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Dec. 24, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
25:07
Cenk Uygur Did Nothing Wrong
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Well, I never thought the day would come when I would have to defend Cenk Yuga.
But here it goes.
Cenk Uygur did nothing wrong.
So yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article called Must Read The Young Turks Host Cenk Uygur's Disturbing Sexist Racist Pro-Rape Past.
The Gateway Pundit is a right-wing site.
The Young Turks are quite a far-left progressive news outlet.
This is a political attack.
So the Gateway Pundit dug up an archive of Yuga's website for his radio show, where he had said some pretty racy stuff, but the original quotes were from 1999.
So we're talking 18 years ago.
And apparently this is back when Jenk was a Republican.
And don't get me wrong, back then he was saying some pretty damn red-pilled stuff, like, obviously the genes of women are flawed.
They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peacefully and fruitfully.
I'm really sorry, I just couldn't read that without laughing.
That is hilariously absurd.
I just want to stress.
That's certainly not the sort of thing that would come out of my mouth.
But that was a long time ago.
He added, I hook up a decent amount, as defined as I make out with a new girl every six to eight weeks and have sex with a steady girl at least once a week.
But it seems that there is a sea of tits here and I'm drinking in tiny droplets.
I want to dive into the whole goddamn ocean.
Okay, so he's young, stupid, and horny.
And when I say young, I mean 30 years, I think he was.
But still, it's not as old as you think.
And, okay, this was long before social justice and politically correct culture had taken hold and completely overtaken the left.
Don't get me wrong, this would be pretty racy even back in the 90s, but sure, it's edgy and it's inappropriate.
But it is important to note how there are no victims of what he's saying.
This is just Jenk saying stupid things on the internet.
And I'm telling you that this is nothing but a political attack, because literally that's all Gateway Pundit has to say on the young Turks.
I mean, just look at some of these articles.
Old left conspiracy theorist Jenk blames Christianity for the Holocaust.
Far left crank Jenk Yuga praises Trump for carrier deal.
This is not something that the left should be taking seriously.
And yet they are.
So Jenk says that it's because he was a Republican at the time.
And I mean, okay, that's a shit excuse.
He was just young, stupid, and horny.
But, and this is his apology.
Some of you might have seen some blog posts that I wrote 18 years ago that some people happened to.
So some of you might have seen some blog posts that I wrote 18 years ago that some people happened to find online.
And I'm sure most of you didn't see it, but that's okay.
I'm going to tell you about it anyway.
And I know now more people will see it.
But that's okay because we learn and we grow on this show and that's what we try to do together.
And boy, back then did I have a lot of learning and growing to do.
So some of the stuff that was written on there was totally offensive, insensitive, ignorant.
If you read it and go, wow, man, you need to learn a lot.
You're absolutely right.
So if any of you have already read it, I certainly apologize to the people who are offended by it because you were right to be offended.
And it was a young, immature guy back then trying to show how cool he was by being edgy and politically incorrect.
Well, what I didn't realize back then, and I think that I've learned throughout these years, is that being politically incorrect sounds fun to you, I guess, when you're a young guy like that, but not everybody sees it the same way.
And if you're making jokes about sex as I was, you might see it a little bit differently if you look at it from the perspective of a woman who has been harassed or assaulted.
Then you look at it from a completely different perspective and understandably so.
What we've been trying to do on this show for the entirety of its existence is to learn to empathize with one another.
And look, it is not an easy process.
And I've said probably about a million times on this show, the hardest thing in the world is to escape your own perspective.
And I wish I'd go back to the younger Janking and explain that to him.
And if someone had written this stuff today, I would probably be harsher criticizing them on air and try to explain that to them.
So look, you guys have seen me.
This was stuff that I wrote before we started the Young Turks.
But you guys have seen me involved with your own eyes on the air on so many different issues.
So I debated Mario Cuomo on The Young Turks for about an hour back when we were on Sirius Satellite Radio.
I took the position of being pro-death penalty.
Well, that turned out to be massively wrong.
It turns out at least 4% of the people on death row were innocent.
So, boy, if anyone's owed an apology, it's every pro-death penalty person should apologize to the people who are innocent on death row.
So look, I can go on and on.
In the beginning, I didn't believe in climate change.
I had absurd ideas that mold wasn't real.
Jesus, how weird is that?
And so as I've told you dozens of times on the air, I held pro-war rallies when I was in college.
I've written terrible things in college as well.
And I think and I hope that I've learned a lot from that and grown a little bit.
I wish I had grown up a little quicker and learned to empathize with people way earlier than that.
I think that I've been on the road to progress and justice for the last 15 years.
And again, you guys have seen that.
If you've seen the movie Madden as Hell, which was a movie about this show, you see my transformation too, from the public access days to the radio days to the online and TV days.
