Case Study of the Hard Right | 2024 Year in Hate & Extremism

Several weeks after the 2024 presidential election, Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), proudly embraced a white nationalist conspiracy theory while celebrating then-President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation.

Kirk accused Democrats of embracing immigration as part of their plot to secure voters, permit crime and enact the “great replacement.” He warned his hundreds of thousands of listeners, “We native born Americans are being replaced by foreigners.” He then promised Trump will “liberate” the country from “the enemy occupation of the foreigner hordes.”

Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA is a well-funded, hard-right organization with links to Southern Poverty Law Center-identified hard-right extremists and a tremendous amount of influence in conservative politics. While the group was previously dismissed by key figures within the Republican National Committee (RNC), Trump attended several TPUSA events across the country throughout 2024, and several of his nominees have ties to the organization. Turning Point Action, the group’s sister 501(c)(4) organization, led Trump’s 2024 campaign efforts in key battleground states and played a vital role in the election of far-right candidates in Arizona, while TPUSA participated on the advisory board of Project 2025, a blueprint to radically reshape the federal government.

2024
Year in Hate & Extremism

Over the last several years, the political right has increasingly shifted toward an authoritarian, patriarchal Christian supremacy dedicated to eroding the value of inclusive democracy and public institutions. The political right in the U.S., whose party infrastructure is dominated by the Republican Party but includes the current Libertarian Party and is flanked to the right by the Constitution Party, has embraced aggressive state and federal power to enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy. Turning Point USA and its growing influence on conservative politics is emblematic of this current state.

Every ill we are fighting right now in society has been brought forth by women.”
— Candace Owens

As a nonprofit, TPUSA does not pay any taxes on its revenue — approximately $80 million in 2022 — though numerous actions appear to potentially violate its tax status. In 2024, TPUSA invited Lara Trump to speak at a 501(c)(3) sponsored event in her official capacity as co-chair of the RNC, where she encouraged attendees to support her father in-law in the upcoming presidential election.

In 2020, ProPublica raised questions about the independence of the firm that audited its financial dealings and the reliability of the organization’s public financial disclosures. The Associated Press reported that TPUSA has made millions in payments to companies controlled by key figures within the organization and even paid for Kirk’s wedding reception in 2021 by billing the event as a fundraiser and ninth anniversary celebration.

The politics of fear

Turning Point USA’s primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists. TPUSA and its spokespeople often warn their audience that their children, wives, religion, way of life and they themselves are under attack by various constructed enemies. TPUSA exploits complicated feelings of insecurity and anxiety to manufacture rage and mobilize support to revive and maintain a white-dominated, male supremacist, Christian social order.

TPUSA is at the forefront of the movement to promote Christian nationalism, the theocratic worldview that the U.S. is a fundamentally Christian country and that Christian values and beliefs should inform the government and wider culture. In a clip Kirk shared on X, he blamed shifts in the religious makeup of America for causing “a constitutional crisis” and asserted, “You cannot have liberty if you don’t have a Christian population.”

Charlie Kirk, co-founder and executive director of Turning Point USA. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In the organization’s early years, Kirk advocated for right-wing politics to adopt a “secular worldview,” reiterating, “We do have a separation of church and state.” He even criticized Christians for trying to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the country. However, in recent years, Kirk has been influenced by pastors such as Rob McCoy to turn TPUSA into an arm of the religious right to “restore America’s biblical values.”

In 2021, Turning Point launched a new subdivision, Turning Point Faith, to organize certain pastors and church communities to work toward TPUSA’s goals. TPUSA Faith works at the intersection of Trumpism and Christian supremacy. This initiative offers religious courses, sermon templates and training opportunities to guide pastors toward political activism. They also host events like The Believers’ Summit and Pastors Summit.

