Charlie Kirk vs College Students

than the RNC. At the RNC, I knew I was going to be walking through the pits of hell, and despite the immense evil on display, the sideshow conspiracy theory freak nature of the event made it almost absurdly amusing.

But the DNC kind of broke me between the infighting among Palestine protesters and the insistence from the official organizers TM to oppose any course of action that would actually disrupt the event or apply pressure to attendees, and instead just use the Palestine protests to promote their little socialist

newspapers and political orgs. Meanwhile, inside the actual event, I was surrounded by some of the richest, most powerful people I had ever been around, and just watching them maintain their like Kamala is bracked party atmosphere at all costs and purposely blind themselves to the atrocities happening around the world, especially Gaza was a deeply unsettling experience like these are supposed to be the if not the good guys, at least the better guys or the less openly fascist guys,

and like among the American right wings, unprecedented focus and organized attack on trans writes. This was the first d n C SINS twenty twelve to not feature a trans speaker, and trans people were never directly mentioned during the convention's prime time speaking slots. And now it's the election ramping up, and the Southeast still recovering from two devastating hurricanes, Israel escalating tensions with Iran, and with the backing of the

United States continuing strikes in Lebanon and Palestine. I am just feeling more lost and discombobulated than I have been in years. So to cheer myself up, I decided to go to a Charlie Kirk and vivek Ramaswami rally at Georgia State University. Now to some that may sound just completely batshit or perhaps some form of bizarre self harm, but look like I've been covering far right rallies and writing about these weird conservative influencers for years now. It's

almost second nature to me. Going to these events can feel paradoxically relaxing, even though it may trigger some stress. My body just kind of subconsciously knows what to do in environments like this. The RNC was so easy, it's like an autopilot just takes over, and so I thought going to this Turning Point USA event might help reset my brain by giving myself a simple task that I

know I can excel at. But before we get into all that, first, for those more fortunate than I, here's some background on Charlie Kirk, also known as the far right podcaster with the Smallest Face. As a teenager, back in twenty twelve, Charles J. Kirk co founded in organization for campus conservatives called Turning Point USA, and then in twenty nineteen he founded a sister organization called Turning Point Action,

which focuses on elections and conservative political advocacy. Though initially more aligned with the so called alt light rather than the alt right, Kirk has slowly moved farther and farther to the right during the past ten years, and by twenty twenty, he embraced election fraud, COVID nineteen, and vaccine conspiracy theories. Also during twenty he started his own podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, which is now somehow ranked as the number seven podcast for news in Apple Podcasts. So

that's not good. At this point, Charlie has kind of taken the place of, if not surpassed, the role that was previously occupied by Stephen Crowder before his fall from Grace isteming from his breakup with Ben Shapiro and the allegations of abusing his ex wife. Through the Turning Point Action organization, Kirk is more tied in with the actual mechanisms of the Republican Party than even the Daily Wire is. Just this past Wednesday, Turning Point Action hosted a rally

for Trump in Duluth, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Trump spoke at this event, and Tucker Carlson made a very fascist speech advocating to refuse the results of the election if Trump loses and likening Trump to a quote unquote daddy figure needing to punish the country for being a quote unquote bad girl the past four years. It's a

huge indictment against Americans. Deeply Freudian politics now. The event that I attended on October twenty first was a part of Charlie Kirk's Your Being Brainwashed tour, where Kirk and friends travel from swing state to swing state to debate college students on camera about why Trump is the better candidate.

Charlie's focus on debating unprepared college students shows how he has kind of picked up the baton from Stephen Crowder and his old change My Mind videos, but this year, specifically, Charlie's version of this college debate content creation strategy is more in line with this overall strategy to inflate Kirk's political influence leading up to the election so that he can get more directly involved in the GOP's get out

the vote campaign in key swing states. As a part of this strategy, Kirk has been on a bit of a media blitz the past few months to promote himself. Some listeners may have seen the viral video featuring Charlie Kirk debating twenty five quote unquote woke college students for over ninety minutes. This video, from the YouTube channel Jubilee, has over twenty million views and like just as an

aside Jubilee is just so deeply evil. This company claims to advocate for like empathy and human connection while turning life and death political issues into fucking game show segments for YouTube ad revenue, often pitting media trained conservative activists against just random clueless liberals. I hate this company. They are so bad, but I digress now. I actually attended a Turning Point USA event on the GSU campus last year.

