The Young Turks Lost The Plot, Then They Lost Me.

The hosts of the largest, longest running left-leaning news show in America now demand appeasement of MAGA to achieve economic agreement. I refuse.

I quit The Young Turks this week. I wasn't a dues paying member for long, but since early 2024 I found the hosts to be a reliable and aggressive force for good specifically relating to the genocide in Gaza, Joe Biden’s historic failures, and criticizing the election campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Then in the final weeks leading up to the 2024 election and since, the main hosts rapidly descended into both-sidesing of fascism and white supremacy under the auspices of maintaining civility and economic growth.

The network’s leaders think they can cooperate their way out of fascism, where much of their audience rightly expected them to express even greater vitriol for the insanity and supremacy and flat out evil of the Republican platform and party. A prime example was when Cenk Uygur called Trump a fascist, accurately, and Ana Kasparian balked at the description. By now they’ve both said people who support him aren't fascist or white supremacist, and should be bargained with. I don’t need to give them my money or attention if that’s what they believe.

Based on the The Young Turks’ (TYT) recent diatribes and specific attacks or complaints about “the left”, I am apparently no longer the Cenk and Ana’s target audience, and in fact I'm a detriment to the left and our country.

Why? Because I go to city council meetings and write my legislators - because I'm an engaged citizen on a literal daily basis. I speak out about issues that affect my city and the people in it, and none of them require advice or approval from Glenn Beck or Piers Morgan or Ben Shapiro, who seem to be providing new favorite destinations for Cenk and Ana.

I went to the Aurora, Colorado apartment complexes for the press conferences and community gatherings. I know the community workers who helped find people housing when some of the buildings were shut down with six days notice. I know the national mainstream press lied about "gang takeovers" because I saw it for myself and spoke with the residents. At this point virtually every left-leaning podcast or commentator has debunked Ana’s reporting on this topic. She can’t seem to understand or admit she was wrong and was directly involved in stoking racist lies intended to drive anti-immigrant sentiment, no matter how much evidence there is.

I also help clothe and feed the homeless in my city and I give my money to worthy causes doing direct good. I protest and disrupt at political events because it is necessary and appropriate to make my voice heard in a system that takes every available step to silence the populace and its demands. I march and face off with fascists and Zionists regularly.

I've seen Democrats in person cover their ears when we tell them how many children they’ve murdered. I've had Trump-hugging Aurora police chief Todd Chamberlain say to my face he will “follow the law”, even if the law is changed to direct cops to shoot protesters as a first response - literal Nazi shit. To the owner and lead co-host of TYT, my level of engagement is inappropriate and undesirable. They said so distinctly on a recent show where they castigated specifically leftists who go to city council meetings. I guess they would rather I spend my evenings watching them talk to Republicans and fascists than taking direct action myself. I have become so busy with in-person activism that I meant to publish this two days ago and simply didn’t have time.

According to these realities, I am no longer a meaningful member of society in Cenk and Ana’s holier-than-thou eyes. It appears I’m only a loud, inconvenient obstacle to their desire for quiet capitulation and appeasement of people they themselves described as fascists. They both seem to believe that cooperation with Trump supporters in the media and in the public can help achieve their goals, and increasingly reiterate that what’s actually hampering the left is identity politics, by which they mean demanding truly equal rights for all. That's taboo on TYT now.

The “home of the progressive left” fights more for civility and process than the rights of the downtrodden and disaffected. They think just because a fascist is their ”fellow American” or has a talk show that they should be compromised with and listened to. Whose show will they go on next? Christopher Rufo? Nick Fuentes? Matt Walsh? Chaya Raichik? Will Cenk and Ana become recurring guests on RSBN or OANN? I wouldn’t be surprised.

People who voted for Trump, a man who said over and over that a group of American residents was eating other people's pets, who was convicted of fraud, who was found liable for rape, who dines with and quotes nazis, aren't reasonable citizens. I don't care if it's a grocery worker or a bank CEO, my neighbor or my bus driver, my family member or a talk show host.

