Media Bros before Worker Bees!
How fake is the left Media?
It turns out that if your goal is to create a media empire that requires you to crush your employees. It doesn’t matter what you outwardly proclaim to be your values when the power dynamics of the corporation are challenged it becomes self evident that the thin veneer of anti-capitalism is just that a marketing tool and nothing more. It doesn’t matter if you are Bhaskar Sunkara founder of Jacobin, Nathan J. Robinson found of Current Affairs, or Cenk Uyger founding member of The Young Turks— in the end the control of the project is what matters and the glory and the profit is second.
I’ve been researching for a while now the TYT Union Debacle— I’ve reached out to the Union on several occasions to get no response at all. I’m a small outlet with little reach; so, I understand the calculus of this decision. Why jeopardize yourselves for a small opportunity to fight your adversaries in the corporation? I understand the math they are doing they need large scale impact with their messaging and why rock the boat if things are going well to appease the viewers of a small substack page? I get that. But, hopefully, they will talk to me at some point because we need people on the left that support labor now more than ever!
The problem with “The Young Turks” is that essentially it is all about the money. Cenk started life off as a Wharton School Bro-Guy from Jersey— I’m sure you know the type they literally are the guys on Wall Street that refer to women as “slores” (slut + whore— I know it seems redundant) in their alpha male driven world view. I know these types all too well. The sexism and misogynistic attitudes are not just part of their shtick it is literally their mantra. They are driven by greed and self-aggrandizement to such an extreme that it is almost comical if they weren’t so toxic in our society. These people believe in one thing only they are dominate and they are the ones who should be dominate. The empire that Cenk created was one of an Alpha-Male Winner!
This is a clip of videos I’ve saved from deletion from the internet— shows how the Young Turks spent most of their early days on the Internet trying to gain fame by “slut-shaming” women and ranking the quality of actresses breasts. This is the culture of the Young Turks a pro-male 15-25 years of age type of series. There is without a doubt a certain type of exploitation that this type rhetoric generates as part of an entire systemic belief system of domination of the people you see as weak.
This the sorta topical discussions that Cenk and the Gang used to delve deeply into for their audiences. The entire culture of TYT has always been the trading Pit at a major Wall Street firm like the scene in The Wolf Of Wall Street— where they are tossing midgets to stick on a target. This same attitudes have always been baked into the TYT cake. And so it should come has no surprise that Cenk has always been anti-worker deep down inside.
This is quote from Politico’s article about the incident states how natural and patriarchal Cenk saw his leadership of the The Young Turks— Like a Father figure he was there to do his best and you the workers like children should accept that it is natural and right this dynamic. Of course Cenk felt that this union talk was an attack on his personal leadership— just as Nathan J. Robinson did in 2021.
The type of argument is the same no matter uses it. You have to keep the worker bees inline don’t let them get the notion that they are important enough to have a say in the work place. Don’t dare create an environment where democracy in the workplace can truly exist. Instead create the cult of personality around yourself and your goals. It is very important that you craft this personality of being the “progressive boss” .
Cenk has carefully elevated his little radio talk show into an internet sensation over the last 22 years. Of course much of this success can be attributed to the fact that Cenk jumped on the bandwagon of creating a “left based talk radio” program in 2002 on Sirius Sat Radio. This was during the time when Air America was prominent and a distaste for the second Gulf War was strong. The demoralized left after the loss of the 2000 election were ready to embrace an entertainment based left news content like the “Daily Show” which became an instant hit with the American population between 18-49 (the most coveted demographic in American Television). Many of this group began to rely on it not just for humor but also for actual news content. The stage was set for developing a stronger version of this same media output and the Young Turks were born.
In an early clip of the series Cenk and Ben Mankiewicz comparing their general net ancestral wealth and prestige that their families had in respect to the world of media is rather interesting. It is clear that both Cenk and co-founder Mankiewicz felt that even if they had a leg up compared to their peers in the industry they were still scrappy underdogs.
It is all part of culture that has made TYT so famous this bombastic aggressive anti-establishment rhetoric that is one part “WWE” and one part “Tucker Carlson” that has lead us to this point in time. You cannot help but get a sense that Cenk was ardent believer in “Boulwarism”— the classic anti-union anti-negotiation practices perfected by Lemuel R. Boulware (1895-1990) of G.E. fame. The same Boulware that actually believed his practices of hard-line non-negotiations were in fact in the best interest of employee and employer alike can be heard echoing through Cenk’s statements about “ Before ITASE came in we had a great relationship…” or “… that some folks got you to believe that being adverbial with ‘Management’ is the right thing to do”. These are classic attacks on the idea that management is anything but looking out for your best interests as workers— even if they engaging in anti-labor practices of low pay for full time employees, poor benefits, and the use of unpaid interns to further their conquest of the “so-called independent media sphere”.
