MAGA Movement Shows Divisions After Charlie Kirk Assassination

In the days after the killing of right-wing influ­encer Char­lie Kirk, MAGA world was unit­ed in mourn­ing. But his death left a void that seems dif­fi­cult to fill. Divi­sions are becom­ing increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble. The sit­u­a­tion is symp­to­matic for the Chris­t­ian right uni­verse: On Octo­ber 27, two com­pet­ing cam­pus events will take place that both claim the lega­cy of Char­lie Kirk who had an out­size impact on young con­ser­v­a­tives in the Unit­ed States. One at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty orga­nized by the late activist’s advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion “Turn­ing Point USA”, and one at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee at Knoxville by 19-year-old Brylin Hol­ly­hand, hailed as Kirk’s “pro­tégé.

Read more: https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/18/cracks-in-maga-world-will-the-movement-survive-trump

Key Points

• Con­ser­v­a­tive wun­derkind Brylin Hol­ly­hand trig­gered fury with­in MAGA world after post­ing a pro­mo­tion­al video filmed from a pri­vate jet, with crit­ics sug­gest­ing the col­lege fresh­man was out of touch with grass­roots activism.
• Leaked Telegram chats exposed racist mes­sages from Young Repub­li­can lead­ers con­tain­ing almost 28,000 offen­sive mes­sages using slurs and hate­ful jokes, draw­ing wide­spread con­dem­na­tion and prompt­ing res­ig­na­tions of sev­er­al local leaders.
• Dif­fer­ences have emerged among MAGA fig­ures like Tuck­er Carl­son, Steve Ban­non, and Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene crit­i­cal of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion over health­care strat­e­gy, Israel sup­port, and Iran strikes.
• Pro­fes­sor Matthew Dallek stat­ed that extrem­ist move­ments includ­ing the MAGA move­ment have a ten­den­cy to grow more rad­i­cal over time and to frac­ture, with the move­ment cur­rent­ly a mix of rival fac­tions and con­ser­v­a­tive influencers.

The US MAGA movement and the Global National Conservative Alliance

The US MAGA move­ment has become inter­twined with a transna­tion­al ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples reject­ing glob­al­ism, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, and lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. This Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal depar­ture from Rea­gan-era con­ser­vatism, mov­ing away from ideals of free mar­kets and glob­al lead­er­ship toward nation­al­ist and pro­tec­tion­ist agen­das that pri­or­i­tize nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty over demo­c­ra­t­ic institutions.

The alliance gained insti­tu­tion­al form through CPAC’s expan­sion to Budapest, bring­ing togeth­er Euro­pean far-right lead­ers includ­ing Spain’s Vox par­ty and France’s Nation­al Ral­ly along­side Amer­i­can MAGA fig­ures, while many of Trump’s appointees have attend­ed Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Conferences.

The intel­lec­tu­al archi­tec­ture under­ly­ing MAG­A­’s glob­al engage­ment draws from unex­pect­ed sources. Christo­pher Rufo has explic­it­ly embraced Ital­ian Com­mu­nist Anto­nio Gram­sci’s the­o­ries about cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny, plac­ing cul­ture rather than eco­nom­ics at the cen­ter of polit­i­cal strug­gle. Rufo aims to serve as “the right’s Gram­sci,” with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion imple­ment­ing these strate­gies through uni­ver­si­ty fund­ing freezes and dis­man­tling the Depart­ment of Education.

Beyond tac­ti­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties, MAGA shares struc­tur­al pat­terns with oth­er pop­ulist move­ments through ide­al­iza­tion of a lost past, anti-elite rhetoric that under­mines insti­tu­tion­al trust, and cul­ti­va­tion of per­son­al­i­ty cults around dom­i­nant figures.

Oppo­si­tion to “wok­ism” has become both a uni­fy­ing cause and strate­gic tool, link­ing Amer­i­can MAGA fig­ures, Euro­pean far-right lead­ers, and Russ­ian strate­gists through shared oppo­si­tion to pro­gres­sive iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. How­ev­er, the move­ment faces sig­nif­i­cant inter­nal ten­sions. Bit­ter dis­putes have erupt­ed over philo­soph­i­cal direc­tion, with anti-woke pun­dit James Lind­say attack­ing reli­gious and nation­al­ist con­ser­v­a­tives as the “woke right” while nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive leader Yoram Hazony warns these attacks are designed to frac­ture the MAGA coalition.

For­eign pol­i­cy divi­sions have proven equal­ly desta­bi­liz­ing, as Israel’s strikes on Iran splin­tered Trump’s coali­tion between iso­la­tion­ists like Tuck­er Carl­son demand­ing restraint and hawks like Sean Han­ni­ty push­ing for mil­i­tary action, rais­ing ques­tions about the dura­bil­i­ty of this transna­tion­al nation­al­ist project.

Exter­nal References:
— Hun­gary inspires U.S. con­ser­v­a­tives. Its leader is seen as run­ning a ‘dic­ta­tor­ship’ — NPR
— CPAC comes to Europe as alliance between the Trump White House and the inter­na­tion­al right grows — CBS News
— Nation­al­ist con­ser­v­a­tives from US, Europe gath­er, tout­ing dif­fer­ent view of democ­ra­cy — Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Monitor

Dis­claimer:
The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.