About

Turning Point USA is a non-profit political outreach and activist organization focused on conservative and right-wing causes. The company and its founder, Charlie Kirk, have been at the center of numerous controversies, including The Professor Watchlist.

History

At age 18, Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA on June 5th, 2012, after being rejected from Military Academy, which Kirk blamed on Affirmative Action. ^[1] The organization was founded to organize conservatives and conservative causes on college and high school campuses. In five years, it has more than 1,000 chapters in colleges and high schools.^[2]

Reputation

Some of Turning Point USA's and Charlie Kirk's actions have been the subject for numerous controversies. In April 2016, conservative students at Drake University were denied a request to start a campus chapter. Some members of the Drake Univseristy Student Senate denied their request based on the “a hateful record,” “aggressive marketing” and “an unethical privacy concern" of the group.^[3] Other projects from the group, such as Professor Watchlist have been described as as racist and pro-fascist, using surveillance type propaganda to manipulate ideas of truth, equality, and freedom.^[1]

Charlie Kirk Hands On Hip Image

On October 7th, 2017, Charlie Kirk tweeted ^[9] a picture of himself in a white shirt and khakis with his hands on his hip. The image was captioned "God is real Taxes are theft There are only 2 genders USA is the best country ever Socialism kills Hillary should be in prison." Within two days, the post (shown below) received more than 6,600 comments, 3,000 retweets and 9,800 likes.

Shortly after the picture was posted, people began posting parodies of the picture, using at as a reaction image for humorous captions. That day Twitter^[10] user @barefootboomer posted several images and received thousands of likes and retweets in response (examples below).

Diaper Protest

On October 18th, 2017, members of Turning Point USA staged a protest at Kent State University in which they dressed up like toddlers, wore diapers, sucked on bottles, and played in a child's play pen in an effort to demonstrate what Safe Spaces looked like to the outside world. That day, Twitter user @austin_m18^[11] tweeted images from the protest (shown below, left). The following day, the Twitter account @TPUSAatKent also tweeted photos from the protest, which brought it to the attention of Twitter users (shown below, right).

This led to jokes about the protest to spread on Twitter throughout the day. Many found the event reminiscent of viral joke tweets from months earlier by @mrmxy^[12] and @BAKKOOONN^[13] which imagined conservatives wearing diapers in an effort to "trigger the libs" (examples shown below).

Twitter user @Cryptoterra^[14] made the connection, writing "I can't believe "Putting on a diaper to own snowflakes" just willed itself into existence" (shown below, left). Twitter user @jimpjorps^[15] also made the connection, simply writing "owning the libs by wearing diapers in public" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Turning Point UK

On February 1st, 2019, Turning Point announced that they had launched a UK division of their organization on Twitter (shown below).

Shortly after the announcement, multiple fake Turning Point UK accounts launched on Twitter, to the point where the official account had to make a statement about them.^[17] Some of those accounts included @TPGLA1, which pretended to be the Glasgow division of Turning Point UK and posted memes mocking conservative figures such as Ben Shapiro (shown below, left). Another pretending to be the Devon chapter posted a meme making fun of Charlie Kirk, gaining over 200 retweets and 420 likes (shown below, right). These jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[18]

Controversies

Professor Watchlist

On November 21st, 2016, Turning Point USA launched the website Professor Watchlist.^[4] According to the site, "The mission of Professor Watchlist is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."

The website became a quick source of controversy. Many commented that the type of list-making for left-wing or anti-capitalist views was similar to the McCarthyism used during the 1950s to find and jail communists. Shortly after the launch, the website Slate^[5] wrote:

But what the site did do--what it continues to do--is compile a one-stop shop of easy marks and their precise locations, complete with descriptions of offenses against America, God, and the 'children of the sun.' Whether it intends to or not, this list watches over us at our country’s darkest turning point, poised to inflame the tinder-dry, gasoline-soaked pitchforks of a mob that has just stepped boldly into the light."

Since the website's launch, numerous professors have reported personal threats to their safety.^[6][7]

FIU WhatsApp Chat Leak

On October 16th, 2018, the Miami New Times^[15] published a report about the Turning Point USA chapter at Florida International University's campus, reporting that members in its group chat on WhatsApp shared a Pepe the Frog meme depicting the rape of a Swedish woman by Syrian men and a The Law Requires I Answer No referencing Loli hentai (shown below, left). Additionally, the article contained a screenshot of a message advising members to "avoid saying the n word", to not mention white nationalist Richard Spencer and to refrain from posting "Jew hate just cause all the time" (shown below, right). That day, the news was also covered by The Daily Beast^[16] in an article titled "Turning Point USA Members Joked About Muslim Refugees Raping White Women."

Involvement in Student Elections

On May 7th, 2017, The Chronicle of Higher Education^[8] reported that Turning Point USA had been funneling thousands of dollars into student-government campaigns. Some of the universities affected by this include Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Maryland, leading to several candidates withdrawing from their student elections. Some have argued that the influence violated Turning Point's nonprofit status.

Search Interest

External References