One of the reasons Donald Trump and Republicans prevailed over Kamala Harris and Democrats in many pivotal Arizona races and in battleground areas across the country was their emphasis on targeting their disinformation narratives toward uninformed-low information voters across non-conventional social media sites.
One of the vehicles for this disinformation narrative is the White-Christian-Nationalist Turning Points USA organization.
A fixture now in Arizona politics, this fringe movement is now becoming greatly normalized in the increasingly MAGA centric Republican Party in Arizona and across the nation.
Its leader Charlie Kirk has seen his influence grow to the point where he joined Donald Trump Jr. on a recent excursion to Greenland and has threatened to use his organizations resources to support MAGA primary challengers to incumbent Republican Senators and House members who steer against the Trump agenda.
They host Mr. Trump and his allies at political events, sponsor conventions like a recent one at the Phoenix Convention Center, are a presence on college campuses where they spread their dogma and attack same sex professors, and are aligning with local Christian private schools, siphoning funding from the Empowerment Scholarship Account private school voucher system to indoctrinate their students towards their cultish world view while also claiming that it is the reality based world is brainwashing everyone else.
Matters of State Strategies Matt Grodsky refers to Turning Point as “ an up and coming local Taliban chapter” on college campuses.
From a historical perspective, their mission sounds eerily like youth organizations founded by totalitarian societies like 1930’s Germany’s Hitler Youth.
Democrats, Progressives, and Centrists cannot let organizations like Turning Points fester and spread their gospels of lies and false narratives to Arizona’s and the nation’s youth.
They need to reinvigorate and create new reality-based youth organizations that build on Democratic and Pragmatic Progressive values to counter Turning Point and entities like them.
In an interview describing the threat Turning Point poses and what people on the center and left have to do to offer Arizona’s and the nation’s youth a fact based and attractive alternative, Matters of State Strategies Matt Grodsky offers his perspective on what needs to be done.
The questions and his responses are below.
In your opinion, what are three reasons Turning Point is a threat to the American electorate?
“They have made far-right extremism and frankly far-right Christian fundamentalism attractive to younger voters. They've made radical conservatism if you even call it conservatism cool. So, I think that's a big one.”
“They are always in constant lock step with MAGA messaging. Something that differentiates the Republican operation versus the Democratic one is we are not always in sync with each other in terms of our message. Whereas I would argue that the MAGA operation knows how to fall in line, and Turning Point definitely follows that approach.”
“The third reason is that they're well-funded. They have just hordes of money that they're utilizing, not just to win big races, but now county races. They did well this past cycle and I'm imagining; they'll be looking to flex that muscle even more in 2026 and we have not come up with a good counter offensive to that.”
Would it be fair to characterize Turning Point as a modern fascist-authoritarian-White-Christian- Nationalist-youth organization? Please explain.
“Yeah. I'll take it a step further. I'll call them your up-and-coming local Taliban chapter on college campuses. They're far-right extremism and they're making extremism normal. They're taking a population of individuals and we're speaking primarily about younger individuals here, that we have to remember as consultants and operatives and members of the media, a lot of these young people don't remember 9/11, and I bring that up because they don't remember the unity that we had in the wake of that tragedy. They don't remember an era of politics where it was normal where we could respect each other, or election cycles before the era of Trump. The current vitriolic state of our politics is all they know and it's normal to them.”
“So, I think that the ground is fertile for that demographic to be pulled into something like this, because it doesn't seem as absurd as it would to other generations and I think that's the risk.”
Would it be fair to think of them as a modern-day Hitler Youth?
“They amplified the Big Lie, supported and sponsored the January 6th insurrection, and have made it very clear that they will support whatever Trump wants. The nature of well-funded extremist groups like this one is that they generally follow a path to violence. We've seen this story throughout history.”
Do you think Turning Point is using the Arizona ESA Private School Voucher program to funnel funds to their schools and allies in the home school industry to indoctrinate children? Please explain.
“I don't know, factually, if they are doing that. I wouldn't be surprised if they were. It just goes to show that they are not only electing extremists into office, but then they're benefiting from policies that those extremists pass, and you've set up a vicious cycle there. We, as Democrats, have to decide how serious and focused we want to be about breaking that cycle by actually winning elections and combating some of this.”
Turning Point recently hosted a conference at the Phoenix Convention Center. I sent you some links to articles from Arizona Right Watch and AZ Mirror. Based on that and your earlier responses, what are at least three steps Democrats and Progressive activists should take to counter and overtake the Turning Point recruitment and messaging machine.
“I think the easiest fix that we could do locally because Turning Points is based here is for Arizona Democrats to reinvigorate some of the youth pipelines that they've had in the past so operations, like the Young Dems on various college campuses, and find a way to pipeline those guys in so that they're being fed into the various the LD offices, the county offices, and eventually, the state party, and that those individuals are becoming candidates or staff and getting pumped into the ecosystem so that we're building a bench. That needs to start on college campuses because I think our presence is weaker in that regard.”
“I think the other big thing that we have to do is you need an operation that is not branded in traditional Progressive messaging. It needs to be a more centrist- youth-focused operation that inverts the Turning Point messaging and uses it to attract the same base of lower efficacy and lower information young voters that might lean more conservative. They might just be independent and need a reason to not necessarily back the Democratic party, the Democratic brand, but the values that party represents. You need to repackage those values in a more universal approach. I think it would be a mistake to put a gazillion dollars behind an organization that sounds like every other liberal think tank we've got out there. I think it needs to be different, and it needs to sound more centrist and a little bit more down to earth. But I think that's a big step you need to take. The other component is funding. A lot of national groups have their own siloed missions. By contrast, the right has found a way to coalesce and fund things with a long-term goal in mind. Often in collaboration with other super organizations. Democrats have to be more focused and pool resources more effectively. The only reason Turning Point exists is because Charlie Kirk gave a speech, a bunch of big MAGA donors watched him and they wrote him checks. Now you have an organization that's pulling in millions and millions of dollars every year through their various organizations and spending that at our expense and we've got nothing to counteract that. I think it will require some investment and strategy from the donor class as much as it is the operative class.”
Do you see any signs that Democrats have learned that lesson in Arizona and they're moving in that direction?
“I haven't seen any move in that direction. Part of the reason why I'm glad we're talking about it is we need to have that conversation, and it can't be a conversation that starts in 2026. It needed to start about six months ago. I haven’t seen it yet but time will tell.”
Is there anything not covered in the previous questions that you would like the readers to know about how Turning Point is a threat and how Democrats, Progressives, and Centrists can counteract that?
“I think we need to take them seriously. For a while now, they've been the butt of jokes. We all felt pretty confident after 2022. We watched Charlie Kirk have a meltdown on Election Day in 2022 because he realized his people weren't going to turn out to vote because they all shot themselves in the foot with the vote by mail operation.”
“But at the end of the day, he's got a massive amount of money. He's got a very well-funded operation that has now shown that it has the ability to perform and get results.”
“I think the main message is to take it seriously."
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