TPUSA simultaneously positions Christianity as superior and dominant, while also orchestrating myths of religious persecution. This framing is used to justify its extreme, authoritarian vision for the country that threatens the foundation of our democracy. While speaking about the need to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign to an audience full of pastors, Kirk warned, “If we don’t get this right, though, and if we continue theological disputes and don’t focus on liberty, then we’re going to be having those theological disputes from prison.”

Similarly, Candace Owens has also warned about what she views as a war on Christianity at various TPUSA events. A hard-right media figure, Owens is a former TPUSA employee and has been featured at TPUSA events and on the organization’s website in 2024. At a TPUSA women’s event in June 2024, she encouraged the audience to reexamine their understanding of history, particularly World War II, which she sees as a perpetual “holy war” being waged against Christianity and a “concerted effort to remove Christ.”

At a Trump rally in Georgia, Kirk told attendees, “I believe there is a spiritual battle happening all around us. … Right now, this state is a Christian state, I want to see that to continue. But we need the faithful, we need those of you that have influence over your congregation to put pressure on your pastors.” He also directed pastors to give sermons dedicated to preaching that “the Democratic Party believes everything that God hates.”

‘Satan wants the children’

One of the strongest examples of TPUSA exploiting the politics of fear to advance its hard-right agenda is in its battle against public education. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, TPUSA mobilized around the broader conservative backlash against public schools. TPUSA and other hard-right actors encouraged parents to be fearful the government was harming their children in schools. They used this fear to target LGBTQ+ books, so-called critical race theory and other examples of inclusive education as well as to promote homeschooling. This was an opportunity to radicalize parents to build parallel institutions aligned with its worldview.

TPUSA originally purported to be dedicated to promoting conservative views in higher education and protecting free speech principles. However, TPUSA increasingly takes aggressive action to silence political speech and attack educational institutions as a collective. In 2016, TPUSA launched its “Professor Watchlist,” targeting professors it accused of promoting “a radical agenda.” In 2021, TPUSA expanded these efforts with its “School Board Watchlist.” TPUSA also continues to play an influential role in the growing movement to ban books and censor inclusive education in schools. According to TPUSA, efforts to teach students about institutionalized racism and hard histories are fundamentally racist and harmful to children’s development.

During the summer of 2022, TPUSA expanded its effort to replace inclusive education with Christian nationalism with the introduction of Turning Point Academy. Turning Point Academy is a subdivision of the organization working to open Christian schools, develop educational resources and organize a political movement dedicated to “RESTORING God as the foundation of education,” according to the TPUSA website.

In June 2024, Turning Point Academy held a summit for educators, featuring Alex Newman, a longtime contributor to the John Birch Society’s magazine, The New American, and author of the book Indoctrinating Our Children to Death: Government Schools’ War on Faith, Family, and Freedom — And How to Stop It. At TPUSA’s Educators’ Summit, Newman declared public education went awry when “the Supreme Court banned the Bible, they banned prayer” from public schools in the early 1960s and falsely claimed that the social-emotional learning offered in public schools is rooted in demonology and teaches students empathy for open borders and abortion. He warned attendees that, when it comes to education, America is engaged in a spiritual battle because “Satan wants the children. Satan wants our country. Satan wants you.”

At the same event, Kirk discouraged participation in school boards, arguing instead, “If you’re not willing to close the local school, then you shouldn’t be on the school board.” He advocated for the elimination of federal and state departments of education and told the audience that America’s economy should be one where “the female” doesn’t have to enter the workforce if she chooses not to do so. The usage of the word “female” by the hard right has increased in popularity as a means of reducing women to their reproductive abilities alone.

Hard-right extremists often see education as a low-hanging fruit. Efforts like Turning Point Academy exacerbate existing parental fears and instill new ones, while continuing to attack the institution of public education.

