– This is not the conservatism we are used to, says Torbjørn Røe Isaksen.

Charlie Kirk caused controversy – even after his death. The murder of the American activist and organizer has led to a heated debate about who he was and what he stood for.

A number of media outlets have highlighted Kirk's controversial opinions on women's and transgender rights, immigration, and whether Muslims can actually be Americans. Others believe his words are being taken out of context, in order to smear the slain American activist.

So the questions remain: What did Charlie Kirk really mean? How are we to understand his thoughts? And in what kind of historical context do they really belong? Was he a right-wing radical, or simply a conservative activist?

To get help answering these questions – and to translate Kirk’s political landscape of ideas into Norwegian – we call Torbjørn Røe Isaksen. He is political editor at E24 and a former Conservative politician. Most importantly in this context, however, he has written about the conservative ideological tradition for more than 15 years, in essays and in books.

– I think I would use the term Christian nationalist, it's quite sober. The hard right is also a good term, says Isaksen.

– Immersed in woke

Isaksen places Kirk at the center of the American Maga movement. It is difficult to describe him without also talking about the movement around Trump, he says.

– Kirk was a Maga Republican. He was a very hardcore supporter of Trump. He was a close friend of the family, says Isaksen.

– So this is really a question about Trump's ideology?

– Yes, to a certain extent. He has his starting point on the Christian right in the United States, and the part of the Christian right that has wholeheartedly supported Trump, says Isaksen, and continues:

– One of the keys to understanding this part of the right is that their analysis is that the institutions in Western countries are infected to the bone by left-wing thinking. They believe we live in a world where culture, politics and the economy are permeated by the left, socialism and what they call woke. This is also where the term cultural Marxism comes in. It gives very dark associations in Norway. This is not the conservatism we are used to, says Isaksen.

He describes typical modern European conservatism as a defense of institutions, for cautious changes to society.

– This right wing no longer has that as its political program, he says.

The new American right has instead drawn ideas from rather surprising sources.

An Italian philosopher

Parts of the American conservative movement have begun to read the Italian communist politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian fascists in 1928, and wrote his most important texts in prison until his death in 1937.

The most important of Gramsci's ideas – or at least the one that has had the greatest impact since his death – is the theory of cultural hegemony. In short, it is about the fact that the power of the bourgeoisie over politics was entrenched in cultural institutions. To combat this power, it was not enough to simply organize politically. Gramsci believed that the left also had to create another, alternative culture, which could fight for hegemony.

Gramsci's ideas were very important for the radical left student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The fact that his writings have reached the American MAGA movement was reported with some astonishment in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, in an article entitled Meet MAGA's Favorite Communist.

– The understanding of politics in this environment is closer to what was the radical left understanding of politics in the 60s and 70s. Politics is not just something about elections and the distribution of goods. Politics is also an all-encompassing cultural struggle, says Isaksen.

- A conservative radicalism

As part of this cultural struggle, Kirk ran a campaign against liberal professors at universities in the United States. The campaign is called Professor Watchlist. The websites state that the campaign exposes professors who promote left-wing propaganda in the classroom.

– It is important to understand this part of the right that they believe that liberals have colonized the various institutions of American society for decades. And by institutions they mean music, movies, schools and universities. This is a conservatism – if we are to call it Maga and Trump – that does not want to fence in the institutions, but that wants to tear them down.

– Isn't this actually quite close to the definition of radicalism?

–I think this is a form of conservative radicalism. I think it is an accurate description. It may sound like a contradiction, but there is a precedent for this. It is a trend in European history, part of the conservative tradition. You find it, for example, among various groups of traditionalists – often authoritarian – in interwar Europe, he says.

Theory and practice

Isaksen says he believes part of what makes it difficult to describe Kirk comes from the way he was an activist.

– Because what does Charlie Kirk do? He travels around and organizes open meetings at universities, he answers critical questions. It is very strange to call it fascism, to travel around and meet his opponents in a – admittedly quite harsh and aggressive – debate.

– Because it is a democratic practice?

– Yes. If he had just sat in his basement apartment and spewed this out, it might have been different, but one of the things that characterizes Kirk is the way he was an activist, says Isaksen.

– And it's hard to assess this ideology, and what it is, without looking at what Trump is doing. I mean it's clear that he has an authoritarian bent, but we don't know yet where he's going to end up. But it's clear, if he ends up in a bad place, this is how it starts, he concludes.