Opinion: Patriots or misanthropists? – The Cauldron
“It is getting harder and harder to find suicide bombers. And all the really good ones are gone.” A quote taken from the 2008 American “comedy” film directed by David Zucker, An American Carol. When looking into this film, I took the initiative to sit through this trainwreck of production so that you don’t have to. When looking at the synopsis at first glance, you may believe it’s a harmless comedy piece about the transition of a once anti-American filmmaker Michael Malone, to a strong patriot that the world would love. The storyline follows Malone through visiting the ghosts of America’s past, present, and future, where he learns to love America as it is.
Sounds sweet, right? Wrong…
Ignoring the obvious conservative-right wing leaning biases demonstrated in the film, this film exhibited radical, bigoted ideologies, such as the demonstration of antisemitism, xenophobia, and overall racism and ignorance shown in the film. It is a polemic of what should’ve been a comical rant and unwavering loyalty to the conservative party. This film doesn’t even come to consider the conflict between the satire of Zucker and the originally liberal heart of A Christmas Carol (1843). This movie instead highlights things such as Hitler as a liberal, violence against the “zombie” ACLU, the “indoctrination” of modern education, modern-day African Americans as enslaved persons (who were shown singing the Jewish tune “Hava Nagila”), and the constant jokes of terrorism and suicide bombing. Yeah, you heard that right.
It’s important to highlight why I chose to look into this godawful film, and that is due to the organization on Cleveland State University’s campus, Turning Point USA. Turning Point USA describes itself as “Turning Point USA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk. The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Turning Point USA believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.” Although this organization claims to be a non-partisan organization, their souvenirs and handouts consist of the following, “back the blue,” “be the rich,” “big gov sucks,” “cancel culture survivor,” “coexist” however depicted with different types of guns, “socialism sucks,” “capitalism conserves” and much more.
This organization has also been promoted by individuals such as Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Alex Clark, Candace Owens, and many others. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the radical-maga-leaning “live feed” shown on the TPUSA official webpage and the anti-LGBT, anti-choice propaganda spread on their various social media.
Our chapter of TPUSA, run by Joseph Falconi, who is a junior here at Cleveland State University, has undergone the process to try and approve the movie, An American Carol for the first TPUSA meeting on campus. I personally can’t understand how anyone could think that this is an appropriate film for any school organization to watch.
When reaching out to Joseph Falconi to address and comment on the false non-partisan claims and the controversial ideas that TPUSA holds, he failed to respond.
More recently, TPUSA has ignored university policies regarding tabling and chose to unlawfully table next to our Queer Student Organization on Wednesday, February 22nd, and was removed as per the RSO Manual.
Personally, I feel repulsed that such a hateful organization is impacting our campus, and I hope that no conflicts arise regarding TPUSA and their behaviors.
Disclaimer: This article in no way reflects the views of The Cauldron and its staff. It only reflects the views of the columnist.