The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk and the heritage of American Christofascism in SA

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By Tristán Kapp

1 Oct 2025

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The dangerous rise of the far right in the US (and beyond)

On 14 September 2025, Rebecca Davis published an analysis on Daily Maverick (“Charlie Kirk may have fans in SA – but his views are inconsequential here”). While her article was contextually accurate – especially when, for example, arguing that “in South Africa, arguments about ‘woke agendas’ are solely the province of the exceptionally privileged and their exceptionally elite institutions” – my biggest concern remains that this underestimated the sizeable followings of right-wing Afrikaner and Christian conservatives – never mind the subsequent resurgence in extremist disinformation, (obviously) amplified by Trump’s Maga regime and its influence on the right-wing digital religious culture, in South Africa. Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, in 2016 and 2024, several studies have documented a strong rise in far-right extremism in the country and beyond.

In 2018, the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that right-wing extremism more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2017, accompanied by the 43% rise in far-right attacks in Europe. The most notable example of American right-wing extremism is the historic 6 January Capitol attack, documented and analysed as part of a digital project, titled “Uncivil Religion”, between the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Furthermore, Princeton University recorded in a 2022 PNAS study that right-wing extremists are positively linked to violent behaviour. The authors included that past studies in the psychological makeup of conservatives indicate a greater predisposition towards aggression in those considered “far-right”. Statista also noted this, recording that between 2014 and 2023, 76% of all US extremist-related killings were carried out by right-wing extremists. 

However, following the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death, a day before the 24th anniversary of 9/11, the US Department of Justice deleted a 2024 study on right-wing “domestic terrorism”, by their National Institute of Justice. Despite recording the same concurrent trend, as seen in all other studies. This comprehensive report showed an exponential growth in right-wing domestic violence, over the past two decades (1990 to 2023). This is reflected in several other sources published in Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society (2021), Terrorism and Political Violence (2014), as well as The Conversation (2018) – confirmed and expanded in 2025 – citing statistics by the Anti-Defamation League.

Charlie Kirk as Trump’s Maga youth propagandist

On 4 January 2021, two days before the infamous 6 January insurrection, Kirk boasted on (then) Twitter: “The team at @TrumpStudents & Turning Point Action are… sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president [Donald Trump].” Thanks to his contributions to the Capitol riots, Kirk became a key Maga figurehead in Trump’s inner circle. He enjoyed considerable influence as the manifestation of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: The Conservative Promise. Owing to his endorsements of election fraud conspiracies, “anti-woke” stances on women, anti-DEI & LGBTQIA+; crusades against “leftist” university education via The Professor Watchlist, promoting traditional (Christian) “nuclear family” values against abortion rights, and pioneering of anti-immigration policies. 

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism criticised Project 2025 as a “920-page blueprint for authoritarianism” and Kirk as a “staunch supporter of Project 2025”, [sic.] reporting that the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) built a conservative empire that grew in revenue from $4.3-million in 2016 to $91.4-million in 2023. Additionally, Robert Draper wrote in the New York Times that Kirk boasted about leading “the youth vote to Trump in the 2024 election”. A feat achieved by Kirk’s incendiary campus (pseudo-)debates, filming him “owning the libs” with bad-faith arguments and disinformation tropes. Thereby transforming him into a champion for Maga conservatism, making Richard Hofstadter’s American anti-intellectualist populism “cool again” to undergraduate university students.

Trump and Kirk: Prophets of Afrikaner Christofascism, disinformation and conspirituality imaginaries

Alas, what about white South Africa? Why is Kirk the “martyr for free speech” and “man of faith” among the Afrikaner far-right? While Trump is seen as the white Christian evangelical’s “reincarnated” “emperor Cyrus in the Biblical book of Ezra”. Afrikaner author Helgard Müller, in his book President Donald J Trump, The Son of Man – The Christ, notes that based on “New Testament prophecies”, Trump’s full name literally means: “The Ruler of the World, graced by Yahweh (the LORD)… the Son of Man… the ‘King of Kings’…[sic.]” There is thus a cultic “apotheosis” of Trump in Afrikaner Christianity, which exceeds mere political admiration. And while there are no recent studies confirming it: this is definitely behind the resurgence of right-wing extremism in South Africa.

