While Matthew Boedy, a college professor at University of Northern Georgia, has studied Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for years, it’s not something that came voluntarily. In 2016 he wrote an oped for a local paper against allowing guns on college campuses. That was enough to get the right-wing organization to put his name and bio on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist. The watchlist was an early incarnation of what LibsofTiktok, Moms for Liberty and others are doing now – finding posts, videos and other statements from educators and sending the internet mob after them. Now anyone who speaks ill of the “martyred” Charlie Kirk is being put on a list for targeting, going after their employment and online safety.
This is what got Boedy looking into Kirk and TPUSA, and eventually writing The Seven Mountains Mandate. The fascinating book, which is out September 30, covers the seven mandates of this right-wing Christian dominionist movement – all the facets of American culture that they planned to work their way into controlling – business, government, media/arts, entertainment, family, education and religion. Kirk was using TPUSA, TPAction, TP Academy and TPUSA Faith to wrest control of culture from his perceived enemies – mostly “liberals.”
The Seven Mountains Mandate walks you through where the idea got its start, and how it’s quickly gaining traction in churches, schools and in politics. While the book delves into some somewhat esoteric religious figures of the last 70 years – it’s likely the most important book you could be reading right now.
You’ve written a book called The Seven Mountains Mandate. What is the Seven Mountains mandate?
As I describe it, it’s a strategy of Christian nationalism to Christianize America and destroy democracy.
The Seven Mountains are as a metaphor, obviously, of seven different cultural institutions that Christians, specifically charismatic, conservative Christians, want to take back, or take over or to climb the mountain for Jesus. They believe the mountain or the cultural institution is run by Satan or demonic forces or anti-Christian forces. So there’s seven areas: business, government, media/arts, entertainment, family, education and religion.
These are the institutions that make our culture. Turning Point USA is a culture war organization, and that’s how they described themselves around2020, Charlie Kirk said, this is the strategy that they want to go after, both to conquer America for Jesus, but also expand the audiences of Turning Point.
The viral success of the Professor Watchlist feels like a real jumping off point for a lot of these new activists like Libs of Tiktok and Moms for Liberty.
Well, let’s be honest, Turning Point is not the first person or first group to come up with a list of professors. So what they did well, of course, was the social media aspect, which is throwing the mob in outrage at an individual person.
So, you know, with the professor watch list, if you were put on it and there’s seven, eight hundred people now on it, you’re usually put on it for some outrageous comment that you make on Twitter. So they have a screenshot or perhaps have videotaped you in a classroom saying something or even innocuous as writing an op-ed.
And they will put your picture, they will put your contact information on that list. They were nice enough to use my wedding picture. You will get torrents of emails and phone calls and things that I’m lucky in this regard that was early on and I didn’t get it.
But through the years, many people have told me stories of the terrorizing that they have gotten from the initial days after that. And I think that, as you mentioned, all those other groups that sort of ambush online, [that] phenomenon has been happening. And Turning Point has gone beyond that to ambush people in person.
They physically ambushed a professor at Arizona State coming out of a class and two Turning Point staffers got arrested for assault. They keep raising the stakes of conservative attacks upon higher education – [and it] is not just, philosophical and ideological because it’s political. They have to gravitate toward action. They have a school board watch list now. They’re doing a lot of things to bring attention to individual people, whom they don’t like.
You mention in your book that anti-Muslim activist/writer David Horowitz, wrote a book about the supposed “101 most Dangerous Academics in America.”
I’m sure you know he was the person to introduce Charlie to Candace Owens.
There’s been a lot of Conservative groups that target young people, Young Republicans, CPAC, but TPUSA really seems to be the first in a long while that is expanding.
Their tagline is they’ve ‘made conservatism fun again.’ And so if you know that, the implicit comparison is the other groups you just mentioned were stoic in, in blazers and arguing philosophical debates, and this is not what they do at all.
They are interested in taglines and bumper stickers, and if you go to one of their summer events in Arizona or their winter events in Florida, it is billed as a big party. There is plenty of music, some of it’s worship music. There is energy in the room. There’s organizing and certainly there is training, but there are a lot of things young people would like.
I went several years ago to a couple of campus events here at the University of Georgia, and [they] packed the room and no doubt, it is [was] political rally. So there’s chanting and there’s back and forth with answering. But it really is, Charlie on the stage sometimes with another person just, monologuing and interacting with the crowd.
They’re clapping a lot, I mean, these events are energetic and they’re obviously good with social media. Once they go to these three day events, and oftentimes I think for the last several years, the Turning Point has paid people’s bus, plane fare and hotel fare to go. And now you can go with your parents. So it is the go to indispensable organization for conservative causes because they combine the political training with a rally, with TikTok, with all the cool lingo you can think of.