It was a smaller event that was ostensibly about defending the Copcity training facility in a Atlanta, though halfway through the event it just stopped being about Copcity and it just turned into an ad for Turning Point USA and this other political organization started by Candice Owens called BLEXIT, which stands for the quote Black Exit from the Victimhood mentality unquote. This was one of the most racist events

I've ever been to. The main speaker, in his best metrosexual attire, blamed black people for creating situations that result in police murders. Said that the real problem is that black kids are never taught accountability and that in the MLK days, people only ever advocated for more police training. He also claimed that rap music is causing a spike in violent crime and ranted against jay Z and Beyonce and closed by saying that we need to support more

conservative rappers and singers. It was really bad, But on the plus side, I went undercover to this event, and when talking with the Turning Point USA officials, I convinced them that I was actually a student at a different nearby university, and I reserved the right to start a fake TPUSA chapter in that school. So hopefully that will never happen, since I'm the one who's supposed to be

doing it. For the Brainwashed Tour event this past Monday, I dressed like an unfashionable campus conservative and donned my Reagan movie baseball cap acquired at the RNC welcome party, and arrived at campus an hour early to scope out the terrain. They didn't announce the exact location for the event ahead of time, so for about half an hour I just walked around to GSU with the fucking Ronald

Reagan hat, looking for like a TPUSA booth. Now, luckily I spotted some people with red mega hats that I tailed to the nearby Hurt Park, where it was immediately evident that this would be a much big, bigger event than the Copcity one I attended a year prior. In the middle of the park was a big table with microphones set up for questions and debate, and on either side there were booths with turning point stickers, buttons, flyers, a pocket constitution, and sign up sheets to get involved

in their political advocacy programs. I took home a big button that read Republicans are Hotter, and I got another, uh, what I would call a brat style button, but brown instead of green, that reads high period stop being a socialist period thanks period. Not good. Not good. But I watched the crowd grow from like twenty people I would say around two hundred. You know, it got kind of fluid,

but yeah, around two hundred to fifty. Maybe A small majority were students or at least young, and appeared to be equally made up of liberals and conservatives, with the rest of the crowd mostly made up of conservatives from all ages who came to campus just to see Charlie Kirk.

As the event was about to begin, TPUSA staff moved all of the older, quote unquote non college students out of frame of the cameras to make the video seem more focused on liberal college students, and after waiting in the surprisingly warm October sun for over an hour, Charles J. Kirk finally arrived thirty minutes late from the official start time, tossing free mega hats wildly into the crowd, one of

which I am now in possession of. For this leg of the tour, Kirk has been accompanied by the twenty twenty four Republican presidential candidate with the tallest hair, vivek Ramaswami, who, by the way, has also won the Cool Zone Media Award for Presidential care Candidate with the most Nick Fuentes Groyper Energy. So there you go. I can't believe I've seen the vek Ramaswami like four different times this year. That doesn't feel good. But do you know what does

feel good? That's right, these products and services that support this podcast. Okay, we are back. It's time to finally talk about this fucking rally. So I'm not gonna go over like the whole event play by play, because there was over two hours of quote unquote debating that I have neither the time nor the desire to recap, but I will mention some of the overarching topics and common lines of questioning even as the first student took the mic, I knew that this was gonna be a rough day.

