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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder on the Utah campus where he was shot. The paper uses this case to approach the question of how fascist imaginaries meet points of fracture that stifle attempts to amplify and congeal an enemy image into an assumed consensus.

Paper long abstract

In the immediate aftermath, many saw the killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah as an inflection point in the United States. In a country that has come to take for granted hundreds of mass shootings a year, the targeted killing of Kirk was held up as if it were a synecdoche of a deep social-political pathology. Discourses following the shooting crystallized the event into an enemy image with definite moral status but uncertain referent. This gave the event polysemy in its potential to justify a variety of repressive actions, but also made its meaning highly contestable. This paper will examine the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder on the campus where he was shot: Utah Valley University.  It traces how attempts to transvaluate the event into an enemy-friend, scapegoating discourse, failed to articulate with an ambiguously Mormon civic religion performed on the UVU campus. Following the shooting, shrines emerged on campus memorializing Kirk as a martyr, pilgrims came to campus to honor him, and UVU’s institutionally sponsored Vigil for Peace celebrated Kirk’s faith and family life. These practices did not directly challenge the scapegoating discourses favored by online MAGA influencers and members of the executive branch of the U.S. government, but tacitly weakened them through redirection. The paper will use this case to approach the question of how fascist imaginaries meet points of fracture that stifle attempts to amplify and congeal an enemy image into an assumed consensus–even among people with shared political commitments.