The Young Turks, Daniel Penny, and the right wing shift
Living through a sea change
A few years ago, I wrote a glowing review of The Young Turks (TYT), which had run a segment on the Ahmaud Arbery trial that had at that time just concluded. Arbery was a guy in Georgia who had been jogging through a neighborhood in Georgia and had been killed by three guys who were following him in a pick-up truck. Arbery was Black; his assailants were White.
This TYT segment was full of spark and fire, as Cenk Uygur, the host, lambasted the defendants’ lawyer for using the vilest, rankest racism in her closing statement. His passionate takedown of the lawyer’s implicit and explicit racism was possibly the most spirited dismantling of that line of thought that I’d ever seen. I was moved by Uygur’s vehemence.
It was only after I’d written the essay and gotten a bit of distance that I realized that it was my very response to his overture that was telling. Likelier than not, I had been swayed by very basic propaganda — not that I disagreed with his underlying point, but his use of emotion was overly influential. I realized how that was a danger.
The thing about the Arbery trial, aside from the blisteringly offensiveness of the lawyer’s arguments, was that the verdict fell the same week as that of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. In the air was a charge, a hanging threat of a return to more of a law of the jungle. There was a ramping up in some quarters, who seemed to thrill to the idea that their avatars might be able to dispense street justice against Black people (as well as traitors to the race) and come out clean.
But the verdicts were split. While Rittenhouse got away with murder, the Arbery killers were convicted. And that seemed to calm tempers for the moment.
That atmosphere has picked back up with the acquittal of Daniel Penny, the strangler of Jordan Neely, a man on a subway car in New York City who had raised his voice and threw his jacket to the floor as he complained of hunger and thirst.1 Though eyewitnesses clearly identified Penny as the man who choked Neely for six minutes and squeezed the life out of him, the jury rendered a not guilty verdict.
This reawakened the racist cheering section in the wider public, which has quickly crowned Penny, an ex-Marine who happened to be White, as a savior and hero who had every right to snuff the life of Neely, Black and lacking shelter. Vice President-elect J. D. Vance invited Penny to the Army-Navy football game, where the two joined President-elect Donald Trump in his private suite. This elevation of Penny’s stature is due solely to his killing bona fides.
But you won’t see Uygur (pronounced YOU-gur) or his co-host, Ana Kasparian, dissect the particulars of this case and its aftermath.
Over the course of at least the last year, the two TYT hosts have changed course, tacking right on social issues.2 Now, the two have begun railing against the “identitarian left,” which ostensibly includes minorities of all backgrounds.3
This turn is concerning, because for more than a decade TYT has been a major voice for left-wing media on the one hand and independent media on the other. It’s occupied a specific niche and intersection, casting a wide net and covering a range of stories and current events. But, just as it has again become crunch time — with retrogressive Trump returning to the White House — TYT has slid into reactionary mode, a change that has not gone without notice.
TYT has billed itself as “home of the progressive left,” but Uygur and Kasparian have ventured onto platforms such as Glenn Beck and Piers Morgan to repudiate liberal and leftist views, a ritual known as punching left.
Kasparian (on Piers Morgan Uncensored, November 27, 2024):
“This is a small but incredibly loud and influential faction of the Democratic Party. This is not indicative of all Democrats, this is not indicative of all Democratic lawmakers — this is a small group of activists who like to bully, who like to go to city council meetings, who like to go to various rallies, and essentially be loud, be threatening, be aggressive until they get their way.
“And for far too long, the Democratic Party has been terrified of these little mobs of people, these little mobs of activists, and have basically just carried out what these activists want. And I just think that they need to be a little smarter than falling prey to the whims of various activist groups, because they’re not representative of the majority of Americans.”4
The hosts of TYT aren’t the originators of this practice of punching left — it was most famously enacted by Bill Clinton in his 1992 run for the White House, where he publicly denounced Sister Souljah to curry favor with the more right-wing elements of the electorate.5
In a two-party system, this practice is seen as safe, because those with views more on the periphery have no other viable alternative. Those in the center may be independent or swing voters, able to shift as the mutable center shifts; but those on the periphery are not so fluid. In fact, such voters are seen to be stuck with whatever crumbs they are offered.6
Uygur and Kasparian have often adopted a pugilistic stance on a whole host of issues, but this seems to be the first time they have expended a concerted effort to court and make inroads into right-wing audiences — at least in such a blatant way. This has a lot of their loyal audience, one that TYT has built for more than a decade, up in arms.
Additionally, TYT bills itself as a leader in independent media. In this environment, where so much of the media is part of a conservative silo — similar voices echoing the same views to a shared but narrow audience — independent media is more important than ever. This is especially true today, where two of the major national newspapers, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, have seen their owners institute by fiat new practices that compromise the papers’ long-standing commitment to editorial independence. Both owners are extremely wealthy, driving concerns that their moves may usher in an era of unprecedented friendliness toward the incoming Trump administration (itself bursting at the seams with billionaires).