The first person to quote unquote debate, Charlie and Vivek, stated that their quote primary opposition to Trump is that he's anti American and anti patriotic unquote. They said that they believed that Trump fundamentally undermines American values, and they specifically invoked Trump's rhetoric online about suspending the Constitution and the whole January sixth incident. Now, look, I don't think this is a very compelling line of attack, especially in

a debate setting. And I just don't believe that patriotism is like an inherently good thing. And I think Grifters and Conman are pretty dark American. But Vavek and Kirk responded by talking about how social media censorship in twenty twenty was a much greater act of anti Americanism, although later on in the day they defended Elon Musk in his running of Twitter, since he's a private citizen and should be allowed to do whatever he wants with his

own platform. This is course ironic amidst reporting from The New York Times that Musk and the Trump team colluded to suppress information damaging to Trump on the platform, basically exactly what the right was accusing the old Twitter doing the last election. But none of that really matters. There's no such thing as hypocrisy. You can never hold anyone account to this sort of thing on the right. Charlie Kirk then just went on to deny that Trump called to suspend the constitution.

this game. It doesn't matter. Kirk went on to lie about the nature of January sixth and whether Trump literally personally committed the legal act of insurrection, eventually saying that even if Trump did it would be thrown out under the new presidential immunity ruling by the Supreme Court, and stating that though Trump didn't actually do a coup, the Democrats did actually do a coup to get Kamala Harris

on the ticket. Okay, sure, buddy. Now, part of Kirk's just flagrant January sixth revisionist history was claiming that Ashley Babbitt was suddenly killed with no warning as she was retreating from the Capitol, and just none of that is true. That just isn't what happened.

booze from the audience. Later in the day, a second student hit the Charlie Kirk debate chair debating on whether Trump is anti American, and mentioned Trump's recent comments talking about a quote unquote enemy within, some enemy inside the United States that poses a far bigger threat than foreign enemies. The veck claimed that Trump was referring to people who shot at Trump, and Kirk claimed that it was a reference to drug cartels.

call him out on it. Another common topic of debate was war and the insistence that Trump didn't start to any new wars, unlike Biden and Harris, who have personally started wars. I guess, with Kirk crediting Biden for starting the Russia Ukraine War by financing the Ukrainian defensive, as well as roping in Harris by saying that she was quote in charge of the Russia Ukrainian War before it happened, unquote,

which really doesn't make much sense as a sentence. The VEK later added that Kamala Harris was personally in charge of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which again just isn't true. The Vek is parroting a failed attempt by Republican lawmakers from last September to invent some way to blame Harris for the Afghanistan withdrawal now that she is the presidential nominee.

Harris is only mentioned three times times in the three thousand, two hundred and eighty eight pages of interview transcripts from the Foreign Affairs Committee's investigation of the withdrawal, but by far Charlie and Avek's main focus on the topic of war is just defending Russia.

United States. Kirk claimed that Kamala Harris let ten million new quote unquote illegal immigrants into the country, and like no the total population of undocumented immigrants in this country has fluctuated between ten to twelve million over the course of the past twenty years. Though, like JD. Vance, Kirk

considers most immigrants illegal regardless of their actual status. Kirk claimed that the quote unquote nine million immigrants seeking asylum that have come into this country under Biden are all illegal because they are quote cartel sponsored fraudulent asylum claims unquote. Kirk said that these false asylum seekers pay cartels ten thousand dollars to be smuggled into the United States.

care a lot about, is actually not being prioritized. Instead, people from the Third World are coming in and Black America is getting put last, which seems to be a common theme over the last sixty years when Democrats are in control.

the Venezuelan refugee crisis. That student said that three hundred thousand Venezuelan refugees came to the United States in twenty twenty three, and Kirk then claimed that three million more would arrive if Kamala is elected, along with twenty million more immigrants. Kirk promised that if Trump's elected, any immigrant, whether legal, undocumented, or a refugee, just any immigrant who commits a crime like a dui will be immediately deported.

And unfortunately, when pressed to defend or even just openly express their own personal views on whatever the topic of debate was, multiple students just like completely backed down, saying that they would rather quote unquote stay out of the political realm or in another instance, political charge fair enough, what are you doing. You're trying to debate about access to abortion or if all immigrants should be rounded up and deported, But you don't want to get quote unquote

too political. What are you talking about. I'm sorry you couldn't get a fast dunk on Charlie Kirk, but come on. But perhaps the most disheartening moment was when Charlie Kirk was challenged on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. Someone asked why Charlie thinks that the Civil Rights Act

was a mistake. Kirk started by saying that even if some of the original intent was good, it's now being used for bad things, like allowing men in women's locker rooms, to the complete shock of the questionnaire, Kirk and Vivek then went on to explain why we should repeal the Civil Rights Act.

