The Leopards Are Eating Leftist Faces

The Democratic Party Takes The Fall For Toxic Politics It Never Wanted

Ana Kasparian is no longer a Democrat, because she blames the party for people are also not Democrats.

For a few years now, I’ve noticed and opined on the ongoing trend of former leftist influences indulging in and ultimately finding a new home in right-wing politics. From Tulsi Gabbard to Elon Musk to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to online influencers like Jackson Hinkle, there is a long list of former progressives, many of whom supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, finding a new home in the MAGA movement.

Last month, I noted that COVID was a significant reason for this trend, but that isn’t the only reason. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, the co-hosts of the leftist podcast The Young Turks, are among those who appear to have moved from progressive politics to a more right-wing posture.

Cenk and Ana were among the most diehard Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 and 2020 and were somewhat influential in progressive anti-Demcoratic establishment politics. Their Super Tuesday broadcast in March 2020, when the two completely meltdown over Bernie’s loss has become legendary.

Since 2020 though, the tone of the duo has changed. Ana, notably, has taken on more right-wing opinions on issues like homelessness - demanding the same progressive California Democrats she and Cenk backed in the past dismantle encampments and criminalize sleeping in the streets. She has also been critical of gender ideology, resenting phrases like “birthing women” and “menstruating person,” some activists leaned on as umbrella terms for cisgender and transgender women. The latter is something that really only took off in extreme activist circles, but Ana again blamed the entire Democratic Party for the shift.

If Ana had listened to mainstream Democrats on this, she’d likely hear people telling her “yeah that’s stupid. Let’s focus on access to care and housing and other issues transgender individuals face rather than stupid phrases.” But Ana spent the better part of the previous six years closing herself off to mainstream Democrats, whose influence would have tempered her extreme reaction now.

Last week, Ana Kasparian said she finally left the Democratic Party over her experience with leftists who listen to The Young Turks after being sexually assaulted in 2022. Not Democrats. Leftists.

“Before I knew it, I started getting these messages, and it’s really, really harsh stuff, about how, ‘You are painting a picture of the homeless community. How could you be like this? These are your unhoused neighbors and they need help,” Ana said on the podcast Keeping It Real, hosted by Jillian Michaels. “A few people accused me of being racist, even though I had never disclosed the race of the individuals who did this to me. And in fact, they were white.”

She went on to say: “Some of the people that I’ve associated myself with because I thought they were the good people….They definitely have stereotypes in their head and are totally blind to the fact that they have those stereotypes and go around accusing others of being bad actors when they themselves need to do the work. At some point last year, the other thing that really hit me was the difference between my upbringing and what the Democratic Party espouses.”

OK, but that is not what the Democratic Party espouses. That is what the far-left lunactics Ana helped elect in Democratic primaries in California espouse. In fact, the type of Democrat whom Ana called “establishment” and “corporatist” in 2020 would have said this same thing, and agree with her today. Yet, she is taking out her frustration at the party because of the reaction of a bunch of leftists who listen to her podcast; a podcast that became popular in leftist circles for opposing the Democratic Party from the left.

Ana was among the many progressives who criticized the Democratic Party for being afraid to take on more radical positions on criminal justice reform, including defunding the police and focus on on non-carcerial solutions. It was through the influence of her and others like her that progressive Democrats won elections in places like California and pushed for policies that ensured it would be difficult for law enforcement to keep mentally disturbed homeless men like the one who attacked her off the street.

The people telling Ana Kasparian that she’s a bad person and a racist for talking about a homeless man assaulting her are not rank-and-file Democrats who represent the party’s base; they are extremists the Democratic Party went to great lengths to keep from gaining power in the party - lengths Ana and Cenk themselves made a career out of condemning. The only reason Democrats were not tougher on crime is because people like Ana advocated for more left-wing Democrats to get elected. I’m not saying it’s her fault she was assaulted, it’s not, but instead of blaming the people who rightfully resisted the radical social justice left or self-corrected at the first sign of failure because they knew this would happen, admit the policies you pushed for were wrong. That is something I did when I myself was mugged a few years back.

Does the Democratic Party deserve to be fatally damaged by the actions of some out-of-touch, anarchist, borderline sociopathic leftists? No. They aren’t blameless. It was Andrew Cuomo who signed the elimination of cash bail in New York, but that is an issue that never would’ve come up had progressives not done well in the 2018 elections in the Empire State. If Centrists Democrats had their way, Ana’s assaulter would be locked away.

The big takeaway from this is Democrats now see how fast progressives who demand they move to the left abandon them when the policies they demanded the Democrats push through backfire on them. They will never trust these voters to back them up if they do politically risky things again, so they will never take political risks again.

If Ana Kasparian had more “normie” liberal friends and did not disown them, she would have had more of them empathizing with her and be willing to have open, frank discussions about the need to balance her safety and the safety of all women with humane treatment of those with mental illness and the need to keep dangerous people off the street. Instead, Ana sealed herself in a bubble of radical leftists and anarchists who only care about one thing - being edgy and contrarian. It isn’t a surprise that her followers had a somewhat sociopathic response to her assault. They are addicted to the concept of fighting for the “underdog,” and in this case they’ve labeled the homeless perv the underdog, simply because he’s homeless. They’d almost certainly be less charitable to the perp if he was a rich white guy with a nice car and a mansion.

Still, it is endlessly irritating that the Democratic Party ends up taking it on the chin because of people like this who do not like the Democratic Party and aren’t liked by more centrist and liberal Democrats. The party entertained some of their ideas in the 2017-2021 timeframe because some of the issues they spoke to - racial disparity in criminal justice, economic insecurity among the working class, xenophobia, homophobia,, and transphobia - were problems that were under the risk of getting worse under Donald Trump’s presidency. The solutions, however, to the extent there were any, turned out to be catastrophic, and for several years now, the party has been trying to rid itself of the stink.

Ana Kasparian is far more at fault for their rising influence in American politics than the party that desperately tried to keep them at bay, often at lengths that Ana herself was critical of. I suspect this latest reaction is because she has such long term disdain for the Democratic establishment, she will never give them the benefit of admitting they were right. Instead she, like the many other leftists who bolted, will just lump the radical leftists with the party she hates and find a new home on the right where she can still keep criticizing establishment Democrats.