A memorial service is supposed to honor the dead and comfort the living. However, when thousands of people gather in a stadium with pyrotechnics and merch being sold, what you get is less a space for grief and more a marketplace, where mourning itself becomes just another commodity.
On Sept. 21, 2025, the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the polarizing CEO of Turning Point USA, resembled more of a political convention than a moment of mourning. Rather than celebrating Charlie’s life, as so many conservatives have been demonizing the left for refusing to do, the event quickly revealed itself as a spectacle for mass consumption.
The irony is hard to miss. For years, conservatives have been accusing progressives of politicizing tragedy and exploiting grief for their own agendas, especially in the wake of mass shootings, when progressives often propose stricter gun control legislation.
Yet in Glendale, conservatives did just that, as they turned Kirk’s death into a rallying cry against “wokeness” and took it as an opportunity to project power and sell merchandise, with those in attendance turning a blind eye to the apparent commodification happening around them.
What this event revealed was that no one is immune to the capitalistic system we live under, not even those who spent their lives profiting from it.
Kirk, who built his entire career monetizing outrage and weaponizing culture wars, was reduced to the same thing he had capitalized on in life: a brand to be marketed, not mourned.
The presence of Kyle Rittenhouse at Kirk’s memorial service shows how thoroughly political violence itself has been commodified. When Rittenhouse was accused and later acquitted of murdering two people during a protest against police brutality, he was embraced by the right as a symbol of patriotic self-defense.
It’s no surprise that the right did not jump through the same hoops to defend the man who allegedly shot Kirk.
In the eyes of the right, violence is free speech when it sells, but a national tragedy when it threatens their brand.
And then there was the bizarre eulogy by President Donald Trump. Instead of focusing on his personal relationship with Kirk, Trump commented on crowd size, teased a “cure” for autism, and hinted at deploying the National Guard to the city of Chicago, claiming that during one of his last conversations with him, Kirk pleaded with the president to “save Chicago.”
This isn’t grief: it’s a marketing strategy. Kirk isn’t being honored; Trump is being sold to the American people.
The commodification wasn’t confined to the stadium. Turning Point USA has already unveiled new merchandise tied directly to Kirk’s death. These are products with price tags, not symbols of remembrance and grief.
The fact that a nonprofit organization is profiting from the death of its own leader only further emphasizes how fully grief has been corrupted by capitalism.
This is the irony of this entire ordeal. Kirk was a staunch advocate for free-market capitalism, insisting that it was the solution to America’s problems.
But in the end, capitalism did not honor him; it consumed him.
The uncomfortable truth is that no one escapes this system. Not the critics, not the champions, not even the dead. In a world where mourning can be exploited for marketing purposes and grief turned into propaganda, we are all commodities waiting to be packaged, sold, and consumed.
