Speaker 1: OK, I have received dozens of emails and tweets and comments asking me to weigh
in about what's currently happening with the online left.
As many of you know, I really don't watch much online political media.
I limit myself to the stuff I read to be ready to do the show.
And then I have other interests in limited time each day.
But I am sort of aware of a bunch of the different things that have been going on with the online
left.
And I want to talk about it a little bit because I do think that it's actually there's a lot
to say here.
Now, as I understand it, there's a few different controversies happening right now.
I am very much aware of young Turks host Jank Ugur and also young Turks host Anna Kasparian
embroiled in again, if I understand it correctly, it's a couple of different controversies.
One is specifically related to another host named Jimmy Daw and sexual harassment or harassment,
as some like to say.
And then another kind of more general controversy is between Genk and the Young Turks and a
sort of contingent of the authoritarian revolutionary left that has a presence online, people like
Glenn Greenwald and others.
I'm not exactly sure who else is part of this.
And so a few things are going on there.
And then on the other hand, it seems as though there was kind of a shake up at the hills
rising and there are new hosts there.
And that seems to be going pretty poorly from the one one thing I read about it and the
question I've basically been getting from people in the audience is whether the online
left is tearing itself apart in a way that is counterproductive to the progressive movement
and whether the left has become overrun with with with grifter's.
So let's take these questions one at a time.
And I want to say I was actually just interviewed for a podcast by Cliff Schecter and John Aravosis,
where we talk quite a bit about this.
And we're going to publish this over the weekend.
And we talk a lot about this issue.
If the topic interests you, there's, you know, probably 20 minutes of this stuff in that
episode which will publish to our YouTube channel.
So first of all, the fact that there are different views on the left is not bad.
It's not a source for concern.
And it's always been my perspective that diversity of opinion is fine and good and should be
applauded and welcomed.
What has been a concern for me has been the increased gatekeeping that I've seen some
on the left and Gagin, which includes call outs about who really is or isn't on the left.
I've received many of those as well as kind of shaming people for views and generally
unproductive insults when somebody doesn't line up one hundred percent with your political
perspective, generally speaking, diversity of opinion is good.
It's not a problem in and of itself.
What is a problem is when people start to focus merely on calling out others, either
for personal reasons or for clicks or for money or to keep or to virtue signal or for
whatever reason they do it.
So I'm going to give you an example.
When Jimmy Door has attacked me, he did on Twitter during the election period last year,
I've mentioned my views differ from Jimmy Dorce, but I don't base my show in my identity
around calling out people like Jimmy Daw with whom I have differences of opinion.
First of all, it just seems so boring.
Secondly, it's so childish.
Third, what would I even get from doing that?
It would probably be profitable.
And I've jokingly talked with others about who should I start a fake beef with because
it gets attention, but it's just not me.
It's not productive in any in any real sense.
Now, the issue of grifter's is a complicated one.
And when I say grifter, what I mean is someone is creating a persona and covering stories
or taking positions or covering stories in a way that doesn't represent who they really
are either because they've decided I can concoct this persona and appeal to a certain audience
or it's going to be profitable in some way.
I might get paid speaking gigs or whatever the case may be.
Now, here's what I can say about that.
I'm going to give you a list of people that I know are not grifters.
And what I mean by that is whether we agree or disagree on any particular issue.
What you see them say publicly lines up completely with what they say privately.
They are not playing characters.
They're not calculating their positions for how it's going to be perceived by their audiences
or for profitability.
And the reason I'm able to give you this list is because I know both these people's public
work as well as knowing them privately as individuals and in no particular order.
Here are people that are not Grifter's, Genk and Anna from the Young Turks.
I've known them both for a long time.
If you talk to them privately, what they say is exactly what they say on their show.
We don't have to agree about everything.
Surely I'd have differences with them about, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
but they are totally sincere in what they say and what they believe would be best for
the world.
I am totally sincere in what I say.
There is no grift or calculation there.
Great.
OK, Sam Ceder from the majority report I've been to what must be at this point 15 or 20
conferences with Sam over the years where we spend hours together.
Every political conversation I've had with Sam and that I've heard and overheard Sam
have with other folks, including people from the Revolutionary Left, etc., the public,
Sam and the private Sam is exactly the same person.
No grift.
Kyle Kolinsky.
I've hung out with Kyle and I've talked to Kyle Atun over the years, the Kyle you see
on his YouTube channel, as far as I know.
And again, I don't watch a lot of this stuff online.
It's the same Kyle that I know privately.
Faran Cousins from Ring of Fire is the same guy politically, privately as he is publicly.
No.
Mickey from The Namiki Show, I've known her for probably a decade.
Private Namiki and Public Namiki are the same person.
This is not someone who I guess we traditionally consider to be on the left in this.
I don't know how my audience will react to this.
Joe Rogan, whatever your problems are with the things Rogan says, and I recently did
a video where I said I disagree with what Joe is saying about vaccination.
I think he's mistaken.
There is no act there.
I can tell you, Rogan, five minutes before the show starts and an hour after and on the
show, it's it's the real Rogen.
OK, now, anybody outside of this list, some of them are grifters, but many of them, I
just don't know privately.
So I can't really say I don't know well enough to say their public persona is different than
the person they are in private, either for profit or not.
Some I don't want to name names because then I'm just engaging in the same stuff.
But there are plenty of grifters.
So then the question is, is the grifting going to tear the left apart?
But probably not.
Some people will make money and are making money with the grifting, with the calculated
fake personas.
There are others who will then make money from attacking the grifters and on and on.
It's not really my thing.
I don't think it's particularly good for the progressive movement to have people with retrograde
ideologies passing themselves as being on the left.
You know, if you are an authoritarian or a faux populist or you defend or sympathize
the authoritarians or the faux populists and the dictators and the strongmen, I would question
whether you're really on the left.
It's not a left I recognize, but I don't know that it's really going to tear the left apart.
A lot of these movements seem way bigger.
If you look at Twitter and Reddit and YouTube, then they really are.
But it's going to continue being profitable.
So it's going to continue.
That's basically my take.
And a lot of it is very boring.
A lot of it is extraordinarily childish.
And the unfortunate reality is that to some degree.
We're all slightly narcissistic, and what I mean by that is anybody who I mean, OK,
if you're neuro divergent, then this this may not apply, OK?
But for people who are, you know, not autistic and you decide, I'm going to have a show where
I give my opinion, there's some degree of narcissism there.
There has to be because somewhere you believe that your opinion may be as opposed to or
different than millions and millions and millions of people who never occurs to do a show.
Your opinion is of some value entertainment or it's something that other people would
want to listen to.
So you're going to have a lot of interesting and different personalities in this space.
But within that, there's a huge, huge spectrum.
And by its nature, you're going to get this this stuff within the space.
And I think that there are aspects of it that aren't good for the progressive movement,
but I don't think it's ultimately going to be destructive in the way that some believe
it's going to be, because much of the survival of this very space, the online left, depends
on conflict and depends on controversy.
And so the idea that it will become a distraction from policy, sure, but it's not going to destroy
the space overall.
We'll have more of this on our Instagram.
You can follow us on Instagram at David Pakman show.
And I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.