fifties before the Great Society? Probably it was even less twenty percent twenty percent back then. So then we look at what the results have been of this entire agenda. Put the Civil Rights Act, put the LBJ, Great Society. Black Americans are worse off today even economically in terms of mobility than they were back then, in the name of laws that were passed to supposedly advance black interests.

philosophy of Frederick Hayek. This fucking dude with a little mustache who ostensibly got up to debate Kirk on abortion, said that quote, I think my generation has started to abuse the option of abortion. Unquote, like why the fuck are you up there debating him? Then Jesus Christ and then what I would call generously a himbo in a white dude's for Harris shirt said that Kamala's greatest accomplishment is being an idol. After debating Kirk about FEMA money

being spent on illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, Kirk just continued to to spew COVID nineteen conspiracy theories to very little pushback.

the fuck is going on now? I fundamentally refuse to participate in quote unquote debates like this for reasons that I will soon get into. So I just started taking notes of all the things Charlie was lying about, and I was right at the very front of the crowd. So whenever TPUSA publishes the video Charlie Kirk destroying silly liberal college students, you should be able to see me pretty clearly in the background in my fucking Ronald Reagan

a hat, just furiously scribbling down notes. Though I would recommend watching with an ad blocker not to give Kirk extra money. The whole event was a pretty pathetic affair. By my count, there were only eight liberal leaning challengers who questioned Kirk compared to thirteen conservative leaning questionnaires who entered a friendly discussion with Kirk. Out of all, the liberal debaters, too backed down because they didn't want to get too political, and three others appeared to be at

least somewhat swayed by Kirk and Vivek. Now, Like, I can't entirely blame these students, right, Like, this setting is not a real debate. Kirk holds all of the power. He does this for a living, and he fucking brought a friend with him to health. It's two of them versus one. It's Kirk and Vivek. There's a reason he

prefers debating college students rather than working professionals. Most students are not prepared to effectively counter Kirk's claims and don't have enough general knowledge on current events to call him out on every one of his many lies. And even if they do catch him on something, Kirk will try to project authority to sway the uneducated audience into believing that he is correct, just because teens are chronically online doesn't mean that they have better media literacy, critical thinking,

or know how to determine the validity of information. A twenty twenty four survey by News Literacy America found that only fifty percent of teens could identify that in article labeled as branded content on a news site was in fact an advertisement. Barely over half of teens could accurately identify an op ed with the word commentary in the

headline as an opinion piece. Forty four percent claimed that a company's own press release was more credible than an independent news report on the same subject, and thirty four percent of teens incorrectly labeled a random picture of damaged traffic lights as quote unquote strong evidence supporting a viral false claim that hot July temperatures had melted traffic lights.

These teens surveyed said that local TV news and TikTok were the most trustworthy sources of information, and thirty five percent of teens said that professional journalists are more biased than social media content creators. Meanwhile, forty five percent said that journalists are just as biased as these TikTok influencers. Let's do a test right now now. Try to see if you can determine that these following clips are in

fact advertisements. Okay, we are back now. This was technically my first time seeing this format of conservative YouTube debate in person. The videos that get published online later get heavily edited down, and while I was going at it in my notepad, I started to recognize the repeating patterns that Kirk and Vivek employed to gain dominance in almost every single debate matchup. So now I'm going to talk

about some of these common tactics used by Kirk. When Kerk Orvivec wants to end a particular line of questioning or move on to the next person, they'll just restate their own opinions as fact and then end that debate, leaving the impression that they won. They can just stop whenever they feel like they have made the final point that gives them victory. Here's the VEC.

the city. This program was actually started because the governor of Texas sent forty thousand immigrants to New York against their will, and those quote unquote. Luxury hotels are actually a small part of an emergency housing program that utilizes some converted hotels as well as airport motels and even office buildings as temporary shelter for immigrants. But I'm sure Kirk would rather these people just be homeless living on the street. I'm sure he wouldn't find ways to complain

about that too. A very common Kirk tactic to avoid answering a question is just to simply flip it around and ask the students a different question that might eventually be related to the student's original question, but not necessarily.