They’re a lot like the big churches, they’re preaching, they’re not giving speeches.
Yeah. I went to a pastor summit here in Gainesville at a megachurch called Free Chapel. So this is supposed to be a pastor summit. But the first night, the whole thing was filled, they gave free tickets to the youth groups.
READ: How Charlie Kirk Went from College Dropout to Christian Nationalist MAGA Influencer
They had a panel during that pastor summit about TikTok influencers. They had them talk to the pastors about how to do TikTok so you can see where that’s going. The pastor summit was directed toward pastors, but it was really putting out the youth millennial energy to pastor to take that on.
How has Turning Point Academy worked its way into America because Kirk is not just doing big one off events.
So in the Seven Mountains Mandate, obviously one mountain is education. So, higher education is part of that, but it’s really the K through 12 area. He has started schools, the first one was partnering with a brick and mortar school, Dream City in Arizona.
But if you look at the Turning Point Academy map, there are model schools that are hybrid home schools, that are private classical Christian schools and then they have this curriculum that they want to give to teachers to use in classes. They [also] have these educator summits, which they bring in people that sell curriculum.
They bring teachers to talk about people’s faith in class, to talk about how to teach Christian classical stuff and to really push homeschooling. Then they also do the public school is bad, and yet we should go save it kind of thing.
So, Turning Point Academy is just one of those seven mountains that they put millions of dollars into. And, you know, it was just getting started. I think it was maybe in the last year that they did that, but they have a lot of schools on their map that they claim as partners. And most of those schools have churches who are willing to [help] them. So therefore those churches are also their partners.
Where do you think Kirk got his guidance on the whole Turning Point Academy thing?
Obviously, Charlie had a close relationship with Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, who was the chairman, and Kirk, the vice chairman of President Trump’s 1776 educational commission. Charlie watched a bunch of Larry Arnn videos that are on free on Hillsdale’s site and Hillsdale has their own K through 12 curriculum that is seeped into public schools.
The state of Tennessee wants to expand their base there. I think Dennis Prager and PragerU played a large role in mentoring Kirk in that educational realm, Prager U has been spreading their videos through K through 12. So, those two people definitely influenced him in the education realm. But really, I think the ideas come from, Larry Arnn and Hillsdale and a little bit of Prager U. Also, and I think that in terms of education now, this has been going back since the beginning of the Seven Mountains mandate, Bill Bright, but a whole book about that, and why education is bad and why private schools are good. So there’s a line that can go back. Charlie didn’t invent this at all.
The left is supposed to be the ones infiltrating education and they don’t have anything like this. The videos from PragerU are wild misinformation.
Yes, it is about the -isms. And so you can sell the fear of the -isms. And then you might have like 1 or 2 teachers, you know, make a comment or not allow this person to say something and that person becomes representative of the larger group.
I mean, we’ve had several teachers, I think, get fired this past week for comments about Charlie Kirk’s death and the superintendent in Oklahoma says if you make comments about Charlie Kirk death that are negative, you’re going to lose your license. So, yeah, this, that these isms come up, and individual people get tagged with them.
But I really think that the Covid shutting down of the schools, really blew up the educational arm of Turning Point, in the sense of making it more popular, more powerful because he [Kirk] became the face of that, of that anti closure movement, anti-vaxx, anti-mask movement as well.
What do you think will happen to TPUSA and what will be Kirk’s legacy?
You don’t replace Charlie Kirk – the face and founder. But I will say Turning Point was built to last, so it has these seven arms. It’s not just one area. There’s obviously a lot of money there and it was looking toward the future. It was trying to be the organization that would be what people come to when MAGA moves on or when Donald Trump leaves office. So, I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen.
Let us see. I think that, you know, the best word that the right has been using? Not the best word, but the best word to understand his legacy is martyrdom. I don’t think it’s the best word to describe his death, but to show he’s a martyr. And you can use a martyr for free speech.
He’s a martyr for the gospel. He’s a martyr for a lot of different things. But that shows you the impact and what people now want to do. To call someone a martyr means we have to double down on our purposes because his legacy demands it. Perhaps, demands retribution and justification.
I think that’s where President Trump is going. [Kirk] was civil at times, but he also made these videos where “Charlie Kirk [would] school somebody. I think that those who loved him will continue to do what they did with a new sense, not just of purpose, but with anger.
I mean, we’ve seen Trump voters be angry and come out of their alienation. This is quite the… I don’t want to use “matchstick” here because I don’t want to say it’s going to get worse, but I do think it will.
