Were Powerful Actors Trying to Turn Charlie Kirk into a Pied Piper?

Charlie Kirk built TPUSA to instruct young men with conservative instincts, and in twelve years it became a powerful institution. Did Kirk ultimately refuse to serve as a Pied Piper?

John Leake

“The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is an archetypal tale of how an influential individual or institution can be used to lead large numbers of people in a direction that may or may not be wholesome for a society.

Back in 2023, I wrote a report on the DNC’s April 2015 strategy to use the then primary candidate, Donald Trump “to lead Republican voters astray.” The genius DNC strategists called their Machiavellian scheme the “Pied Piper Strategy.”

The DNC’s “strategy,” which totally backfired, reminded me of the Viennese socialite and darling of the Austrian Socialist Party, Udo Proksch, who once boasted to a friend, “Ich bin der Rattenfänger” — alluding to the original German title of the folk story, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln.

Charlie Kirk was an idealistic and voraciously curious man who founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to attract and educate young American men with conservative instincts. Because of the dreadful state of education in the U.S., millions of such young men are unable to articulate their instincts into a coherent vision for themselves and their society. Charlie Kirk became an intellectual and spiritual leader for this cohort of young men.

In just twelve years, TPUSA became an enormous success, attracting $84,288,135 in donations in the year 2024 alone.

As with all institutions that rapidly acquire influence and wealth, it’s likely that Turning Point USA drew the attention of opportunistic individuals.

As Jordan Peterson pointed out in an interview with Charlie Kirk a few months before Kirk’s death, about 4% of every society is composed of “predatory parasites.”

They look for a story that’s working—could be Christianity, Judaism, Marxism, could be conservatism—doesn’t matter what the story is—they look to see where it has purchase, where the people who play that game have power. They infiltrate that, they advertise themselves as the vanguard of that movement, and they do that for no other reason than to gain power. Now this is politically agnostic. They’ll guise themselves in political cloaks and they’ll learn all the tropes ….

It’s a fascinating exposition that begins at about 23:00 on the tape.

I’ve been studying criminal psychology for 22 years, and I believe that Peterson is spot on with this description.

This brings me to a few questions that I believe are worthy of contemplation.

• Did Turning Point USA attract the sort of people and donors that Jordan Peterson described?
• If so, were such people trying to shape Turning Point into what may be characterized as a “Pied Piper Institution”?
• Did Charlie Kirk ultimately realize that this was happening and declare that he refused to serve as a Pied Piper?
• Now that Charlie is gone, has Turning Point USA identified someone to replace Charlie—that is, someone who is willing to play the Pied Piper role?