I descended the escalator into the bowels of the Phoenix Convention Center and was thrown into a writhing sea of red and white hats and shirts. Several media outlets compete with each other to be the loudest, the speakers’ voices shaking the building and drowning out the thumping bass from the adjacent rooms.

The walls were plastered with images of Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA’s late founder who was fatally shot on September 10 at Utah Valley University. In some of the images, he’s stern. In others he’s smiling, his gums revealed like an angered primate flipping back its upper lip to bare its teeth.

Estimates put attendance for the event at 30,000, making it one of the largest conservative political events ever. It attracted all stripes: families with children were everywhere, kids kitted out in MAGA merch and hats reading “Christ won.”

“When is Tucker Carlson speaking?” A child ahead of me on the escalator, who I would later find out was only 12 years old, asked another. “I’m so excited!”

This was TPUSA’s annual conference, AmericaFest, held in Phoenix, Arizona, from December 18 to 21. The event was a depraved spectacle filled with the image and voice of Kirk and countless grifters looking to make easy money off of the event.

I flew out to Phoenix from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, earlier in the day looking to see if I could glean anything on the future of TPUSA and the American conservative movement writ large. It was billed to be a large event, but tickets quickly disappeared after Kirk’s assassination. I bought my ticket shortly after, and as a student at the University of Minnesota I qualified for a student ticket. I chose to pay an extra $50 for TPUSA to put me up in a hotel room for three nights with three conservative students, an opportunity I hoped would illuminate the inner workings of the growing movement of far-right youth.

Turning Point USA’s ‘AmericaFest’ Kicks Off in Phoenix as Fallout Over Founder’s Death Continues

Beneath the surface of uniform slogans plastered across all of the political merchandise, this was not a unified right. There were spectres hovering over the festivities. Everywhere I walked, I was bound to hear two different names, whether from panelists, speakers or attendees: Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes.

Neither was invited to the event, but they were such hot topics that speakers went back and forth fighting over them, culminating in Vice President JD Vance telling a packed audience on the final day of the event that it’s good they’re having these “debates,” though it looked more like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro shouting past each other as they bickered about whether it’s OK to platform virulent anti-semites like Fuentes.

Once I got off the escalator, I entered “media row.” Directly ahead of me, I saw the Rumble studio, where various speakers were brought on to answer questions from the audience. When I arrived on day one, Russell Brand was on stage in  the deepest v-neck t-shirt I’ve ever seen. The crowd at the time was so obnoxiously large that it was impossible to see Brand himself, except on the overhead screens, reclining on a couch in the corner of the setup.

Brand would be charged with two counts of sexual assault in England only two days after the event ended, on December 23, adding to the five sexual assault charges he was already facing.

Beyond the Rumble studio was Steve Bannon’s War Room. On one occasion, Bannon himself was there, wearing at least three shirts and encouraging the crowd to invest in gold and silver.

To the right of the escalator, there was the Daily Wire’s studio set up – if someone like Ben Shapiro or Michael Knowles was  at the desk streaming, their faces would be blown up on the giant LED screens facing the escalators and the crowd surrounding the studio would be so deep that you would have to elbow your way through to get to Fox Nation’s studio, part of the Fox News Media family.

The exhibit room, off to the right, occupied a vast space where dozens of sponsors lined up with booths, recruiting new members and handing out literature, buttons and candy. Beams of light from the ceiling illuminated smoke from fog machines. Each booth displayed seizure warnings, placed by event organizers, to warn of the flashing LED lights and projectors.

Various TPUSA-affiliated organizations, such as Turning Point Action, Turning Point Education and Turning Point Faith, had massive booths that were working hard to drum up engagement. Recruiters with iPads would poach people waiting in line, making dull small talk while their mark filled out whatever form and made a donation.

If attendees forgot to buy MAGA merch from the various entrepreneurial vendors outside the convention center, there were several in the exhibit room making hand-over-fist profits, selling “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts nearly a year after Joe Biden left office and black windbreakers with “ICE” emblazoned on the back in big, bold letters.

