According to Newsweek, young conservatives are no longer silent as they look ahead toward 2020, mobilizing with TPUSA on college campuses around the country in support of President Donald Trump’s re-election.
Conservatives are making inroads with young voters on high school and college campuses across the country, which can be attributed to the success of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), according to a recent report by Newsweek that highlighted accounts by several conservative students and activists involved with the organization, founded by Charlie Kirk.
“They see themselves in the role traditionally played politically by the young,” writes Newsweek of young conservatives it interviewed. “They are the rebels, the non-conformists, willing to stand up for what they believe in opposition to the establishment.”
“Only this time,” the report added, “the establishment — on campus and in the broader society — is a culture that demands lockstep obedience to — ‘far left ideas.'”
One Texas State University alumna, Stormi Rodriguez, said that she had never been called a racial epithet until 2016, after she posted a photo of herself on Facebook wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat. After that, Rodriguez says that she has been subjected to several racial epithets, including “wetback,” and “race traitor.”
Earlier this year, while still a student at Texas State, the school’s student government voted to ban the Turning Point USA club on campus, of which Rodriguez was chapter president.
Videos taken during and after the student government meeting later surfaced and effectively backed up Rodriguez’s earlier claims, as the video evidence depicted students hurling expletives and racial epithets — such as “race traitor” — at Rodriguez, as well as the school’s TPUSA vice president, who is black.
“There were some protesters outside the meeting, including one guy who came up to me and was pounding his chest like he wanted to fight,” said Rodriguez to Newsweek of her experience that day. “It was very, very scary. Believe me, whatever political ideology that guy associates with, I want no part of.”
Colorado State University alumna Isabel Brown noted that for some reason, young people in her generation are no longer “rebellious,” or even “particularly thoughtful.” Brown is not alone in her assessment, as many would concur that the current generation of college students behave strikingly in the opposite manner as their predecessors in earlier generations.
Take, for example, UC Berkeley, a campus that was once celebrated as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s is now a haven of militant opposition against conservatives, shutting down events and where someone can be physically attacked in broad daylight for daring to have opinions that fall outside of leftist Groupthink.
“They feel the need to adhere to a politically correct ‘progressive’ agenda,” said Brown of those in her generation obedient to leftist dogma. “True rebellion is simply to say, ‘I disagree.’ I think conservatives were expected to be quietly polite, and we expected people would be quietly polite in return.”
“Now we’ve learned that unless you boldly fight for what you believe in, the culture and the country will look very different,” affirmed Brown.
Newsweek added that not one of the students interviewed considers the president to be racist and that they reject that label for themselves as well.
“People who say that don’t have an argument; they can’t defend their [political] ideas and positions,” said Georgia State University student Ben Okereke, who is black. “They’re not making an argument — they are trying to get out of an argument.”
Students also divulged their experiences in losing close friends after revealing that they think differently.
University of Alaska-Anchorage senior Allison Ackles told Newsweek that she lost all ten of her very close friends at school, after attending a TPUSA event in Dallas and returning home to tell her friends that she was “thinking more conservatively now.”
“All ten of them ultimately stopped speaking with me,” said Ackles.
“What has happened to the left to make it so closed-minded?” asked Brown, “where if you don’t agree with every little bit of their policy agenda you’re castigated as an evil, racist xenophobe and they just shut the discussion down?”
The report noted that the Trump campaign won 37 percent of the youth vote in 2016, adding that this time, it will not be the same, as the campaign has already raised more than $125 million and will make a collective effort to target young voters in battleground states.
One of those key players will be Kirk, who vows to enact an “unprecedented” effort to mobilize the youth vote for President Trump’s re-election, and has previously stated that his group has over 1,000 college chapters and more than 40,000 members across the country.
“It’s no question that freedom is on the ballot in 2020,” affirmed Kirk, who recently announced the launch Turning Point Action — TPUSA’s sister 501(c)(4) organization — as well as the acqusition of Students for Trump, and a “Get Out The Vote” campaign seeking to organize 1 million Trump-supporting students by 2020.
“There’s never been a pro-GOP effort at this scale before, targeting young voters,” said Kirk. “This can be done. We will make a difference.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.