Anyone too ignorant or disengaged to know Trump lies on purpose to stoke racial anger deserves zero respect or role in the political discourse of the left. When Ana gives Grace to Trumpers because they help her carry groceries or smile when they pass by, she is relying on personal interactions (as an attractive white woman) to determine they are “good people”.

If someone believes lies, votes for a rapist, and desires the rights of those I love be stripped away, they are not “good people”. They want me and mine destitute, deported or dead. Cenk wants MAGA to embrace populism on budget issues and speak against Trump. He simply doesn’t talk about how they also want to take away human and civil rights, destroy the planet so they can drive big trucks, eliminate vaccines, and some of them very literally want to disadvantage minorities of all kinds to maintain white privilege and supremacy.

The hosts of TYT desire cooperative process and procedure so much that they think we should try to make peace with folks who are cool with the Proud Boys marching in our streets. They also seem to think the economy is the only issue that matters. I am not a capitalist, I think growth economics is a cancer on modern society and I extricate myself as much as possible from the madness that is the American war machine (the economy IS the war machine).

I don't care that Cenk wanted me to vote for Kamala Harris even as she herself embraced fascist ideology and engaged in literal goddamned genocide. I will sacrifice my life before I will sacrifice my principles, but it appears the leaders of TYT don't actually have any of those. If they did, they would be calling for a general strike and tax revolt against the American conglomerate as we are dog walked into climate catastrophe by both parties because they are wholly owned and controlled by corporations subject for few laws, if any. But that would be uncomfortable. That would require actual sacrifice.

I don't give my money to Netflix because they eliminated all their Palestinian content. I no longer give my money to Spotify because it was going directly to Joe Rogan. I don't give my money to Walmart or McDonalds or Starbucks or Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A or Coca-Cola or Lay’s or Nestle, for reasons that should all be clear in 2024 (BDS, anti-gay actions, Christian nationalist actions, environmental destruction, worker abuse). I boycott at every opportunity and waste as few resources as I can reasonably manage.

I support indigenous rights and land back, black Americans and reparations, trans rights and freedoms, disability programs and equity, the unhoused masses, those in need of medical services and the protection of Muslims and women from the malicious white supremacists in our midst. I am not afraid in the slightest to disassociate from friends, family or colleagues who deem finances or personal comfort more important than making progress as a species and planetary society.

At TYT, all of these progressive or leftist ideals have fallen to the specter of collaboration with the new party in power. I wish many of the other hosts well, including Jordan Uhl, Dr. Rashad Ritchie, Francesca Fiorentini, Mayor Mondale Robinson, John Iadorola, Jayar Jackson and Sharon Reid.

While I was writing this, one of their frequent guests publicly announced his decision to stop appearances on the network. Then two of the hosts named above explicitly stated that they understand why people are leaving and what their grievances are with the main show, noting that the people leaving tend to be black or trans. Those two groups’ concerns have seemingly made them persona non grata in the conversations Cenk and Ana pursue.

Whether they are chasing money a la Peter Thiel’s crypto betting site or actually believe the bile they’ve been spewing is irrelevant. I have no need for the centrist demands of appeasers, two people who championed the actual left until they felt it was a losing battle and made intentional decisions to court the right. It’s the same thing Kamala Harris did, under the false belief that cooperating with fascists can stave off fascism. It's been tried before, and it's a dark part of our history.

We are on our way to having concentration camps, and the people who voted for them are now a catered viewership of The Young Turks. It doesn't matter whether the hosts believe fans of literal Nazi rhetoric can be reformed or deprogrammed, or they're just weathervaning as we enter what most expect to be a violently oppressive era for this country. The effect is a decided shift to the right, away from the demands of the left, under a hilariously false notion of bipartisanship that will only result in the further erosion of our rights, freedoms and safety.

I know I am not alone in saying to TYT: so long, and thanks for all the fish!

Author’s note: I have neither the time nor desire to source every statement said here from hundreds of hours of TYT broadcasts, but many can be found on recent analyses and commentaries provided by The Majority Report with Sam Seder, The Benjamin Dixon Show and others YouTube will recommend onc eyou view those.