Turning Point USA is a conservative organization that aims to build the conservative student movement on college campuses. As of fall 2018, there will be a chapter at UT, founded by Meghan Lovett with the help of Benjamin Larrabee. They bill themselves as your classic right-libertarians (with anti-big government, anti-communist, and “pro-liberty” themes). Dig a little deeper though, and you’ll find that under their nice polos and blazers are the Blackshirtsof the fascist right.
Turning Point USA enables fascist recruitment through dog-whistle politics and a clean, youth-focused image, training college students to support many of the key tenets of the alt-right and fascism. TPUSA denies being associated with the alt-right, yet their actions indicate otherwise. Significantly:
- The founder of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, is a contributor for Breitbart–the right-wing site that served as a breeding ground for the growth of the alt-right
- TPUSA’s main goal in 2016 was recruiting college students for the Trump campaign and building support amongst young voters.
- They have invited Milo Yiannapolous to campuses. Milo is a far right comedian who routinely uses fascist iconography like the Iron Cross, has attempted to target trans and undocumented students, incited his followers to attack protestors at the colleges he’s spoken at, and most recently encouraged vigilante attacks on journalists.
- Their December 2017 Student Action Summit featured prominent alt-right figures such as Steve Bannon (executive chairman of Breitbart, a grotesque racist & anti-semite), Ann Coulter (a massively Islamophobic writer who inspired much of the rationale behind Trump’s Muslim Ban), Sebastian Gorka (outed as a member of a Hungarian pro-Nazi group), Tomi Lahren, Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, and more.
- At a November 2017 conference in Denver they hosted new alt-right star Ivan Throne, a Mens Rights Activist who advocates reducing women to their “wife value” ideology and fantasies of a patriot-warrior cult.
One can see their ideological political commitments demonstrated as well in their propaganda. Most notably:
- They have spread a meme that “hate speech is just speech liberals don’t like”–a ploy to normalize fascist organizing and recruitment
- Their marketing strategy of “anti-communism” actively draws from the fascist playbook. Anti-communism has long served as a dog whistle for fascist politics, consolidating the right and even liberal forces in opposition to the “threat” of communism while normalizing their own violent ideology.
- Right-wing libertarian “pro-market, small government” forces like TPUSA have served as fertile ground for fascist entryism and recruitment, as they repeatedly demonstrated a preference for authoritarian police states (such as Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile) in the name of capitalism/anti-communism over any real commitment to liberty
Turning Point USA poses a danger to students and faculty on campus. Nationwide, they are notorious for putting together a “leftist” professor watchlist–a frightening attempt at attacking en masse critical thinkers and liberatory thought within higher education. This disproportionately targets professors who are women, LGBTQ+, or non-white, and at some campuses they have organized harassment campaigns against professors.
By mainstreaming and normalizing far-right ideals & figures and using the dog whistles of “free speech,” “anti-communism,” and “limited government,” TPUSA lays the ideological foundation for fascism and collaboration with fascism. Whether through attacks on “PC culture,” the perpetuate of hypermasculine rape culture, the pathologization of trans folks, the demonization of Islam, or the targetting of progressive academics, they materially enable the progression of fascist policies and organizing at local and national scales.
Known members:
