Turning Point’s Commodification of Socialism
By: Chad Glapion
Tags: Socialism, Social Media, Election 2020, Politics, Capitalism

Perhaps you’ve heard of Turning Point USA. TPUSA’s stated mission is to: “identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government.” On the surface, it’s essentially a normie-tier Conservative organization.

Founded by a young Charlie Kirk in 2012 after the late Bill Montgomery, so impressed by Kirk’s Reganesque speech, convinced him to postpone College and pursue political activism. After being groomed for the role by Bill, Kirk found himself the founder of TPUSA in 2012. Besides posting “so bad they’re good” style memes on social media, TPUSA likes to spend its time as a watchdog for its brand of wrong think — Liberal and Left-Wing influences on College campuses. In that sense, TPUSA is much like Right-Wing Watch, but the Conservative version. But back to the memes which are at the heart of this composition.

TPUSA’s Facebook page has over 1 million likes, and over 2 million followers. Not too shabby at all. Except I’d suggest a large portion of those people aren’t there because they love TPUSA’s brilliant political analysis or savvy wit. But how could that be? Well, for starters I’m friends with several people who like their page. They often re-post their memes to poke fun. Secondly their memes are just so terrible and brain dead, it’s obvious a large portion of TPUSA’s audience isn’t laughing with them. They’re laughing at them. So what is it TPUSA actually offers? Well, in the war of Blue Tribe vs Red Tribe, TPUSA obviously puts its stake firmly in the red. Its primary goal is to make Conservatism hip and cool. That’s why they post “funny” memes, and why they’ve hired attractive black Progressive Bernout turned Blexit Conservative Candace Owens as a spokesperson. Turns out audiences just react better to an attractive black female going “Socialism Bad” as opposed to Charlie Kirk himself, who seems to ooze a quality that can only be described as anti-cool. If TPUSA has created a debonair rock star in the American Conservative movement, it’s Candace. Kirk is just along for the ride at this point. With that said, Kirk has shown himself willing to wield Candace in when she starts to off the rails a bit, such as publicly suggesting that German Nazism was okay as long as it remained in Nazi Germany.

A cursory glance of TPUSA’s Facebook page will grant you such bastions of memetic brilliance as this Ronald Reagan meme, bearing the classic Reaganite quote of: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Odd that a small-government minded Conservative group would advertise someone like Reagan, who not only expanded government control, but curtailed gun rights, as well as dubbed immigrants the “most important sources of America’s greatness”, a sentiment many Trumpists would vehemently oppose.

So why does a pro-Trump organization like Turning Point extol Ronald Reagan? Simple, his actions as president don’t really matter at the end of the day, he was a leader of the Red Tribe and opposed the Blue Tribe. That’s enough to garner their favor, even if his opposition of the Blue Tribe extended all the way to funding rebellious factions in Nicaragua via a secret arms deal with Iran.

Perhaps this isn’t all TPUSA’s fault. The average person has the attention span of a fruit fly. Perhaps TPUSA’s meme team secretly has enough political knowledge to put Machiavelli to shame. But since the average American’s political understanding is significantly lacking, TPUSA can only rely of Reagan soundbites. Ask the average Joe Schmo on the street for a precise and concise definition of Capitalism and Socialism. To them, Capitalism is synonymous with trade. As for Socialism? Well, that’s just when the government does things.

Want affordable healthcare? That’s Socialism. Affordable education? That’s Socialism. Empowerment in your workplace? That’s definitely socialism. Pull yourselves up by the bootstrap, maggot! Corporate lobbyists and Conservative pundits have spent decades convincing the public “Socialism is when government do thing.”

Is it truly a mystery why there are hordes of Millenials and Zoomers who prefer Socialism to Capitalism? The Republican Party, in its grand wisdom, has convinced the public nearly everything worth fighting for is Socialism. The modern-day ruling class has spent decades conjuring the very enemies they claim they wish to vanquish.

So the process remains with TPUSA. A plethora of memes displaying a first graders understanding of politics, parked next to a webstore where one can purchase t-shirts, stickers, and buttons with double-faced platitudes such as “Big Government Sucks” for the scrupulous Woke Conservative consumer.

So far we’ve identified at least four things about Turning Point USA.

1. It’s a youth-minded Conservative organization that attempts to be hip and cool.

2. It possesses the political depth of a lemon.

3. It loves selling you stuff to trigger the Libs.

4. Without the Libs TPUSA would have a much smaller audience.

It’s that final point that is perhaps the most important. Remember what I said about the Conservative movements tendency to conjure its own villains? While Social Liberals have reached a stage where there’s a fascist hiding around every opinion, the modern Conservative movement has decided to create the very foundation for everything they want wiped from existence.

Turning Point should be thankful Socialism exists. Without it they’d fade into complete irrelevancy.