Yet not only is TYT moving ideologically closer to that of the incoming administration, it also is abdicating the mantle of independence. The basic definition of ‘independent media’ is one where the financing is not from corporate sponsorship but rather comes from the viewers / listeners. This is to ensure that the viewpoints shared by the commentators are not steered by those who would dangle funds conditionally. However, TYT recently signed a contract with Polymarket, an international betting venue financed by Peter Thiel, a deep-pocketed technocrat known to harbor far-right views.
TYT went so far as to rename their studio — which had originally been funded by donations from viewers — Polymarket Studios. Now they announce the name of the company at the top of their segments. None of this accords with journalistic independence.
One might be forgiven for thinking Uygur simply a bit naïve (though, considering his veteran status in political matters, that might be a stretch). He himself has painted his outreach as an opportunity to capitalize on a widespread disaffection with the “establishment.” He recently addressed his audience, seeking to reassure them that the time was ripe for joining with those in the Trump camp on issues where common ground could be found.
It is certainly opportunistic, though short-sighted as well. “Fascist contempt for the soft, complacent, compromising center was absolute,” writes Robert O. Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004).7 While the Glenn Becks of the world might find Kasparian and Uygur’s ideological walkback amusing, and certainly they may exploit such outreach for their own advantage, in no world do those right-leaning forces look at Kasparian and Uygur as collaborators or contributors but, at most, resources to be mined.
What’s worse, though, is that the hosts seem eager to offer themselves up in the far right’s project, if only to have a seat at the table, however temporarily. This is evident in Uygur’s haughty glee when he let the rest of us know that Trump’s inner circle had responded to his X post / tweet asking for them to take his input on cuts at the Pentagon.
Though the response, objectively viewed, was tepid and cordial, Uygur took it as proof that Trump advisers were ready to listen, even to progressives. All the while, though, he has bent his views to be more amenable to those on the right.
It would seem to me that this is an instance where pride goeth before a fall. The demise may be a bit off into the future, nothing immediate, but its origin would be hubris, an almighty sense of self-importance. “I am the left,” Uygur asserted during a Thanksgiving debate with Hasan Piker.8
It’s clear that Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Jr. — the ones who responded to his tweet — are playing on Uygur’s vanity. The latter is willing to compromise all of his heretofore expressed values in order to offer a few suggestions, which may or may not ever be considered in earnest.
This is a bargain destined to lose. In the meantime, though, Uygur gets to preen and to feel he’s making a grand exchange. To gain proximity to power, all he has to do is renege on his professed principles.
The backlash, sudden and sharp, against the two hosts has been its own spectacle. This is partly of their own making, as they have picked fights with those in the progressive camp (again, part of their bellicose style). Most visibly, one of their content contributors, Mondale Robinson, quit the TYT team live on the air of the Benjamin Dixon show.9
This shredding of professional ties, made so publicly and for such intangible but important reasons (a betrayal of values), has brought this internal conflict out into the open. Dixon himself created a “rebuttal” video to the rightward turn that Uygur and Kasparian have taken, urging viewers, just as Robinson did, to unsubscribe from TYT and to support others in the progressive movement.
If you watch nothing else on this page, watch the above video. It’s about 45 minutes long and, as Dixon’s title notes, sets out the case against Uygur and Kasparian. It’s damning.
In just the last week, TYT has suffered a loss in viewers, perhaps reflective of their audience’s rejection of this shift. This bleed is probably what spurred the hosts to craft the video love-bombing and reassuring their viewers that their right-wing outreach was good. It is unclear whether that will be enough to stanch the outward flow.
Either way, the timing of Uygur’s and Kasparian’s switch could not be worse. We’re in the fight of our lives, and the initial move out of the blocks is critical.
If, in the wake of Trump’s win, Trump supporters are feeling their oats — as I suspect they are — and the atmosphere is once again heating up, we will need clear voices that can cut through the haze of distraction in order to highlight the dangers that lie before us.
Already, we have seen defections in basic responsibilities from major newspapers and broadcast outlets (witness ABC News settling a defamation suit with Trump by depositing $15 million dollars into the fund for his presidential foundation and museum). As Dixon noted, we need all hands on deck by those who will hold the line.
We do not need turncoats doing their level best to cozy up to those spreading racial hate, gender suppression and xenophobia. This is not the time to befriend those who would subjugate us.
I previously wrote two essays in response to the Neely killing: “Why are so many people failing Jordan Neely?” (May 5, 2023) and “Why the violent reaction to homelessness? It’s too much a mirror” (May 8, 2023).
This disdain, incidentally, is especially true of trans rights. It seemed that trans rights didn’t “poll well,” and so Uygur was keen to jettison the entire slate of concerns, out of expedience. Kasparian, for her part, took inordinate offense to the idea of being called a ‘birthing person’ and used the controversy as a springboard over the course of a year to court a more centrist as well as right-wing audience.
Interestingly, the term ‘identitarian’ doesn’t yet seem to encompass feminism, the inclusion of which might cramp Kasparian’s image as she currently presents it.
Note the language here: ‘loud’, ‘bully’, ‘threaten’, ‘aggressive’, ‘mobs’, ‘falling prey’.
