Why Respond to Kirk's Racist Lies

Letter on Kirk article

12 December 2025

I apologize for the length of this letter. I tried to keep it short, but the subject is too complex for simple answers in which little is learned. I meant for this to be with humility to be a learning exercise.

I have a problem with the 22 September 2025 supplement; Kirk Still Needs to be Proved Wrong. How do you prove a racist lie wrong? Why dignify a racist lie with an answer? One example of a racist lie, blacks will not work unless they are compelled to. Black youth (baby boomers) entered the labor market at an early (age 13) to contribute to the family income. As one recalled,” ... that is all we did was work” .... no summer camp, no hanging out at the beach, no vacations outside of family visits. But this racist lie goes all the way back to the overseer’s whip.

Okay, Charlie Kirk is not a fascist. He is a racist ideologue, a racist provocateur. When I read the words of Kirk, they bring back memories of the Jim Crow laws and customs that humiliated blacks in everyday life. I am not alone here. It brought to mind my uncle explaining to me that the segregationist was unAmerican. My uncle was a patriotic Air Force NCO, a career soldier. He said this to me when I complained to him that the town movie theater charged us black kids the same ticket price they charged the white kids for the Saturday matinee with cartoons. The black kids clustered until the last white kid bought their ticket heading straight to the snack counter that was off-limits to the black kids. The black kids brought their own snacks as they made their way up the alleyway staircase to a small space above the white kids.

But the white kids when I looked over the rail of the “crow’s nest” the white kids were spread out over dozens of empty seats while the black kids were crammed into a filthy space with broken down seats. I quickly learned soon after that the segregationist was very American. The Jim Crow system as Dick Fraser observed was based on white (skin) privilege ... more on this later.

He said, “...okay next Saturday matinee I will take you all, and we will sit were we want to sit.” He did just this, leading a group of us black kids into the whites’ section of the theater. The theater management was alarmed, argued with my uncle that we were not allowed in the whites’ section. He even raised the argument I gave him about the ticket price being the same. Flabbergasted the theater management told him if colored people want to sit here, they had to pay extra. My uncle paid them the “extra” and we were seated in a backrow of seats with guarding ushers on both ends of the row.

The civil rights movement was a church-led social movement jumping to the head of black people who would no longer accept Jim Crow. Rosa Parks was the designate “respectable” petty bourgeois to take the Montgomery bus arrest. The real person arrested for challenging Jim Crow bus rules was an unmarried pregnant ghetto woman who refused to surrender her seat to a standing white person. King was the designated respectable petty bourgeois spokesman for the press. Defiance of Jim Crow in everyday life was growing spontaneously. As Trotsky summed up revolutions occur when the rulers can no longer rule the same old way and those who are ruled refuse to be ruled the same old way.

Today we have Trump and his MAGA followers who cannot bring back the Jim Crow laws without creating a social explosion of greater magnitude than the first American Civil War that freed the black chattel slaves. But racist whites are vindictive dangerous people (Trump is the personification of this). I have worked in industry with these people and like every black co-worker learns quickly you cannot trust these racists to be rational or even safe ... watch your back. They would gladly watch a black person fail even by injury or death. They would mumble amongst themselves,” ... you see they can’t do this work.” There is nothing one could say to refute their ignorant “opinions”. Sometime one can silence them with a fist more effectively than with words. I am not partial to one or the other. I like a slogan I saw saying, Make Racists Afraid Again. I agree that violence is to be resorted to wisely. In old school home training black students were instructed to not tolerate racist insults from white kids resulting in many school yard fights after a white kid repeated something they heard from home. One last point on this, the preferred target of menacing racists are black women and youth. In my working years in the railroad industry, I have had to come many times to the support of black women and youth against some bitterly racist old white person who would not dare to repeat their provocation to a black adult man. I think it is important to understand that Jim Crow is a bitter memory for many black families with stories passed down generations.

Anti-black racism is the bedrock upon which US capitalist society was built. This has practical and substantive implications and effects. Here are a few that I am not sure you understand or simply don’t agree with.

