What makes a good martyr?

October 14, 2025

	By Katrin Bennhold

Good morning, world! When Charlie Kirk was assassinated and President Trump called him a martyr, as a German I thought of Horst Wessel. Wessel was a young Nazi storm trooper who was killed by Communists. He was lionized in speeches. Streets were named after him. His eponymous song became such a powerful propaganda tool that it remains banned in Germany to this day.

The two men were not the same: Wessel was a jackbooted thug; Kirk was not violent. But both illustrate the potency of political martyrs and what can be done in their name. Today I’m writing about what makes an effective martyr.

What makes a good martyr?

It’s not just American conservatives who are trying to immortalize Charlie Kirk. His name was a rallying cry at a large far-right gathering in London. His death was the No. 1 topic at a right-wing party conference in Madrid. Even the mayor of Lima, Peru, held a Charlie Kirk memorial. He compared the activist to martyrs in Rome who helped spread Christianity.

In the U.S., Charlie Kirk’s consecration as a MAGA saint has been swift.

There are proposals to name portions of highways after him and to mint coins with his face on them. Oklahoma is considering a bill that would require all state colleges to build a statue of Kirk. Yesterday, on what would have been his 32nd birthday — and was officially a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk,” thanks to an act of Congress — President Trump held a ceremony to posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Martyrs are potent. Their deaths can be used to infuse a cause with quasi-sacred meaning. They can be used to unite people behind that cause and against an enemy. They can be used to justify violence.

There are a number of criteria that experts say make someone a good martyr — and Charlie Kirk ticks all the boxes.

Three ingredients

George Floyd made an effective martyr. Ashli Babbitt less so.

If you haven’t heard of Ashli Babbitt, it’s because efforts to elevate her after her death never reached the heights many on the right had hoped for.

Babbitt died in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. She was killed by a police officer when she tried to breach a door that was one of the last barriers between rioters and members of Congress.

Trump and other prominent MAGA figures framed her death as the execution of an “innocent.” There was a burst of Babbitt hashtags and T-shirts in QAnon and far-right circles, where she remains a martyr to this day.

But efforts to broaden her appeal beyond that never really bore fruit.

Floyd, a Black man, died facedown on the pavement when a white police officer knelt on the back of his neck. “I can’t breathe” became the rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. People across the globe marched in his name. Pilgrims still flock to the site of Floyd’s death outside a convenience store that was renamed after him. Murals of him abound.

What accounts for the difference?

I asked Tom Holland, a historian who has studied Christian martyrdom, what the most compelling martyrs had in common. He listed three criteria.

A mural of George Floyd in Texas.  Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

 

First: a public, dramatic and ‘innocent’ death.

Floyd’s victimhood was never in any serious question. The world watched the video of him taking his last breath.

Babbitt’s death split the right. Senior Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham called the Jan. 6 rioters “domestic terrorists.” The House speaker at the time, Kevin McCarthy, said the officer who shot her “did his job.”

Second: The deaths should have a cause linked to them.

Martyr means witness in Greek; the early martyrs were witnesses to God. Babbitt and Floyd both had causes linked to their deaths. In Babbitt’s case, it was Stop the Steal; in Floyd’s, it was Black Lives Matter.

But they differ again when it comes to Holland’s third piece of criteria.

Third: Martyrs need a powerful movement.

Movements have the resources to invest these deaths with greater meaning — to tell their stories in a way that galvanizes people.

In May 2020, when Floyd died, America’s left was mobilized ahead of that year’s presidential election. By the time Babbitt died, Trump had lost that election and was a few weeks from leaving office. It wasn’t yet clear where MAGA was going.

A powerful tool

Charlie Kirk’s death, Holland noted, can be made to fit all the criteria. He was shot while debating college students. He was already recruiting young voters to the MAGA cause. And he’s being mourned by a movement that’s more powerful than ever.

The ripple effects of Kirk’s death have already gone beyond statues and plazas. He’s become a powerful tool. The administration has used his death to crack down on free speech and liberal groups. It has threatened to deport people who trivialize Kirk’s murder and has canceled some foreigners’ visas.

While guest-hosting an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller declared that the administration was “at war” with the left, and he vowed “to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” what he called a “vast domestic terror movement.”

The government would do this, Miller said, “in Charlie’s name.”

Interested in providing feedback on this newsletter? Take our short survey here.