He was the modern day Joseph Goebbels for Donald Trump, whose white supremacy Kirk made palatable for his millennial supporters. He was Rush Limbaugh in skinny jeans. A KKK youth recruiter without the hood and burning cross.

His very public and brutal murder in Utah didn’t bring me joy; those images will be etched in his loved ones’ minds forever. But let’s be clear: his racist rhetoric left its own indelible impressions—no less unsettling or damaging—on the people whose rights and liberties he sought to restrict. Namely, anyone who wasn’t white.

He once said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’”

He called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “awful,” added “he’s not a good person,” and said that “he said one good thing he actually didn’t believe” during a speech at America Fest in December 2023. He also denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” Yep, the same act that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and ended segregation in public places and facilities.