Yet Another Campus Chapter of the Conservative Diaper Group Is Into Super Racist Memes
Turning Point USA is national young conservative group whose leader, Charlie Kirk, has essentially admitted it grifts wealthy older Republicans into funding its war on “nuttiness on college campuses.” The group is frequently in the news when its members are exposed as racists: Over at HuffPost, Ashley Feinberg reported earlier this year that the group’s former national field director once texted another TPUSA employee: “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.” Another conservative group, the Young America’s Foundation, accused TPUSA in an internal memo of “boosting numbers” at rallies “with racists & Nazi sympathizers.” They’re also infamous for that one time a bunch of their members at Kent State wore diapers in public to own the libs.
Today, we have another example of these urination-challenged youths being deeply, deeply racist. The Miami New Times obtained screenshots of group chats between TPUSA members at Florida International University showing the thoroughly racist and extremely dumb jokes and memes the members find amusing. It isn’t necessarily surprising—by now we know how deeply ingrained this sort of childish, 4chan-ish racism is among college Republicans—but the substance of what these morons were sharing is still startlingly racist and disgusting.
The screenshots the paper obtained show the members sharing, for example, a meme of a Syrian “Pepe” figure raping a Swedish woman. I feel 600 times dumber for having typed that sentence. Imagine being one of these absolute cretins: not only choosing to sign up for an organization headed by Kirk, who is three large toddlers stacked in a Brooks Brothers suit, but then spending the best years of your life sharing racist Pepe rape memes with your classmates. The funny frog man is brown now! I am an adult!
Other screenshots show one user warning another to [sic throughout] “avoid using the n word and don’t reference Richard Spencer too much and don’t Jew hate just cause all the time.” Be sparing with your anti-Semitism at TPUSA—don’t do it unless you have a really good reason. That was in response to, the paper reported, a group member asking “how ‘edgy’ the person’s ‘meme game’ can be in the group chat.” Again, imagine yourself earnestly asking about the specifics of your friends’ “meme game.”
To compound your second-hand embarrassment: The Miami New Times also obtained a screenshot showing one member joking about enjoying “‘loli hentai,’ a type of Japanese pornography that, according to Urban Dictionary at least, depicts underage, prepubescent girls having sex.” TPUSA: a place for the internet’s perverts to meet other perverts, and also do racism. (Splinter reached out to TPUSA, the group’s regional field director in Florida, and the FIU chapter for comment. So far, none have responded, but we’ll update this post if they do.)
As Alex Pareene wrote last year, we still have much to fear from this group of desperately stupid, hateful people, because soon, they will age into being elected members of the Republican party:
This is the state of the GOP leadership pipeline. In a decade, state legislatures will start filling up with Gamergaters, MRAs, /pol/ posters, Anime Nazis, and Proud Boys. These are, as of now, the only people in their age cohort becoming more active in Republican politics in the Trump era. Everyone else is fleeing. This will be the legacy of Trumpism: It won’t be long before voters who reflexively check the box labeled “Republican” because their parents did, or because they think their property taxes are too high, or because Fox made them scared of terrorism, start electing Pepe racists to Congress.
We are about to enter an age where Republicans will be led by a group of men whose racism has bloomed under the heat lamp of terrible internet culture, a culture where abject racism is turned into a meme, a joke, an ironic abstraction—making its participants no less racist, but removing all barriers to expressing and embracing that racism—and shielding it with a rock-hard outer layer of irony. Anyone who doesn’t get that is branded a “normie,” an SJW, a cuck—not just, like, a normal person who doesn’t spend their time stewing over the imagined scourge of immigrants raping white women.
Previous generations of racist Republicans were a lot more careful about their hatred, talking about “state’s rights” and “small government” instead. It’s hard to say whether that’s better or worse than a generation that will make open racism the center of their politics. Given how things are going under Trump, who is worshipped by these pathetic gremlins, I am willing to bet it’s worse.
Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer Charlie Kirk $150 to debate me on whether fans of “loli hentai” have a place in the future of the Republican party. If he doesn’t say yes, I’d have to assume he is afraid of my powerful logic.