The first sign it would be a weird night came moments after I arrived at Zellerbach Hall, where a flock of young Republicans scurried past security after a series of bangs suggested gunfire or a bomb. It turned out to be fireworks, of which there were some literally and figuratively.
In the last leg of the Turning Point USA college campus tour at UC Berkeley, helicopters patrolled overhead, protesters screamed into megaphones about fascism, bottles flew, firecrackers popped, and the smell of sulfur mixed with conviction.
Charlie Kirk died almost two months ago when an assassin’s bullet struck him in the throat during another Turning Point event at a college in Utah, but the organization’s founding father was ever-present Monday on shirts and posters, and, at one point, the crowd cultishly chanting his name: “Charlie Kirk! Charlie Kirk! Charlie Kirk!”
The headliner of this hot mess was “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” actor and philosopher Rob Schneider, which may help explain why tickets were free.
Rob Schneider headlined the event. | Source: Jungho Kim for The Standard
Veronica Hernandez, a daughter of formerly undocumented immigrants who lives in East Oakland, said she thought the event was “wonderful” but it lacked a certain oomph. She noted that she had been a lifelong liberal who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016 before shifting her support to the Make America Great Again movement.
“I wish Charlie had been here,” Hernandez said. “This group of people is not the same without him, the message isn’t as strong. But the spirit is there. There needs to be somebody who comes up and speaks to people the way that Charlie did, because that passion is not there.”
What the event may have lacked in inspiration, it made up with a dollop of say-what-now? The pre-show soundtrack predictably featured “Y.M.C.A.,” prompting the faithful to form the letters as if it were a federal agency in need of immediate deregulation. MAGA caps bobbed beside trucker hats reading “47,” a reference to Donald Trump’s number in the presidential pecking order. Freedom shirts were everywhere, which may explain why they let a young man sing the national anthem in a key unfit for a family show.
A singer performs the national anthem during the last stop of Turning Point USA’s college campus tour. | Source: Jungho Kim for The Standard
The program itself was a genre bender: part theology and campus politics, part standup in which the worst joke is that the event lasted almost two hours.
Frank Turek, a Christian apologist, asked the audience to remember where they were when they heard Kirk had been murdered. He then detoured to defend himself against internet conspiracies that suggested he was part of an inside job, while also lauding the security team from that fateful day.
Only a few questions into a Q&A portion to end the evening, Turek took umbrage with a young man asking about Candace Owens’ thoughts about who may have had Kirk murdered. He facetiously suggested that Owens herself may have been the plotter.
Kirk rose to fame for his verbal jousts with liberal college students, and the Q&A overseen by Schneider delivered peak inanity. One audience member accused Schneider of being “retarded” and Schneider returned fire, saying the heckler was intolerant and “never going to get laid.” Another question dove into the sexual urges of eunuchs, because of course.
Attendees dance inside Zellerbach Hall on Monday. | Source: Jungho Kim for The Standard
Meanwhile, a fight outside the event led to arrests and campus police reportedly took four students into custody (opens in new tab) earlier in the day for trying to hang a five-foot cardboard bug off Sather Gate as an anti-Turning Point art installation.
If there was a point to anything that occurred, it’s that everyone has a right to be as loud and as wrong as they want to be in this country, thanks to the First Amendment. But one throughline for those who attended was a sense of exhaustion with Democrats and the status quo.
Joseph, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley senior who asked that his real name not be used, said he viewed himself as a Democrat in his early adult years but attended the event because he respected Kirk, and conservatism has become increasingly appealing as an openly gay Zionist.
“What happened to him, obviously, he did not deserve that,” Joseph said. “You should be able to say what you think and you believe. More and more, I am starting to align more with conservatism.”
Morgan Kelley, a long-time donor to Turning Point USA from Marin County, called Kirk a martyr and said his message and events like Monday’s will only grow bigger in time.
“I think it’s just going to continue,” Kelley said. “A lot of these kids have been told things that really aren’t true, and this is their chance to hear another side. I mean, we’re not dangerous people. We’re just not.”