Specifically, ‘loud’ is interesting, especially as Kasparian uses it twice and in the same vocal register. Author of The Open and Closed Mind (1960), Milton Rokeach, noted that for those who tend to score highly on the trait of dogmatism, one aspect that revealed this tendency for right-leaning opinion was an inordinate attention to a lack of manners, specifically noise-making. Examples of items quizzed are “It’s the fellow travellers or Reds who keep yelling all the time about Civil Rights,” “It’s the radicals and labor racketeers who yell the loudest about labor’s right to strike,” and “It’s mostly the noisy liberals who try to tell us that we will be better off under socialism.” See “Political and Religious Dogmatism: An Alternative to the Authoritarian Personality,” Psychological Monographs: General and Applied (1956), Vol. 70, No. 18, p. 12.
Professor Ian Shapiro, in a lecture about left movements, described this moment in American political history:
“There you see the Clinton/Gore campaign [in 1992] moving very far to the right, to capture the middle ground, because they no longer think that they can get the solidaristic support of people on the left. And, indeed, Clinton felt that he actually had to attack the left of the Democratic Party to get his bona fides as somebody who could win in this new world. This is his famous speech about Sister Souljah:
‘You had a rap singer here last night named Sister Souljah. I defend her right to express herself through music, but her comments before and after Los Angeles [i.e., the riots] were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight. Just listen to this, what she said. She told the Washington Post about a month ago, and I quote, “If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill White people? So you’re a gang member and you normally kill somebody… why not kill a White person?” Last year, she said, “You can’t call me or any Black person anywhere in the world a racist. We don’t have the power to do to White people what White people have done to us. And, even if we did, we don’t have that low-down, dirty nature. If there are any good White people, I haven’t met them. Where are they?” Right here in this room. That’s where they are.
‘I know she is a young person, but she has a big influence on a lot of people. And when people say that, if you took the words “white” and “black” and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.’
“So, that was very dishonest in its presentation, because she had not actually said that. She had talked about a rap singer singing that. It wasn’t her music. She was talking about a rap song that made those claims and was talking about the claim. She wasn’t herself taking those views.
“But it didn’t matter. This was seen as — this went viral, or the 1992 equivalent of ‘viral’, because it was Clinton distancing himself from the African-American affirmative action agenda (as it was portrayed by his critics) as a way to try and move to the center.
“And so the thought here is, the motivating thought is, in a two-party system, if you move to the middle, the people on your flank have no place to go. So when Trump was running in 2016 and he said to African-Americans, “Vote for me, what have you got to lose?”, he was exactly saying that they don’t get any attention on the left of the Democratic Party, so the Democratic Party can take them for granted and ignore them.
“So this becomes the argument for the politics of triangulation. … The idea is that you move to the middle to peel off support from the other side, and enough support to win. And you might depress turnout a little bit on the left of your own party if you’re a Democrat who is triangulating, but at the end of the day they have no place to go. And so it seems like a winning strategy.”
See “Lecture 6: Reorienting the Left: New Democrats, New Labour, and Europe’s Social Democrats” — YaleCourses (YouTube, September 27, 2019), ~ 39:30
On the right, over the last three to four decades, this pattern has been inverted, where edge voters, even those who might otherwise be described as fringe or extremist, have been welcomed into the fold, even made the core of the conservative movement. This has changed the dynamic of the entire electorate, where far-right views are mainstreamed as a matter of course, while on the other side of the aisle leftist views are stiff-armed by centrists and moderates.
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), p. 11. Vintage: New York.
Piker is Uygur’s nephew who has become one of the darlings of the online progressive scene. “Cenksgiving” has become a perennial event between the two.
Dixon too was once under the TYT umbrella, years ago, leaving due to a contract issue.
The shift right in traditional media has for sure been ongoing and picking up steam to the point where you wonder just how extreme it can get. That Bezos story where he stopped the WaPo endorsement was eye opening but I don’t know if it should surprise us. I mean look at him! He builds more wealth in a single day, than more than half of the population will see in the entire lives. So of course Bezos fears losing that by angering a full blown fascist who will have the power of the presidency to disrupt his growing fortune. And then ABC, already slanting right, actually pays him off! And then the LA Times with their similar moves. All of them are obviously scared. I have not followed TYTs. But I watched the excerpt from the interview with Morgan that you posted. She seems like she would be comfortable in that private suite with Trump, Vance, and their favorite killer.
As you laid out, the two party system has the Left screwed. The media has shifted right, the Democratic Party has shifted right. Meanwhile, this freaky fascist is about to walk into the WH. I get the sense that we, ALL of us, right, left,
and the unaware… all of us are about to try to live through very tough times. These events can create their own energy that then becomes a force just looking for ANY target. The hunters become the hunted. It seems like this will get worse before it gets better.
Thanks for your voice. I appreciate your writing.
So brilliant as always. You should be getting paid for these reports. I find it all nauseating and can only take in current events in small doses. That Penny was invited by those two devils to join them is beyond appalling. Effing dumpster family are very recent immigrants to our country, unlike the human beings forced into slavery and their descendants, who continue to be horrifically abused.