Photo made by author in Photoshop
UC Berkeley tried to host a Turning Point USA event Monday night, and predictably, it went exactly how you’d imagine a conservative rally at Berkeley would go: yelling, fireworks, police, confusion, and at least three people live-streaming the collapse of civilization to TikTok.
The event took place at Zellerbach Hall, and technically it was part of Turning Point’s “Live Free Tour.” But the evening felt more like a spiritual séance for the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, who, as the SF Standard politely reminded everyone, was assassinated two months ago. That detail alone should’ve been a clue things were about to get weird.
Inside, there was chanting… lots of it. People shouted “Charlie Kirk! Charlie Kirk!” like he was about to rise from the dead like Jesus Christ, but a vehemently more racist one. Instead, the crowd got Rob Schneider. Yes, that Rob Schneider. The comedian formerly known for yelling “You can do it!” in Adam Sandler movies is now apparently a philosopher-comedian for the conservative circuit. He was promptly called “retarded” by an audience member, to which Schneider accused the heckler of being a virgin. Real life events at one of the most prestigious colleges in the world are basically just an extension of the Bay Area Memes comment section. His set jumped from jokes about cancel culture to something about God and pronouns, which is exactly the kind of performance you’d expect when a college lecture hall becomes a culture-war battlefield.
People can’t afford food in this country, but hey.
Then came the noise. A series of bangs echoed outside which many initially thought were gunshots. People ducked. Helicopters started circling. Campus police locked down the area, while protesters banged on trash cans and yelled about fascism through megaphones. The atmosphere felt like a political panic attack.
Meanwhile, outside Zellerbach, things spiraled into Berkeley performance art. Protesters waved signs, a few bottles got tossed, and some students decided the best form of resistance was an art installation: a giant bug hanging off Sather Gate. Police weren’t fans. They never are. Four students were arrested. Nobody agreed on what the bug symbolized, but everyone agreed it looked kinda cool. Some guy got beaten bloody by police. Berkeley’s back, baby.
Back inside, the night hit peak absurdity during the Q&A session, which the Standard described as “peak inanity.” That’s polite journalist-speak for “a total mess.” Audience members shouted over each other, lobbed insults at the speakers, and one guy reportedly brought up eunuchs for reasons no one understood.
By the end, the energy had shifted from righteous fury to collective exhaustion. Protesters claimed victory for disrupting the event; Turning Point supporters called it a free-speech win; and the rest of Berkeley just wanted to go home and doomscroll in peace.
If you squinted, the whole thing kind of made sense. Turning Point got its publicity. Protesters got their TikToks. The SF Standard got a headline. And Berkeley got to prove they can disrupt fascists kind of. Everybody won except for you and I. Because in 2025, nobody seems to go to Berkeley for enlightenment. They go for the spectacle, the memes, and the chance to say, “Yeah, I was there when Rob Schneider almost caused a riot, and he called me a virgin.”
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