If attendees wanted to go the extra mile and actually join Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they could head to the far right corner of the room, where the Department of Homeland Security and all of its subsidiary agencies set up recruitment tables. A massive, armored police vehicle was parked near a stage for attendees to take pictures in. At one point, they had a live mariachi band playing in the back of an ICE-branded pickup truck from a cage.

Across the stage another photo-op was on display: an exact replica of the very tent Charlie Kirk was assassinated under. Attendees in full makeup, some showing a less-than-conservative amount of skin, could strike a pose next to a memorial portrait of Charlie Kirk himself to post on social media.

Other notable exhibitors included Breitbart, Epoch Times, the John Birch Society, Passage Press and Gays Against Groomers, all of whom sponsored the event.

Two large sponsors notably absent from the exhibit hall were TikTok and Meta. Although Mark Zuckerberg’s company had apparently been on board up until days before the event, Meta was removed from the list of sponsors shortly before AmFest began.

From the exhibit hall, attendees waited in a seemingly endless line to enter the stadium, where main event speakers walked out to hype montages and trap beats throughout the day. 

The first speaker of the evening was Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk and new CEO of TPUSA, who made her entrance amid a pyrotechnic display wearing a golden, glittery suit. On one side of the stage sat the microphone Charlie Kirk was holding when he was assassinated, encased in glass.

The iPad Kirk was going to read off malfunctioned, so she was forced to go off the cuff when reciting a series of statistics.

“We have 25 countries represented plus Puerto Rico,” Kirk said. “Don’t worry guys, Egypt is not on the list.”

Kirk’s jab alluded to the various conspiracy theories floated by right-wing internet pundit Candace Owens, who was responsible for much of the tension over the weekend despite not being there.

Shortly after Charlie Kirk’s killing, Owens alleged that multiple Egyptian airplanes had been tracking Erika for years, and that one of them departed an airport near Utah Valley University shortly after the assassination. The claim would evolve to include an alleged cover-up that was conducted by TPUSA. Her narrative led to chaos on the right and death threats being sent to TPUSA staff.

“You may not agree with everyone on this stage this weekend,” Kirk said. “And that’s okay. Welcome to America.”

Kirk’s speech was followed immediately by Ben Shapiro, who took the opportunity to talk about how the conservative movement is being co-opted by grifters spreading misinformation and conspiracies.

“The people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice,” Shapiro said.

He accused fellow right-wing pundits who refuse to disavow Owens of betraying their fundamental duty to the American people. Later, he took aim specifically at Tucker Carlson for having interviewed Nick Fuentes on his show in early October.

“[Charlie Kirk] knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility,” Shapiro said. “And that is precisely what Tucker Carslon did. He built Nick Fuentes up and he ought to take responsibility for that.”

Later that same night, Tucker Carlson took the stage, and used the opportunity to attack Shapiro in response.

“To hear calls for deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like what?” Carlson said. “This is hilarious.”

Carlson did not name Shapiro, but implicitly accused him of calling for the cancellation of others – something Shapiro did not explicitly call for – which he referred to as “the whole Red Guard cultural revolution thing.”

Shapiro also attacked Steve Bannon in his opening speech, accusing him of maligning his opponents with claims not backed by evidence. “Which is indeed par for the course from a man who was once a PR flak for Jeffrey Epstein,” Shapiro said.

The next day, Steve Bannon delivered remarks on stage and fired back at Shapiro for his speech, accusing him of trying to take over TPUSA. “Ben Shapiro is like a cancer,” Bannon said. “And that cancer spreads.”

There was an open mic at the end of Shapiro’s address; a line of attendees formed to ask questions of the Daily Wire host. One of the speakers, a college student, asked Shapiro about his disregard for Israel’s attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967, a favorite talking point for Groypers. The crowd interrupted the question, thundering with applause and cheers, a sign of things to come.