Davis identified this, by exposing the right-wing Boeremag’s “Israel Vision” thriving online in 2022; echoed by Ernst Calitz in 2025 on Afrikaner digital echo chambers chasing Trump. Davis and Calitz highlight a trend that I have also identified emerging on social media since 2017. Namely, Afrikaner Christian nationalism (or Christofascism) popularising right-wing hate conspiracies in social media echo chambers. This is exemplified by News24’s exposé of the pseudonymous “X-Boer”, who treasonously exported falsehoods via Elon Musk into Trump’s ears. Along with right-wing Afrikaner Trump loyalists AfriForum and Solidariteit’s Dr Dirk Hermann, Kallie Kriel, Flip Buys and Jaco Kleynhans travelled to the White House on multiple occasions. One instance specifically, with their “Washington Memorandum”, requested Trump’s aid in their crusade against “race laws” of the ANC. 

This is alongside Dr Ernst Roets’s misinformation on right-wing podcasts with

style="font-weight: 400;">Tucker Carlson,

style="font-weight: 400;">Jordan Peterson,

style="font-weight: 400;">Ben Shapiro and

style="font-weight: 400;">Piers Morgan. Afrikaner and US right-wing ideologues amplified Afrikaner conservative imaginaries about South Africa, eventually culminating in a handful of Afrikaner “

style="font-weight: 400;">refugees” fleeing South Africa’s “white genocide”. A few months later, the US “Refugee” Admissions Program for South Africans officially partnered with the South African-based, right-wing “humanitarian travel agency”: Amerikaners to vet potential candidates. 

American algorithms and Christian echo chambers: Afrikaner hate-farming and Charlie Kirk sow division on South African (digital) soil

Similarly, Kirk’s algorithmically boosted conspiracies found fertile ground among other conservative and right-wing social media ideologues: David Scott (a.k.a. The Kiffness), Willem Petzer, Steve Hofmeyr and

style="font-weight: 400;">Colonel Chris Wyatt. Including fringe Afrikaner extremists and right-wing conspiracy influencers, who enjoy significant followings, such as Frank Cornelissen, Dan Roodt, Paul Hattingh and Rooies Strauss. Echoed by other (even more extreme and organised) vocal right-wing groups such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), the Vryburger Beweging, Boerelegioen,

style="font-weight: 400;">Suidlanders, Cape Independence Advocacy Group, and Orania Dorpsraad, who each occupy an echo chamber in the South African mainstream digital sphere. 

Therefore, conservative Afrikaner Christian schools, media outlets, radio stations and celebrities like Brendan Peyper, Charlize Berg and Danny Smoke paid tribute to Kirk as a Christian martyr. In tandem with pseudonymous right-wing Facebook misinformation pages; Letters From The Persecuted Minority of South Africa, Patriot-235, Break the Silence About South Africa, Alternative Afrikaner, Afrikaners and Afrikaner Refugee/Vlugteling na Amerika, among several others – who promote (either in part), or fully represent conservative right-wing ideologies. Collectively, they idolised the legacy of Kirk by mourning him as a patriotic Christian martyr and “great man” for exposing the situation of Afrikaners in South Africa.

The entire Afrikanerdom has been moved by Kirk’s McCarthyism rhetoric, completely ignoring (or perhaps silently nodding to) his racialised disinformation about South Africa. In 2018, Kirk encouraged Trump to back out of Agoa in a tweet.