1. Liberals are not anti-racist and never have been. As Cannon observed the American CP black work in the depression years and later made by the 1950’s it an embarrassment for liberals to cater to anti-black racism. The liberal position was at best stop the anti-black violence, blacks not invited into their homes except as servants, but after the sixties ghetto rebellions they feared even the black servants in their homes and their black servants despise them. Black servants decamp for better job opportunities being replace by Hispanic servants. Even now it is easier for them (liberals) to say “people of color” than black people. You can’t be anti-racist and loyal to the US capitalist order at the same time (important lesson for youth and workers alike). But you conflate blame to liberals’ policies resulting in the present reactionary shift in US bourgeois politics. Is this a flinch to pressures coming from the right?

2. ICL comrades individually have long denied the existence of white skin privilege. I understand this was in response to a off-handed remark by Robertson that he did not feel privileged to be white. In genuflection white cadre did likewise. But what was an off-hand remark by a highly respected party leader {respected by me as well) was wrong. Because it does not matter what one feels at all, what matters is how real social forces leaves it’s imprint on class society as a whole. White privilege is real, not a matter of subjective guilt or not, I find it peculiar that these same comrades acknowledge a non-existed “transgender movement”, but not white privilege, I find this a stunning mistake.

Remarks on the article itself:

1. “.... Countless white people fill positions they did not earn other than by accident of birth.” What is this? Putting aside liberal demagogic use of this social reality you acknowledge here what is your position on white (skin) privilege?

2. “... Kirk was playing to the swindle at the heart of affirmative action and DEI. The liberals expect white working people to just swallow shrinking opportunities for themselves out of moral obligations.” Who knows what DEI is? However, affirmative action did play a role in the expansion of the black middle class acting as a buffer between the racist rulers and the seething black masses. You don’t address affirmative action in industry except as a divisive tool against the unions. My last year in the railroad industry is a good illustration of both I was a high seniority locomotive engineer under intense harassment for calling out the racism of my boss’s action. They hated me and wanted me gone. They utilized their connections with racist white medical people to pressure and harass me under “health concerns”. At one point a young black woman doctor walked into the ER and instructed both the mean-spirited white nurse and threatening company cop to leave the room. I was grateful. Since then, I have express gratitude to every black woman doctor I have had the pleasure of being treated by.

3. “.... The liberals blame white youth and workers (white privilege) for black people’s wretched conditions...” My God! What a wretched capitulation to the right. More of the same ‘.... members of the black elite whose interests and outlook are far removed from the black masses.... they are strong defenders of the old liberal order.” You bend to pressure from the right! It is racist US capitalism build on a bedrock of black chattel slavery is what we are witnessing, regardless of political façade is in place. Do you reject the concept of the race/color caste? It certainly seems so. Black Americans are necessarily race/color conscious given the society they reside in. Regardless of whatever mistakes the old ICL cadre leadership made they certainly understood this reality. You do not.

WV Replies:

Hi Don,

Thank you for your letter and apologies for the late response.

I would like to start off by addressing your question: why respond to the racist lies spewed by Kirk? We need to situate Kirk in the context of the right-wing shift that is currently going on in this country. The rise of Kirk and even Trump did not happen because a bunch of white people woke up and just decided to be evil one day. A long line of liberal betrayals led to the rise of reaction that we see now.

For decades, liberals lorded over the misery and devastation of the working class; material conditions eroded while the liberals preached high moral platitudes. The liberals preached tolerance, diversity and wokeness while wreaking nothing but havoc and misery on the working class. They used a few token minorities in desirable positions to talk about progress and how we’ve made it as a society, while workers of all colors got crushed.

This only pushed white workers, who were looking for a way to address their very real economic concerns, to the right. These workers rightfully hated liberalism and falsely blamed minorities for their worsening conditions. This correlated with the rise of right-wing demagogues who feed off white workers’ anger and told them the reason that they’re in a bad spot is because of black people, women and other minorities. Kirk was not just some fringe guy. His organization, Turning Point USA, was the fastest-growing student group on college campuses across the country.