At least Nathan J. “Willy Wonka” Robinson attempted to be a bit more honest in his aspirations- “Current Affairs”—was just simply his project and he “….knew in his heart it was his project”. And that usually means he also that he felt the lion share of the wealth was of course for him too. It’s not clear that Current Affairs is a very successful publication when compared to say Jacobin. But make no mistake Bhaskar Sunkara is not exactly a socialist either for all his talk about creating a socialist economic system— he has enriched himself by underpaying for articles as David Minzer has stated. However, when that wasn’t enough Sunkara has shifted to outright destroying "worker rights”. When Jacobin Magazine acquired the failing “Tribune” magazine based in London around 2018 for a paltry 5 figure sum it soon became evident that Jacobin was not going to keep the current staff. Within months of the purchase the writing staff of the “Tribune” found out that Sunkara had pulled a bait and switch on them after allegedly promising 70% of their back pay they were released with zero pay. This caused a flurry of angry accusations to be sent across in the internet in Open Letter format from the writers to the publisher and his American supporters. This effort ending in a Payday Report article by Mike Elk and not much more.
As disgusting as this all will seem to you my readers the facts about TYT are even more grotesque— after years of calling itself the home of progressive news it was slowly reported that at least since 2014 according to Politico Cenk had been engaged in finding seed funding from equity firms like the Buddy Roemer (former Louisiana Governor and Congressman) were investing $4 million with an option to double that to $8 million that year. This deal came with a seat on the adviser board for Roemer’s firm as well. A mere 3 years later in 2017 it came to light that another larger investment this time $20 million from a Jeffery Katzenberg lead investment group had decided that TYT was going to be the recipient of their generosity and they received a series of members on the board as well. The only people it seemed to not be talking about these large scale funding projects of a so-called independent media source were the socialist watch dogs magazines and independent journalists.
It is interesting that in the period of 2017 to present not one article or mention of the $24 million in funding from private equity can be found. In fact in July of this year Current Affairs did an interview with Cenk about the political landscape of the election. Do you know what didn’t manage to come up in this interview? If you guessed labor rights you’d be right? Of course you might say this is not the article to do such a question. But if you’re fighting for heartbeat of America and claiming that all CNN and MSNBC care about is access to Power and so on as this article does it makes sense to talk about “labor rights”! After all isn’t that what “Make America Great Again” is partly about the return of high paying quality jobs to Americans? The type that Socialist claim they want to deliver to the nation?
Of course this should still be a big issue for the people on the left when your champions of the ideals fall not just short but betray them completely it is necessary to point this fact out. But, how can any of these pseudo-leftists achieve this goal? Krystal Ball certainly isn’t able to do so with a straight face after running the People’s House Project that managed to achieve two things: access for Ball to billionaires like Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame and Christopher Hughes early founder and spokes person for Facebook (later renamed Meta) and so on. In other words Tech people who had money to burn on this project no matter the outcome. The other achievement was of course putting a nice paycheck in Ball’s account almost 94% of the total funds were found in her compensation package.
Bhaskar certainly was in no better condition his Jacobin magazine was built on the exploitation of cheap of idealistic journalists that were often under paid if paid at all. Bhaskar also had that entire issue with the Tribune still lingering to some degree over his head. Certainly it would not be advantageous to point out the issues of Cenk and TYT during this period as it would look cravenly hypocritical.
Sam Seder and the Minority Report were still part of the TYT umbrella networks at the time. So, that meant that Seder couldn’t come out swinging against his gravy train. So, it was best to leave this topic alone and they all fell inline basically. This included the Secular Talk show by Kyle Kulinski too- who was also trading heavily as the clone of Cenk in more than just content but literal style as well. And all the top contributors of these magazines were silent as well.
Not one of these above mentioned bastions of Labor Fighters were able to comment on the topic. That is because each of these figures I’m pointing out are in the business of self-enrichment. As I’ve stated before I was blocked on Twitter when I outright asked Dr. Ben Burgis why he didn’t stand up and fight for the workers of the Tribune against Sunkara? I guess the answer is simply that Burgis’ wants his socialist statements printed in the Jacobin still? I guess it’s Media-Bros before Worker Bees in his world. But, Burgis’ isn’t the only the facts are rather clear that anyone who had their career attached to these individuals: Sunkara, Robinson, and Uygur were all silent. For example it wasn’t until just recently that Emma Vigeland mentioned anything at all about “Union Busting Lawyers” on Twitter in December. It is telling the amount of class solidarity that Vigeland had with her boss Ana Kasparian, that the only reason this was stated was due to the fact they had fallen out as friends. Just imagine if they had not fallen out— I doubt this would ever have been brought out into the open.
It turns out that worker solidarity in the Leftist Media world isn’t all it seems to be. People like Dr. Ben Burgis that spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince you that they are for “Democracy in The Workplace” in the end they will always sell the non-author or journalist member out to the bosses to ensure their own position. This is a grotesque bit of class solidarity designed to ensure that people like Megan Day now editor of Jacobin magazine her ilk are safe from the dangers of becoming too involved in a true socialist project. Remember this type of producer class isn’t about to give up their potential for making millions so an editor in TYT can make enough money to live on.
