Courtesy of Anonymous Yikyak User
Turning Point USA, abbreviated as TPUSA, was founded in 2012 by the late right-wing activists Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery. The organization became involved with high schools and college campuses. Notably, TPUSA created the “Professor Watchlist,” attacking professors who have been deemed “anti-American” and are accused of discriminating against conservative students. Its offshoots, including Turning Point Action, Turning Point Endowment, and Turning Point Faith, have allowed TPUSA to expand into political involvement and Christian nationalist ministry. Most recently, Turning Point USA has created an alternative to Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show after backlash claiming that he is not American. This alternative halftime show includes artists such as Lee Brice, Gabby Barrett, and Kid Rock, whose song “Cool Daddy Cool” contains timely lyrics about attraction to underage girls.
Kirk was shot and killed in September of 2025 at a rally at Utah Valley University. Many prominent members of the Republican and Democratic parties expressed their condolences for Kirk and his family, with President Donald Trump blaming the “radical left” for the shooting. Prominent Democrats used Kirk’s death to call for gun control legislation. On social media, Kirk’s death was met with mixed reactions. Some conservatives felt emboldened by his death, crying out, “We are Charlie Kirk,” and celebrating him as a martyr for the Christian faith; a few conservatives compared him to figures such as Martin Luther King. Many other people, however, viewed his death as a consequence for his inflammatory views, including a statement he made that he would force his young daughter to carry a pregnancy that resulted from sexual assault. It is ironic that when he was shot, he was debating gun violence with a student, and that he had made a statement suggesting that it is fine for some people to die as a sacrifice to protect the Second Amendment. In recent months, Kirk has become a meme. “Kirkified” AI images add Kirk’s face to various images, and slang phrases such as “lowkirkenuinely” have emerged on social media. A mysterious AI-generated song with the lyrics “we are Charlie Kirk, we carry the flame/we’ll fight for the Gospel, we’ll honor his name” has gone viral on TikTok.
At the beginning of the semester, many students noticed flyers for a Connecticut College chapter of TPUSA. Little information is actually known, however, about the potential organization, since the flyers disappeared just as quickly as they were put up. Conflicting rumors on Yik Yak have spread about professors and students involved with the club, but no real information exists. There are no existing social media accounts on Instagram or TikTok affiliated with Connecticut College and TPUSA.
Students on Yik Yak had mixed reactions about the possibility of a TPUSA chapter at Conn; however, most of these reactions were negative. TPUSA has been mentioned multiple times on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website with the dangerous alt-right, as well as the Right Wing Watch website. An organization that has been associated with the far right has no place on a campus that claims to value diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many conservatives say “so much for the tolerant left,” as if intolerance does not threaten marginalized groups. Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance” outlines this conservative fallacy perfectly: if tolerance includes intolerant ideals, there is a risk of intolerance becoming the dominant ideal. This obviously undermines the ideas of tolerance that a tolerant society strives for.
