A Bloomsburg University sociologist is trying to tie Turning Point USA to the alt-right, mostly by putting them in the same sentence. “I began to track Turning Point USA/Professor Watchlist in 2016, and have assembled a bibliography of it and its many layers of association to organizations and persons identified as the Alt-Right,” Wendy Lynne-Lee writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “From David Horowitz’s 101 Most Dangerous Professors to Ben Shapiro, from websites like Truth Revolt to characters like Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon, Ivan Throne, James O’Keefe, and Lucian Wintrich, I has come to a pretty good understanding of Turning Point’s objectives.”
Whoa! Time out. “I has come”? Every time I run across a grammatical construction like this I wonder why elites consider themselves elite. But let’s go to the name dropping part, and I’ll do some of my own.
I am fairly recognizably conservative by those rare few who do, indeed, recognize me. Thus, I’ve known David and Ben for about 13 years apiece. I’ve known Ann a good deal longer than that: she was an intern in the program I was an editor of when she was either finishing or just graduated from Cornell.
I’ve encountered James O’Keefe a few times and know who Steve Bannon is but who the hell are Ivan Throne and Lucian Wintrich? Nevertheless, she goes on to allege that she was victimized by TPUSA: “Still, nothing could have prepared me for the unfettered viciousness of its attack on my character and career, and nothing could have prepared me for my administration’s failure to protect me and worse: their knowing concession to everything Professor Watchlist represents for my campus, my colleagues, and my students.”
If she supported these allegations with evidence, we’d follow up. As of now, we’re waiting for it…