The Post–Charlie Kirk Right Is at War With Itself. Libertarians Are the Odd Target.
Rising campus conservative star Kai Schwemmer declares libertarianism his enemy.
On the political right, the months since the death of conservative media superstar Charlie Kirk have been characterized by ever-escalating and internecine warfare between his would-be professional inheritors. In retrospect, it is now apparent that Kirk had held together a very fractious coalition.
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Leadership of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the flagship political organization for young conservatives that Kirk founded in 2012, has formally passed to his widow Erika Kirk. She has faced a barrage of attacks from Candace Owens, a former friend of Charlie Kirk who has made spurious accusations that TPUSA leadership and perhaps the state of Israel were involved in his death. On one level, this particular feud seems deeply personal, and it's hard to take Owens' vendetta seriously when it's mostly backed up by outright conspiracy theories; on the other hand, she remains incredibly popular and has a massive audience.
This fact tends to make more respectable conservative commentators nervous, since it reveals a very basic fact: The Owens faction is winning the hearts and minds of young Republicans, or at least appears to be prevailing among very online and politically active conservative Gen Zers. Some (admittedly wild) speculation says that around "30 to 40 percent" of young white male conservatives working in Washington, D.C., belong to the "groyper" movement of Nick Fuentes, whose fans overlap with Owens' despite on-and-off feuding between the pair. Owens can also claim Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, two of the biggest names in conservative media, among her defenders.
The other faction is most prominently represented by Ben Shapiro and his organization The Daily Wire (though The Daily Wire's other most famous figure, Matt Walsh, is often at odds with folks on both sides), The Babylon Bee, James Lindsay, Dave Rubin, and others. Support for Israel, oddly enough, has become a defining issue for the right, and so Jewish and pro-Israel conservatives are universally opposed to the groyper faction. Their viewers, readers, and subscribers tend to be older, more traditional conservatives. They also watch Fox News and Newsmax. The Owens-Fuentes-Carlson-Kelly side is winning online and appears more attractive to young people. Looking beyond vibes and digging into the data reveals a mixed picture: There are polls that cast some doubt on the notion that Carlson's stridently anti-intervention, Israel-skeptical point of view is so popular with Gen Z. On the other hand, surveys of Gen Z Trump voters reveal worrisome levels of tolerance for antisemitism and hostile views toward Israel.
Speaking as a professional libertarian, it's tempting to look at all this infighting and say: not my circus, not my monkeys. I prefer the anti-interventionism of the New Right but decry the racism and antisemitism; with the establishment right, it's the reverse. Neither faction seems particularly inclined to cozy up to libertarians. The three-legged stool of fusionism that held up the modern Republican Party—religious social conservatism, foreign policy neoconservatism, and economic libertarianism—has long since broken apart.
But there's not cozying up and then there's denouncing by name. Increasingly, this seems to be the choice the New Right is making. That's why Kai Schwemmer has caught my attention. Schwemmer is another rising figure on the New Right: He recently became the political director of College Republicans of America, another campus conservative group. Unlike many New Right figures, he's Mormon. (The new right tends toward Catholicism, whereas the traditional right tends toward evangelical Protestantism.) He's also a former friend and associate of Fuentes, and as such, the enemies of the New Right have spent the past week vigorously denouncing him. The Babylon Bee's Joel Berry said people like Schwemmer give the GOP an image problem, and Lindsay took his turn as well.
I'm once again telling you College Republicans (of America) is a very radical wolf in sheep's clothing you should want nothing at all to do with. Look into it for yourself, starting with this guy. https://t.co/M5kWehkriw
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) March 5, 2026
Schwemmer, for his part, made a video explaining his views and followed up with the declaration that caught my eye: "Most importantly: I am NOT a libertarian."
Most importantly: I am NOT a libertarian, I am a conservative. I believe the state absolutely can and should be used by virtuous people to decrease and disincentivize vice, making it easier for good people to live good lives. The religious morality we have had since the nation's…
— Kai Schwemmer (@KaiSchwemmer) March 6, 2026
I admit I'm a little confused that a New Right figure would declare libertarianism his most hated enemy, particularly because it would seem like we were aligned on the issue they are most obsessed with: aid to Israel and foreign interventionism. Libertarians tend to oppose these things. The two most libertarian members of Congress, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), are the ones leading the intra-GOP opposition to the Trump administration's wars of choice against Iran and Venezuela.
But beyond that, it's genuinely surprising to me that young Republicans would conclude—after living through the past six years—that what went really wrong for them is government doing too little. Have we all forgotten about COVID-19? In response to the pandemic, the federal government implemented the exact program that nonlibertarians are calling for: a crackdown on inconvenient personal liberties in the name of the common good. The health and well-being of young people were particularly negatively impacted by the government's common-good statism in the form of school closures and bans on group social activities. Vaccine mandates, mask requirements, lockdowns, and the like were all justified under the framework that the government had a paternalistic responsibility to do things for people's own good, no matter whose freedom was harmed as a result. Disproportionately, the groups that got the shortest end of the stick were kids, teenagers, and college-aged students.
Indeed, I might have expected the post-pandemic generation of up-and-coming political commentators to all be radical libertarians, since they experienced firsthand the horrifying consequences of big government run amok during the pandemic—what 2020 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen called "the biggest assault on our liberties on our lifetime." But for whatever reason, that appears not to be the case.
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