With his blue navy blazer, white-toothed smile, and clean-cut features, Charlie Kirk looks like a classic American jock. But he is far from that.
Aged just 25, he is already a phenomenon in the US centre-right politics. A best-selling author with almost a million followers on Twitter, Kirk is often tipped as a future President.
The present one, Donald Trump, calls him a “great warrior”. In turn, Kirk says that Trump “is on track to be America’s greatest President.”
Kirk’s closeness to the White House was highlighted when he posted online a photo of himself alongside Melania, the First Lady, at a private New Year celebration in the exclusive Trump-owned resort of Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
He has been labelled “a rock star among millennial conservatives” and “the conservative boy wonder.”
Others are less keen on him. Some critics have described his methods as “unethical”, “hateful” and even “racist.”
Now he has been over here on a mission to make conservatism cool.
“Britain and America have so much in common culturally,” he said during his visit last week, though it remains to be seen if this youthful entrepreneur will have the same appeal on this side of the Atlantic.
Largest student movement in the States
He owes his colossal influence in the USA to the organisation Turning Point, which he founded in 2012 to challenge the dominance on left-wing ideology in American universities.
“It is not that young people are opposed to conservative ideas. It’s just that they are not exposed to them in the first place,” he explained last year.
One of his jokes runs: “What do you call a room where everyone thinks the same? A university.”
Driven by his charismatic leadership, Turning Point has become the largest student movement in the USA, with 150 staff, a budget of $15 million, and a presence in no fewer than 1400 educational institutions.
He aims to replicate this success with young people in Britain, particularly in our universities, where no-platforming is rife, ‘safe-spaces’ are paramount and even mainstream newspapers are banned as offensive.
But how will we Brits, with our imperfect teeth and scruffy politicians, feel about this dazzling American envoy?
Last week during his tour of this country, he spoke at Turning Point events in London, Nottingham and Brighton.
His visit followed the formal launch of the British branch of the organisation last December, a move that was welcomed by a number of senior Tories such as leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and former Cabinet Minster Priti Patel.
The UK wing of Turning Point already has chapters at ten British Universities, including Oxford, the London School of Economics and Sussex.
And Kirk hopes that the British version of Turning Point will soon have a much bigger impact, explaining that he had been “approached by tons of students who wanted to see the same kind of grassroots conservative resurgence in the UK as we’ve had here.”
Driving disagreement
Supremely self-confident and six feet, four inches tall, Kirk is not a man to be intimidated by his foes.
Indeed, he relishes political combat, one reason why he so despises the suppression of free speech.
At the London event last week, he spotted a group of Trump fans wearing Make America Great Again caps. “What we really want is disagreement,” he declared.
When he was at high school, he played the class rebel by disputing the left-wing views of his teachers.
“I’d say that Ronald Reagan lifted more people out of poverty than your crazy social programmes. That drove them nuts and I found enjoyment in it,” he once recalled.
Born in Chicago, where his father made money in the construction industry, Kirk never went to college but instead devoted himself to his Turning Point enterprise, which he created the day after he left high school.
An evangelical Christian who says that his political work is “all-consuming” – he was on the road 338 days in 2017 – he still has time for a relationship, though he refuses to discuss it.
He is more open about his admiration for Britain.
Speaking to Sun Online last week, he called Winston Churchill a “total hero” and expressed his disgust at John McDonnell’s use of the term “villain” to describe the great war leader. “It’s extraordinary, it’s repulsive,” he said.
‘You guys can be the most excellent country’
On the theme of the links between Britain and America, Kirk saw parallels between the Brexit result and the election of Donald Trump four months later in 2016.
“There were a lot of communities that felt traditionally disenfranchised by the ruling class, that rose up and voted for the first time in a long time and I think that’s a great thing.”
Just as he backs Trump, Kirk is a supporter of Brexit.
“I don’t think that Brussels should have some sort of super-government jurisdiction over the UK”, he says, arguing that our departure could be the cue for national renewal: “Decline is not inevitable. You guys can be the most excellent country in Europe. You don’t need the EU.”
Just as Turning Point is scathing about the US Democrats lurch into toxic, left-wing identity politics – “socialism sucks” is one of the favourite slogans of Turning Point.
He is vitriolic about Jeremy Corbyn, whom he recently described as “a committed Marxist who wants to destroy Western civilisation.”
The ‘Professor Watchlist’
Kirk is also a believer in small government, free markets and immigration controls.
One of Turning Point’s more controversial initiatives is the creation of a “Professor Watchlist”, naming academics who have alleged tried to advance a radical agenda on campuses.
