Charlie Kirk amassed a tremendous amount of power and influence before his murder on Wednesday. But to those not well-versed in right-wing politics, it may be difficult to discern the role he played in the conservative universe, and what made him uniquely positioned to advance the divisive, often incendiary causes he believed in. To further understand how Kirk became such a potent force in only a few years, I spoke with Kyle Spencer, who wrote the 2022 book Raising Them Right . In it, Spencer chronicles the rise of Kirk and Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization he built into a culture-war powerhouse.

It strikes me that Charlie Kirk was representative of our fragmented culture, in that he probably had close to 100 percent name recognition for people under 25, but mu

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