And so I'm asking for the people who have read it and were rightfully offended, of course, for your forgiveness.
And for all of you, you're understanding to some degree.
And I hope that we continue to grow together on this show and start to and continue to spread that empathy to everyone involved.
And I hope that for those folks, again, who are rightfully offended, that being on the road to progress and justice, never fully arriving, but being on that road is a good thing and that it's a positive note that we have gone through this journey together.
So for all the mistakes that I have made in that journey, and they are plentiful, including those blog posts, of course I apologize.
And by the way, I deleted them not yesterday when the news reports came out, but over a dozen years ago.
You know why?
Because I didn't stand by them.
I looked at them and I was like, that is embarrassing.
That is totally wrong and inappropriate.
So I think and hope again that folks can come to an understanding where they say, I think this guy's getting a little better, you know, and everybody's got a lot of work to do, most especially me.
So again, I hope you guys understand that and that we continue conversations on this show that get us to a place where we see each other's perspectives better and have more empathy towards each other.
And I'm certainly trying hard to do that.
Thank you for putting up with me for all these years and through this as well.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with that apology.
And if you can't accept that apology, the problem is with you.
Because if you can't accept that apology, then I'm guessing you are a fucking social justice cunt who is looking for a way to take moral advantage of this in what is going to become a purity spiral that will absolutely destroy the Justice Democrats.
Because Jenk has actually resigned from his position on the board of the Justice Democrats because of this.
Because of something that his political opponents dug up that he wrote 18 years ago, that he completely disavows, he's apologised for, and he has moved on from.
It is ridiculous that anyone should demand he resign for anything.
This should be an open and shut case.
When Jenk was younger, he was an idiot.
He said things he regrets.
He openly disavows it.
He says, these things I regret, I take them back.
I'm really sorry.
I take full responsibility and I have changed.
That should be the end of it.
But of course, it's not.
This is the response from the Justice Democrats.
We are deeply disturbed by recent news regarding Jenk and Dave Collar.
I don't know who that is.
Their language and conduct is horrifying and does not reflect our values at Justice Democrats.
Well, no fucking shit.
They didn't reflect Jenk's values at Justice Democrats either, because these were things that he said and did decades ago, before he'd even started the Young Turks.
They say we would be hypocrites to not act immediately and ask for their resignation.
That's ridiculous.
Jenk didn't say these things yesterday.
He doesn't stand by them now.
It is absurd to suggest that it would be hypocritical to not demand Jenk's resignation for things that he doesn't stand by and wouldn't say today.
But more concerningly, it speaks to a much larger problem of radical purity testing.
And this is a problem with any political movement everywhere on the internet.
If you can't accept an apology that is, as Jenk showed, completely taking the blame onto his own shoulders, if you can't accept that, then you are the problem.
Nobody is fucking perfect.
Nobody is pure.
Stop looking for purity.
When someone says they're sorry, an adult accepts that apology.
End of story and it never comes up again.
This is what I did with Ian Miles Chung when he said, you know what, I've been really unfair to Gaminggate.
I don't approve of the social justice warriors I'm running with.
I would like to apologize.
What did I do?
I put out a video saying, I accept your apology without reservation.
You'll never have to mention it again.
Do you know why?
Because I'm a fucking adult and I know what it's like to be wrong.
But instead, look at this statement.
This statement is a power play.
Yesterday, blog posts written by Chenk Yuga and David Collar surfaced in a way that made they both made extremely disturbing sexist and racist statements.
The entire staff and leadership of the Justice Democrats was horrified by these posts.
After hearing Mr. Gyuga's side of the story and talking with our candidates, our staff came to the swift and unanimous decision to demand Chenk Yuga and David Collar's immediate resignation from their position at Justice Democrats.
The words and conduct that they used in these posts degrades what it means to be a Justice Democrat.
Listen, you fucking SJW chucklefucks.
They didn't say it as members of the Justice Democrats and they don't stand by it.
We do not feel that Mr. Yuga is fit to lead or participate in an organization that truly believes women's issues and the issues of black and brown people are all of our issues.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, this is an SJW power play.
We get it.
Mr. Yuga decided to resign from the board yesterday and has agreed to remove himself from any and all involvement with our organization.
I am extremely proud of our staff for risking their livelihoods in order to stand up for the values of Justice Democrats.
Justice Democrats was built from the ground up by incredibly hardworking staff and volunteers.
We've built an infrastructure over the past year with the focus on supporting on 51 candidates and we will continue to make that stronger.
Our mission is to create a just America that fights for progressive values.
We believe these departures will strengthen our ability to fight for that and win in 2018.
Bull shit.
Bollocks.
