Charlie Kirk wasn’t perfect, but he was genuine. Long before the funding, fame, or Turning Point USA empire, he was the kid hustling between high-school classes and talk-radio studios, arguing that young conservatives deserved a seat at the table. He had conviction before he had capital. His rise wasn’t engineered by consultants but organic, from late nights, coffee, and the conviction that ideas, not algorithms, still mattered.
Kirk’s assassination last month sent a shock through American politics. For all his bluster, there was no denying his sincerity. He believed the culture war was real, that universities had become ideological factories, and that young Americans needed to fight back with words, not weapons. Agree or disagree, Kirk’s energy was his own. He built a movement on the strength of persuasion, not inheritance.
And now, in the vacuum left behind, a new face has emerged—Brilyn Hollyhand, the 19-year-old Alabama prodigy already called “the new Charlie Kirk.” It’s an uncomfortable coronation, and one that says as much about the state of modern politics as it does about the young man himself.
Hollyhand began as a child interviewer, cornering conservative celebrities with charm and precocity. By 11, he’d interviewed Kirk. By 19, he was flying private to launch a 10-stop college tour called “One Conversation at a Time,” echoing his late mentor’s “prove-me-wrong” campus crusades. The soundbites are the same, the aesthetic nearly identical—slick graphics, strong hair gel, and a soundtrack of patriotic pop.
Last week, however, the Daily Mail revealed that Hollyhand’s agent had asked a fake university for thousands of dollars in speaking fees, despite his public insistence that he never charged to talk to students. The fee—$7500 plus expenses—was small by influencer standards, but enormous in symbolism. The boy who claims to carry Kirk’s torch seems more interested in carrying his own luggage in first class.
Hollyhand’s defenders say the backlash is unfair. Every speaker charges something, they argue; logistics cost money. And they’re not wrong. But Kirk’s success wasn’t built on luxury. It was built on labor. He slept on floors, not jets. His early campus events were more folding chairs than fanfare. Hollyhand, by contrast, ascends in a digital age where ideology and image are indistinguishable, and sincerity is a branding exercise.
There’s something troubling about how quickly both the left and right have accepted this inheritance. The left mocks him as a grifter, the right elevates him as a prodigy. Both should be wary. Hollyhand isn’t Kirk; he’s the algorithmic offspring of a movement that has learned how to market outrage.
In a way, he’s the inevitable product of the machine Kirk helped build. Turning Point USA professionalized campus conservatism, but in doing so, it made activism performative. Hollyhand’s rise completes that arc. He’s fluent in the dialect of digital politics—punchy quotes, tight suits, instant virality—but you sense little of the moral gravity that animated his mentor.
That absence matters. Charlie Kirk, for all his faults, was animated by belief. His Christianity wasn’t for show; his arguments, however blunt, were grounded in something beyond himself. He thought the West was worth saving, not monetizing. Hollyhand, meanwhile, seems caught between preaching conviction and posting about it. When every act of courage doubles as content, conviction becomes choreography.
The tragedy is that movements rarely survive their founders. Kirk’s death has turned him into myth, and myths attract opportunists. Hollyhand may yet mature into a serious thinker. But right now he embodies a worrying trend—the influencer-ization of ideology. Where Kirk saw politics as persuasion, Hollyhand sees it as promotion.
And that should alarm everyone, left and right alike. Because when belief becomes a business model, the truth no longer matters—only engagement does. The young conservative firebrand of tomorrow might not be reading Burke or Tocqueville; he’ll be studying TikTok analytics.
Kirk believed in building institutions. Hollyhand seems content building a brand. That distinction may sound small, but it marks the line between leadership and self-marketing, between the teacher and the influencer, between legacy and lifestyle.
The conservative movement now faces a choice: preserve its principles or monetize its martyr. For all his controversy, Kirk left behind something that mattered—a belief in persuasion, in debate, in showing up. To replace that with a traveling selfie tour wouldn’t be continuation but corruption.
Hollyhand likes to say, “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill a movement.” Maybe so. But you can certainly cheapen it.