“Better Rethink This Abbott”: Gov. Greg Abbott Defends the Champions of Hate Speech In Push Of Turning Point In Texas Schools
Extremist conservatives are trying to censure speech by pretending to support free speech—a nice fascist trick of cloaking racism. They attack and terrorize teachers with hate speech and pure lies. And when these facts are reported, the right wing tries to censure your comments by threatening physical violence, trying to get you fired from a job, and racist phone calls and emails.
The way a person died, does not redeem them from the life they lived. According to BlackNews.com, Charlie Kirk “repeatedly made remarks that revealed deep hostility toward Black people and toward civil rights progress in America.” Pointing out what Charlie Kirk said, while leading Turning Point, does not equate to celebrating the death of Kirk. Anyone making this whack claim is a bald-faced liar to say the least.
Freedom of the Press Cannot be Threatened
Freedom of the press is important. We cannot be threatened to keep quiet about truths. The decision by Governor Greg Abbott to push for Turning Point USA to be in campus organizations in Texas is outrageous. By putting Turning Point in every school, teachers and students will be harassed by rightwing fanatics.
SNOPES, a fact checker site, investigated Charlie Kirk’s racism and said, “As we’ve reported previously, Kirk made negative remarks about the Civil Rights Act. For example, in April 2024, Media Matters for America published a video (archived) and accompanying transcript in which Kirk said the Civil Rights Act “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.” That footage appeared in a video on Kirk’s channel on Rumble.
According to Black News.com, Kirk dismissed George Floyd as a “scumbag,” falsely claiming the public outcry after Floyd’s death was “exaggerated” and driven by “corrupt voices.” He also called Martin Luther King “awful” and not a “good person.” This is more like hate speech rather that free speech!
Kirk said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified; from The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024. He went even further, down the white supremacist yellow brick road and said, “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” (The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023). Wait Mr. Governor, there is more, taken from the Charlie Kirk Show of January 3, 2024, “If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder if she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?”
Also, the Charlie Kirk Show of July 13, 2023 reveals, “If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, … You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” The Governor wants a group like this to be in every High School? If it happens, there will be lawsuits and chaos by such a ridiculous decision.
According to SNOPES, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point, began to attack Olympic star Simone Biles (2021). He called her a “sociopath,” a “coward,” and a “disgrace of the nation” when she was going through a stressful situation.
According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), “Turning Point maintains the Professor Watchlist. It claims that the purpose of the watchlist is to identify professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom,” but most entries are not about instances of discrimination or propagandizing in the classroom.
Many entries on the Professor Watchlist concern faculty members’ social media posts or scholarly publications. In a number of instances, listings have led to campaigns of online harassment against faculty members.”’ The governor wants them in public schools?!
Additionally, and according to People, “Congresswoman Nancy Mace is attempting to rename the area formerly known as D.C.’s Black Lives Matter Plaza in honor of late political commentator Charlie Kirk. Mace introduced the Charlie Kirk Freedom of Speech Plaza Act. The legislation aims to redesignate the area of 16th Street Northwest between H Street Northwest and K Street Northwest in Washington, D.C., as “Charlie Kirk Freedom of Speech Plaza.” This is racism at the highest level masked as free speech.
We all have free speech, at least for now, but championing hate speech is a move toward violence. They want free speech for themselves, but not for others. Calling Charlie Kirk and Turning Point, “Champions of Free Speech” could be more accurately called the Champions of Hate Speech.
Better rethink this Abbott, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “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.”