You think anyone in the establishment was rooting for Justice Democrats?
The young Turks are your biggest patrons.
They made you what you are.
And to be honest with you, what you are isn't all that impressive.
So it baffles me that you think you can get along without Jenk, just from a pragmatic political perspective, let alone on point of principle that the man fucking apologised.
But this is from the executive director, Sykat Chakrabarty, and he posted this to his Twitter feed.
Justice Democrats is not saying no one can ever reform.
Cenk has indeed come a long way from where he was 18 years ago.
The question is not whether or not Jenk as an individual can grow, it is whether or not that Jenk is the right person to lead our organization that puts women's rights and black and brown people's rights at the forefront.
No one is entitled to leadership, and we don't believe our leader should be someone who needs reforming on these issues we hold dear.
Okay, couple of points there.
You are not the moral superiors of Jenk Yuga.
You are not moral exemplars.
You are not fucking flawless.
You are flawed humans just like Jenk.
And I'm sure if we dug into your ancient past, we'd find some racy, uncomfortable stuff as well.
Because let's be honest, everyone's fucking got it.
I mean, how I used to be a 9-11 truther a few years back, but I dropped all that when I realized it was horseshit.
Jenk dropped all this when he realized it was wrong.
And he did it without your prompting, dipshit.
He did it because he knew it was wrong.
He doesn't need your validation.
No one is entitled to leadership, and we don't believe our leader should be someone who needs reforming on these issues.
He doesn't.
He's already done it.
Ages ago, years ago, over a decade ago, this is a horseshit statement to justify some up-and-comer climbing the ranks, climbing the ladder, and knocking off the person at the top.
Because let's be honest, the people just below him are always desperate to do that.
But the thing is, it's fucking foolish because it's going to end up killing your movement because your movement is now going to be taken over by rabid SJWs.
Jenk, for all his flaws, is not that bad.
That's one of the reasons that I have spent any time criticizing him.
I actually try not to go after the lowest hanging, most radical, insane fruit on the stupid tree that is the ever increasingly far left.
Cenk is actually someone you can reason with.
He's a flawed human being, he's got a crazy ego, he's a stubborn, egotistical twat sometimes, and he's definitely got his bigotries and biases, but he's really by far the worst of it.
Let's be honest.
And I feel that I can be taken seriously when I'm saying this, because it's not like I've ever been accused of being some kind of fucking sympathizer for Cenk or the young Turks.
I'm one of their worst nightmares.
So when I'm telling you that Cenk is really not as bad as these fucking lunatics, then trust me, I'm saying it with conviction.
Especially after the Justice Democrats retweeted this.
Either you're perpetuating rape culture or you're committed to ending it.
Thank you, Justice Democrats, for taking swift action.
This is what progressive leadership looks like.
Well, I guess we can just call it the social justice democrats now then, since you've ousted the most reasonable or one of the most reasonable people in there who just happened to be at the top because of something that happened.
Well, how old is this fucking person?
I mean, how old are they?
Were they a fucking toddler when Jenk was doing this?
Were they even in school at this point?
And you've got to love the way she puts her pronouns in her profile.
You know exactly the kind of person you're dealing with here.
But I think the thing that annoys me most about this is that somehow this is forcing Kyle Kalinsky's secular talk to resign as well.
And that to me is really disappointing because I like and respect Kyle.
I think he does good work.
Even if I don't always agree with his political positions, I still respect the man's integrity and I respect his honesty.
And that he feels the need that he has to go as well is actually kind of heartbreaking to me.
Especially when you listen to the tone of voice that he is giving when making this statement.
Kyle has done nothing wrong either, but just listen to this.
When people on the staff saw these things that he said, the overwhelming majority of them said, basically, look, it's him or us.
So either he steps down as a face of the movement, because a face of the movement should have said these things about women under no circumstances.
So it's either him or us.
Either, you know, he stays, in which case you need an entire new staff to do all the difficult infrastructure work, or he goes as a public face in the movement and the staff stays, and we continue doing all the infrastructure work and all the work necessary to move forward.
Now, Jenk handled this in as mature a way as possible.
Because Jenk said, listen, this isn't about me.
This was never about me.
This is about the candidates.
This is about the policies that they're fighting for.
So I'm going to, he offered his resignation.
He offered.
He said, okay, I'm going.
Given the reaction that this is causing in the staff, this isn't a hard decision.
I will voluntarily resign.
And, you know, you guys can keep fighting on and I'll support you from outside the organization.
The Justice Democrat statement that announced his resignation wasn't cordial.
It was framed in a very venomous way and in a way I don't agree with.
They intimated that Jenk was sexist and racist.
And they said Jenk is part of the patriarchy.
I don't agree with that.