“Groyper” refers to followers of Nick Fuentes, taken from a Pepe-derived frog meme that became popular on Twitter in the late 2010s.

On Tuesday, Fuentes took to Rumble in a three hour livestream to address all of the remarks made about him at AmFest, focusing particularly on Shapiro for the first half.

“Shapiro, who hates whites… gets up in a white convention–it’s all whites for the most part at this convention, the GOP is 90% white, the country is 65% white–they get up in the white party, in the white convention, the remnant in our white country, and they declare war against the white people,” Fuentes said.

The night was capped off by a country music concert by Nate Smith, which I saw as my opportunity to leave.

I checked into my hotel room later that evening and met one of my roommates, Brendon. Brendon studied information technology at a university in Savannah, Georgia, and his Catholicism made him a big fan of the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, a fellow Catholic in the right-wing entertainment industry.

Brendon is half Filipino, his mother’s parents having immigrated to the country decades ago.

We chatted for some time about Donald Trump and Nick Fuentes until I decided to call it a night. It was clear to me that Brendan himself was fairly moderate as far as AmFest attendees go – he wasn’t chronically online like many Groypers. What Owens had been saying about Charlie Kirk and TPUSA was news to him.

The sleeping arrangement was four students in each hotel room –  two in each bed. I only learned about this after I purchased my ticket, but I held out hope that we would be given queen-sized beds. They were much closer to full-sized.

There were supposed to be four of us in the hotel room, but it was only Brendon and I. Brendon had already claimed the bed by the window, so it only seemed right to pick the one opposite. A large piece of luggage had been left on the bed by someone else. Brendon informed me this belonged to Catching, one of the other two sharing this room with me.

The moment I removed the luggage from the bed and crawled under the sheets, I heard the hotel door open.

“Hey, Catching,” Brendan said.

In walked a young man dressed for a rodeo, his cowboy boots thudding on the floor with every step. This was Catching, who I would later learn was the director of operations for the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a pro-gun lobbying group in Colorado.

“We’re sleeping together?” He eyeballed me. “If you promise not to rape me, I won’t rape you.”

“Deal,” I said.

He removed his t-shirt and threw himself into bed next to me, still wearing blue jeans and his cowboy boots. His belt had a large, shiny buckle depicting a deer. He closed his eyes, as if meditating.

“Where are you from, bed-mate?” he said, eyes still closed.

“Minnesota,” I said.

“How does it feel knowing that your state has been conquered by third-worlders who aren’t as smart as you?” He responded without missing a beat, referring to the state’s large Somali population, which began arriving in the 1990s as refugees resettled by Catholic Charities. Since Trump decided to direct his ire at the population, they have become a significant target of the right-wing culture wars.

“I guess I never thought of that,” I said.

Brendon chimed in to talk about genetics and IQ scores.

“People say you’re racist if you believe different races have different levels of IQ,” Brendon said. “I think the measure of Somalis versus other races, it’s much lower. Like, the majority of Somalis are just in fact, like, 70 IQ or lower. It’s not a very kind to say. Maybe I’m misled, but Somalia has never been a place where they’re known for its scholars.”

The room fell silent, nobody talked for the remainder of the night. The fourth roommate would never show up.

Turning Point’s Christian Revival

Day Two: Groypers Break Containment

In the morning, I showered, got dressed and left before either Catching or Brendon got out of bed.

I spent much of this day in the exhibit room, where I hovered around a booth in the corner that was set up as a “Prove me wrong” style debate, where attendees would approach the microphone and debate the speakers based on whatever prompt was on the screen behind them. The prompt when I arrived read “BEN SHAPIRO IS A F*****,” likely in reference to the pundits speech from the previous night.

The booth was hosted by Dennis Feitosa, also known on YouTube as Def Noodles, whose internet presence collapsed from a channel with more than 500,000 subscribers to one that nets roughly 100 views per video. Taped to the wall behind him was a smathering of signs reading things like “PROVE ME WRONG” and “LGBT IS A MENTAL ILLNESS.”

