Kellnerian media spectacle: Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA and discourses of “indoctrination” and truth

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This paper draws upon Douglas Kellner's theory of media culture, a framework that emphasizes the spectacular, that examines the culture of media as an inherently commercial culture, and that emphasizes overlaps of social and political power. While Kellner has, in the past, examined such large-scale spectacles as sporting events and the live televising of war, this paper examines spectacle in the age of social media by focusing on a particular example – the now deceased politically conservative public figure Charlie Kirk. In examining Kirk primarily via the discourse of social media posts and threads, I aim to shed light on how social media frameworks help to shape the discourse around such issues as liberalism vs. conservativism, the Trump effect on media messaging, and the legitimacy of experts and of higher educational institutions. It should be noted that the organization started by Kirk, Turning Point USA, has made a name for itself asserting a “liberal bias” in today’s academia. In making such assertions, Kirk and his defenders engage in considerable rhetorical work as they mask their own biases. Nevertheless, the dialogic discourse of Kirk, his followers and supporters and his critics illustrate several features of Kellnerian analyses of the spectacle. Examining this and other forms of spectacle allows us to better understand this year’s conference theme of fact vs fiction and to better grasp the wider context of growing inequality as this plays out in debates about the public support of public educational institutions. In examining the authored social media posts of Charlie Kirk, particularly those targeting higher education and progressive ideals, the message is, essentially, that universities tend to brainwash students with leftist dogma, leftists are violent and irrational (and by default, universities enable violence and irrationality and conservatives as outnumbered but can and do courageously stand up for truth.

Author

• Thomas Michael Conroy, CUNY-Lehman College