by SONALI KOLHATKAR
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, centrist liberals have lionized the white supremacist, paving the way for a greater assault from authoritarian bullies.
“The proper way to respond” to white supremacist fascism “is to have a backbone,” says Tariq Khan, a historian and lecturer at Yale University, in an interview on September 17, a week after the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk.
As the author of The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression, Khan is more than qualified to speak on the matter.
But he is also personally qualified, having been on the receiving end of a racist and Islamophobic campaign of harassment and threats aimed at him and his family by members of Kirk’s organization.
Khan’s life was turned upside down during President Donald Trump’s first term in late 2017 when TPUSA members attended a political speech he gave at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and heckled him. According to Khan, who at the time was a PhD student in history, “one of them made some threats against my children, which I’m like, why do they even know I have children?”
A verbal altercation followed, which TPUSA’s members twisted into a headline that Khan remembers being something to the effect of “Antifa Professor Assaults Conservative Students.”
Every single word in that headline was false—including “conservative.” TPUSA went on to prove that its real agenda was not merely conservatism but authoritarian extremism and the promotion of a dangerous white supremacist narrative built on dehumanizing people of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTGQ people, especially transgender people—anyone other than straight white men.
“Truth didn’t matter to Turning Point USA,” says Khan. “People in power, including President Donald Trump, were retweeting their false story about me. And the result was I was just being bombarded with threats, harassments.”
TPUSA members showed up to his wife’s office, drove past his house, threatened his children, and urged his history department to revoke his professorship—again, Khan was a PhD student, not a professor.
“Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk is behind the scenes, encouraging this the entire time. The right wing is rewarding them for this. So, they’re using these kinds of incidents to build their careers,” says Khan.
It was based on such campaigns of intimidation that Kirk made his name as a GOP political strategist—and made millions of dollars. According to Associated Press, “top Turning Point officials collected pricey salaries, enjoyed lavish perks and steered at least $15.2 million to companies that they, their friends and associates are affiliated with.”
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