifa explain somebody who who reposted a Charlie Kirk saying something racist and saying, like, we shouldn't martyr this guy was like going to be a communication step too far along with not having infrastructure.

They, like, didn't have the infrastructure and also like it becomes like trying to explain something deeply online to a mass populist where things start to fall apart versus being able to say, like, they're illegal here and they're criminals is a much simpler messaging. I also just think like no one,

cares about Charlie Kirk. Like, like no one cares about Turning Point USA. I mean, the data I think I saw from maybe, maybe it was more perfect union, was sort of revealing that like most of the chapters don't exist. And if they do exist, they were created purely just to like sort of show up on paper. There's no members.

It's not a real thing. Charlie Kirk was not a real person that anyone knew about. He was a kid who got as started like a blogger on right wing Facebook. websites and there's like something very funny to be said there where it's like it's kind of like when the try guys got made fun of on Saturday Live and the whole country was like who are these people? Totally.

Like Charlie Greg was that a real popular human being. I have to be careful because I think like trying to ascribe too much order to the Trump movement is a mistake. I don't think there is sort of any kind of mastermind behind the scenes including Trump. And they're all just like very selfish, you know, I think there's just a lot of people operating on a level of like pure selfishness and there's no real coordination. But I think as Project 2025 started to heat up and there was this attempt to kind of organize the MAGA movement, organized Trumpism into like a coherent political force, there was this

fear that without someone like Trump to replace Trump when he dies or whatever, they were kind of screwed. I think the Trump assassination attempts were really freaking people out. So I suspect there was maybe some whispers among the MAGA movement that Charlie Kirk could be a replacement for Trump, that they were sort of grooming him to be the right-wing AOC, the kind of person who could take over as the cult of personality. And when he was killed, that not only sort of, you know, wrap that whole idea up, I think it also proved that the internet still just like isn't there for that. Like, and especially the right-wing internet.

Like, the right-wing internet is just not popular enough. Like, so the, so when the U.S. government and, you know, conservative media were trying to turn Charlie Crook into a murder, they were doing double work. trying to also tell people who he was without admitting that they are trying to tell people who he was. So it's like they can't admit he wasn't popular. They have to convince people that he was popular. And then they have to convince people that it's like a great tragedy that he died. And then they have to try to dance around the fact that the bullets that killed him were covered in memes and that the whole thing is a joke.

And so I just think it's too much work. It's way too much work for government like the Trump administration to do. You said to me off mic that when they put the flags at half-mast is where you thought that they like started to really overstep or like overplay their hand. Is that just because like that's another, that's like a crucial example of like really overvaluing who this person was outside of internet land? Yeah. I definitely think it's like it's an early, you know, moment where it's like, why are you doing that? but, you know, if they had just left it there, okay, or if they had done some sort of super serious, super somber state funeral, I think people still would be like, why are you doing this for like a YouTuber? But the funeral being so bombastic and so ridiculous and Erica Kirk being so unable to sort of sell the fact that she cared that her husband died, I think is where things really fall apart.

I was looking up the last time that J.D. Vance had to talk about Tyler Robinson. And it was like to convince some right wing podcaster that like Tyler Robinson, that he believes Tyler Robinson actually did it. And like I could like feel the disappointment in in the conversation. Is that just it's always more fun to have a conspiracy? Like are you surprised at how background noise and and minor the court case seems to be? I'm pretty sure just because you can't film in that state, right? You just think it's like not creating enough content? Yeah, so, I mean, basically, I don't know if the average person knows this,

but basically every state has different rules around how you can report on criminal cases. Some allow, like New York, criminal sketch artists. Some, like California, are totally psychotic and allow cameras in the courtroom. I have personal feelings about what should be acceptable. If you're ever wondering why certain cases don't have national attention, I would say nine times out of ten, no matter how high profile the case is, it is almost always because of the individual state's requirements on reporting. So like the Lindsay Clancy trial in Massachusetts, I believe, is being filmed because Massachusetts allows it. So like Tyler, Tyler Robinson, I believe is in a Utah and they don't allow. allow it. I always laugh when people are like, no one's talking about this. And it's like,