“So everybody in here agrees with me?” Feitosa said as nobody stepped to the microphone, referring to the statement on the screen about Shapiro.

The booth evolved over the day, ending on the prompt “NICK FUENTES VERSUS EVERYBODY.” Sitting beside Feitosa was now J. Emilio Martinez, a large, older man whose face twitched as he listened to the people he debated with. A red MAGA hat was hidden underneath a blue America First hat – Nick Fuentes’ brand – on his head, and he wore an American flag around his neck like a cape.

“I’m just pointing out the BS that is pulled on the Groypers, again and again and again,” he said, gesturing wildly. “You can’t ask questions! You can’t criticize Israel! You’re antisemitic!”

“Is anybody calling for you to get arrested?” right-wing comic Ami Kozak asked him.

“No!” Martinez said. “But when Groypers come to this event, they get kicked out.”

At this point, there was a massive crowd growing around the booth, with shouting matches breaking out between different attendees. The man wrapped in the American flag continued shouting various talking points related to Holocaust denial at right-wing European journalist Phelim McAleer, who was recording him.

“How can it be a genocide if you’re still here?” Martinez said.

The shouting match devolved into comparisons of Fuentes with Adolf Hitler, and the attendees could not get him to condemn either. Instead he kept fighting with Kozak and McAleer over the definition of “condemn.”

Eventually, they changed the prompt because they decided arguing over Fuentes was causing too much controversy. I left the quarrel and returned to my room.

Brendon was in the hotel room on his own, laying in bed watching several billionaires on YouTube telling their viewers that artificial intelligence is good. I avoided some of the potential conversation by hopping in the shower.

Again at the most inopportune time, Catching walked in, but this time he had a female companion. I quickly washed up and got dressed to greet them.

It was Reagan Polarek, the co-president of the James Madison University chapter of TPUSA. I recognized her from a panel earlier in the day about the “Gen Z Factor.”

That night, Catching was dressed in a suit and tie. They came to the hotel so Catching could pick up a change of clothes before he spent the night with Polarek.

Brendon mentioned that he was going to a nearby movie theater to see Avatar 3, and Catching wasted no time letting us know his feelings on the franchise.

“I don’t like that it valorizes being a race traitor,” he said.

“Yeah, I really like it for the technical side,” Brendon replied.

After Catching left, I took the night to investigate his internet presence while Brendon watched a QAnon-adjacent YouTube channel of an older woman reading off the news with a monotone voice and blank stare. What I found was not very surprising, considering what I heard him say over the weekend. Multiple Rhodesia memes posted in the last month particularly jumped out to me. [Memes about the former white minority-ruled country, today Zimbabwe, have been a fixture in white supremacist and neo-nazi discourse. – Ed.]

The different political beliefs of Brendon and Catching I found to be emblematic of TPUSA’s fracturing base. Brendon’s views seemed much more moderate compared to Catching, who seemed obsessed with race, like many who identify as Groypers. The two were irreconcilable on this, regardless of Brendon’s choice to laugh it off and treat it like a joke. That was the attitude that brought the right to make bedfellows of its far-right counterpart, and that union was eating it alive.

Day Three: “Real Americans”

The next morning, Brendon joined me on my way from the hotel to the convention center.

“Do you think Catching is racist?” He asked me. 

I looked at him and shrugged.

“It’s just that he keeps bringing up this hybrid thing with me,” he said, chuckling.

The two of us had breakfast and then headed to one of the breakout sessions, titled “Mass Migration is Causing all the Problems, Actually.” The session was led by Blaze Media’s John Doyle and Sara Gonzales.

“We’re not really here to be combative and controversial,” Gonzales said. “I actually think that it should be reasonable and common sense to hold these views.”

“I am here a little bit to be combative,” Doyle said in response. “Because, frankly, I find it offensive that I have to listen to so many people who are not American tell me what it means to be American.”

