LONDON—From its roots in a garage in 2012, Turning Point USA has grown to operate in more than 1,300 campuses in the United States.
The student movement wants to embolden students who feel under attack for their conservative views. Now they are hoping to have the same success in the UK.
“I am not a feminist, ok. I’m proudly not a feminist,” said Candace Owens, at Turning Point UK’s first event in East London.
Perhaps words that many aren’t used to hearing from Owens, the Communications Director for Turning Point USA. The crowd at this event reacts with applause.
Since the launch of Turning Point UK, the group has been labelled as “sinister” and “white supremacist” by some.
20-year-old Dominique Samuels, an “influencer” at Turning Point UK, said she’s faced verbal abuse for her political stance.
“I’ve been called an Uncle Tom numerous times, but this just reveals the racism of the left. As a black woman, I can think anyway I please,” she said.
But she remains passionate about engaging young people, in her words, “to challenge the groupthink of the left.”
In an interview after the talk, she said, “I think that socialism presents itself as something warm and fuzzy, and something they should embrace straight away, because the ideas they put forward sound nice, but they actually do the reverse of what they are intending to do.”
The panel at the event was made up of Steven Edginton from Leave Means Leave; Dominique Samuels, Candace Owens, and Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA; and Chloe Westley, campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
They called for tough questions, and the first up was, perhaps predictably: “Who finances you?”
George Farmer, Chairman of Turning Point UK, who is engaged to Owens, replied.
“So the question about who funds Turning Point UK. I can tell you it’s UK donors, who are businessmen, who don’t want to have their names disclosed. I gave money to the Tories. I was vilified for giving money to the Tories,” he said.
An offshoot of Turning Point USA, the group travelled to other locations where they faced protests in the UK this week.
Another day, another all-white group of progressives protesting my events in the name of “racism”.
This time from the UK!
Spoiler alert: they eventually admit they are just anti-Trump.
White liberals are racists who use black people as shields to mask their hate.@TPointUK pic.twitter.com/JrVoS0dDE3
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 12, 2019
Dominique Samuels said she voted for the left-wing Labour party in 2016, but has since changed her mind after researching their policies. She’s now a student at the University of York.
“It’s a very good university, it’s also very left-wing as well. So I’ll be taking the fight there as well,” she said.
She says in her experience, conservative thought is often cut out of university campuses—and hopes events like this will begin to change that.