TPUSA became popular because it poked holes in core beliefs of the previous liberal status quo. Youth see no future for themselves: their economic prospects are slim, they’re in huge amounts of debt, they can’t afford to move out of their parents’ houses, their degrees are worthless and life sucks. The political tendency that is making the greatest strides right now is the right, and the left cannot continue to allow this. Workers and youth will not be won away from the right just by calling them a bunch of racists and moral preaching, but by exposing how Kirk’s politics (or the politics of any right-wing demagogue) are not going to advance their position at all and will only betray them and their interests.

Even though Kirk’s arguments were vile, we need to politically destroy them because many youth and the working class are buying into them. To engage with these arguments and give them a real Marxist answer does not give them validity; it is actually the best way to strip the validity away from them.

We do so not in the service of downplaying his vile remarks, but to figure out what strategy is needed to most effectively combat him. If Kirk were mobilizing youth nationwide to hunt down minorities in the streets, there would be no question that he would deserve the barrel of a gun. But that wasn’t what he was doing. Killing him did not stop his vile ideas but amplified them and made him a martyr for the right. Believe me, when I hear Kirk speak, I want to punch his smug ass right in the face. Kirk’s words were meant to provoke and humiliate minorities; that is without question. His rhetoric and politics are also meant to place the blame on minorities for the plight of white youth, who are his main supporters. In order to undercut his appeal, his arguments must be politically defeated by clarifying the real source of the problem. This has nothing to do with “turning the other cheek” in the face of racist provocation or conciliating hardened racists.

We need to show to workers and youth who buy into Kirk’s crap that the bigotry being spewed is harmful to themselves. It only weakens the united working-class struggle needed to actually better their material conditions, helping the capitalist masters crush them even more. Treating everyone who buys into Kirk’s or Trump’s lies as a fascist or an irredeemable racist does nothing to protect black people or other minorities or to stop the rise of the right. It only furthers the racial divide and keeps large swathes of workers in the arms of reaction. Liberalism got us into this mess; we cannot continue to try to fight the right using these means. It’s like bringing a butter knife to fend off a nuke.

Now, on to your other points:

1. Anti-Racist Liberals

You argue that it is impossible for liberals to be anti-racist. What would you call the majority of youth marching in the streets for BLM if not anti-racist? What was the anti-Trump resistance if not the liberals’ anti-racist popular front? There is a contradiction here between the aspirations of what these people fought for and their political strategy. You argue that you can’t be anti-racist and loyal to the capitalist order, but in actuality you can’t effectively fight racism or black oppression if you are loyal to the capitalist order. This is what we have to fight to get anti-racist militants to understand. They also must be made to understand that liberalism is a bourgeois ideology that only hinders the fight against black oppression and racism. To advance the black struggle, this strategy must be rejected.

You also argue that our blaming the liberals’ policies for the present reactionary period is a flinch caused by the pressures of the right. But as I already laid out, this is just a matter of fact: Liberalism breeds reaction. This is not a new phenomenon. Our recognizing this reality is not a capitulation to the right, but the first step toward being able to successfully fight reaction. I think that refusing to recognize this reality is a capitulation to the liberals.

2. On White Privilege

White people obviously do not suffer from racial oppression. This is undeniable. Call this a privilege if you want. But the term “white privilege” is almost never just some neutral term. It is utilized by the liberals to blame white workers for racial oppression. They are said to benefit from black oppression and get privileges from the oppression of black people. This is obviously not true; but, as Fraser put it, this is the reigning theory of American liberalism. When pushing this theory, liberals want white people to cleanse themselves of their sins by checking their privilege and being good allies, and somehow this will help black people. Ask a white worker at the meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado, where they are at constant risk of losing a limb or worse, how much privilege they have. This is the same liberal nonsense that led to the current right-wing climate. White workers who are barely holding on do not want to be lectured to check their privilege. Again, this does nothing to help black people, it only sets us up for racist reaction and further divides the working class.

Let’s address your remarks on the article itself:

a) “…. Countless white people fill positions they did not earn other than by accident of birth.” What is this? Putting aside liberal demagogic use of this social reality you acknowledge here what is your position on white (skin) privilege?

