Espousing a fiery – and usually provocative – brand of conservatism, Charlie Kirk took the battle for converts to the place where he felt his opponents were most deeply entrenched: America's university campuses.
The activist and social media influencer – credited with turning many young voters to Donald Trump at the last election – believed students were brainwashed by Left-wing ideology and that free speech was desperately needed in the country's supposed temples of learning.
And although his views – which included banning gay marriage and all abortion, while condemning Martin Luther King as 'a bad man' – were frequently inflammatory for many Americans, he was always ready to sit down and debate them calmly with his critics rather than shout them down.
So it's an irony that will be lost on few of his supporters that he of all people was shot dead on the campus of Utah Valley University just after he'd taken a question about mass shootings.
The death of a father of two, hailed as 'the youth whisperer of the American Right', has sent profound shockwaves through a country now contending with a surge in political violence.
