In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, right-wing politicians, Christian evangelical leaders, podcasters, and conservative media outlets are casting him as a martyr for free speech, for truth, and for Christian values. President Donald Trump called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom,” praising him as someone who “fought for liberty, democracy, justice and the American people.” Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, called him “America’s greatest martyr to the freedom of speech he so adored.”

At a prayer vigil that drew hundreds to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night,

House Speaker Mike Johnson told the crowd that Kirk’s “movement was a ministry,” rooted in the belief that “our rights do not derive from the state or a king. They come from the King of Kings.”

As The Forward’s Benyamin Cohen reported, “The vigil, which drew Republicans, Trump administration officials and Kirk’s loyal followers, crystallized the narrative that has come to dominate the conservative universe in the days since his assassination: that he was more than a political activist — he was a martyr in an existential struggle between good and evil.”

But no matter how the right spins it, Charlie Kirk was no Martin Luther King, Jr., no Medgar Evers, no Malcolm X. Far from embodying the principles of those leaders. and despite his tragic death, there is no way to hide his record of homophobia, anti-feminism, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, and hostility toward civil rights. He dismissed the separation of church and state, as “a fabrication.” He stood firmly with the gun lobby with his inviolate pro-gun views.

In the rush to canonize Kirk, one should not forget that Kirk embodied division and scapegoating.

At Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Howard-John Wesley countered the right-wing’s narrative, delivering a searing and emotional critique of efforts to sanitize Kirk’s legacy.

“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated,” Wesley said. “But I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land.”

Kirk regularly disparaged the Civil Rights Act,  the landmark 1964 legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Speaking at AmericaFest in December 2023, Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr. “not a good person” and “awful.”

At the same event, Kirk said “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” and “passage … created a ‘permanent DEI-type bureaucracy.’”

He often criticized affirmative action and made inflammatory comments about Black people and other racial minorities, including saying “In urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target White people” on his podcast in 2023.

Wesley criticized people with “selective rage” who condemned Kirk’s killing but not the killing of Minnesota state Sen. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Democrats who were shot dead in their home in June, as well as those who “tell me I oughta have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life.”

“You do not become a hero in your death when you are a weapon of the enemy in your life,” Wesley said to raucous applause.

And that is the deeper truth obscured by the calls of martyrdom: Kirk’s death, while tragic, cannot cleanse his legacy of division, nor should it be used as a rallying cry to sanctify a politics of hate.

The post Kirkwashing: Right Sanitizing Charlie Kirk’s Legacy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.