no one's talking about it because reporters can't film it. And, you know, that's it. Like, people talk about the New York ones because the, like, sketch artists are funny. Like, the ditty sketch is funny or whatever. That would have been so much bigger, though. But part of the reason they don't do that is so you don't, like, you know, screw up your, screw up your jury pool. But yeah, so like the Lindsay Clancy trial, yeah, it's a big story. And it has a lot of like tendrils into you know the state of being a mom in the 21st century but I think it is also the fact that all these TikTokers can watch a Reuters live stream and just rip clips and then use that for conspiracy. Half the conspiracy theories about the Lindsay Canty trial are how the

husband is like looking on the stand you know so like you're just not going to get that kind of attention in a case that's being tried in Utah where there's no media allowed at all. Two more for you. By the way, I personally think that's good. I think, like, it's good that, like, having, like, a reporter in the room, cool. You should read it. You can read about what's happening with Tyler Robinson. But the fact that there isn't a camera in there means that somebody like J.D. Vance can't be, like, look at this little worm squirming on the stand.

He's hiding something. Like, it's kind of good, I think. It's a good thing. Yeah. See the Johnny Depp trial. Yeah. Like, I think that there's, like, literally nothing. And like court TV should be illegal.

Like it's that's not a thing that should exist in a functioning democracy. Yeah. Two questions to close out. Looking back at your initial reaction, looking back at how you felt when this happened, you know, you said at some point you hope you don't feel silly for what you're about to say in five years. Do you feel silly about what you said last year? I don't because I got a lot of traffic for it. So that doesn't, you know, that's all it really matters for me.

But no, the, the thing that I keep on. coming back to and perhaps I will write about this week is like the one moment of that day that is like really stuck with me and kind of haunt me for the last year is the TikTok user brother elder totally it's the for those you don't remember it's the Mormon influencer which we should definitely do an episode about by the way like Mormon influencers in general who is both I think he was the one grabbing hats like from the stage and then he's filming himself running and telling people to follow him for like more updates and I think there's just something so rotten about that and throughout this whole episode

throughout this whole year of discourse no one is really talking about the role that tech platforms played in this entire thing happening both the rise of charlie kirk the murder of charlie kirk and then the way we process the murder of Charlie Kirk. I think, you know, my hope is that we, I don't know, I keep waiting for, like, everyone to be like, that's it. I'm done with the internet. I'm walking away. Like, you know, there have been moments, you know, throughout history where, like, a population goes,

that's it. I'm done. No thanks. And they all kind of walk away from whatever is sort of ruining their lives. And I keep waiting for that moment with social media. and I thought maybe the Charlie Kirk one would be it. We're like, okay, no more right-wing media for me, no more sensationalist social media for me,

but it's actually gotten worse. Like straight line from a million influencers filming Charlie Kirk's head exploding to clavicular. You know, like it's just a total shamelessness. And so we just, we haven't hit the bottom yet, apparently. You think clavicular murder Charlie Kirk? That's right, I do. Just keeps getting worse.

He did it for AOC. see. As you were saying that, I wanted to see whether or not those hats are on eBay. I did not find them. There is a paper from the day that he is slain that is available for $39, for $2,99. And then there is a autographed Charlie Kirk hat, a Nick Shirley Shirley, autographed Charlie Kirk Trucker hat that is listed for $1,800 and no one has bid on it. I think that the Mormon influencer needs like a Kalshi eBay situation to be able to offload like Charlie Kirk death merch. I don't think he matters.

I don't think he will matter. I think he contributed nothing and died for no reason. And I do think we will look back probably and say, okay, maybe I don't believe in the idea that like politics gets better or worse. It's just always like the right wing will never disappear. but like this era of them, I think, I think ends with Charlie Kirk. Like, that's the beginning of the end because there's really no way to come back from that, I think. They kind of failed.

Beginning at the end of what specifically? Trumpism, make America great again, whatever. Like, none of those people get along anymore anyways. Like, the long 2010s, you know, ends with Charlie Kirk dying. Like, it's just, whatever comes next will probably be bad in a different way. but this era, I think, wraps up now, or it starts to wrap up now. My last question for you was going to be, do you want to say who you think Charlie Kirk was, but I think you just did.

Yeah, he's nothing, nobody. Harambe for Gen Alpha. That's his legacy. Oof. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon. We're filming this from our new studio, which we are still currently putting together. But we will be back to a normal schedule.

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