‘If we’re going to win the culture war, we have to start at home’

Turning Point USA also exploits fear to advocate for increasingly restrictive gender roles and a system of male supremacy. TPUSA activists have long decried feminism as a destructive force that threatens every aspect of American life. At TPUSA’s 2024 Young Women’s Leadership Summit (YWLS), Alex Clark warned attendees to “stop outsourcing the home” and putting children at risk through dependence on public education. “Children are under attack, and you and I have to protect them,” she warned.

Alex Clark is a TPUSA pop culture and lifestyle influencer and the host of POPlitics and Culture Apothecary (formerly The Spillover) podcasts. TPUSA describes the role of the conservative pop culture shows as, “politics is always downstream from culture, and if we can reach people where they’re at culturally — that’s how we influence our nation.” Clark has used her platform to attack day care and make the false claim that hormonal birth control can make people bisexual. Her Instagram page sprinkles these views among sponsored content and carefully curated photos. She plays a crucial role in TPUSA’s effort to soften its extremist positions by putting women at the forefront of its male supremacist work.

Clark, Kirk and other key figures have called on young women and girls to abandon their educational and career aspirations in favor of their “natural” position as wives and mothers. Kirk once asserted, “More younger women need to get married at a young age and start having kids. The single woman issue is one of the biggest issues facing a civilization.” At another TPUSA event, Owens defended this need to pull women away from social and political life. “Every ill we are fighting right now in society has been brought forth by women.”

Hard-right media figure Candace Owens is a former TPUSA employee. (Credit: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

According to Owens, one of those ills includes “transgenderism,” which she credits to feminist efforts. TPUSA frames the existence of trans people — trans women in particular — as an existential threat to womanhood.

At the 2024 YWLS, Kirk argued the acceptance of gay marriage allowed for the “abolition” of what it means to be a man or woman. “First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate and then they wanted you to participate. And if you don’t, they are willing to destroy your life,” Kirk said of LGBTQ+ people.

Kirk helped lead a boycott against Target in June 2022 for its Pride collection, insisting it amounted to “support for grooming kids.” In 2023, Rolling Stone revealed that a registered sex offender was the leader of a Christian fashion company that sponsored TPUSA’s 2023 Pastors’ Summit. Kirk defended the man, who was convicted and served federal prison time for trying to coerce an underage girl into sex, as “a nice person who did something wrong over a decade ago” before doubling down on Target being the true threat to the safety of children.

The hard right has historically used narratives about maternal responsibility and manufactured threats to children to mobilize women. White nationalist propaganda is full of depictions of mothers with their children, and “securing our future one child at a time” is the motto of Women for Aryan Unity. Mothers’ organizations were at the forefront of segregationist efforts, battles over school curricula and campaigns to uphold patriarchal systems. QAnon’s #SaveTheChildren campaign provided a powerful entry point into the violent conspiracy theory by feeding off parental anxiety — particularly for mothers — at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For TPUSA’s narrow vision of womanhood, the most important role women have is to submit to their husbands and serve in the home. Women, men and nonbinary people who deviate from this rigid gender dichotomy are demonized because they threaten the hard right’s efforts to maintain white, male, Christian dominance in America.

At its founding, Turning Point USA insisted it was committed to promoting free conservative speech on college campuses. Early on, Kirk avoided controversial social issues, including abortion and racism, and preached the virtues of America’s secular government. He praised Martin Luther King Jr. as a “hero” and a “civil rights icon,” and TPUSA sold $55 shirts featuring his image. Today, Kirk condemns King as “awful” and “not a good person” as part of TPUSA’s broader effort to discredit civil rights legislation.

As he positions his organization to be at the forefront of every culture war, Kirk has even directed supporters: “Buy weapons. Buy ammo. If you go into a public place, bring a gun with you.”

Turning Point USA’s effort to sow fear and division to enforce social hierarchies rooted in supremacism is emblematic of the hard right’s broader political project to destroy our foundational democratic principles and institutions.

Research contributions by Maya Henson Carey and Joe Wiinikka-Lydon.

Illustrations by Tomasz Woźniakowski.