1. Financiamiento y el Verdadero Público: ¿Jóvenes o Donantes?
Los comentarios sugieren que TPUSA es un proyecto de "astroturfing" financiado por megadonantes republicanos. Su propósito principal parece ser crear la apariencia de un movimiento juvenil conservador para satisfacer a los donantes mayores, en lugar de organizar genuinamente a los estudiantes.
- Tpusa is way better understood as a mentorship program for conservative students and republican donors than as a youth movement.
- What this tells me is that tpusa was actually sort of an op for older conservatives to convince them there are conservative youths. Because clearly it wasn’t very successful in its stated mission.
- Yeah tpusa was never actually appealing to college kids, the point was to grift elderly donors who thought it did.
- At 18 some conservative millionaires threw money at him, paid to build up an organization for that very reason. And yet the media still refers to tpusa as "grassroots".
2. Tácticas y Actividades en el Campus.
Se acusa a la organización de emplear tácticas poco éticas, como la interferencia en elecciones de gobiernos estudiantiles y la organización de eventos diseñados para generar contenido de radicalización en lugar de fomentar un debate abierto y honesto.
- This is not activism the way i understand it: earlier this year [2016], leaked records revealed tpusa efforts to secretly funnel thousands of dollars into multiple college student government elections to elect conservatives.
- If you haven't been to one of these tpusa campus events, they are not good-faith townhall style listening sessions meant to facilitate a free and fair exchange of ideas. They are staging opportunities for the creation of right-wing radicalization content, using college kids as collateral.
- This is par for the course at texas state, where tpusa bought student government positions (2018). And a lot of other shit.
- Tpusa was astroturf, not organizing, and i've never seen any proof that they conducted actual persuasion or turnout campaigns.
3. Percepción vs. Realidad: La Influencia entre Estudiantes.
A pesar de ser descrita como una organización influyente, los testimonios indican que TPUSA no es popular entre su público objetivo. Otros activistas juveniles la veían con escepticismo y la consideraban un "chiste", destacando una gran diferencia entre su imagen pública y su recepción real en los campus.
- Tpusa is an incredibly influential organization; it’s just not actually very influential with its suggested target, college students.
- As someone who was very involved with the young americans for liberty and college republicans when tpusa started, it was scoffed at by other young activists. Everyone knew it was a grift that focused on the showy stunts and nothing else.
- How tpusa presents itself to boomer donors and what it is actually like on campus are very different.
- Which is strange to me as a late millennial because i remember thinking tpusa was a giant joke throughout the 2010s when i was in uni.
4. El Llamado a una Contraparte Progresista.
Una temática recurrente es la percepción de que no existe una organización de izquierda con el mismo nivel de financiamiento y presencia centralizada en los campus para contrarrestar a TPUSA. Esto genera un llamado a crear y apoyar alternativas progresistas para movilizar a la juventud.
- I wish mediastouch develope a robust youth program to counter tpusa. We really lack a central hq that dedicated to liberal youths in schools and colleges around the country.
- I keep thinking about how the left hasn't countered campus groups from anti-abortion to tpusa. How there is no equal campus group to the federalist society and fox/right-wing propaganda.
- I have been saying for years that liberals to give young people an alternative to that tpusa garbage - something that will engage them in a fun community and help get them excited about liberal politics.
- During the campaign, i saw videos of tpusa on college campuses doing massive voter drives of college students and i thought; where are the left-equivalent groups? they are out there, but they need our help.