Last Sunday, Stop Antisemitism tweeted the enclosed video, saying: “Horrifying to see swastika flags and antisemitic signs being displayed earlier today at the Tampa Convention Center outside of Turning Point USA’s conference.”
Horrifying to see swastika flags and antisemitic signs being displayed earlier today at the Tampa Convention Center outside of Turning Point USA’s #SAS2022 conference. pic.twitter.com/alypSZRgsB
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) July 24, 2022
The conference took place in Tampa, Florida, and the speakers included former President Donald Trump and presidential contender and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Turning Point USA (TPUSA), is a nonprofit organization advocating for conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses. It was founded in 2012 by radio talk show host Charlie Kirk, and activist Bill Montgomery. TPUSA is renowned for its Professor Watchlist, exposing academics the group says “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
TPUSA’s conferences include the Teen Student Action Summit, Young Women’s Leadership Summit, Young Black Leadership Summit, Americafest, and Young Latino Leadership Summit.
They are certainly not promoting Neo-Nazi values, and should not be held responsible for Neo-Nazis who show up outside their conference hall.
But ABC’s The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg thought differently, and on Monday’s show, she said: “But you let them in. You let them in and you knew what they were, so you were complicit.”
“Let me make a quick clarification about the neo-Nazis at the Turning Point event,” Goldberg added, “They were outside protesters. My point was more metaphorical. You embraced them at your thing, I felt.”
Her co-host Joy Behar said, “Neo-Nazis were out there in the front of the conference with antisemitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich,” and added, “It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook.”
TPUSA served The View and co-hosts Goldberg and Behar with a cease-and-desist letter, saying “the View hosts intentionally and falsely associated TPUSA with neo-Nazi protestors outside the event placing TPUSA in denigrating and false light and negatively impacting its public perception.”
On Thursday, Goldberg apologized: “You know, in Monday’s conversation about Turning Point USA, I put the young people at the conference in the same category as the protesters outside. I don’t like it when people make assumptions about me, and it’s not any better when I make assumptions about other people, which I did. So, my bad. I’m sorry.”
I, for one, will sleep better tonight.