But he is no stereotypical reactionary. A supporter of the legalisation of marijuana, though he does not take the substance himself, he is also is suspicious of British and American military intervention overseas.
“Trump is trying to end the wars where amazing British soldiers died for nothing. I’m talking about Afghanistan and Iraq,” he says.
But Kirk’s prime concern remains the left’s supremacy in the university sector because, as he told Sun Online, “the students of today will be the leaders of tomorrow.”
‘They steal our pamphlets and overturn our tables’
In both Britain and the USA, he finds the same authoritarian unwillingness to tolerate differing opinions.
When he recently visited the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, he was viciously denounced. “I felt it was like a US campus. They steal our pamphlets, they overturn our tables.”
It is impossible to escape the irony that institutions which constantly prattle about the importance of diversity are unwilling to accept diversity of thought.
As Kirk recently put it in a reference to the once renowned British sense of humour, “Monty Python would not be allowed in this politically correct climate.”
Slammed for being xenophobic
What especially disturbs him is how students are pressured into submission to left-wing doctrines.
“I saw it at first hand at a campus here in the UK. Students are afraid of cultural isolation; they’re afraid of losing friends; they’re afraid of having their grades lowered; they’re afraid of being labelled something they are not.”
As if to prove his claim, Turning Point UK has been subjected to a barrage of abuse since its launch.
The outspoken Labour MP David Lammy said that its arrival was “evidence that sinister forces are taking hold of the country” to promote “hard-right xenophobic bile”.
At their events last week, Turning Point speakers were greeted by left-wing demonstrators protesting about bigotry.
But Kirk sees the charge of racism as another smear. In fact, he is fan of cultural diversity, as he told Sun Online when describing his visit to London: “It’s a really amazing country with amazing people. I love how diverse the city is.”
Ferocious attacks following Christchuch
Moreover Candace Owens, Kirk’s fellow high profile campaigner and Turning Point USA’s Director of Communications, is a black woman.
Owens, who provokes controversy by challenging the concept of black victimhood in America, wrote on Twitter of her exasperation at the socialist demonstration that greeted her appearance in Nottingham: “Another day, another all-white group of progressives protesting my events in the name of racism.”
But the attacks on her became all the more ferocious at the weekend when it emerged that Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch gunman, reportedly named her as one of his influences because of her warnings about the Islamification of Europe.
In typically forthright style, Owens angrily responded that “racist white liberals” wanted to taint her by association with the New Zealand massacre.
Her romantic connection to Britain runs deep.
She is the fiancée of George Farmer, the 29-year-old Turning Point UK chairman and a Tory donor who tweeted on the night of the organisation’s launch last December: “Plenty of snowflakes melting in London tonight.”
His father is Lord Farmer, a millionaire commodities broker who went on to be appointed a Conservative peer and Treasurer of the party.
The chief executive of the UK group is Oliver Anisfeld, a 24-year-old University College graduate who launched the Jewish internet channel J-TV in 2016.
Mainstream Tories keep their distance
Though most of the donors to Turning Point UK are anonymous, one significant backer is John Mappin, of the Mappin and Webb jewellery dynasty.
Mappin, a scientologist and the owner of the Camelot Castle Hotel, is such a keen Trump enthusiast that he awarded the US President his own eccentric version of an honorary knighthood.
“Henceforth Donald J Trump shall be known at Camelot Castle as Sir Donald Trump of Camelot,” read the citation.
For all Turning Point’s wealthy connections, the mainstream Tory party, wary about controversy, has refused to embrace the group.
In an email to Conservative student associations, the party warned, “our advice would be not to work with them in any capacity.”
‘We’re the cool kids’
But that is just the sort of advice that would please Kirk. He sees himself and his organisation as outsiders, kicking against the political establishment.
Involvement with Turning Point, he said last year, “has almost become the rebellious, punk rock, fun thing to be because who wants to be a leftist on a college campus. We’re the rebels. We are the cool kids again. They’re the conformists.”
Whether that message works in Britain remains to be seen. Little excitement was generated over the three Turning Point events last week, and attendances were disappointing.
Just 110 people came to Nottingham leg, while one journalist wrote of the London gathering: “The whole event felt vague and flabby.”
Nor does Britain have the same enthusiasm for private enterprise as exists in the USA.
“The bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen,” says Kirk, but such words will mean little here, given the widespread support for the NHS and the welfare state.
Yet he may have more success on British campuses, where the stranglehold of left-wing radicalism needs to be broken.
And it is clear that Kirk will not give up easily. “We’re here to fight a culture war and we feel we can win,” he says.