support of Kirk's own argument. Alternatively, Kirk will ask a question that the student probably doesn't know, like some specific stat but something that Kirk already has a prepared answer for, so that he can throw off his opponent, make them question their own ability to debate, and make himself seem smarter. Here's a short compilation.

quote unquote do well against someone like Charlie Kirk. I think the only time Kirk was really thrown off was during one of the very last matchups, with a student asking about Kirk's support of military aid to Israel despite his alleged anti war stance and his call for the US to pause all foreign aid until the southern border is secured. Like usual, Kirk first tried to deflect by using red herrings and turn questions back on the student.

make content. It's YouTube debate. These debate videos rack of thousands and sometimes millions of views on YouTube and TikTok, and every single person that participates as if these are real debates is directly helping Charlie Kirk and make money and grow his brand. This TPUSA Brainwash Tour will continue into November, and I'm sure Charlie Kirk will keep doing events like this in the years to come, regardless of who wins the election. So what's the options to counter

something like this? I'm of three minds. My default response to stuff like this is usually just to ignore. Don't give these attention hounds what they're looking for, don't try to debate, don't try to own Charlie Kirk with facts and logic. There's no real benefit from engaging with him and his ILK on their own terms. But there will always be at least a few college students who think

they can get one up on Charlie Kirk. So since these events are gonna continue to happen even if my friends and I withhold our participation, the second option is just to simply confuse. This is what I call the skibbity bite in strategy, one which I deployed against the my pillow guy, Mike Lindell in front of the Israeli Consulate as he tried to set up as much attention as possible during the DNC them skibbity Biden, Sir, skibbity Biden.

by turning point USA. The more time you spend spewing your near unintelligible gibberish about how Warhammer connects to US foreign policy or explaining your made up conspiracy theory about how the Hawktua girl is a CIA asset. All of that is less time for some nineteen year olds to challenge Kirk on his abortion views, and a knowing Charlie Kirk is just a fun bonus. Now that I think

about it, This is essentially the patent Oswalt filibuster tactic. Now, obviously Kirk has control of the mic and probably won't let you ramble on about gibberish for too long, so this strategy becomes more successful if you can get a whole team lined up in front of the microphone now. Finally, the last option is disruption through force, preferably in a way that limits the possibility of creating an on camera

spectacle that can be utilized by TPUSA. This has typically not been a common tactic used to counter turning point events on campus, but it may be time to reconsider. Forceful disruptions were often utilized when figures like Milo Uanapolis toured college campuses back in twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, and more recently against campus events featuring Daily Wire employees

like Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh. Historically, this strategy has not been applied to Charlie Kirk, as he's been viewed as less radical than some of these other figures. But I just don't think that's true anymore. Kirk is spreading and normalizing hardcore as xenophobic and nationalist rhetoric across college campuses with little to no resistance, not to mention his complete embrace of conspiracy theories and use of transphobia to

undermine civil rights. There's many ways to disrupt events like this through forceful means, sound disruption, visual disruption, physical disruption, Planning an alternate event to take place at the same time and place big banners with Charles's tiny face carefully

placed in view of the debate cameras. Creative opportunities abound, but it requires people to be actively monitoring when and where these events take place and actually plan a counterdemo ahead of time, and that just doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. And so I thought going to this event would help reboot my brain, cheer myself up, and amuse me with Charlie's childish display of debate kid politics.

But it just left me more sad watching hapless kids fall prey to Kirk's transparent scheme, just feeling like I had no way to stop the train wreck. But it doesn't have to be this way. With a few friends and a little preparation, there is an alternative, and hey, it could happen here. Well that's my recap on this fucking Charlie Kirk rally. Oh and heads up, next week, there's gonna be no Spooky Week episodes for the first time in four years. Sorry, the world has just gotten

too spooky this year. Between the election and hurricanes and the genocide and Gaza and everything else happening, the world's just too spooky. I'm really just not feeling Halloween pilled as I usually am. Hopefully things will get better soon. But in lieu of Spooky Week, we actually have a special series from James on the Darien Gap, so you have that to look forward to next week. Goodbye everyone, see you on the other side.