Furthermore, in 2025, as part of the Charlie Kirk versus 300 Oxford University Students campaign, Kirk posted a segment on 7 June on his

style="font-weight: 400;">YouTube channel, in which he “debated” a single student on South African issues like land distribution (i.e. the Expropriation Act of 2024), Julius Malema’s “kill the Boer” chant and post-apartheid economic inequality, all while regurgitating the “white genocide” lie. By describing South Africa as “a warning for white Americans” according to University of Johannesburg professor

style="font-weight: 400;">Mark van Staden this not only gave voice to what Professor Nicky Falkof called “white victimhood” among South African (Afrikaner) white supremacists in her Wits University op-ed on Trump and Afrikaners, but also, as I indicate in my own research on the matter; such victimism is closely linked to Afrikaner Christian white fragility and whiteness, which remains “alive and well in post-apartheid South Africa”.

Afrikaner (Un)civil Religion: Christianity with touch of whiteness, paraded as racialised victimhood and ‘cultural preservation’

Christofascism rose when Afrikaner Christianity acted “as a civil religion [that] underpinned colonialism, and later apartheid”, ”embedding in society the belief that whiteness itself was a divinely ordained standard of humanity”, as Charles Matseke stated on Eyewitness News. He argues that Afrikaners’ eulogy of Kirk was never about him. By sanctifying him as a “man of faith”, they mask the protection of white privilege as cultural preservation. Kirk becomes their mirror – a symbol that fuses grievance with religious conviction and reasserts whiteness in a post-apartheid democracy meant to be nonracial.

Matseke also quotes Dunbar Moodie in her 1974 book, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion, which remarked: “Afrikaner nationalism was not merely a political project but a quasi-religious civil religion. It sanctified racial separation as divine mandate, cloaked political dominance in moral righteousness, and framed white power as sacred duty.” Therefore, noting South Africa’s 85% Christian population and overwhelming Afrikaner fundamentalism. This warns why Kirk’s “legacy” and sentiments are not “inconsequential to South Africa”. If they were, “self-proclaimed head boy Ernst Roets” [sic.] would not be jumping on the bandwagon of American right-wing “cancel culture”, doxxing people for “Saying Bad Things About Charlie Kirk”, as Richard Poplak wrote. 

Afrikaners are quick to rally around their favourite prophets of division. Online threats, doxxing, targeted harassment and intimidation are not beneath the Afrikaner right-winger’s modus operandi. Social media has become a digital breeding ground for Afrikaner Christofascism, that has become even more radicalised by the right-wing voices (like Kirk’s) who represented their interests in the US. No thanks to Trump, he has symbolised the revivification of Christofascism, right-wing populism and anti-intellectualism among American and Afrikaner conservatives alike, who feel threatened by pluralism, intellectualism, equality and diversity. 

While Afrikaner Maga-pundits are mostly fringe figures, they still exert considerable influence online. Because Kirk as well as Trump have radicalised right-wing extremists, celebrating those who inflicted "righteous" violence upon its (perceived) enemies on 6 January 2020. In South African history this is echoed by the Wit Wolf shootings (1988), the Boeremag bombings (1992), Janusz Waluś and Clive Derby-Lewis assassinating Chris Hani (1993), including the various AWB terror attacks (1990-1994), each recorded in the Institute for Security Studies’ “Monograph 81” (2003). 

Not to mention the more recent violent Senekal riot (2020), public violence by the Bittereinders director in Groblersdal (2021) and the Vryburger Beweging supporting Rustenburg children after a Nazi salute (2022). It can therefore be said, to paraphrase Metternich in 1830, “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold”. South Africa, despite our exemplary Constitution, is not immune to the virus of white supremacy. We cannot afford to let our guard down, allowing our democracy to be infected by right-wing nationalism and Christofascism. Least of all, as a result of imported hate from American populists like Kirk.

After all, as Kirk himself said shortly after the shooting at Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee (which killed nine kids and three adults), “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational” (TPUSA Faith, 5 April 2023).

Kirk’s death (like every murdered schoolkid before him), according to his own logic, is rendered a rational and prudent deal. He is not a martyr, but the collateral damage of his own ideology. “You can’t invite violence to the dinner table and be shocked when it starts eating” (Amanda Seyfried). DM