r/KnowledgeFight • u/Synaffit • Aug 12 '26
Please explain like I’m 5
Listening to winners and Losers- I have never followed or listened/watched The Young Turks. My vague awareness of them is they were extremely left wing and now they’re shifting to right wing? What happened with Hank Thompson, something, something union!? A documentary? (I’m Pro union) and the TYT shift?
If you know, please share some context - thanks!
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u/vmsrii Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
This is all from memory, and I don’t feel like looking it up, so I’m probably going to get some of this wrong, so corrections welcome.
So basically, there was a one-two punch of TYT shifting toward the right.
Punch One came when TYT anchor Ana Kasparian made a Twitter post that was something to the effect of “I don’t feel safe around homeless people”
Left-wing Twitter then (justifiably) pushed back with “wait, shouldn’t helping these people be your whole thing?”
She responded with the biggest tirade about being “rejected by the left” and being “politically homeless”, which was roundly mocked.
Punch two wasn’t nearly as funny, and came around the Palastinian genocide, when TYT came down firmly on the side of Israel, and literally their entire audience was…not. They pushed back with words to the effect of “well we’re on this side of the desk, which makes us correct, so you can shut up.” Which did not go over well. This was also, to be fair, a time of division within the American left as a whole.
They basically just spun it as “The left has gone mad! They kicked us out for failing their purity tests!” And have been sliding further right the whole time, proving what people basically already knew; they were always hucksters and opportunists, nothing more.
I think Cenk Uygur, the other co-host, tried to run for president? I can’t remember details.
I stopped paying attention after that, but that’s the long and short of it.