The audience roared with applause. For Doyle, the topic of immigration was the most pressing issue of our time and everything else was downstream from it. The goal of immigration policy, in his telling, should be to maintain a high proportion of European-descended whites to reduce interethnic conflict and chaos.

Doyle transitioned smoothly from this into a version of the Great Replacement conspiracy trafficked by white nationalists and right-wing pundits in America, asserting Democrats have loosened restrictions on immigration to dilute the white voter base with a non-white population that is more likely to vote for them.

“As the country has become increasingly less like its founding stock from Northwest Europe, the Democrats have realized they don’t actually have to appeal to the sensibilities of normal, white American Christians to win elections,” Doyle said. “They actually can get away with pursuing their more radical proclivities, because they’ve imported tens of millions of people from these foreign cultures who will vote for them regardless, because they offer them free stuff, which is, of course, paid for by your tax dollars, your white American Christian tax dollars.” (According to a recent poll, only 36% of naturalized immigrants identify as Democrats, while 25% identify as Republicans and another 34% as independent.)

As Doyle continued on this tangent, I looked at the older man to my left typing on his phone. He was writing in his notes app, the font as big as it could possibly get, “Import 3rd world, become third world.”

The session went into a questions and answers format at the end, and one of the attendees asked the panelists, “What is an American?”

Doyle mentioned that Vivek Ramaswamy answered this in his speech at AmFest the day before. Ramaswamy directly called out the ‘blood and soil’ interpretation of who is an American championed by many on the right, that it is tied to your lineage. Part of this is the supposed superiority of “Heritage Americans,” those who can trace their lineage at least to the American Revolutionary War. For Ramaswamy, an American is someone who believes in the ideals of America.

Some in the crowd clapped when Doyle mentioned this, but the overwhelming response was to boo.

“Hey,” Doyle said, trying to calm the audience down. “He’s a great guy. On this issue, he’s a little wrong.”

Doyle proceeded to provide his own answer to the question: “Americans are simply Americans themselves.” He went on to elaborate that this meant Americans were mostly European and definitely some form of Christian, heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon tradition.

“We exist as a pan-European country,” Doyle said. “America was founded for that posterity specifically. Doesn’t mean that other people can’t be Americans, but it does mean that we have to acknowledge that and not pretend, quite evilly, that those people are somehow just as American…”

The audience cheered and clapped for the answer, obviously finding it more appealing than whatever Ramaswamy was trying to sell them.

In Fuentes’ Rumble stream on Tuesday, he mirrored Doyle, who himself used to associate with Fuentes’ America First brand, making clear that one of his policy priorities was an immigration moratorium. But he went further than Doyle in his reaction to Ramaswamy, saying he would be in Ohio in 2026 to do everything in his power to spoil his candidacy for that state’s gubernatorial election.

“If you’re as American as us, let all the other Indians vote for you,” Fuentes said. “No white people should be voting for Vivek Ramaswamy then.”

After the event, I kept seeing a clip of Tim Dillon on his internet talk show Sunday night, after the event ended. His remarks perfectly captured the atmosphere of the conference for his audience, which probably overlaps with the attendees that weekend a great deal.

“Everything about this is weird and uncomfortable for everyone,” Dillon said. “This is deeply unsettling to a lot of people. It feels like you’re being played. You feel it. It seems off. You feel like this is a coordinated and choreographed spectacle so that you are played. They want your money.”

In the end, the conference brought the conservative movement in America – and in some cases from abroad – together. But only physically. In reality, this was a conservative movement far from united, with deep fissures that were on full display in Phoenix.

It was evident that there were two divergent paths in this party: one represented by Fuentes that fully realizes the direction of the Republican Party, and the other which refuses to see this and wants it both ways. The other side is best represented by Shapiro, whose career at the Daily Wire has been spent peddling conspiracies and drumming up hate for others. However, now that this hate has spread to Jews – and particularly Israel – he wants to pump the brakes. It might be too late for that.

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