This sentence is primarily talking about nepotism and class, although there is no question that countless white people have received jobs instead of black candidates simply because of their skin color. This reality is an expression of the race-color caste oppression of black people. If you want to call this white privilege, so be it. Our problem is with the liberal program attached to this term.

b) “… Kirk was playing to the swindle at the heart of affirmative action and DEI. The liberals expect white working people to just swallow shrinking opportunities for themselves out of moral obligations.” Who knows what DEI is? However, affirmative action did play a role in the expansion of the black middle class acting as a buffer between the racist rulers and the seething black masses. You don’t address affirmative action in industry except as a divisive tool against the unions. My last year in the railroad industry is a good illustration of both. I was a high seniority locomotive engineer under intense harassment for calling out the racism of my boss’s action. They hated me and wanted me gone. They utilized their connections with racist white medical people to pressure and harass me under “health concerns”. At one point a young black woman doctor walked into the ER and instructed both the mean-spirited white nurse and threatening company cop to leave the room. I was grateful. Since then, I have express gratitude to every black woman doctor I have had the pleasure of being treated by.

We’re all for black people gaining access to jobs, and we advocate union recruitment and training of black people and other minorities in many industries. Affirmative action prepared a huge backlash against black people. As resources shrink and everyone is left to scramble over less and less crumbs, setting a quota for a certain race will only result in reaction and black people being scapegoated for white misery. Black people are told that they didn’t earn their positions, and we have to try twice as hard to be taken seriously. I think your anecdote about your time in industry shows this. The various liberal DEI programs that mushroomed in government, education and industry up until Trump’s return created a fierce backlash for similar reasons. They combined all the worst features of liberal schemes, like sensitivity workshops and talk of hiring targets, which sparked a major racist job purge of black people last year.

c) “…. The liberals blame white youth and workers (white privilege) for black people’s wretched conditions…” My God! What a wretched capitulation to the right. More of the same ‘…. members of the black elite whose interests and outlook are far removed from the black masses…. they are strong defenders of the old liberal order.” You bend to pressure from the right! It is racist US capitalism build on a bedrock of black chattel slavery is what we are witnessing, regardless of political façade is in place. Do you reject the concept of the race/color caste? It certainly seems so. Black Americans are necessarily race/color conscious given the society they reside in. Regardless of whatever mistakes the old ICL cadre leadership made they certainly understood this reality. You do not.

Yet again, you accuse us of bending to pressures from the right when we are exposing liberalism. You go on to argue: “It is racist US capitalism build on a bedrock of black chattel slavery is what we are witnessing, regardless of political façade is in place.” Ok, sure, but the face that the bourgeoisie puts on to crush the working class and black people matters because it shows us the ideology and illusions we need to combat in the workers movement. For the last 30 years, the left has capitulated to liberalism and “peaceful” imperialism. And now with the rise of the right, the left is still clinging on to the old order and trying to use the same strategy that led us down this path to begin with, the strategy that has divided the working class and weakened our class’s ability to fight for itself, let alone black liberation.

And, of course, we understand race-color caste, that every black person is oppressed regardless of their class position in society, and the strong sense of racial solidarity due to that oppression. But this does not mean that every black person has a common interest. This is something we have to fight in the black community to show. The sentence that you object to on the black elite is talking about the likes of Michelle Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They benefited from the old liberal world order and are staunch defenders of it. They are token black faces in high places who are held up as having made it while they front for a system that immiserates and oppresses black and working people.

I think that the common theme throughout all your arguments is an adaptation to liberalism. The right is on the rise, and it is a terrifying thing, especially for black people who know that they are first in line for racist attacks. It’s absolutely necessary that we fight back against these attacks. Socialists are going to be under enormous pressure to walk the hazardous tightrope of not conciliating the right and backwardness and also not falling back into the liberal politics that paved the way for the right in the first place. This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one that we have to take on. We cannot let the right continue to be the only opposition to the miserable status quo, and we cannot continue to get caught in liberal traps.

I hope this letter has brought some clarity.

Comradely,
Cairo Turner
18 April 2026