Charlie Kirk was not a household name outside the United States, but his profile had grown with the rise of the global populist right, and even more so following President Donald Trump’s second presidential victory.
After Kirk was fatally shot on a Utah college campus Wednesday, on the heels of a trip to meet with students and activists in South Korea and Japan, international political figures and world leaders expressed condolences. Most vocal among them were Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — central figures in a global nationalist right with deep connections and shared affinities to Trump’s MAGA movement.
“We lost a true defender of faith and freedom,” Orban said in a social media post that blamed the “hate-mongering left” for Kirk’s death.
“I mourn the loss of my friend,” said British conservative politician Nigel Farage in a tribute before the House of Commons Thursday. A vigil in central London was planned for Friday by the British offshoot of Kirk’s movement, Turning Point U.K. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the Labour Party, offered condolences of his own in a social media post decrying political violence.
