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I wrote this letter a few days after learning Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk is visiting our campus — something that personally confounded me and a number of other people I know. I think that, given the current political environment and the Trump administration’s clear war against higher education, you would assume a university would hesitate to give a Trump propagandist a platform on its campus.
In the first seven months of the Trump administration, Colorado State University leadership has shown that their main strategy against creeping authoritarianism is to simply roll over and take it, and Kirk’s appearance is yet another example of that approach.
Kirk and his TPUSA organization cannot be untangled from the actions of the Trump administration. Senior Arizonan Republican operative Chuck Coughlin is quoted as saying: “Turning Point is supplanting the traditional role that the Republican party used to fill (by) recruiting new members to join Turning Point.”
TPUSA gets its funding from the same large-scale donors that fund the Republican Party, including Foster Friess, the Bradley Foundation and DonorsTrust, a conservative dark money PAC. There is no way to disconnect the government currently attacking our university from the group inviting Kirk to our campus.
When it comes to Kirk on CSU’s campus, I am constantly reminded of the statement Chancellor Tony Frank of CSU’s Board of Governors made about a white nationalist group spreading propaganda on our campus, which was put out the day before Kirk’s visit in 2018. The statement, titled “No place for hate at Colorado State,” talks about the abhorrent anti-immigrant rhetoric spread by the hate group Traditionalist Worker Party and how their specific brand of hatred is not welcome on campus.
It is to be noted that after Kirk’s speech, a group of a dozen Nazis marched on the Lory Student Center Plaza, leading to street fights on the pathway toward the Rec Center. I’ve always found a few portions of Frank’s statement to be incredibly prescient to our current conditions. For example: “Such groups are insidious. They generally hide and grow in the dark, avoiding the direct light of day. When they emerge, they frequently align themselves with groups who hold more mainstream views, as was the case with the anti-immigration flyer scattered on our campus. Their ideas then play into the prejudices and fears of people who would never intentionally align themselves with someone who openly identified as a Nazi.”
This passage shows Frank predicting the exact ways in which the far right would continue to grow within the Republican Party. Nefarious elements have infiltrated the mainstream Republican Party, as can be seen by a number of Trump’s cabinet nominees. For example, far-right political operative Stephen Miller is currently the deputy chief of staff. In leaked signal chats, Miller acts as the de facto voice of the president on the matter of extrajudicially striking Yemen. It is also of note that openly white nationalist activists like Laura Loomer are empowered to directly affect policy within the Trump administration.
Despite this clear realignment toward white supremacy, the university sticks with its old stance, claiming that Kirk is simply a conservative speaker and that there is a clear delineating line between him and the “real” white nationalists. I argue that, as the second Trump administration centers white nationalists, all those with direct connections to this administration should be seen and handled by our university’s administration as white nationalists.
The only way that we, as a campus, can resist the encroaching authoritarianism of the Trump administration is if we all band together to fight against all the manifestations of this government — Kirk included.
Michael May, five years at CSU
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