2 weeks ago
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Style|Young Turning Point Crowd Finds Infighting Distracting
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/style/americafest-turning-point-usa-charlie-kirk.html
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Content creators with fuzzy TikTok haircuts cornered attendees for man-on-the-street style interviews. Aspiring influencers, hoping to build up follower counts, sat at tables beneath signs reading “Prove Me Wrong” as they egged on passers-by to debate subjects including Israel, the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the concept of American identity.
It was the first major gathering of the Turning Point USA organization since the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk, who minted a singular style of combative discourse in American politics. Inside a Phoenix convention center, the promise of discord loomed.
But many of the attendees at the four-day conference, especially those under the age of 30, had come primarily to pal around with fellow Christians in an environment that could feel like an evangelical youth-group service crossed with a college football tailgate. For them, the drama unfolding on the main stage — where the event’s star speakers griped and traded insults — appeared to be taking place in some remote realm.
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“IDGAF,” said Dane Hoff, 20, who studies at Clemson University in South Carolina, using a shorthand for not caring one bit.
