The Man Who Held Back the Flood

By Abe Greenwald

One of the many things that’s become clear since Charlie Kirk was assassinated is that not only was he a true friend of Israel and the Jews, but he was the key figure in keeping the groypers cordoned off from the rest of the young American right. With his calm, reasoned, but passionate public refutations of groyper Jew-hatred, he was holding his finger in the dike. For this act, Jews, Christians, and Americans of all faiths owe him an incalculable debt. 

I don’t care about the winding road he may have taken to get there. He began his public life at an extraordinarily young age. By the time of his assassination, Kirk was preserving the future of the country, steering it between the Scylla of left-wing radicalism and Charybdis of right-wing nihilism. I honestly had no idea how much good he was doing for the nation, and I wish I could have expressed my gratitude while he was alive.

After he was murdered, there was no young, charismatic, patriotic, Christian influencer with Kirk’s reach and moral courage to step up and do the job. In fact, the most prominent among them used his death as an opportunity to do the opposite. They smashed the barrier and cackled as they profited from the hatred that came flooding in. 

Kirk’s friends and associates grieved over his death, swore to carry on his campaign and build on what he created—and then they took a sledgehammer to it all.

It’s obvious why the Jews owe Kirk so much on this score. But the role he played in protecting young, particularly male, Christians from being seduced by a poisonous worldview was no less vital. Indeed, that was his life’s mission. 

There’s a point that Ben Shapiro often makes. If you’re following the groypers and their enablers, your life will get appreciably worse. When you take no responsibility for your own misfortunes and instead blame the Jews or America, you’re condemning yourself to a helpless, hopeless life of loserdom. A permanent basement existence of online anti-community, gaming, grievance, and porn. And the hate-peddlers are getting rich off your misery. This is your hour of despair and their golden age. 

There are doubtless many would-be Kirks out there in our great country. As I’ve said many times, the overwhelming majority of non-Jewish Americans do not hate the Jews. But now that the dam has broken, we must be honest about the extent of the anti-Semitism flowing through the younger generations. Rod Dreher says 30 to 40 percent of Gen Z Washington staffers are somewhere in the groyper camp. Others claim that’s an overestimation. There are no official figures, but it’s a bleak situation. 

It was little more than two months ago that Kirk was shot, and that’s all the time it took for the anti-Semitic deluge to breach the veil of civil society on the right. That itself is a testament to how much rested on his shoulders. But it’s also, ironically, reason for modest hope. In the age of online influencers, the culture can shift on a dime. It’s not hard to envision the rise of a fresh, young political talent offering the lost boys of the right a better vision of themselves and the country. That prospect is made more likely by Charlie Kirk’s having reached so many and showing them how it’s done. 

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.