This Tuesday, Charlie Kirk brought his You’re Being Brainwashed Tour to the campus of my public university in a Republican-controlled state. It was nothing like the last time Kirk and his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization had visited. Although the different timing matters – this was literally two weeks before election day – the differences between the 2018 and 2024 events in many ways reflect the dangerous radicalization of the US right wing.
In 2018, Kirk had a fairly similar agenda when coming to my university: “exposing leftist lies and progressive propaganda” at US universities. I wrote a column about the rather bland event, describing it as a “rightwing safe space”, in which Kirk railed against the “cultural Marxists”. Most students seemed more amused than aggrieved. How different this week’s event was.
