Let’s Talk About Turning Point USA (and The Patriot Sisters)

Some Conservatives are too happy that pride month is over. Luckily, their posts make fun of themselves.

TW: Homophobia, Transphobia, Etc. The posts I’m going to discuss here are hateful in nature. If you are sensitive to that or simply want to protect your peace of mind, I recommend not reading any further.

I recently stumbled across a couple of Instagram accounts called @turningpointusa and @Thepatriotsisters.

Both of these accounts are radical right-wing, and they often overlap because The Patriot Sisters work with Turning Point USA. I found myself doubled over in laughter at some of their posts. They read as satire, which is hilarious considering that is not their intent.

But that laughter only lasted so long. The hate pouring from their accounts is extremely disheartening. I laugh because I truly can’t believe it exists.

Many of their posts are targeted at minorities. For the sake of brevity, I will just be talking about their posts made for pride month and explaining why they’re funny. I will be linking every post below so I don’t get accused of making any of this up, but I will also explain and transcribe the posts in a caption beneath them, so you don’t have to give them another view if you don’t want to.

We’ll start with a “comedic” reel from Turning Point USA:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CgAYMKFJEbq/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

This reel is a SpongeBob Squarepants meme from the season one episode: “SB-129.” This is the episode that takes place in the future. The clip shows SpongeBob saying to Squidward, “Just ask my clones, X, Y, and Z.” Above SpongeBob is a label that says “LGBTQ Community.” Squidward then asks, “Are any other letters of the alphabet involved here?” Above him is a label that reads, “Normal People.” SpongeBob (representing the LGBTQ+ community) eagerly responds, “Sure! All 486 of them!” After that, Squidward (representing non-LGBTQ+ individuals, or ‘normal people’ as the account puts it) curls up into a ball and repeats “future.”

If you’re having trouble understanding the joke here, you’re not alone. This account refers to people who are not LGBTQ+ as “normal” implying LGBTQ+ people are abnormal. Then, they go on to make fun of how many letters makeup LGBTQ+. I’ll be honest, it is a lot of letters. I know that memorizing long lists of letters is probably very difficult for the people behind this account and following it, so I don’t blame them for being frustrated.

It’s a truly awful meme that I don’t think I would find funny even if I were homophobic. However, you can take pleasure in knowing most of the comments on this post are bots claiming they know how to make you lots of money.

I really don’t want to link to any more of their content, but feel free to peruse their account if you so choose. I will warn you, though, that they refer to Pride Month as “Groomer Month” and have several angry posts about how drag shows are poisoning America’s youth.

Now for my personal favorite account: The Patriot Sisters.

These girls are extremely right-wing. I saw some memes of theirs on Twitter, and I had to check and see for myself. They partook in the latest “Little Miss” meme trend, and I actually can’t tell if they’re being serious or not.

I can’t link to these posts because they blocked me. I posted a couple of their memes on my Instagram story, said they were hilarious, and then they blocked me. I even followed them after I posted them so they would think I was an ally, but I suppose the rainbow flag in my bio was enough to show I wasn’t on their side.

However, anticipating this, I took lots of screenshots.

Okay, that’s all I’m going to show, but you get the idea. To me, they read like satire.

Their “Little Miss” memes aren’t even what prompted me to write this post. It was their homophobic pride month posts. Luckily, many of these are reposts from their TikTok that I am not blocked from.

https://www.tiktok.com/@thepatriotsisters2/video/7104322875720600875?_t=8UHYnlT1PuI&_r=1

As you can see, one of the sisters (I don’t know their names and if I did I don’t think it would help. They are identical) is wearing a Turning Point USA sweatshirt. For those who do not want to watch the video, I got you with a transcript:

“Welcome to Pride Month! Congratulations, we made it to June first. I don’t know about you, but I’m just trying to make it through these next thirty days because it’s going to be a lot. Everybody is prideful. Hm… anyways. Um, I have a legitimate question: Why are we catering to a group of people that there’s only around 20 million of in the U.S.? Like, if we’re going to cater to a good population of the country, there’s 230 million Christians. Why are we catering to 20 million LGBTQ people?”

Okay, so there is a lot to unpack here. First of all, she says 20 million like it is not a lot of people. Second, because 20 million people are technically a minority, that’s why they get a month to be prideful. Christians have December, Easter, and a lot of days in which the country puts almost everything on hold for them. Pride month does not give anybody a day off. It does not force anyone to sit in observance. It is literally just to remind a group that they are recognized despite being a minority. And that their human rights matter and will continue to be fought for. She is saying that we should have a month for Christians instead because there are more Christians than gay people. She is also implying that there is no overlap between Christians and LGBTQ+ people, which is not only untrue but invalidates those in the community who identify as Christian.

These weirdos have a podcast, a backup Instagram account (I’m assuming their main Instagram gets taken down a lot for misinformation) and multiple accounts on other social medias with similar posts. My favorites are those with numbers after the username because it means their original account was taken down for being hateful and/or untrue.

All of this is to say that hate is still out there in the world. It is messy, distressing, and disheartening that the people who claim to love others the most consistently spew out their hate. I’ve been privileged enough that I didn’t find out about these accounts until today.

I don’t want to argue with anyone, especially not these two accounts. I just wanted to share because I think despite their bigotry, there is something to be laughed at here. They consistently clown on themselves without realizing it, and that is what true freedom of speech is all about. May God (a woman) Bless America!