They said that he abused his power like other officials, which implies that there's some sort of a parallel or a comparison between Jenkin and guys like Representative Conyers or Jenk and Al Franken.
I reject that implication and I reject that comparison.
I don't agree with that at all.
In a retweet, they even implied that his words and actions, quote, perpetuate rape culture.
I couldn't disagree with that any more strongly than I do.
Even if you agree with the harshest interpretation of Jenk's comments, they were made 18 years ago, and for over a decade, he's come to be the polar opposite kind of person.
In fact, Jank has run his company in a newsroom for over a decade, and there have been a grand total of zero complaints made against him.
So I am on the board of Justice Democrats.
And I was faced with a decision among the other board members.
I'm not the only person.
I either override the majority, the overwhelming majority of the staff, in which case I'm undemocratic.
Or I don't try to override the overwhelming majority of the staff, in which case, on some level, I'm being spineless.
I didn't have the power or the leadership authority to look at the overwhelming majority of the staff and say, I'm not going to take your concerns to heart, and I'm going to have Jenk stay on.
Nor did Jenk say, listen, I don't care.
I'm going to override the will of the overwhelming majority of the staff and I'm going to stay on.
So for this reason of strong differences, strong disagreements with the staff, I'm going to be stepping down from Justice Democrats.
Now, I don't want people to take this the wrong way.
I still, with all of my heart, believe that all of those members of the staff are vital and they're very important.
And I respect each and every one of them.
And the work that they put in must be fully appreciated because it really was a lot of work.
And it's really stuff that I don't have the skill set to do on my own.
And they bring something very important to the left-wing movement.
It's beyond crucial that each and every one of us still support the candidates because the candidates had nothing to do with any of this.
Every single one of the candidates has my support.
They all still support Medicare for all and free college and a living wage and ending the wars and a new New Deal and getting money out of politics.
And they weren't even involved in this drama or the fallout or the very quick decision making.
So I want everybody to know that I'm not just saying that.
That even though I'm resigning from Justice Democrats, each and every candidate still deserves our support, still deserves our donations, still deserves our time to actually put in work at the grassroots level and to fight for them to get elected so that we can get our vision implemented.
Basically what this comes down to is an amicable split between the media wing of Justice Democrats and the remainder of the staff of Justice Democrats.
Kyle, my dude, you can't let them take this because they are going to kill the Justice Democrats.
The Justice Democrats is going to become increasingly more SJW-ish and you know it.
Come on, man.
You were one of the bulwarks against social justice nonsense.
To be honest with you, Jenk was too.
I know there are going to be loads of people like, what the fuck are you talking about?
But Jenk is not actually as crazy as people think.
He is surprisingly reasonable on certain subjects.
Of course, he's surprisingly unreasonable on others, but that's a different story.
The point is, there is so much to criticize him on from a liberal point of view, not a progressive point of view.
But when you look at it, he is actually not calling for, oh, I don't know, the disestablishment of the United States, which is what a lot of people on the far left are actually agitating for.
He is actually not calling for the overthrow of capitalism because he is a fucking capitalist himself.
He is actually probably not in favor of racial discrimination.
Cenk is probably well-intentioned, but just not very clear on the principles that he is following.
But the SJWs know exactly what they're doing.
They know exactly what their principles are, and they are not good.
If you guys let them take this, they are done.
The Justice Democrats are going to sink into oblivion.
Seriously, just look at these comments.
God damn it, Kyle Chenk.
This is why we told you to avoid letting these people into any sort of management position.
This isn't a good day.
You let Justice Democrats slip into the control of the SJWs.
This shatters all hopes for any coherent movement going into re-election this year.
We are divided at every turn.
Damn it, Kyle, you should have stayed and not let Jenk drag you down.
Justice Democrats is over.
It's done.
Justice Democrats is done.
The left is constantly eating each other.
It's the social justice warriors.
This is why I am such an implacable foe of these lunatics.
They are basically a soft form of communist revolutionary, and they are really, really unpopular.
Their whole modus operandi, and we have seen this dozens of times at this point, is to infiltrate, co-opt, and brown-nose their way up a hierarchy and then utterly destroy it with their puritanical witch hunting.
No one is good enough for them.
And anyone who isn't a social justice warrior needs to support Jenk and Kyle behind this and just say, you know what?
No one's perfect, but they're good enough.
That's what you need to say.
This is good enough.
That's the only way to defeat them.
And when they say, no, it's not good enough, you say, no, it is.
No, it is.
You just stand by your guns.
Now, I know, if you don't like it, there's the door.
If you don't like it, find somewhere more perfect.
Start your own movement, which I'm sure will be perfect from the ground up.
But this is good enough for us.
Jenk apologized.
It was a good apology.
He took responsibility for it.
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